There’s a new compulsion burning inside. Not a serpentine aria coiling around my heart and squeezing, demanding to be purged so the toxin can strike me down. Determination and confidence are driving me now.
I want to sing Renata’s aria, while everyone’s out, to prove to myself I can perform it to the end without getting sick, but also on the chance my maestro is in the farthest corners of this theater, up in box five, waiting . . . expectant. I lift his glove to my nose, inhaling the leathery scent. I want to please him, because it would bring pleasure to me. We’re mirror images, somehow. My desires are his.
My gaze flicks from the pitch-black balcony to the highest point in the ceiling where a gargantuan chandelier glistens in the dim light: thousands of miniature crystals, eager to reflect my humiliation or triumph.
Climbing the steps to the stage, I pause as something rustles in the orchestra pit, followed by a soft thump and a clack. I glance down at the impenetrable velvet darkness. Silence overtakes again, and I continue up the stairs. What do I have to fear? The Phantom is in every corner of this opera house. He won’t let anything get in my way.
He wants to hear me sing . . . to hear me triumph.
Up close, the curtains no longer appear ravenous or threatening. Instead, they welcome me.
I turn to face the rows of seats, straighten my posture at center stage, and take a breath. Opening my throat to widen the space in the back of my mouth, I release the first note. The room begins to spin, but there’s no pain, only the faint lament of a violin—the one from my dreams—as it adapts to my song, rearranging the whine of its strings, shifting its rhythm and melody until it slips across the aria to fit it, like the glove cradling my hand. I shut my eyes and study the violin’s silhouette in my mind, watching those feminine curves grow and sway until they take my maestro’s masculine form. My plain floral dress transforms into a red opera gown, flowing and lush. He latches his fingers to mine and draws my chest against his, my cheek nestled between his sternum and collarbone. His free hand skims my lower back, and we fold into each other like rose petals, so close we move as one. We dance. The violin becomes his voice, serenading me as I serenade him back. The music brightens our synchronized steps, as warm and honey yellow as the sun, flooding our surroundings, relaxing me until there’s no strain anywhere on my body. Though the aria rages from my throat in a powerful crescendo of color—the mood dark, mad, and melancholy—I’m unaffected. Bubbles of serenity encapsulate every staccato, trill, and glissando, then lift them from my vocal cords and roll them off my lips, effortlessly. My partner spins away and sets me free the moment I release the last golden note—in complete control.
The finale stretches, silken and luxurious, before falling in an audible drizzle that coats every wall, rafter, and seat with tremulous emotion.
The room stops spinning, and I’m left standing, strong, powerful . . . victorious. For the first time in ten years, I conquered the music. I did it.
“I did it!” I shout, spinning in place on the stage, my wet floral dress opening like a parasol and sprinkling water everywhere. I haven’t felt like this for so long . . . elated, like when Dad would accompany me, when together we carried the songs.
That unanswered guilt at his absence flutters through my heart again, but can’t find a place to perch. My chest is too full of happiness; it feels effulgent, as if it’s glowing from within. I look down to find it is, and can’t help but wonder if somewhere above me, the Phantom’s chest is glowing, too.
I glance up at the box seats and project my voice, smiling. “Thank you!”
The soft wail of that familiar violin answers, not in my mind, not from the balcony, but from the orchestra pit. One murmuring, sensual note that winds around me like a caress. My cheeks tingle and I press my palms to them, only to realize the black glove is gone from my hand, as if he took it back during our dance. As if he really held me in his arms . . .
Before the magnitude of that discovery can register, the lights burst on overhead, blinding. I shade my eyes.
“Have you lost your mind?” Madame Bouchard’s booming voice bounces around the auditorium.
The minute my eyes adjust, I study the orchestra pit. A glistening pair of yellow-green irises looks back at me. Diable. Other than rows of chairs, nothing else is there. No instrument . . . no Phantom . . . no glove. Since when has a cat been able to sound like a violin?
“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Bouchard’s question slices through my bewilderment.
