Maybe I’m worried over nothing. This is still so new to me. All I know is the sooner I get the Phantom to Bouchard’s workshop and incapacitate him with the song that breaks his heart, the sooner I can look for Etalon myself.
The aroma of melting wax, spiced cider, and smoky-savory finger foods offers an olfactory-parallel to the rich décor. Considering Tomlin’s creepy alliance with Erik, I expected gothic, but he chose elegance over eeriness.
Building on the glittery gold floor, he stationed round black tables and matching chairs along the edges of the room, adorned with “spider” webs made of delicate gold chains in place of tablecloths. Black-and-gold-damask plastic plates, gold silverware, miniature pumpkins rolled in glitter, and fall bouquets of orange mums, ivory roses, and sage greenery in crystal vases complete the settings. Ivory tapers in wrought-iron candlestands add a touch of illumination between tables. Black-shimmer organza drapes the side walls in sweeping arcs that reach up to the domed center of the ceiling. Each panel is tied to a chandelier almost the size of the theater’s. Glistening gold streamers drizzle down from the crystal fixture, making me think of the “octopus” at the rave, leaving my stomach queasier than it already is. I reach for my pumpkin cider, lifting the plastic stemware to my lips. The brown sugar-and-nutmeg coating on the rim adds a comforting dimension to the flavor.
Lining the back mirrored wall is a row of ivory trees with twisted branches, seated in matching pots and varying from four to six feet in height. Black leaves, wired to the scraggly ends, add a haunted quality, while some branches are left bare. Behind, panels of sheer gold organza drape across the mirrors from the ceiling to the floor, with individual black leaves pinned in place to simulate the wind’s movement. Loose leaves speckle the floor in intervals and bring the motif full circle. The chandelier’s electric bulbs are turned off, leaving only the candles to cast gentle, warm light and long shadows over everything. It’s sparkly and mystical, with only a subtle hint of Halloween.
The opulent serenity is at odds with how I feel.
Appear oblivious. Etalon’s instruction keeps looping through my brain, making me second guess everything. How do I appear oblivious while knowing the danger hidden beneath this opera house for over a hundred years is about to lurk into full view? Two worlds colliding, and my four accomplices and I have to ensure there are no casualties.
My heartbeat knocks in rapid rhythm against my sternum. I can actually see its movement beneath my dress where the one-strapped bodice hugs my curves like a second skin. The sage panel of fabric I’m trying to use as a wrap keeps sliding off my shoulders. Sighing, I rub my temples. The gold-leaf metal headband is too tight atop the golden-brown wig I’ve swept into a high bun. Under the wig cap, my thick hair bulges and takes up too much space. I consider removing the headband, but there’s too much riding on getting this role right. So I choose to ignore the dull throbbing headache, although the stress isn’t making it any easier.
Over at the dessert buffet, my friends gather to fill their plates with bite-size ganache truffles and assorted candies. Quan and Sunny came as the Corpse Bride and her prospective groom—complete with bluish-gray complexions. He helps her with her plate since she has only one working arm. The other is hidden inside her tattered gown to make room for the skeletal limb covertly sewn into the bodice. Jax is a butterfly collector with round owlish glasses that magnify his blue eyes, and a handlebar moustache that looks like a fat brown caterpillar. Tiny artificial monarchs cling to his safari hat, shirt, and pants. He’s tucked his giant net under his arm to help Audrey resituate her angel-size set of monarch wings across the black leotard and spandex polka-dot skirt that cling to her dainty form. After the wings are in place, Jax thumps one of her springy antennae, causing the sparkly bulb to bob back and forth on her head. She gives him a playful scowl before reaching for the cookie cups and dropping two on her plate. She probably wouldn’t have agreed to the matched costumes had they not purchased them before I sucked his face and his energy; but at least it’s giving them something to bond over now. Seeing them happy and teasing is my one bright spot. I’m determined they’ll get the chance for many more memories like these.
As if sensing me watching, Jax casts a glance over his shoulder in my direction. I look away, focusing instead on Kat and Roxie off in a corner. Roxie’s glistening pewter-statue makeup and skintight costume, complete with cracks in the stone, is stunning with the matching gray contacts that fog her irises and the metallic silver glaze in her hair. Kat’s half-skeleton, half-human makeup and costume are just as creative and gorgeous. They both have a chance at winning the artistry portion of the contests later, but with the way their gazes keep flitting over, that’s the last thing on their minds. They’re conspiring payback. Little do they realize their petty revenge is the least of my worries tonight.
