The instant Jax’s feet and mine meet the floor behind Quan’s and Sunny’s, the bells stop pealing. In the wake of the fading gong, a haunting assemblage of acapella voices drifts from the acrobats—male and female alike—chants worthy of monks in a gothic cathedral.
The eerie hymns nudge that place inside of me . . . those dormant depths I can’t let awaken.
Rune . . . I’m here. Stay in control.
My maestro’s hoarse command, in my head. I stop and turn, searching. It feels as if he’s standing right next to me, but I can’t find him in the multitude of shadowy faces. Trepidation twists in my throat, forming a knot that burns.
“Stay close.” Jax’s insistent hold on my hand drags me closer to Sunny and Quan. The four of us wind through heated, sweaty bodies and ultraviolet adornments: fiber-optic dress shells that look like glowing baskets, animated shirts and shoes like Jax’s, suits made of an electrified fabric that sprays fizzing light into the air, like lit sparklers. Some ravers sport luminescent lipstick and eye shadow or LED jewelry. Others have fiber-optic dreadlocks along with neon body paint curling around their faces, arms, and legs in tribal designs. A woman with flashing orange fingernails moves aside so we can push through.
As we pass, I notice another source of light, something that has nothing to do with rave fashion. Luminous halos appear around each person’s shadowy head, the colors vivid in the darkness: reds, oranges, blues, and greens. Pinks and grays and browns. The frantic dancing of earlier must have burnished their auras to a new level of electric brilliance.
The sight makes my feet drag, as if my boot soles keep sticking in tar.
“Rune.” Jax pulls me close. “Come on, we have to keep up.”
His warm breath lingers on my temple, teasing and tempting. Scenting the primal stir of pheromones beneath his cologne, my nostrils quiver and my mouth waters.
Stay in control.
Beads of sweat tickle my hairline. Hoping to escape Jax’s allure, I put as much distance between us as possible while still holding his hand. A few steps ahead, Sunny and Quan join a cluster of ravers standing midway to the stage where glowing-vested employees gather to keep order. Jax and I are almost there when streams of multicolored smoke gush from metal nozzles lining the ceiling, forming a sulfur-scented cloud between us and our friends.
The Gregorian chants rise above the hissing smoke. The metallic butterflies flutter through the audience and graze our skin and hair, spurring a collective gasp.
The smoke fades to a translucent fog. Returning to the stage, the band members wait by their instruments, each one dressed in a flashing orange costume. They stand at the ready, while the drummer accompanies the chanting with a deep, hypnotic beat. There’s something about him . . . something in his movements that is familiar now that we’re closer. Before I can put my thumb on it, the crowd shuffles in anticipation as the fog parts on center stage and a dais rises from a trapdoor, lifting a coffin into view.
The lid opens. A beam shines down to spotlight a man in a monk’s robe sitting inside. Giant white canvas panels unfurl down the walls. Somewhere a camera clicks on, projecting an enormous view of the coffin’s occupant. His silvery skeletal mask—covering all of his face but his chin and lower lip—fills every screen. I’m struck by minute differences from how I remembered him in his half-mask in the chapel. Yet behind the velvety eyeholes, his flaming yellow irises call to me.
My heartbeat kicks against my sternum.
Etalon?
He seems thinner somehow. During our fantasy dances in the dark, I’ve become familiar with his tall, sculpted body and the strength of his arms. Maybe it’s the distortion caused by fog, or the rave wear shimmering in my peripheral sight, or even the large robe—a grim parallel to the spiritual reverence that’s overtaken the room. Everyone around us begins to sway as the chanting acrobats lower their melodious voices to a hum.
Jax squeezes my hand to get my attention. “I don’t see Quan and Sunny anymore.”
I lift to my toes and spot Quan’s hat in the sea of swaying people. He’s arguing with one of the employees, who, other than his glowing hooded vest, is half hidden by the crowd. Quan shoves at the guy’s chest. The employee—at least a good three inches taller than Quan—takes both of my friends by their arms to escort them out.
Jax curses. “We have to get over there.”
My face burns with shame. How could I have let them out of my sight after promising to watch over them? “Let’s go.”
