Chapter 16 – Graham
Chapter Sixteen
Graham
Graham knocked on Lark’s dressing room frame with the lightest rap he could manage—polite, restrained, the kind of knock you used when you already regretted being there.
No answer.
He waited a second, listening past the muffled post-show chaos in the hallway.
The women’s star dressing room sat in the same semi-private pocket as his, tucked off a side corridor most people only remembered existed when they needed something.
Normally, he appreciated that. Tonight, it made the silence feel… pointed.
He knocked again, slightly firmer. “Lark?”
He was still in costume—Darcy’s coat tugging at his shoulders, shirt damp at the collar, the faint grit of stage makeup still on his skin.
They’d only just taken their bows. The applause was probably still dying in the house.
And yet Lark had hurried off the moment the curtain fell, fast enough that he’d barely caught her shadow as she vanished into the wings.
That alone would’ve been enough to make him pause.
Lark loved an exit, but not like that. Not when she’d had a crowd.
He shifted his weight, irritation sparking—not at her, exactly, but at the fact that he was here, outside her door, like a man who didn’t know how to mind his own business.
He usually did. He’d made an art of it with Lark: stay out of her way, keep things cordial, keep things sterile.
Scene partners. Coworkers. No unnecessary overlap.
It had been easier that way.
But something was wrong. Not just in the general sense—the creeping, uncanny disturbances that had started to feel less like coincidence and more like a pattern—but with Lark specifically.
Onstage, she hadn’t been herself. Her timing was fine.
Her voice was fine. Her blocking was flawless, as always.
But the energy behind it—the thing that made her magnetic, that made the audience lean forward as if she were pulling them by a string—had been…
absent. Like someone had turned down the voltage.
He knew her tells. He’d been Darcy to her Elizabeth long enough to recognize when she was playing the scene versus when she was surviving it.
Tonight she’d smiled at the right moments and hit the right marks, but her eyes had looked unfocused in the way they did when she was somewhere else entirely.
During their final moments, when he’d drawn her close for the stage kiss, she’d felt brittle.
Like something in her had cracked and she was holding herself together by sheer will.
He had no idea what he could possibly offer her. They weren’t friends. They barely qualified as acquaintances outside of their shared lines and choreography.
And still… he couldn’t shake the image of her disappearing offstage, too fast, too intent, like she was fleeing something no one else could see.
It struck him then—absurdly—that her door was closed at all.
These dressing rooms were rarely shut. They were little more than designated corners with mirrors, and theatre people treated privacy like a suggestion.
Even costume changes happened with doors propped open, conversations continuing as bodies slipped in and out of garments without ceremony.
A closed door meant someone wanted to be alone.
Or wanted to keep something in.
Graham swallowed and tried again, softer this time, as if volume might be the difference between intrusion and concern.
“Lark,” he said. “Are you alright?”
Silence answered him for a moment longer than felt normal.
A faint sound—fabric shifting, a soft intake of breath—and then the door cracked open. Lark didn’t step out. She only peeked, face half-hidden behind the frame, eyes scanning the hallway first as if she were checking for witnesses.
Her gaze landed on him and, just for an instant, something like surprise flickered across her features.
“Graham,” she said, as if his name didn’t belong here.
She was wrapped in a robe, hair still up in pin curls, the faint sheen of stage sweat still visible at her throat. She didn’t look composed. Not the way she always looked composed.
Without inviting commentary, she opened the door wider and jerked her chin once—an instruction more than an invitation.
He stepped inside.
Lark closed the door behind him immediately, the latch clicking into place. The room felt smaller with the door shut, air warmer, saturated with perfume and hairspray—and something else, sharper under it. Smoke.
Graham’s eyes went, unwillingly, to the counter.
A small bundle of herbs lay there among a scatter of objects that didn’t belong in any standard backstage kit: twine, a shallow dish dusted with salt or ash, a few dark stones, a folded scrap of paper marked with quick, deliberate lines.
Witchy paraphernalia, there was no other honest description for it.
And in the middle of it all sat a candle burned down nearly to the base.
A thin thread of smoke still rose from the wick, curling toward the light above the mirror like she’d only just blown it out.
Graham stood near the door, suddenly aware of how little practice he had at this kind of conversation.