Most students stand around talking, others are on the dance floor, rocking out to the dark, electronic indie-pop playlist streaming through the speakers. Tomlin put it together. Hard to believe he had time with teaching every day and moonlighting for the dark side. A few small groups occupy the tables around me. One couple dressed as silent-movie characters—in black and white from head to toe—hold up signs with clever dialogue to answer their friends’ questions. They all bust out laughing, oblivious to who’s on the guest list.
Aunt Charlotte and Bouchard are on the other side of the room, watching me. They’ve come as Red Riding Hood—in a long red cape and dress—and Grandma in a wolf costume, complete with nightgown and cap. No surprise Bouchard chose to be the furry, snarling half of the duo.
They’re keeping their distance, although Bouchard didn’t even like handing her key over to Jippetto. Predictably, it has more to do with her aversion to anyone going into her sacred shrine of dead animals than watching over me.
I touch the necklace hanging at the dress’s deep V above my cleavage. The ruby ring pendant is only costume jewelry. Etalon put it in with the Pandora pieces to be worn as the final nail in Erik’s sentimental coffin. And I understand the significance now. The true meaning of the ring.
During lunch, I convinced Sunny that Christine’s letters were another prank, along with the broken mask, and that Professor Tomlin was going to help me catch my creeper tonight. I told her if she saw me leave with him not to follow, because she could mess up the plan. It was as close to the truth as I could get to protect her without blowing her mind.
After she left for fifth period, I chose to skip theater, which was to be another study hall, and read Christine’s journal entries, in case I could find anything to use. Instead, I found the heartbreaking ending to the Phantom and his love’s star-crossed saga.
Shortly after Christine’s husband died, Erik faked that he, too, was dying. Years earlier, he and Christine had made a pact that neither one would let the other die alone. When she found him, he confessed he still loved her. He hadn’t aged a day in the ten years since they’d last seen each other, but Christine was in her early forties, and had at last matured beyond her fear. She gave in to her heart after years of denying, and they had a night of passion that resulted in an unexpected conception. Terrified of how a baby would react to his face, Erik holed himself up underground and locked Christine out of his life. It took him five months to conceptualize a mask so real he could wear it and look “human” enough not scare his child. He went to Christine. She’d been concealing the pregnancy to perform, as she’d signed a contract with a French opera house two years earlier. He told her his plan, but she said she didn’t want him to hide from their baby, that the child would grow seeing him each day. That their child would be the one person in the world who would never think him repulsive or different. Overcome with happiness, the Phantom asked her to marry him, offering the ruby ring. She said yes, and for a week they hid away, blissfully happy in his underground apartment. But there Christine went into premature labor, giving birth to a perfectly formed beautiful little girl—weighing less than a pound and lacking the ability to take a breath—t
oo fragile to survive outside her mother’s body. Christine was devastated and bedridden, unable to even name her, so Erik buried the infant while composing the ballad her tiny ears would never hear.
There was no more to the entry. After reading it, I checked the cemetery. The unnamed infant’s headstone—which cradled my roses and led me to the chapel a month ago—had the same birth/death year as Erik’s poor, tragic baby: 1883.
He’d almost had everything, then was left with less than nothing—with a heart so battered and beaten, it turned to stone as dense and immovable as his daughter’s nameless grave.
The ballad Etalon taught me, the one Erik sang with Christine, belonged to that child. It’s undeniably the most powerful weapon I could wield, but I dread using it.
As if feeding off my morbid thoughts, the music overhead changes to a throbbing, angry song, snapping me back to the present. All around the room, the candles flicker, as if blown by a breeze. Yet there’s no wind anywhere. I turn my attention to the entrance just as he steps in—black pants and shoes, black leather jacket and gloves, black rubber gas mask molded to look like a jackal with a pointed muzzle and ears, yet somehow still human and undeniably male. In spite of his monochrome ensemble, everything else seems to drain of color and life, paling to his feral dominance and those yellow eyes glittering in the depths of his mask.