Jax and I push through, me leading the way this time. My gaze keeps straying to the stage, drawn to the man who taught me to tame my songs, waiting for something momentous, a current to reach from him to me and close the space between us. I’ll be back, after I see to my friends’ safety.
I find an opening in the crowd and start to sprint. Jax hangs tighter to my hand to keep up with me. I refuse to slow my footsteps, torn between the need to protect my friends and the compulsion to get as near to the Phantom as possible.
We’re almost where we last saw Sunny and Quan, prepared to follow in their tracks, when the Phantom’s giant image onscreen repositions, stopping us. He’s standing inside the coffin now. His looming form hovers there for a few seconds before levitating gracefully onto the stage. He opens his mouth, and one pristine note escapes, so pure, lyrical, and heartrending, it’s like the marriage of every harp, violin, cello, flute, piano, and bell that has ever been played.
Everything falls away. All I can see, hear, and feel is the performance unfolding before me.
The Phantom spreads his arms and casts a song from his throat in a rain of operatic ornamentation. It floods through me and reaches inside with liquid fingers, plucking at the strands of my heart as if I were his instrument. This is different than when he guides me with his violin. This is intrusive, seductive, frightening—yet at the same time, inevitable.
The notes sluice through the nucleus of my being, invading every pore, bringing the music I’ve dammed within my depths to rise in my throat on a surge of anguish, but I fight releasing it.
I’m drowning and gasp for breath, edging closer to take the lifeline the Phantom’s voice offers. Jax follows, his eyes on the stage, mesmerized like me. Like everyone.
Nausea churns through my stomach. The music has trapped me, my enemy once more. I’m a marionette, but this time, it’s the Phantom’s beguiling voice pulling at my strings. I want to ask him why he betrayed me; why he promised to bring my father to me, only to make me a victim; I want to know why he helped fix what was wrong, just to break me again. But if I open my mouth, I’ll be incapacitated once I purge the song.
I can’t be vulnerable like that, not here.
Beneath my confusion and the Phantom’s serenade, another voice breaks through: Rune, turn away. Do not sing for him.
Then I remember the boy from my dreams. The Phantom onstage doesn’t sound like my maestro, he isn’t humble and gentle like Etalon. This man is powerful, majestic, and menacing.
Somehow, they’re not the same person at all.
In that moment of clarity, the music gurgling in my throat sinks into my chest until I’m in control once more. The danger of the situation hits hard and fast: Quan and Sunny are missing, and Jax is standing beside me in the darkness, hand in mine, still entranced, both of us overshadowed by the other ravers leaving us behind on their journey to reach the stage.
Holding tighter to Jax, I back us up, headed for the stairs we descended earlier. He tries to pull away and join the forward-moving crowd, but I overpower him, taking advantage of his weakened, song-induced stupor.
Like the others, he doesn’t hear what I hear: the Phantom’s serenade is no longer beautiful . . . it’s raging and violent. All the instruments have resumed: electronic keyboards, cymbals, and drum lines, throbbing into the roots of my teeth and knocking against my bones and marrow. Jax doesn’t see what I see: the chandelier’s black tentacles curling down like living, thorny vines, stretching closer and closer to the crowd; the acrobats w
ith eyes aglow, floating like spiders on anchor lines, creeping ever closer to their prey; the employees surrounding the stage in their flashing vests, offering a distraction to keep everyone from looking above.
Oblivious, the ravers march around me and Jax—an ultraviolet line of ants avoiding two strands of grass on their journey to get closer to their source of nourishment: the Phantom and his rapturous, brutal song.
I whimper upon seeing one of the employees in pursuit of us. Jax and I scramble up the stairs to escape. Once we make it to the balcony, I’ve lost sight of our stalker’s flashing, hooded vest.
It gives me some small relief that Sunny and Quan were escorted out before all the mayhem began. The surge of ravers has reached the edge of the stage. They stretch their hands high, some crying, others moaning as if in pain, each one surrounded by an aura of purple and crimson—offering up their spirits and loyalty to their tormentor.