He’d come with an intention. It had felt simple in the hallway. Now, with the door shut and the air threaded with smoke, it felt like stepping onto a stage with no script.
“I—” he started, then corrected, because stumbling wasn’t going to help either of them. “I wanted to see if you’re okay.” He kept his voice even, careful not to sound accusatory. “You haven’t seemed like yourself recently. Is there… anything I can do?”
Lark stared at him for a long moment.
Not blankly. Not idly. Like she was weighing him. Testing for motive, for weakness, for the hidden knife behind the offered hand. Graham had the distinct impression she wasn’t used to people checking on her without wanting something in return.
Finally, she spoke, but it wasn’t an answer.
“Elise,” Lark said. “Did she tell you about the shadow in the wings yesterday?”
Graham nodded once.
Lark’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And you believe her?”
He took a breath and did an internal check-in, the way he did before a difficult scene.
Did he believe her?
Until Lark put the question in front of him, it hadn’t even occurred to him not to.
Graham had never made a hobby of the paranormal. Ghosts and witchcraft and all the unexplainable things people whispered about in comment sections and late-night forums—he’d always categorized them under entertaining, unlikely, not relevant to my life.
He certainly wouldn’t have called himself a believer.
But then Elise had told him what she could see. He’d met Kevin. He’d watched her react to things in the air before he heard them. He’d held Ellen’s phone in his hand after it had been wedged into the floor.
The category had shifted without him noticing it happen.
“Yes,” he said finally, quiet but sure. “I do.”
Lark’s gaze held on him, searching for the crack.
Graham didn’t look away.
And with the word out loud, he realized something with a strange, almost resigned clarity: regardless of what did or didn’t ever happen between him and Elise, he had crossed a line he couldn’t uncross.
From this point forward, he would always fall into the category of guy who believes in ghosts.
Lark didn’t give him time to shape his answer into something more articulate.
“Good,” she said, clipped. “You should.”
The word landed with an edge Graham couldn’t quite name.
Approval, yes—but threaded through with something that looked uncomfortably like resentment.
Like the fact that he’d offered Elise belief so easily was its own offense.
Her mouth tightened, and her eyes flicked away as if she regretted letting him see that much.
Graham’s attention caught on it—on her tone, on the quick fracture in her composure.
Lark noticed.
Her gaze snapped back to him, sharp, and whatever vulnerability had been hovering in the room shut down like a light switch. She turned toward the door and reached for the knob.
“No,” she said, already twisting it. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”
It wasn’t just the words. It was the way she said them—final, scornful, a dismissal wrapped in velvet. A clear directive: leave my bubble.
Graham didn’t argue. He stepped back instinctively, letting the door swing open.
The hallway’s fluorescent glare felt too bright after the warm, smoky hush inside. He crossed the threshold, and Lark started to close the door again as if sealing herself back into place.
Then she paused.
Her hand stayed on the knob. Her voice dropped, lower than before—enough that it felt like she was saying it despite herself.
“But…” She held his gaze for a beat that sharpened into something almost warning. “Keep an eye on Elise.”
Graham’s stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?” he started, but Lark had already moved, the door sliding toward the frame.
She didn’t elaborate. The door clicked shut, and Graham found himself staring at it longer than made sense.
The conversation replayed in his head in uneven fragments—her questions, his answer, the way she’d pivoted on a dime and turned him back into an outsider.
Most of his exchanges with Lark felt like that: a whirlwind he was never fully in control of.
Like stepping onto a moving platform and pretending it was solid ground.
Still… he was more certain than ever that something was wrong with her.
Not just “Lark is in a mood” wrong. Not just “two-show day fatigue” wrong. Something deeper.
He couldn’t force her to let him help. He knew that. He didn’t even know what help would look like. But the thought of walking away without offering anything didn’t sit right.
He leaned toward the door, keeping his voice low, as if volume could make it less intrusive. “If there’s anything I can do,” he said, measured, “just ask.”
He paused, listening for any sign she’d heard him. Nothing. Only the steady hum of the hallway lights, the distant movement of the company resetting for the next show.
Graham straightened.
Then he turned and strode down the corridor, already reaching for the fasteners on Darcy’s coat, already shifting back into the practical rhythms of getting out of costume—something he could control.