Chapter 3 – Elise #3
“I know, I know.” Ed wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. “Just here for the opening wig. I’ll grab the mutton chops during intermission.”
Elise laughed under her breath. “Some things never change.”
Nick made a dramatic show of checking his invisible watch and then popped out to get into the last pieces of his costume, leaving Elise mid-chaos.
Elise turned back to the mirror—and the energy in the room tripled.
Devon, all long limbs and perpetual motion, twirled through the doorway mid-conversation. “I told him—if you can’t pirouette without knocking over the chaise, maybe don’t stand center.”
Benji followed, coffee cup in one hand, the other adjusting a scarf he definitely didn’t need. “What chaise? There’s barely enough set in that show to call it minimalist.”
Lex trailed behind them, soft-spoken and serious, already humming his opening harmony.
They lined up like choreography. Elise barely had time to catch their names, but she caught their patterns: Devon was kinetic, Benji charming chaos, Lex a steady note in the noise.
She moved faster now—wig cap, wig, pin, glue, repeat—until the room spun in a kind of organized frenzy. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Kevin leaned against the shelves, half-possessed by the moment.
“Backstage ballet,” he mused. “No one sees it, but it holds the whole illusion up.”
Elise didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. This was her element. The eye of the storm, the heartbeat of transformation.
And then—a quiet knock on the doorframe.
Not rushed. Not hesitant. Just… deliberate.
Elise glanced up, comb still in hand.
The rhythm shifted again.
Mr. Darcy. This must be Graham.
He didn’t enter so much as appear—one shoulder leaning against the doorframe like it was blocking his spotlight.
Broad shoulders, sculpted cheekbones, the faintest wave in his dark hair.
Leading-man handsome in the exact way that always felt a little unfair.
His shirt was half-buttoned for Act One, cravat already undone in that practiced I-woke-up-like-this way that only ever looked effortless on people paid to be adored.
“Quick check in the back?” he asked, voice like velvet with a grin tucked just behind it. “Usually I handle it, but I like a thumbs up from the expert.”
He turned smoothly to show the back of his head, and his distractingly perfect hair. The lighting caught just enough to make it glow like some Regency-era shampoo commercial.
She didn’t even pause her glue application on Lex. “Looks criminally perfect,” she said. “Go away before someone cries.”
He chuckled, the sound low, easy, and annoyingly attractive. “Aye, aye,” he said with a mock salute, already backing out of the doorway.
And just like that, he was gone.
There was a beat of silence.
Kevin was quiet for a beat. Then: “I’d give that hair a solo curtain call. I hope it earns a standing ovation of its own.”
Elise rolled her eyes, but her hands stilled briefly on the spirit glue jar.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that leading men were either gay or actively working their way through the entire cast, crew, and possibly the orchestra pit. Usually both.
Yes, he was handsome. Yes, his voice had the kind of quiet power that could make women lean forward and critics swoon. And yes, she’d felt a brief flutter somewhere in her chest when he spoke.
But attraction was a luxury item she hadn’t budgeted for in years. She was too out of practice to flirt, too tired to try, and too smart to assume it’d end in anything but a dramatic monologue and a playlist of regrets.
She dipped the glue brush back into the pot and returned to Lex’s lace front. Whatever spark she might feel—for Graham, or Lark, or any of these obscenely attractive people—she would smother it like she always did, like a ghost light behind a blackout curtain.
The final hairpin slid into place with the precision of a ritual completed. Elise exhaled.
The pre-show gauntlet was over.
Day One. Pre-show. No disasters. No glue explosions. No missing lace fronts or emergency pin-curling in a stairwell.
She glanced over at the unstyled twin Elizabeth wig still resting on its head form, sad and squashed from travel. “I’ll deal with you tonight after the finale,” she muttered, giving it a half-hearted glare.
Usually, she’d have a few quiet moments once the curtain rose.
A chance to scroll, sip tea, maybe crack a few pages of whatever paperback had been following her from city to city.
But tonight, the wig closet still looked like someone had shaken it like a snow globe.
There were too many supplies to sort, labels to re-stick, loose pins to collect.
Elise stood in the middle of it, feeling oddly at peace. A mess she could clean. A tempo she could set on her own terms.
