Chapter 6 – Elise #3
“I hope you’re not planning on chanting anything,” Kevin warned. “Last time you tried a chant, you accidentally invited that tap-dancing ghost into the orchestra pit.”
“I was nineteen and quoting Wicked lyrics,” she muttered. “This is different.”
Back in the green room, Elise realized she was missing one crucial ingredient.
“A lighter,” she said aloud, patting her pockets. “I forgot a lighter.”
Nick disappeared for a moment, before returning. “Found one—Romy keeps one in the prop drawer with her emergency mascara,” he said, handing it to her.
Elise took the lighter and stared at her sage bundle, the dry ends crumbling slightly between her fingers.
“All right,” she said, more to herself than anyone. “Let’s see if this works.”
She crouched by the ghost’s pacing path, lit the sage, and let the smoke drift across his frantic loop—back and forth, back and forth, shoes scuffing a path long since worn into the floor.
Elise stayed just out of his way. She knew better than to get too close.
Walking through a ghost always felt like stepping into a frozen lake in your socks.
“Don’t crowd him,” Kevin warned. “Ghosts on the edge don’t like to be startled. Ask Macbeth how that went.”
Elise shot him a startled look. It was a cardinal theatrical sin to mutter the name of that play within a theatre. Hopefully the rules didn’t apply when you were already a ghost.
Nick, oblivious, leaned closer. “Is anything happening?”
“Not yet,” Elise murmured.
The ghost walked on, mumbling to himself, anxiety carved deep into the furrows of his brow. Elise was starting to think maybe this wasn’t going to work after all—when suddenly, he stopped.
Right in front of her.
He turned.
Looked at her.
Elise froze. She hadn’t planned for this part.
For a split second, she wished Cici were here. She would know the perfect thing to say, the perfect way to say it.
She scrambled for something—anything. “Good luck,” nearly slipped out, but she caught it just in time.
Another theatre superstition. Never say “good luck” in a theatre.
Instead, she squared her shoulders, and forced her voice to steady.
“Break a leg tonight.”
The ghost blinked. Then nodded once—sharp, decisive—and resumed pacing. But his stride was smoother now. Less frantic. The muttering had stopped.
“I think that did something,” she whispered.
Nick clapped like he’d just witnessed a magic trick. “I love ghost stuff. I feel like I should tip you.”
Elise only smiled and texted Cici again.
I did the thing. He looked at me. Calmed down. I think it helped??
I told him to break a leg.
Thank you, love you
Cici replied seconds later.
Cici
obviously.
Personally, I would have told him to project and enunciate
But yours was better. (duh) and I love you too
Elise bent over her station during the second show of the day, amidst the swirl of people and chaos.
She was smoothing a line of flyaways from a stubborn updo when she glanced up and found Graham across the hallway, half-shadowed, like he was on his way somewhere and got waylaid by a surprising thought.
He wasn’t staring, exactly—but he wasn’t not either.
Just watching. Like he was trying to memorize the scene without knowing why.
He adjusted his cuff, turned, and walked away without a word.
Elise turned back to her work, realizing she had lost herself for a moment. She reached instinctively for a pin, only to find it already in her palm.
Nick was there, calm and quiet behind her, holding out a second just in case.
She blinked. “Thanks.”
He smiled and leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, like he’d always been there. No flourish. No joke. Just... presence. He lingered a moment longer, then slipped away with a small, mock-salute when his cue called him to the wings.
Not long after, Elise could hear it when the sound board hiccupped during “At the Ball (Reprise)”—a half-second delay that would’ve thrown lesser actors.
Talia had apparently barely blinked. She twirled with an exaggerated flourish, looping the pause into her choreography like it had always belonged.
Romy caught it instantly, mimed a curtsy with mock outrage, and the entire stage pivoted into something even more alive.
Backstage murmurs caught fire instantly. Later, Jen relayed the moment with pride in her voice. “Did you see that pivot? We should be taking notes.”
Elise smiled, warm and a little wistful.
Kevin, hovering nearby, was characteristically deadpan. “You miss them.”
“The sisters from the First company?” she asked, already knowing. She nodded. “Of course. But this group… they’re something too.”
An hour later, tucked in the wig closet with a monitor crackling overhead, Elise listened to the final verse of “In Vain Have I Struggled.”
Something in Graham’s voice tonight felt… different. The tension had gone soft around the edges—less restraint, more ache. Like he wasn’t playing Darcy anymore, just telling the truth in iambic pentameter.
Kevin, hovering near the speaker, gave a long-suffering sigh. “Someone’s found his subtext. About time.”
The theatre was quieted again as the hours slipped past.
Everyone had trickled out over the last hour: cast, crew, even the ever-lingering Nick. Elise was alone in her wig closet sanctuary, surrounded by the scent of hairspray, the distant memory of orchestra notes, and the hush that only came when the curtains were truly at rest.
She hummed, then sang softly. Tonight’s choice: “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” A bold finish to a two-show day. Her voice curled around the room like ribbon, confident and precise. Kevin floated by the doorway, pretending not to watch—but his smile gave him away.
As the final note hung in the air, shimmering like the last fleck of stage glitter, Elise exhaled and carefully set the wig into the dryer.
Kevin cleared his throat. “Show-off.”
Elise grinned. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“Someone had to,” he said, softer than expected. “It was the best performance of the night.”
She was just about to start packing up when something caught her eye.
Tucked between her teasing comb and a jar of bobby pins, was a brush she didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t hers—that much was clear. The handle was smooth, carved wood, darker than anything she used.
Nestled in its bristles was a small lock of hair, brown and fine, tied delicately with a piece of red thread.
Her brows furrowed. “That’s… weird.”
Kevin drifted in closer, gaze sharpening. “Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” Elise said, reaching toward it with mild curiosity. “Maybe it was buried in the wig trunk?”
But before her fingers could close around the handle, Kevin darted forward—unusually fast for a ghost.
“Don’t.”
Elise blinked, hand suspended in midair. “What?”
“Don’t use that brush on yourself,” he said, tone suddenly sharp. “I don’t like the way it feels. It’s… wrong.”
Elise hesitated. Kevin wasn’t often this serious. But the look on his face now—that pinched, protective tightness—was enough to give her pause.
“Is it cursed?” she asked lightly, trying to dispel the sudden heaviness in the air.
“I don’t know,” Kevin admitted. “But someone wanted it found. That hair isn’t random, and that’s no ordinary brush. Don’t trust anything you didn’t place here yourself.”
Elise didn’t argue. She picked it up with a towel and placed it in the trash can on the far side of the counter, far from where anyone might accidentally grab it.
“I’ll text Cici later,” she murmured. “She’ll know if I’ve almost accidentally adopted a cursed object.”
Kevin didn’t laugh. He just hovered nearby, watching it like it might sprout legs and walk off.
Outside the wig closet, the theatre creaked. The ghost light still waited out onstage, warm and steady—but somehow, Elise felt a chill creep in anyway.