I hunch my shoulders to make myself small, long enough to nod to my aunt who’s talking to a group of junior dancers she’s been tutoring. She nods back, the worry on her face glaring. Although my instincts tell me to crawl under the table, I stand.
His eyes lock on mine, and the shock wave of recognition snaps through my legs and arms, sapping me of my strength. The wrap falls off my shoulders as I grip the table to hold my balance. At the same time he wavers and backs up four steps in a daze, bumping into Headmaster Fabre, who’s speaking to Principal Norrington and Madame Harris. They all three turn to him and laugh, then welcome him into their group, chatting, oblivious.
His eyes keep flashing in my direction, his wits gathering again like a lightning storm radiating through his frame and coloring his aura brick red: controlled anger, simmering resolve.
My heart rate spikes. Sunny and the others head my way with full plates in their hands. “Okay, Rune,” she says. “We’re going to share our desserts with you. You’re looking way too lonely over here. Time for bygones to be bygones, right?”
Sensing the Phantom’s gaze on us, I shudder. I can’t let him come to me. I can’t risk them getting in the middle.
I shake my head at Sunny, a signal just for her. I mime “the plan,” then turn, leaving my friends gaping as I head for the door.
I pass the Phantom. Even with the distance between us, I feel the energy pulsing around him. His voice bewitches the teachers—the perfect imitation of Tomlin with an underlying musical command so subtle they’re helpless to stop it, so heart-wrenchingly lovely it nudges that song he planted inside me at the rave, and wakes it up.
Pushing through a cluster of students, I step into the abandoned corridor where the glossy floor reflects the shimmering candlelight from the ballroom. The marble is cold to my feet, but it’s my breath that freezes, my lungs that feel heavy and glacial. I force the air in and out. Then I head for the stairs.
Bouchard’s workroom. All I have to do is make it there. Jippetto’s waiting with the animals, and I won’t have to sing that haunted ballad.
I sense Erik’s ominous presence following. Not rushed. Cat-footed and quiet. That celestial song he planted in the back of my mind is guiding him, twisting and twining . . . restless.
My legs shake as I take the steps, winding as fast as I can go without sliding on my bare soles. At last, I’m on the second flight and the door is just at the end of the hallway, ajar and slanting light onto the floor like a beacon.
He’s close enough now to hear his breath inside the gas mask, a grinding, mechanical sound that worms its way into my brain, causing me to stumble over my dress and bang my scarred knee on the marble. Wincing, I glance over my shoulder. He’s just coming down the last step, yet his grisly breath rattles in my ears, a ventriloquist’s trick.
Gritting my teeth, I limp the rest of the way, then push Bouchard’s door open.
Jippetto lifts his white eyebrows with a question and I nod, backing up to the far wall underneath the stuffed crow that greeted me with a cat’s meow the first day I arrived . . . what seems a lifetime ago.
The Phantom steps in. His eyes graze me but fix on Jippetto as the caretaker releases his trilling whistles. Erik’s head darts left to right, taking it all in, and I see it . . . the clarity, the guilt, the change. A melting of ice and frost. His vulnerability gives me the strength I lack. He needs one more push, so I unleash the ballad. My voice lifts, soars above him, angelic and accusatory. He drops to his knees and joins in—a sobbing duet—pure, beautiful, remorseful. His body trembles, his eyes wet with tears inside their shadowy depths.
It’s working. I raise the volume of my voice, channeling the ghost of his dead love with new confidence.
He slumps forward, the jackal’s muzzle almost touching the floor. His gloved hands grip the ears of his mask. “Forgive me, Christine”—his voice a potent, symphonic wail as he looks up at me—“I had to keep her alive. Please, please, let me do what’s left. I’ve waited so long.” Heaving sobs roll out of him, shaking his entire body.
Still humming the ballad’s notes, I inch closer, trying to make sense of his confession, when I catch movement in the corridor and lose the melody.
Bouchard stalls at the threshold in her wolf costume, a few inches behind the Phantom’s prostrate form, waving a length of rope in her furry paws. “Hurry, let’s tie his hands!”