She’s standing inside the doors I left propped open, one hand on her hip. Her thin lips are stretched in a snarl—a glaring expression even across the span of the enormous room. She has her hair pulled into a tight bun. With the duo-color job, white at the scalp and fuchsia at the nape, she looks like a grumpy powder puff. It would be almost comical, were it not for her latex gloves and the blood smeared across her white apron’s bib. I must have interrupted her while she was working on her latest project. Sunny said there’s a rumor that when she runs out of deceased pets, she sets traps for animals in the forest. The way she looks now, crazed and bloodthirsty, I’m guessing she’s demented enough to peel roadkill from the country road that leads to RoseBlood.
I cringe.
At first, I wonder if she heard me singing . . . if she’s angry again because she thinks I’m trying to horn in on her star pupil and steal the lead role of The Fiery Angel. Then I realize what I’ve done . . . the line of muddy water I’ve tracked across the auditorium’s plush red carpet, as well as the pool surrounding me on stage. I can’t even imagine how bad the white marble in the foyer and corridors must be.
“I—I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Apparently not. Have you any idea, oiseau chanteur, the extent of damage standing water can cause to marble, wood, and carpet?”
My lips freeze together. Oiseau chanteur . . . songbird.
She did hear me.
“There’s a mop and carpet cleaner there, behind the curtains. Fix your mess before everyone returns and tracks it all over the school. Understood?”
I nod.
With haughty disdain, she looks down her nose at me—an unnecessarily exaggerated gesture given the fact that I’m standing in the midst of a sunken stage.
As she turns to leave, she casts a half glance over her shoulder, showing only her severe profile. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve mastered bel canto. You don’t have the stamina to be our prima donna. Renata has to sing over two-thirds of the opera. There’s not any angel, fiery or otherwise, who can prepare you for that kind of role. So you managed one aria at last, here in the darkness with no one watching. A momentary victory, already fading. Any attempt at the entire repertoire before an audience, and your stage fright would kill you. Abandon the music and go back home to the States. That’s the best choice for everyone, don’t you agree?”
I stare at her, slack-jawed.
Without another word, she leaves, shutting the doors behind her with a vicious thud.
Seated inside his room, with only the soft blue glow of his aquarium to guide him, Thorn lost himself to his music—a dark and gloomy nocturne movement by Shostakovich.
He cradled the neck of his violin, the chin rest tucked under his jaw like a mother’s loving hand, and let the strings speak, coaxing out notes with a mastered repositioning of his left fingers and the liquid glide of the bow. They shared a familiar dance, founded on trust and sensation, perfected after hours, days, and years of performing together. Just like the spiritual dance he’d shared with Rune in the theater only an hour ago, while his body hid within the darkness of the orchestra pit.
His gaze caught on the black glove at his feet, remembering how it felt to hold her soft curves against him, how her sweet orange-vanilla scent embodied the purity of her magnificent voice . . . how gravely he’d betrayed Father Erik.
It was a miracle he’d avoided exposing the glow in his chest when he returned home after Rune’s triumph. Their triumph. It belonged to him, to
o. Now that he and Rune had connected, physically as well as spiritually, her strongest emotions and most potent energy surges would feed his own, and vice versa, once she learned to control the power.
When she’d conquered the music, her radiant happiness had filled him to the brim. It had been so long since he’d felt such joy; he thought he’d forgotten how to form a genuine smile.
Thankfully, his father was so engrossed in his personal side of the planning, he didn’t even spare Thorn a passing glance upon his return. Erik had been in too much of a hurry, headed to the cellar lab, to ask about progress.
But it was only a matter of time. Soon, he would come seeking news about his “pigeon,” and the truth wouldn’t be well received.
Tightening his chin, Thorn brought the violin’s voice to a wailing fervor, an appeal for forgiveness, altering the instrument’s center of balance and the bow pressure, angling his body forward in a humble pose. The piece was no longer Shostakovich’s. It was his . . . a newly inspired piece born of guilt . . . a prayer for absolution.
