Chapter 24 – Elise
Chapter Twenty-Four
Elise
Elise’s body moved before her brain could catch up.
She was already in motion—racing out of the wig closet, narrowly avoiding a dancer sprinting past.
She wasn’t the only one. A few others who’d been lingering downstairs—techs, swings, ensemble—poured into the green room, drawn by the scream and the silence that followed.
Elise reached the stairwell just in time to see Nick descending, carrying Lark in his arms. Graham followed close behind, nearly matching his pace, a hand braced against the railing as if ready to catch them both.
Lark’s eyes were open, glassy and wide. Her face was pinched and pale, limbs curled inward like she was trying to make herself smaller. Nick didn’t stop. He moved like a current, weaving through the green room and lowering her gently onto the couch.
Elise pushed through the growing ring of people, heart thudding louder than the voices around her.
Jen appeared moments later, slipping through the crowd with forceful precision. “What the hell happened? Is she alright?” she asked, kneeling by the couch. Her voice was steady, but her hands hovered, uncertain whether to reach out or hold back.
Lark gave a small, pained nod—but her eyes locked on Elise’s, wide with something deeper than fear.
“He knows what we’re planning,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “He’s fighting back.”
Lark’s words hung in the air, were still reverberating through the green room when Nick cleared his throat.
“I saw it,” he said. “From backstage.”
Everyone turned toward him.
“I was behind the flats near stage left. I had a clear view of the Collins set from behind.” His voice faltered.
“She stepped through the door from onstage and slammed it just fine. But… the second the door slammed, something changed. It was like… something underneath the platform moved. Like a shadow peeling away from the floorboards like it had been waiting there.”
Elise felt something sharp and cold flicker up her spine. Myrtle’s disembodied voice slid into her awareness, whisper-thin and urgent: “You’ve been marked. He’ll keep coming. You’re running out of time.”
Nick continued, slower now. “It rose up. Fast. And then it grabbed her. I mean, physically grabbed her. It looked like it pulled her straight down through the platform. I heard her scream—and then the thud. She didn’t just fall. She was dragged.”
Gasps fluttered around the room.
Lark’s fingers curled into the armrest. Her eyes were glassy, but clear. “I felt hands,” she murmured. “Cold, like ice.”
Kevin, hovering dimly behind the others, looked almost transparent now—but his gaze had sharpened to a fine, haunted point.
“That platform’s solid,” Jen said, quietly. “There’s no trap door.”
“I know,” Nick replied. “That’s what’s messing with me.”
Jen was crouched beside Lark, her hands moving with the practiced precision of someone who’d dealt with more backstage injuries than she could count. She gently pressed along Lark’s ankle, her face growing tighter with each wince.
“It’s already swelling,” Jen murmured, reaching for an ice pack from a nearby first aid kit. “Lark, can you move your toes?”
Lark tried, and grimaced. “Barely.”
Elise knelt nearby, already seeing the truth in the way Lark’s foot looked—pale, puffed, and angry. There was no way her character shoes would go back on, even if she could stand.
Something cold and heavy settled in Elise’s chest.
Jen looked up and gave a small shake of her head, confirming what Elise already knew. Lark wasn’t going back onstage tonight. Maybe not for days.
Lark caught Elise’s eye and gave her a look that was equal parts pain and guilt.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly.
Elise didn’t know whether the apology was for the injury, or for everything that came before it. Either way, it hit her like a punch to the ribs.
Somewhere behind her, a bulb buzzed and dimmed, casting flickering shadows across the floor. Elise didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to.
Jen straightened, her expression sharpening with the clarity of someone stepping into crisis mode. “Okay,” she said, voice brisk. “We need options. Let’s think this through.”
She started pacing in a tight circle. “The swing’s not ready. She’s never gone on for Elizabeth, not even in rehearsal. It’d be chaos.”
Elise opened her mouth, but Jen was already shaking her head. “And the new understudy—Ellen’s replacement—she’s not even here yet. Contract’s not finalized. She’s still in Chicago, I think.”
Jen stopped pacing. “We can’t put anyone in. Not tonight. We’ll… we’ll have to cancel the second act.”
The words dropped like a stone.
Elise surged forward. “No. We can’t.”
Heads turned. The room stilled. “If we cancel, there’s no audience. If there’s no audience, the spell fails.”
She turned to Jen, eyes shining. “We’ll lose Ellen. And Kevin—” Her breath caught. “He won’t make it through the night.”
Silence wrapped around them, taut and trembling.
“There has to be another way,” she said again, softer this time.
