Page 84 of Specters & Spotlights

Her chest squeezed a little. “I’m fine,” she said before he could ask.

Kevin raised that eyebrow higher. She knew the look well—it was the “Really?” expression. And okay, maybe the concealer hadn’t fully handled the dark circles this morning, but she didn’t need commentary about it.

She gave him a glare sharp enough to draw blood.

Kevin relented with a dramatic sigh. “Of course you’re fine, darling. Radiant. The very image of rest and emotional stability.”

She snorted.

They moved together down the fluorescent-lit hallway, her boots echoing softly on the linoleum, Kevin’s form gliding just a breath above the ground. The light was too bright for him here—it leeched some of the presence out of him. He looked more like a suggestion than a person. A trick of the eye.

She glanced at him, quiet for a moment.

“You really were waiting, weren’t you?”

Kevin didn’t answer.

He merely drifted a little closer.

Elise rounded the corner into the wig closet, expecting silence and solitude—and instead found Nick leaning casually against the counter, holding two to-go cups like a gift from the heavens.

“For you,” he said, offering a coffee to her like a chalice.

She blinked at him, touched. “You didn’t have to⁠—”

“I did,” he cut her off. “Anything for my backstage bestie. You look like you fought a demon army last night and maybe lost.”

She took a sip—too hot, but still perfect—and murmured her thanks.

Nick glanced at her over his own cup, tone easy but eyes attentive. “How was your night?”

The question hung there, heavier than it sounded. He didn’t ask about the spell or the envelope or the buzz of ghostly interference, but the curiosity was unmistakable.

Elise tilted her head, pretended to consider. “Well,” she said lightly, “my ex got hit by a bus.”

Nick blinked. “Come again?”

She gave him a wide-eyed, faux-serious nod. “Hit. By a bus. Like something out of a telenovela.”

Nick stared. “You’re joking. You have to be joking. Things like that don’t actually happen in real life.”

“Welcome to my life,” Elise said, raising her coffee in a toast. “It’s basically magical realism with better wigs.”

Nick didn’t press, but he didn’t look away either. His presence was steady, like a grounding wire. Elise appreciated it more than she could say.

“I read the rest of the articles last night,” she said, her voice quieter now, as if the truth needed softening. “It happened three years ago. Just days after I last saw him.”

Nick blinked. “That close?”

She nodded. “I didn’t know. I never looked him up. I just… moved on.” Her mouth twisted. “Or tried to.”

She took a bracing breath, and continued, “He died in a crosswalk. Hit by a bus.”

The words hung in the air, strange and absurd. There was something too poetic about it. A brute force ending for someone who had made her feel so small with precision.

Nick murmured, “That’s surreal.”

“He was cremated,” she added, like an afterthought. Like that sealed it. “That’s what the article said.”