Bringing the song to a heartrending close, he laid his violin in its case gently. His fingers traced the lines, the perfect imitation of a woman’s curves, then moved to the scroll at the fingerboard’s tip, which arced like the graceful spiral of a seashell.
The Stradivarius was the most precious gift he’d ever received from Erik, worth even more than his freedom. For this violin was his and Rune’s beginning, and now, since they’d at last made physical contact, she would be able to conjure those visions while awake just as he could; she no longer had to rely on her subconscious to make his spirit manifest as a reality. They could touch each other, taste each other, hear each other on some level, regardless of the distance between them.
Thorn hadn’t yet decided whether to be thrilled or grief stricken over this turn of events.
“You have indeed mastered the voice.” Erik’s statement from the doorway shook Thorn from his thoughts. “No one else could own that instrument now. It is an extension of you.”
“Thank you, Father.” He closed the violin’s case. “Maybe later this evening, you can harmonize with me on the pipe organ.” He relayed the request in an effort to quiet his inner qualms. He used to live for their duets, but Erik had become so distracted once the academy opened that he’d abandoned all other pursuits.
“I’ve missed playing,” Erik admitted, his timbre quavering with a poignant din of longing. “But only when she’s at last with us, fully complete, can I resurrect our music once more.” He was pencil thin in an untucked white shirt, gray slacks, and flesh-colored mask. So deceptively frail to the untrained eye, but his mind was a lethal trap for anyone who dared judge him by appearance alone.
Still, it was unsettling to see him in disarray. All the years Thorn had lived here, Erik was never less than meticulous with his clothes and surroundings. Lately, he’d been letting such things go, too preoccupied to notice.
“After such a long silence, to hear you composing again this past week has been divine.” Erik’s smile bloomed at the lower edge of his mask—wide and perfect. Many had fallen prey to the stunning charm of that partially hidden expression; even Thorn couldn’t resist feeling soothed, in spite of his storm-tossed mood.
Erik padded across the black marble that stretched from end to end and up the walls. Ange waddled at his feet. Dust dulled her feathers, an indication she’d been in the laboratory, too. The swan rarely left his side, and was only with Thorn earlier because she’d followed when he’d slipped from the apartment—activated the trapdoor in the baptismal with her bill and swam her way into the chapel.
Being Erik’s familiar, she was able to sense when Thorn was doing something to help him reach his goal. She’d trailed Thorn to assure he didn’t mess things up. And then he had after all, except she and Diable had a hand in that . . . or more like a wing and a paw.
He was lucky the bird couldn’t talk, or Erik would already know.
Thorn pulled a gray, long-sleeve shirt into place over his arms and shoulders and fastened the buttons. The soft fabric absorbed residual droplets of water from his shower. He’d come into his room still dripping and dropped directly into his chair to play without putting on anything more than pants. When he was younger, he’d often be overtaken by his muse in such a way, stopping to compose half-naked, barefoot and shirtless. Erik would tease that he couldn’t escape his upbringing, that he was a peasant violinist if ever there was one.
Erik took a seat at the edge of Thorn’s four-poster bed and slumped, elbows on knees. His eyes looked dull behind the mask . . . drained. He’d spent too much energy in the lab. Thorn knew it couldn’t go on much longer. Erik was practically committing suicide, spending all of the extra life he’d obtained through bloodshed and butchery. Thorn had been the one to convince him to stop his murderous ways, years ago, although he had blood on his hands, too. Now he’d thrown a wrench into everything, and would have only himself to blame should the killing start again.
He strode to his fish tank and settled on the far side so he could face his father with the glass and water between them. He sprinkled flakes of food atop the surface. The bluish glow tinged Erik’s gaunt, bony outline, and the ripples in the water created waves in his image, causing him to resemble the ghost all the rumors made him out to be.
