Ghost Shadow

Once again my companion for the night was a ball of hair. After helping Alexandre to bed and answering Madeline's questions in grunts and headshakes, I retired for the night with Bessie, who greeted me with an array of sounds that in her native tongue sounded like ecstasy.

She sat thumping her tail on the ground while I dressed for bed. The first thing I did was remove the wig, and it felt like a blessing to have it off my head. The tension released from my forehead made me sigh. Though I absolutely despised leaving clothes scattered around the room, I removed my cloak and tossed it onto the chair with my shirt, trousers and socks. I was too tired to redress completely and settled for only pajama pants. I saw the dog staring at me and knew that her kicking would cause me to wear a shirt or remove her from the room.

I hadn't seen her in days, I thought, as I buttoned my shirt and lay down in bed.

It was a shame, I thought, as she clawed me in the spine and licked the back of my neck, that some people didn't live for ten years and some dogs didn't live for fifty. Bessie snorted against my ear and pushed me farther across the bed.

"Calm yourself," I whispered. I reached back and tugged on her ear. "You'll be replaced by a woman soon enough."

She growled at me. I wasn't sure if it was because she thought I had insulted her or she didn't appreciate me pulling her ear.

I closed my eyes and sighed. Thank God this night had ended.

Over and over again I envisioned the last kiss I had shared with Julia, the way she had touched my face and not cried out or flinched or run from me. Her compassion, her acceptance, made my lips quiver.

I needed to sleep. Thinking of her was making me too emotional, draining me inside and out. There was nothing as completely debilitating as love. And now it was forbidden love, again.

I hit the mattress with my fist for thinking like a love-sick poet. I didn't need to dote over Julia. We would see each other tomorrow like two civilized adults and have a pleasant conversation. Then I would suggest she accept my offer and marry me.

It would be simple. My eyes grew heavy and I dreamt of the song I would compose for our wedding. A nice song, I thought, no longer the need for a requiem.

A knock at the door woke me. I could have sworn only a moment or two had passed, but when I opened my eyes the sun was shining brightly through the gap in the curtains. Well, hell.

"Are you awake?" Madeline asked.

I turned over and looked at the clock. It was only ten in the morning, which normally would have been ungodly late, but since I hadn't gone to bed until four, it was far too early.

"What do you want?" I grumbled as I sat up.

She took that as an invitation to try the door. Finding it unlocked, she barged in. I wondered what she would do if I slept undressed at night. That would certainly teach her to not enter uninvited.

Madeline looked frazzled. She stood wringing her hands and glancing about the room, carefully avoiding my gaze. "Today I take it to be cleaned but…but…I can't find it." Her eyes scanned the dresser and saw the wig tossed aside. "Oh…."

Normally it would have been on a wig stand or nicely wrapped for cleaning but I had merely tossed it onto the cherry wood desk and forgotten it in my need for sleep.

Her face flushed as she stared at it in complete horror. She wouldn't turn to face me.

"Where's the other one?"

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "Julia's house."

"It needs to be cleaned."

I wondered if she was more concerned about the payment she would receive for its cleaning or for my personal comfort. With a yawn I rose to my feet. "Take this one," I said with a wave of my hand.

"But you need it."

I yawned again. "I will retrieve the other one from Julia tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Raoul de Chagny is stopping by her house for dinner."

She looked at me, wide-eyed as though I had completely lost my mind.

"What?" I asked.

Madeline turned away. "You should not go over there," she said under her breath.

I crossed my arms and regarded her a moment as she opened one of the drawers in my desk and removed a sheet of brown paper. With great care she placed the wig on top and carefully folded the paper over it. She treated it as she would some fine religious relic.

"He wants Alex to inherit his fortune," I said.

Her reaction made me smirk. Her body straightened and she turned swiftly to stare at me. "Why would he do such a thing?"

Because he's a damned fool, I thought. "Because Alex is Christine's son."

Madeline studied me a moment. She searched my eyes for deceit but found nothing worth arguing about. With the wig folded into the paper, she walked to the bedroom door.

"You would be wise to be careful," Madeline said with her back to me. She took a deep breath and looked at me from the corner of her eye. "I don't want Alexandre to lose his father. I don't…I don't want you…I don't want to worry about you, Erik."

While she spoke I had moved across the room. I stood directly behind her and touched her arm with one hand while holding two twenty-franc notes over her shoulder with the other one. She stared at my hand a moment and reluctantly took the money. Before I pulled away she ran her thumb down my fingers.

"Don't worry. Everything is signed over to you," I whispered.