As the music reaches its crescendo, a fluctuation on the giant screens snags my attention. The Phantom lifts a black glove and rips off his mask, exposing a horrific distortion of crinkly, waxen flesh, hanging askew on a gnarled, misshapen skull. His eyes—those eyes I thought I knew—burrow under his bulbous forehead, and his nose is gone, as if it were a candle that melted away. I don’t know who’s been visiting me each night, because this is the true Phantom. He doesn’t even have half a face.
A sob lodges in my throat. I peel my gaze away, unable to watch another second. It’s not the deformity that makes it unbearable. It’s the unquenchable agony inside those glimmering deep-set eyes—over a century’s worth of dejection, sorrow, and rage.
Pandemonium breaks loose below. The thorny vines whip down and wrap around each raver’s ankles and wrists, so they can’t hide their eyes or run, forcing them to look at the screens. Their auras pique to a grayish yellow—the color of pure terror. Somehow, the light from their halos bleeds into the vines, filling them with illumination all the way into the chandelier’s base in the ceiling. Screaming, fainting, and wailing hammer my ears. The glowing-vested employees gather around their quarry—joining with the acrobats who leap upon the imprisoned ravers, feeding off what’s left of their light. The victims gyrate as if convulsing.
A flavor awakens on my tongue, a memory of an essence I’ve only savored once but want to taste again.
Jax whimpers beside me, reminding me he’s there. He covers his eyes, trying not to view the screens and the Phantom’s tragic face still singing the final, mournful notes of his song.
I turn Jax around so he’s facing me and the elevator at my back. “It’s okay, Jax.” I shake his shoulders gently. “Just look at me.”
He blinks, his glazed expression clearing. “Rune?” He steps back. “Your eyes. They’re glowing. Like ... his.” Horror strains his features.
I try not to notice how my mouth is watering . . . try not to remember that Ben’s face looked the same when I was feeding on his terror . . . try to forget that heady flavor of power. But I can’t think anymore. All I can do is act.
Lifting to my toes, I wrap my arms around Jax’s neck and force him against me, pressing our lips together. Groaning into my mouth, he pulls me closer, deepening the kiss, both of us riding waves of music, passion, and dread.
I attempt to drag myself away when he drops to his knees, losing his breath. But his desperation only feeds my gluttony. He tastes like Ben: singed, sugary, and unnatural—roasted autumn, sulfur, and copper wrapped in sweet, dark candy. I’m too weak to resist; I go to the floor with him, still siphoning that delicious pulsation of life.
The ping of the elevator registers behind me. I ignore it, locking Jax’s jaw in my fingers so he can’t escape.
Strong hands grip my shoulders and break us apart. Jax hunkers on the balcony floor, gasping for air as I growl and kick to escape the set of arms holding my spine immobile against a solid wall of chest muscles.
“Don’t be greedy.” Etalon’s deep rasp is muffled, his breath filtering out in a stream that warms my neck. “Learn to know when you’ve had enough.”
I stop struggling, though my tongue still stings with electric scintillation. He drags me across the balcony and deposits me, slumped, inside the elevator. I roll over to watch his broad back as he activates the brake and steps out again. He’s wearing an employee’s uniform—hooded, glowing vest with black pants and shirt. He retrieves Jax’s unconscious body and settles it next to mine on the carpet then releases the brake.
As the elevator doors shut us in and the motor carries us down, Etalon drops his hood, revealing thick, dark, disheveled curls that graze his shirt collar. He studies me from behind a full black satin mask, then kneels, those expressive brown eyes shifting to Jax. Fishing a syringe from his fiber-optic vest, he aims the needle at my friend’s bared arm.
I struggle to sit up. “Please, don’t hurt him.” I attempt to push him away.
Etalon stops my wrist with his bare hand. A jolt passes between our skin and lights up our veins in synchrony, hot and rejuvenating. In that moment, deep inside, I know without question he’s not going to hurt Jax. He’s trying to help. I jerk free, shocked by the potency of our connection. Etalon’s silence stretches out like a shadow—leaving me bewildered and astonished.
Eyes glinting like copper coins, he looks away and injects Jax with the syringe before straightening my friend’s rumpled clothes and covering the top of his face with a blindfold. When Etalon holds up a blindfold to me, I shake my head.