A beat.
“Could we put the swing in anyways?” Bex asked. “She knows the blocking, right? We could have her carry the script and skip the songs?”
“Or dub the vocals,” Marcie added. “We’ve got that dress rehearsal recording from Boston. We could sync it up—”
“Shadow play,” Jasper chimed in, eyes bright. “Backlit sheets and interpretive movement. We use the audio tracks. Very avant-garde.”
“Okay but what if we loop the Act One finale on repeat and claim it’s a conceptual exploration of regret?” Casper suggested. “Like, Elizabeth never gets the second act because we never get what we want. Very French.”
Jen blinked. “That doesn’t solve the fact that we’re down an Elizabeth, Casper.”
“Or,” Ed offered, “we could rotate Elizabeths every scene like Company. Everyone plays her. No one plays her. Art.”
“But no one would be playing her well,” Jen muttered.
“Wait,” Talia cut in, dead serious. “Do we know any good Elizabeth Bennets in the audience?”
The room collectively paused.
Then Graham stepped forward.
“It has to be Elise,” he said, his voice calm in spite of the rising panic around them.
Jen and Elise both froze, heads snapping toward him.
“Come again?” Elise said.
“You,” Graham replied, gesturing to her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You should go on. As Elizabeth.”
For one impossible second, Elise thought she had misheard him.
Then her body caught up.
Her stomach dropped. Her mouth went dry. Every light in the room seemed to sharpen around her, too bright and too close.
“No,” she said automatically, because that was the only reasonable answer. “Absolutely not.”
Jen blinked. “Wait—you sing?”
Elise opened her mouth to explain all the reasons this was a terrible idea. She wasn’t an actor. She wasn’t Lark. She was the person who made Elizabeth Bennet possible from the shadows, not the person who stepped into her shoes.
Even before the protest reached her tongue, she knew.
Graham was right. There was no one else.
“She knows the role,” Graham said firmly. “Inside and out. I’ve heard her sing. She’s good. Really good.”
Elise flushed, but didn’t argue.
“She’s Lark’s size. She knows the lines, the cues. She’s watched every show. If anyone can do it, it’s her.”
The room shifted around her, like the entire company had turned toward her and was trying very hard not to make the decision feel as enormous as it was.
Kevin shimmered into view. Elise saw it immediately, the way his outline wavered at the edges, the way the light passed through him more easily than it should.
And still, he looked at her like she was the one who needed bracing.
“I’ll help,” he said softly. “We’ve got this.”
Something in Elise’s chest pulled tight.
Not fear this time. Love. Worry. The particular ache of realizing someone you depended on was more fragile than they wanted you to know.
She wanted to tell him to stop. To rest. To save whatever strength he had left. But Kevin gave her a small, stubborn lift of his chin, as if daring her to say it aloud.
So Elise nodded. Her stomach twisted, but her resolve settled like a stone.
Jen exhaled sharply through her nose. Elise could practically see the actor’s equity rulebook scrolling behind her eyes—waivers, exceptions, insurance, six different ways this could become paperwork.
But finally, she gave a tight nod. “Alright,” Jen said. “Let’s make some theatre magic.”
And just like that, she spun on her heel and became pure stage manager.
“Bennet sisters, help get Lark’s mic pack off of her! Nick, go grab the sound tech. Marcie, get Elise into makeup! Graham—make sure everyone else knows. Now!”
Chaos snapped into action.
Elise could barely track where one task ended and the next began—everything came at her sideways.
Someone handed her a bottle of water. Someone else was shouting about mic tape.
She nodded, moved, responded, but it all felt slightly dreamlike.
Or maybe like the wrong kind of dream—the kind where you’re handed someone else’s life and told to live it convincingly with five minutes of prep and no notes.
Marcie swept in like a well-trained storm, taking over the intermission wig changes without being asked. “Go,” she said simply, and Elise did.
She ducked into a mirror station and started pin-curling her own hair with shaking hands. Nick appeared at her side, and Elise thumbed open a FaceTime call to Cici, pressing the phone into his hand. “Tell her,” she said, and Nick nodded.
Across the room, Talia and Bex were helping Lark out of her costume. They moved quickly but gently to the wig, loosening and peeling back the tape that held her mic pack in place on Lark’s temple and back, carefully removing it from where it had been secured beneath layers of costume and hair.
By the time Elise had her pin curls finished and a wig cap anchored, the sound tech was already waiting. She stepped into the green room so he could work—unspooling tape, rerouting wires, strapping her into the mic pack that had belonged to Lark just five minutes ago.