He’s on his feet before I can blink, shaking off whatever trance Jippetto and I managed to evoke. In a controlled blur of black leather and rage, he shoves Bouchard into the hall after snatching the rope. “Don’t move.” He casts the command like a silken net. She obeys, flat on her rump and not budging. “You, too. Sit.” He motions with his jackal head, directing the caretaker to Bouchard’s worktable. Like a robot, Jippetto takes a seat in the chair and becomes still as stone.
Witnessing the hypnotic mastery of his voice is awful and awe-inspiring—a fictional legend brought to life.
The Phantom’s eyes flare inside the mask. I tremble, backing up to my spot against the wall. “Come, pigeon.” He holds out a gloved palm, the other fisted around Bouchard’s rope. “You won’t want to be here for this.”
I fight the urge to obey, but his seductive voice shakes the caged song in my head as if it were a wild animal, stirring it to primal heights. The only way I can soothe the beast is to reach for him.
He pulls me close and ties my wrists together before working off my metal headband, wig, and cap. My black hair springs free, wild and tangled. He lifts my chin to study me, as if assuring himself I’m not Christine.
Then wrapping one arm around me, he lifts his free hand in a wave directed at the stuffed trophies on the wall. A loud buzz grumbles from the animals’ throats. I swallow a scream as swarms of bees burst from the muzzles and snouts—clouds of stingers and wings polluting the air.
Sunny and her allergy springs into my mind, followed by everyone else I’m supposed to be protecting.
I struggle, but the Phantom loops my tied arms around his neck so I’m facing his chest. With his heel, he nudges a ridge in the baseboard, opens a secret panel, and yanks me in with him, before shoving it closed and leaving the confused insects on the other side.
Darkness surrounds us. He drags me up some stairs. I clutch at the edges of each step with my bare feet, boring with my toenails until they bleed. He overpowers me and we reach the upper level. The instant we step into the narrow passage, he picks me up. His scents of formaldehyde and leather sting my nose, making me woozy. That embedded song claws deeper into my cranium, incapacitating me.
“Take her.” This time, his words aren’t directed to me. They’
re for Professor Tomlin, who’s waiting in the shadows.
“It will be over soon, Rune. Then you can have your life back.” My body is too limp to react to the betrayal slithering through my veins as Tomlin slides my tied wrists from around the Phantom’s head and scoops me into his arms, his beard brushing my temple.
I’m only half-aware when my captors stop on the other side of the ballroom’s mirrored wall. The sheer gold fabric paints a hazy scene within: staff and peers oblivious to the swarming bees on their way up. I try to find my friends or my aunt in the crowd, but my vision blurs. With a twitch of his fingers, the Phantom conjures another trick, stirring life into the black leaves on the trees and the floor. They burst into flight like bats, lifting the cobweb chains lining the tables and dive-bombing the now-screaming students and teachers. The bats drop their nets, trapping everyone. My mind is muddled . . . I can’t decide if they’ve really morphed into bats, or if I’m totally unconscious now, having a nightmare.
Tomlin moves us out of the way. The Phantom pulls a lever on the wall that instantly shuts the ballroom’s double doors, locking everyone inside, then releases the enormous chandelier. It plummets to the floor on a high-pitched whistle, raising the chaos to another level as people struggle to scramble out of danger while tangled in the nets. I must be dreaming, because a statue comes to life to shove one of the students out of the way, and ends up getting crushed itself beneath a bone-jolting crash of glass and metal. The fabric tied to the crystal fixture catches fire as it makes contact with the candles around the room. In an instant, the trees against the wall erupt like kindling, cutting off my view with a wall of smoke and flame.
I barely hear the screams inside. I barely hear anything but the Phantom’s lyrical voice, filtered through his mask. “So, so clever . . . using her song, dressing like her, wearing her chains.” He jerks the ring necklace from my neck. “But you broke the tether of illusion just a moment too soon.” He traces the coiled ribbon marks on my wrist that show between spaces of rope, sending a chill through me. “My son should’ve taught you better. The devil’s in the details.” The Phantom takes me back from Tomlin, securing my wrists around his neck again, and cradling my body in his arms. My foggy head lolls against the cool leather of his jacket. “You, stay and see that everything goes as planned,” he directs Tomlin. “Miss Germain and I have an appointment with fate.”