Chapter 23 – Elise
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elise
The theatre greeted them like a cathedral: hushed, shadowed, holy.
Elise and Graham stepped through the stage entrance of the theatre together.
Elise moved with purpose, her boots crunching faintly on the entryway gravel, and her warding bracelets clinked softly at her wrists with every step.
A soft scent of rosemary and lavender clung to her skin, and the moon charm on her anklet tapped lightly against her ankle.
Graham carried her bag slung over his shoulder. He didn’t speak, but his hand hovered just behind hers as they walked in, not touching but close enough to feel.
As they passed through the quiet hallway toward the green room, Elise’s thoughts drifted.
The night before hadn’t gone as planned, which—to be honest—tracked.
She’d sat at the little hotel desk in her room, scribbling Cici’s emailed sigils onto tracing paper like a stressed-out student in finals week.
The symbols had started to blur together—some flipping, some repeating, some twisting into patterns her brain refused to decode.
It wasn’t new. Her dyslexia always got worse when she was overtired or stressed, and this was both.
Graham had stayed up with her, bless him, reading notes aloud and helping her figure out which runes looked like angry birds and which ones looked like spoons. Then he checked every single sigil against Cici’s references, just in case.
At some point, she’d dozed off, pen still in hand.
When she woke, she was tucked into bed. The lights were off. Her tracing paper sat neatly stacked on the nightstand.
Graham was asleep on the lumpy couch across the room, in nothing but an undershirt and boxer briefs. She’d stared at him for a moment longer than necessary. Nothing had happened. She was sure of that.
But still—there’d been a moment. A quiet wish. That if things were different—if dread weren’t wrapped around them like fog—she would’ve crossed the room and kissed him.
Later, she promised herself. After.
When they weren’t fighting nightmares.
Back in the present, she glanced sideways at Graham as they approached the wig closet.
He caught her look, raised a brow.
“Ready?”
Elise nodded, her heart steady for the first time all day.
“As I’ll ever be.”
The moment Elise crossed into the wig closet, she stopped cold.
Kevin was already there, standing near the trunk. Or… trying to. His form was fractured, like a photograph left too long in the sun. Edges bled into the air. His face was pale, even for a ghost, and his cravat hung colorless and slack.
A chill crawled up Elise’s spine.
Graham looked at her. “What is it?”
“Kevin,” she said softly. “He’s here. Barely.”
“I’m still here,” his voice answered, almost disembodied.
She swallowed. “You’re worse.”
He offered the ghost of a grin. “Fading dramatically. How on-brand.”
“I don’t think you’ll last another night,” she said, her voice catching.
“Neither do I,” Kevin admitted.
It was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that crept in and stayed.
Graham looked at Elise. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, her eyes burning, “the spell has to work. Tonight.”
Word had clearly spread. Probably thanks to Jen, who operated with the efficiency of an air traffic controller and the tactical ruthlessness of a wedding planner.
When Elise and Graham returned upstairs, the backstage halls were already humming. People moved with purpose. Crew members buzzed past with clipboards and zip ties. Even the actors who usually slept through call were already warming up.
Nick had arrived last, dragging a duffel bag behind him and squinting like he hadn’t slept in a day. His curls were smushed under a hoodie. He still grinned the moment he spotted Elise.
“Sorry I took so long,” he called as he approached, “but apparently not all of us are allowed to rebook our flights at a moment's notice.”
Graham passed him with a clap on the shoulder. “Leading man perks. Comes with the cravat.”
“But I wear the cravat sometimes, too,” Nick muttered in mock outrage.
The wig closet became command central—half staging area, half ritual prep zone.
Volunteers filed in and out—placing candles behind wing flats, brushing salt in long, deliberate lines across doorways. Casper moved like a ghost himself, tucking tea lights behind set pieces with surgical precision. Ed just nodded, like he’d seen stranger things.
The orchestra whispered to each other in the pit, rehearsing the newly added cues like they’d always been there.
Marcie arrived in a flurry of eyeliner and energy. “Did I hear something about sigils?”
Elise handed over the paper stack and two Sharpies. “Red for power, black for protection.”
“Perfect,” Marcie said, flipping through the pages like a cryptic score. She grabbed Jasper on her way past, muttering something about ‘go find some glitter, we’re gonna need flair.’
The closer they got to curtain, the stranger things became.
Lights flickered overhead, not in rhythm but in warning. Cold spots moved through the dressing rooms. Whispers threaded through the hallway vents like forgotten songs.
Elise could feel eyes on her. Always.
