Chapter 22 – Graham
Chapter Twenty-Two
Graham
Graham would probably have been concerned, if he’d had the bandwidth to be concerned.
A week ago, he would’ve filed all of this under fiction and theatre people being theatre people. Now: spells. Specters. Ghost mimes. He’d watched Elise speak to the air like it was normal, and he’d… adjusted. Not gracefully, but quickly. Alarmingly quickly, if he stopped to think about it.
He did not stop to think about it. He filed it away for later, in the same mental drawer as existential dread and taxes.
Because Elise was already moving, already in motion like the plan itself had wound her up.
They’d been scurrying around the theatre all afternoon—phone pressed to her ear with Cici, scribbling requirements on whatever scrap paper they could find, arguing over timing and sight-lines and what could be changed without breaking the finale.
They’d mapped out the precise adjustments the rain scene would need onstage—where the circle could live, how the water would hit, what had to be said and when—and then they’d started the harder part: translating it to other people.
Cast. Crew. Jen. Anyone who would need to be in the right place at the right time tomorrow without asking too many questions.
They had covered a lot of ground in a couple of hours.
By the time Graham finished talking Jen through the latest changes to the call sheet, Elise had somehow managed to unpack the wig trunk.
He wasn’t sure how she did it without growing a second set of hands. One minute the wig blocks had been stacked like a puzzle, and the next the essentials were out, organized, and show-ready.
Jen, meanwhile, had been… surprisingly accepting.
He’d expected pushback. Not because Jen didn’t care, but because she cared too much.
The finale was sacred in a touring show: precise blocking, precise timing, the kind of choreography that lived in muscle memory across an entire company.
You didn’t tweak it the day before a performance unless you wanted to be haunted by angry notes for the rest of your career.
If everything went according to plan, the audience would never know the difference. They’d see the scene, feel the beat, applaud on cue. It would look almost like what they’d get on Broadway, or in any other city on the tour.
But if there was a producer in the house—or a choreographer, or anyone with the show’s original blueprint burned into their retinas—they’d know. Jen would be the one taking the earful later for allowing deviations.
She seemed to have accepted that risk without hesitation.
Somewhere between the phone call and the last scribbled revision, Jen had shifted into full mother-hen mode—efficient, protective, already anticipating the next problem before it could hatch.
She worked alongside Graham and Elise all afternoon, making sure every detail was planned and accounted for.
Now Graham found himself in the wig closet with Elise, each of them holding a candle in one hand and a small pocketknife in the other—like this was a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening in a theatre.
A couple dozen more candles were arranged on the floor between them, lined up with an almost military neatness. Wax shavings and little swirls of pale debris littered the ground around the row, evidence of the last hour: carve, wipe, compare, repeat.
Elise’s phone lay open in her palm, the reference image bright against the dim closet. They leaned over it together, then back to their hands—eyes flicking between the screen and the candle they were working on, both of them concentrating hard enough that the rest of the theatre fell away.
Graham should have found it absurd. He did, in a distant way. But mostly he found himself… steady.
He was content with the closeness. Grateful for it, even. Whatever this thing between them was, whatever it might become, could wait. For now, it was enough to stand beside her, share the same small pool of light, and be useful in a way that mattered.
A soft scuff of shoes sounded in the hallway. Graham and Elise both looked up at the same time.
Lark stood at the wig closet entrance, peering in—still and unreadable, as if she’d been there longer than the single scuff implied. Her hair was pulled back in a way that looked more practical than styled, and she had that faint, travel-worn edge to her, like she’d come straight from the airport.
Of course. She’d been booked on the same flight he’d originally been on, which must have just landed.
Graham felt his jaw tighten before he could stop it.
The last time he’d seen her—really seen her—had been in an alley outside the previous theatre. Her confession. The love spell. The Specter. Kevin’s sacrifice to save Elise.
In his mind it felt like weeks ago, the way trauma stretched time into something unrecognizable. But in his chest it was still sharp. Still new. A fresh wound you couldn’t help probing.
How could she try to use Elise like that?
He kept his face neutral through force of habit, but anger moved under his skin, hot and immediate, begging to be given a voice.
He didn’t give it one. Not yet.