“It’s for your own safety, Rune,” he speaks at last, his accent dusting each gravelly word with French decadence. “I’ve been lying to you and don’t deserve your trust. But you’re going to have to give it to me one more time. It’s the only way to get you out of here before the Phantom realizes you’re gone and unleashes his wrath on us all.”
17
THE ARTIFICE OF PRETENDING
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend . . .”
Kurt Vonnegut
“All right, Miss Nilsson, les charges de poo!” The glee in Madame Bouchard’s call from the stage curdles inside me like heartburn; her every syllable and consonant echo with bravado along the rafters of the theater as she awaits her star pupil.
Kat steps from her row but stops to grimace at the right side of the auditorium, where, triggered by Bouchard’s “loads of poo” expression, snickers erupt among the junior-year students. They still can’t rein in their juvenile reactions, even after being taught the meaning behind the saying. Back in earlier times, audiences took carriages to the opera house or theater. The bigger the attendance, the more horses—each one fully stocked with a supply of manure. So to convey success to the performers, what could be more appropriate than wishing them a full house, i.e., loads of poo?
“Chut!” Bouchard claps her hands, silencing the laughter so effectively that the jingle of Diable’s collar at my feet draws the attention of several students from the two rows surrounding ours.
Bouchard aims one of her infamous snarls at the juniors. “You can rest assured I’ve taken note from whence the laughter originated, and you will each be in detention tomorrow. A full hour after classes, reorganizing and cleaning my art studio and supplies.”
A collective moan arises but fades just as quickly, as if the students fear an even worse fate should they offend her again. I don’t blame them, considering the “art studio and supplies” are in fact the tools of her trade: bloodied and gut-gooped taxidermist equipment and the stuffed heads of animals waiting to be mounted on plaques.
I nudge Diable affectionately with the toe of my cowboy boot. He wraps his front claws around the worn leather, gnawing it with sharp little teeth. He sits up with a start. His large ears perk tall. Paired with his flicking whiskers and tail, it’s a sure sign he either hears Etalon in the walls, or a mouse or rat somewhere. I really hope it’s Etalon. I haven’t heard from him since I left the club last night. Even my dreams were devoid of his songs.
Not giving me a second glance,
Diable’s off, disappearing into the shadows. I wish I could escape as easily. The final dancing auditions took longer than expected. We started at two o’clock, and now it’s four. But the most important singing audition still remains. Only Kat and Audrey made it to the finals, since I bowed out. After today, one will become Renata, and the other will be understudy. Or, if Kat ends up with the lesser role, we’ll have no understudy at all.
“Now, Miss Nilsson, if you please.”
Kat resumes her walk down the aisle and ascends the steps to the stage. Sunny grunts, keeping the volume low enough that the teachers seated at the back of the theater can’t hear her. It’s all for Audrey’s benefit.
Her turn will be after Kat’s, and I’ve never seen her this nervous before singing. She was back early enough from Paris yesterday to practice five more times without a single mistake, and she was already nailing the aria days before that. Yet something’s shaken her up, to the point she won’t even look at me when I try to help.
Maybe it’s because several of the juniors stopped my group after lunch this afternoon and asked if I planned to try out. Apparently, since Kat and Roxie are no longer giving me hell over my stage fright, some of our peers have decided I’m worth a second thought.
But a role in an opera is the last thing on my mind. For one, I would never step all over Audrey and her hard work, not to mention betray our friendship. I won’t do it. And two, the stage is a reminder of the performance and ensuing events at the club last night, and that I’m a dangerous liability. I’m a ticking time bomb of energy-sucking savagery. Just look what I almost did to Jax and Ben. What I’m hoping I didn’t do to my dad.
I’m lucky Jax, Quan, and Sunny remember very little about our weird outing, but that doesn’t make me any less guilty.
As incredible as it felt a little over a month ago, singing in this theater when it was just me and my fantasy partner, that kind of temporal joy seems so far out of reach now. Everything is tinged by what happened almost twenty hours earlier—and the questions that were answered only to birth a thousand more.