But no one ran. No one panicked.
Instead, people stayed close. They walked in pairs. They carried flashlights. They looked out for each other.
Jen appeared again, this time all confidence and black jeans.
“Gaffer tape holds,” she said. “Steve and I tested it. Ten seconds tops.”
Then Nick returned, holding out a small tin box like it contained treasure.
“I took up a collection,” he said. “Eight lighters and a torch from props. We’re covered for candle ignition.”
Elise gaped. “I forgot about lighting the candles.”
“I know,” he said smugly.
Later, Elise passed the callboard on her way back from the green room and caught sight of a new page taped underneath the run sheet: RUN-OF-SPELL, it read in bold marker, complete with diagrams, cues, and the exact timing of the rain. She didn’t need to ask. It had Jen written all over it.
She saw Jasper had annotated it with tiny ghost doodles. Talia also added a note: “Don’t die.”
She returned to the wig closet just long enough to retrieve a few final components from her warding kit.
A small envelope held the obituary photo Cici had mailed her what felt like forever ago.
And Kevin’s talisman—the old pocket watch—hung now on a delicate chain.
She tucked both away in a hidden inner pocket of her tech-black hoodie.
The whole company worked like a crew on opening night—and in a way, it was.
The show would go on. And so would the spell.
Elise slipped away down the back hallway, her boots soft on the worn floor. The energy of the prep buzzed behind her, but here, the air grew still. Reverent. The door to the dance studio creaked as she eased it open.
Inside, the room was empty—but only in the usual sense. The wall-length mirror caught her reflection—and three more, standing right behind her. The ballerinas. Perfectly still.
Miss Myrtle stood by the piano, her hands resting on the closed lid, as if she’d never left.
“I thought you’d come,” the old ghost said, voice crisp as ever.
Elise stepped into the room, keeping her tone respectful. “We’re casting the spell tonight.”
Myrtle’s eyes narrowed. “I assumed as much.”
“We’ll need your help,” Elise continued. “I think he knows what we’re planning. He’ll try to stop us—sabotage, distractions, worse. I need eyes everywhere. Quiet ones.”
Miss Myrtle gave a small, approving nod. “The girls will watch.”
“And one more thing,” Elise said. “During the ritual… keep your people off the stage. I don’t want to banish the wrong ghosts by accident.”
That earned a disapproving sniff. “As if I’d let my girls waltz into the middle of your chaos. We may be dead, Miss Elise, but we are not foolish.”
Elise exhaled, her tension easing just slightly. “Thank you.”
“Go,” Myrtle said, waving her cane toward the hallway. “You’ve got work to do. And so do we.”
As Elise turned to leave, the ballerinas dipped into matching curtsies, delicate and eerily precise. Elise gave a small bow in return.
The door clicked shut behind her.
The rhythm of pre-show filled the theatre like a pulse.
Call time had passed. The backstage world swelled with bodies and voices.
Costumes swished. Violins tuned. Tech crew made last-minute adjustments to props and marks.
Ensemble dancers were doing pliés in the hallway—Frankie Moreau humming scales under his breath while Talia helped Avery pin stray hairs into place.
Marcie was whistling backstage as she balanced regular makeup prep and sigil spell work.
Rae passed by, eyes wide. “Marcie! No whistling backstage. Everyone knows that—it’s bad luck.”
Marcie paused mid-note, sheepish. Devon, lounging in the makeup chair with a power brush in one hand, didn’t even look up.
“We’re way past bad luck,” he said dryly.
Upstairs, the house lights dimmed in preparation. The show would go on. But tonight, it carried a different weight.
Onstage, Lark and Graham were mid-rehearsal, running the rain scene choreography one more time—minus the rain, of course.
Elise and Jen stood in the house, watching like nervous stage moms.
Lark practiced the motion: step, turn, prick, summon.
She concealed it with a spin and a line of dialogue—nothing that would raise suspicion to an untrained eye.
Graham moved in close to assist with the misdirection—just enough cover to draw attention to himself when she needed to complete the summoning.
The spell would be masked in performance.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was close.
“It’s gonna take sleight of hand and timing,” Jen muttered.
“Sounds like theatre,” Elise replied, sounding more confident than she felt.
They ran it again.
And just as they hit the final moment, a stage light popped—loud as a gunshot.
A burst of light from above. One of the downstage fixtures sparked, raining glittering shards onto the stage below.
Everyone stilled.
Elise felt her skin flash hot. Her tattoos pulsed, ink trembling with alarm.