“Busy caring for your pets and animal patients as usual.” Erik batted Ange’s bill playfully. “But have you eaten today?” He’d always been diligent about seeing to Thorn’s physical needs: clothing, food, shelter. It was as if he was trying to make up for all Thorn lacked as a child before he found him . . . or possibly, all he’d lacked himself.
“Before I showered,” Thorn answered, battling even more guilt for his father’s kind concern. “I had some dried beef. Some figs and cheese. And wine.”
“So, your body is fed. Then why this discontent I sense? It’s been some time since you’ve written new music, but from what I remember, your compositions were never so insatiate or bleak.”
“I came face-to-face with her in the chapel.” Thorn leaned against the cool glass, his arms propped in place at the top. His fingertip tapped the temperate water, bringing the fish to tickle his skin with eager, puffy-lipped kisses.
Erik stiffened, sitting straighter, his golden eyes fixed on Thorn.
“I was wearing a half-mask. She thinks I’m you. The phantom from the stories.” Ange tottered over and pecked Thorn’s toes with her bill, as if prompting him to confess everything. He frowned and nudged her away with his foot.
Erik’s flawless chin twitched—a tick that always made Thorn uneasy, as it indicated a shift in mood. “You were wise to wear a mask. Surely she’s wise enough not to tell anyone. Our spy within the academy has informed me that the staff now thinks she hid her own uniforms. No one would believe her, were she to claim she saw a fictional character from a book. But you sparked her curiosity, yes? Offered the clues that would bring her to me for answers.”
Thorn silently relived what he’d shared with Rune. How he’d allowed her to look upon the reflection of his identity. She knew she was like him. Now all she needed was to discover what he was.
“I led her to the grave and the roses,” Thorn answered, wary of how much he disclosed. “She saw the message. The storm chased her into the chapel, where I’d planted the wristband and the tubing of blood.”
Erik nodded, calling Ange over with a flick of his fingers so Thorn could finish feeding his fish without distraction. “All of that was in keeping with the plan. So, you improvised, as any good performer. I am curious how the sighting happened. You’re not usually that careless.”
“Ange filled the baptismal with water. Rune fell in and panicked. She was going to drown.”
Watching her sink, like a deadweight, had shaken him to the core. It was too similar to their nightly interactions. He’d always wondered what horrible event had spawned such torments in her dreams. Earlier, when he shared his memories with her—a connection only possible with two pi
eces of one soul—he’d taken some of her own. After all this time, he’d finally seen the old woman who had tried to drown her. He was shocked to have recognized her. She was the same one who Erik had visited in a Versailles prison three years ago, and several times since. Thorn always accompanied him, but stood back in the shadows, and could only hear what Erik said as they spoke through telephones with a glass partition between them. Now he was even more curious. The old woman had been instrumental in bringing Rune to them. What was her angle . . . why did she wish to harm Rune, her own granddaughter?
“Then you were right to step in and save her.” Father Erik’s observation dragged Thorn back to his bedroom and their dark conspiring, against his will. “A corpse would do us little good.”
Thorn almost groaned at the irony of the words, considering what was in their cellar.
“How did seeing you affect her?” There was an undertone of almost desperate interest in Erik’s question. Although the urgency wasn’t for Rune, but for someone else, someone Erik had obsessed over and put above every other aspect of his life for more than a century. Every aspect including Thorn.
Thorn grimaced against the acid sting of that knowledge. “She was afraid.” Until I revealed myself as her maestro. After that . . . Thorn’s jaw twitched. “Once she realized I’d helped her, she trusted me.”
Erik huffed. “Trust. A weak and visionary concept, for the lonely and the lost. We’re going to fix her . . . make her better. For that, she’ll only need trust herself.” He reached into his shirt pocket and dragged out two crumpled pieces of paper. “She’s in the perfect frame of mind now. Isolated and miserable, trying to live in a world where she doesn’t fit. These unfinished notes were in the trash in the foyer. She left some boy in a coma back home and somehow feels responsible.”
Thorn’s heartbeat stumbled. “You’ve been visiting the academy? I thought we agreed you shouldn’t venture there without me.”