Because they needed her. Because whatever they were about to ask of her, whatever Cici’s instructions required, was a narrow chance for Lark to do something right. A small redemption, maybe. A first step.
And if the spell was going to work, Lark had to be on board.
“Hey,” Lark said softly as she stepped into the doorway. Her eyes went straight to Elise. “You’re okay.”
“We are,” Graham replied before Elise could, his voice even. He didn’t add no thanks to you, but he didn’t particularly bother to hide it, either.
Elise shot him a look—quick, pointed. Not now. Or maybe, try harder.
Right. Fine.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Elise said, inserting herself neatly into the gap Graham had left. “We have a lot to catch you up on.”
Lark moved fully into the closet. Her gaze swept the floor: the line of carved candles, the wax curls, the bags of salt, the bundled herbs. Her eyebrows lifted, one slow notch.
“This is some… complicated shit,” she said.
“Courtesy of Cici,” Elise replied, calm and brisk. “We’ve got a plan, and we’re under a deadline.” She held Lark’s eyes without blinking. “And there’s something important you need to know about your part in the spell.”
Lark studied her for a beat—searching, assessing—like she was trying to find the trap hidden inside the invitation.
Then she nodded once, decision made.
“Tell me everything.”
They did.
Elise walked Lark through it all—Ellen’s phone, Kevin, Myrtle and the girls and the mime, the way the Specter’s presence had hitched a ride into the theatre.
Graham filled in the pieces Elise skipped—not because she couldn’t explain them, but because she’d lived them, and sometimes he could see the strain of those experiences in the tightness around her mouth.
Lark absorbed it with unnerving speed. No dramatics. No denial. Just a steady, intent focus. He found himself surprised by how quickly she agreed to the plan. He hoped that trend would continue when they tried to introduce tomorrow’s wildly unreasonable idea to the rest of the company.
The underlying current of the afternoon was wariness.
Now that the Specter’s growing presence had been confirmed—named, understood, and tied to Kevin—everything in the theatre felt slightly tilted.
People spoke more softly in the halls. Doors closed with care.
Even Jen’s brisk efficiency had a tight edge to it.
Graham could feel it in himself too, a quiet, watchful readiness that made him aware of exits and corners and shadows like he’d never been before.
The Specter needed to be contained until the right moment. If it surfaced early—if it broke through when they weren’t ready—it wasn’t just Elise who’d be at risk. It was everyone.
Half of their preparation, Graham realized, wasn’t really preparation at all. It was suppression. Safety. Holding the line.
Lark seemed to understand the mechanics of Cici’s spell with an intuitive ease that made Graham feel, briefly, like the only person in the room without the right language.
She asked two questions, made three suggestions, and within minutes she was already rearranging pieces—tightening the plan in small ways that felt practical, not performative.
Helpful, too. Annoyingly.
They called Cici to confirm the “tweaks,” Elise holding the phone between them while Graham tried to follow the thread.
“You’re sure it’s ash, not grave dirt?” Cici asked, voice on speaker.
Lark’s mouth tightened. “Of course I’m sure,” she said, irritation flashing like a blade. “I’m not a”—she cut herself off, substituting something cleaner on instinct—“beginner.”
Cici made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh or a scoff. “Okay, okay. Just checking. You’re positive it’s ash from a spent protective burn?”
“Yes,” Lark said, clipped. “And tell Elise to stop using table salt. It’s fine in a pinch, but if we’re doing this properly—”
Elise rolled her eyes, but there was a flicker of relief there too, like having someone else in the room who could carry the weight of knowing made the air easier to breathe.
To Graham, watching them talk shop was… illuminating.
Cici’s warding mechanics—what he’d seen so far—were heavy on candles, runes, careful incantations. Structured. Intentional. Like building a fence board by board.
Lark’s additions were different. Older-feeling, somehow. Less pretty. More… practical. She talked about knots and bindings, about wax seals and bones used as anchors—things that sounded like folklore until you heard the certainty in her voice.
Graham didn’t understand half of it. Maybe more than half.
But he watched Cici and Lark volley terms back and forth—correcting, refining, agreeing—and felt a strange, unsettled appreciation. Even if he didn’t understand the language, he could recognize competence, and that made him feel something close to hope.