"Oh, Erik."

"Stop at the bakery," I said before she could finish. "Pick up two—no three croissants on your way home."

She turned and looked at me. "Meg made breakfast."

"I'm sure she did, but with the two of you inheriting my house I would rather not be fed arsenic," I said with a smirk.

She tried her best to glare at me but decided it was easier to turn away. "Welcome home," she said before she walked out the bedroom door.

It hadn't even been a week and still it felt like a month had passed since I had been home. Meg had conveniently left a stack of paperwork for me on the kitchen table. She had placed bread and preserves at my place setting along with bills from the butcher's shop and tailor.

There was no one in the kitchen when I finally came down for the morning. It felt surreal to walk about the house without my mask and hair. For a half-hour I had combed my own thin strands and attempted to make it presentable. Over and over I tried to reassure myself that if Alexandre could accept this beast as his father, the rest of the house could tolerate a gruesome carcass as the benefactor.

Charles and Alexandre had holed themselves up in the study while Meg was humming to herself as she swept out the foyer. I saw her on my way down the stairs but didn't turn.

Meg and I had always had a rather strange way of going about our business without interacting. She only spoke to me when something involved Alexandre, and even then she preferred to keep her distance.

The older dancers had teased her when she first came to the ballet. They had told her that the opera ghost was looking for a little blond child to steal away. She went crying to her mother and said that I would take her away and use her for doll parts. I thought it was amusing but Madeline felt differently. To quell Meg's anxieties and to make an even more preposterous claim, I left her a note ensuring her and her mother that one day I would make her Empress. Meg Giry, Empress of France. She was very proud of that unearned title. The dancers talked for weeks.

Meg, of course, came into the kitchen and heard me chuckling as I sifted through a bill for the cobbler. She was careful not to look at me as she pulled off her ring and set it on the counter. She always removed her ring before she prepared to clean the dishes.

Since she was Madeline's daughter, I had generally left Meg alone. She wasn't particularly enjoyable to toy with as she gasped and turned white at the slightest sound. Time and again she swore I had taken her ballet slippers when she was the one who never put them in the same place twice.

Meg took away the challenge and my enjoyment. I sometimes wondered if she laughed as easily as she shrieked.

I stared at her while she did the dishes. I suspected she didn't feel comfortable standing with her back to me as her posture was rigid. It made no difference. It gave me time to think.

I tapped my fingers on the leather cover of my checkbook. If I was going to ask Julia to be my wife I would need a ring to present to her along with all of the reasons why she should agree. I had eight hours to devise a list.

The ring….

"Meg," I said. The word came out harsh. The poor thing jumped and glanced over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For being here. In your way."

"Well, to compensate for your burden, tell me what you paid for the gold band."

Meg stared at the ring she had removed. "Charles gave it to me," she stammered.

I sighed. "Well, what did he pay for it?"

"He never told me."

My fingers tapped faster. She was irritating me and wasting my time. I still needed to draw up my proposal and decide what I would say to the vicomte's offer.

At my wit's end, I rested my chin in my palm. "Could you estimate?"

She hesitated. "Five thousand francs?"

There were operas that sold for much more than that. I could write one act for an opera and command that amount. "Five thousand?"

She nodded. "Are you….pawning it?"

"No," I replied.

She started to speak again but stopped herself.

"What?" I snapped.

It took her quite some time to muster the courage to speak again. "I was going to say that if you didn't want me to write Christine, I would stop. I saw what she did to Julia's hand and…and I understand."

"Understand what?"

She stammered again. "I don't quite know."

Meg's nerves had the best of her. Despite my irritation, I found her amusing. I rose from the table and took the bread and preserves with me, deciding it was best to leave her alone. Too many years had passed between us and none of them had been good.

Before I walked from the room she spoke again. "I was worried about you," she blurted out.

I paused and turned.

"Is the ring for Julia?" she asked as she leaned against the sink.

"It's been a consideration of mine," I replied.

She simply nodded. I knew she continued to search the right side of my face as though the skin would change but I didn't say anything to her. There was no need. We had finally communicated.

"Do you still want to be Empress?" I questioned.

Meg blushed furiously. "I had forgotten that," she said quietly. A slight smile pulled at her lips. "The older girls mocked me for weeks."

"I know. Why do you think there were always chocolates in your ballet slippers?"

"I could never find my ballet slippers," she said with a slight giggle.

I stared at her for a moment and saw her coyly smile. It was the first time we had ever really spoken at all in nine years. I found the exchange strangely tolerable.

At last I nodded. "They're in the cellar. In a box with several playbills."