But first—her phone.
She dug it out from beneath her wig apron and unlocked it. A few hours had passed in a blur, and she winced, realizing she hadn’t texted anyone to say she’d arrived. Oops.
At least now she could report that all was (mostly) under control.
Her eyes widened. Two missed calls from Cici.
That alone was unusual.
Then she saw the messages. A flood of images and texts. She opened them and was immediately bombarded by—kittens. Six of them, in fact. Tiny, squirmy, pink-nosed miracles.
Cici:
I know you’re busy—don’t worry about responding until later tonight. But I had to share my joy.
SIX healthy kittens!!!
Look at these tiny beans!!!
Elise clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a delighted squeal. Kevin raised an eyebrow from his perch on a nearby shelf. Even from two time zones away, Cici knew exactly how to anchor her.
She quickly typed back.
I’m dead.
I have *perished.*
Please name one of them after me so I can live on through your kitten dynasty.
As she added a row of sparkles and cat emojis, Elise caught a glimpse of the tattoo on the back of her hand: a simple pentacle inked right below her knuckles, the lines delicate but deliberate.
She had one on each hand. Cici’s design—the first tattoos Elise ever got.
The first protective charm that didn’t fizzle or fade.
The first one that actually quieted the whispers long enough for her to breathe.
Before she could blink, memory surged forward, pulled loose like thread from a spool.
She’d been just eighteen. Fresh out of a suburb so sterile it practically hissed at the word haunted.
Sure, she’d caught glimpses—a shimmer here, a whisper there.
Nothing that couldn’t be explained away if she tried hard enough, and she usually did.
It was easier to cling to the normalcy everyone around her seemed to be blessed with.
Her world had been built new. Poured in concrete and vinyl, scrubbed clean of lingering souls.
But their college? It had been standing for over a century and a half—red brick, ivy-covered, the kind of place that practically breathed with paranormal history.
Elise had barely made it through orientation before she felt the shift.
The ghosts there were… louder. Closer. Present in a way that made her skin hum.
By the end of the first week, she hadn’t been sleeping.
After that, denial stopped being an option. Whatever she had—the thing she’d tried to tuck away and live around—didn’t coexist with “normal” without some measure of radical acceptance. Sanity and spirits required a truce.
Cici had been her anchor. When Elise confessed what she could see, Cici didn’t laugh, didn’t flinch, didn’t tell her to talk to someone. She just nodded. Then pulled out a candle and a sharpie.
“I’ve got you,” she’d said.
A low-key witch with a high-key talent for grounding energy, Cici had helped Elise find balance.
Looking back, Elise truly felt the universe must have intended for them to find each other.
In a world where magic was quiet and the supernatural lived in the margins—half-believed, half-mocked—the fact that she’d been assigned a roommate who’d already fought her own way to self-acceptance felt too improbable to be luck. It had to be fate.
That first semester had been chaos: too many spirits, not enough shields.
But together, they learned. Salt circles between study sessions, grounding rituals and warding bowls tucked beside homework and late-night popcorn.
The tattoos came after their third close call, a quiet rebellion carved into skin: protection, intention, a permanent anchor.
Some of their tattoos even matched—little markers of battles survived and a friendship that hadn’t needed proximity to thrive.
That was over a decade ago now, Elise realized. She and Cici had grown up, moved cities, changed jobs, and still, the bond hadn’t cracked. Distance hadn’t dulled the magic.
She blinked back to the present as the whoosh of her message being delivered lit up the screen.
“Alright,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.”
Elise tucked her phone into her apron pocket. She could feel it—the shift in air pressure, the hum through the walls.
The overture had begun.
The orchestra swelled into the bright, bouncing melody of “Five Daughters and a Dowry.”
In the wings, Isla Kent would be straightening her skirts as Mrs. Bennet, preparing to launch into a full-throated plea to marry off her daughters before Mr. Bennet met his demise.
The Bennet siblings would be swirling behind her, skirts flying, as the sleepy town of Meryton burst to life in dance and gossip.
Elise took a breath and stepped lightly over a smattering of loose pins littering the floor of the wig closet.
Showtime.