Without another word, I went upstairs.

Ch 1

The afternoon passed without much activity. Just as before my rendezvous with the vicomte, I stayed upstairs and worked while Meg and Madeline cleaned and did whatever else was normal for their day. Madeline returned late in the afternoon and tapped on the door. She sounded horrified when she told me how she had forgotten about the croissants. She offered to go out again but I had no interest. I didn't even notice when she left the room.

I'll be damned if the checkbook wasn't balanced. Not even a week yet eleven hundred francs were missing. However, money was least of my worries.

I went about planning for the meeting with the vicomte first. My mind was made up. He would not claim my son as a nephew. I had no interest in Alexandre assuming the Chagny name. He would have my name and no other. If the vicomte didn't like it then he could go to hell.

And to hell with the truce. I owed him nothing.

If he wanted to set up funds for Alexandre, he would need to do so through a third party. Meg and Charles had become Alexandre's legal guardians as I needed a married couple to become his guardians should I die. Anything regarding Alex would be done through their solicitor.

Which reminded me, I still needed to ask Charles if he would agree, and to ask him what he paid for Meg's ring.

My Julia.

I was hell-bent on finding a convincing reason for Julia to agree to marriage. There had to be something I could tell her that she would find remarkable.

I would capture it on paper and take it with me for my after-dinner proposal.

Alexandre knocked on the open door a few hours after his studies concluded for the day and provided a queer distraction. He rushed in and asked if I thought a bear could defeat a lion in an arena fight. With this question I assumed Charles had moved on to Roman studies.

"The lion, I think," I answered. How was I supposed to know?

"Why not the bear?"

"The lion has teeth and claws."

"But so does the bear."

"Then the bear."

Honestly, I wasn't sure where the difference was between Alexandre's erratic words and Bessie chasing her tail.

Alex stayed for a while and gave valid reasons for and against the bear and the lion. He sat on the bed as I looked over the newspapers I had not read while incapacitated at Julia's home.

It was still a struggle to speak with him. I had a feeling it would be difficult for quite some time.

At last Alex decided that he wasn't sure which animal would win though he was leaning toward a bear, depending on its species. He asked for permission to play with two boys across the street whom I had never heard of before and I consented.

He hugged me from behind before he left. He buried his face against my shoulder and pressed against my neck. I no longer had the heart to reprimand him for leaving the previous night, though I suspected his show of affection was part of a greater scheme.

I turned up the lamp at my writing desk as late afternoon became early evening. After hours of sitting hunched over, I needed to stand and stretch. My body was still sore from several days spent in bed and a long night of walking up and down stairs.

My frustration continued to grow as I sat at my desk. I couldn't think of any reasons for Julia to marry me save one: Longevity.

We shared five years but that wasn't going to be enough to persuade her to stay with me. I stared at the page with the single word I had written hours ago and felt like slamming my head into the wall.

There had to be something more profound.

I loved her.

Ink splattered across the page as I collapsed in the wooden chair again and jotted my second reason down. Just as quickly as I had become excited by my new thought I was just as quickly disappointed. The rest of the paper remained blank.

I folded the list into my overcoat pocket and glanced at the clock again. It was already a quarter past nine.

A quarter past nine!

The vicomte, of course, had reached Julia's home in a timely manner. Before I opened the back door I heard their voices. Julia was laughing.

He was making her laugh. On the night I would ask her to consider marriage, the vicomte was making her laugh.

"…most amusing, Monsieur. Your daughters sound simply delightful."

"The oldest one would love Lisette. Your daughter is a beautiful girl. You can tell she's just like you."

"How very kind of you to say."

I mocked her in disgust before I opened the door, before I ruined their perfect little chat.
He was not supposed to be entertaining Julia. The night was about business, not jovial banter.

The vicomte would not ruin my evening. As much as he tried, I would not allow his inappropriate conversation to destroy my night.

Their pleasant talk ended the moment the door opened and I walked through Julia's kitchen into the dining room. Both of them turned to stare at me and my delayed arrival. It irritated me that they said nothing.

"I apologize," I said through my teeth. "Though I see it made no difference to either of you."

Julia rose and took my cloak without a word, which left my snide comment lingering in the room.

"Good evening," the vicomte said politely. His courteous nature was grating on my nerves.

I nodded, barely glancing in his direction. His perfect hair, face and clothing made me well aware of how my attire only emphasized what a disaster I truly was. My anger flared as Julia returned to the dining room.

"Would you like something to drink? Dinner should be finished shortly."

"What do you have in your cellar?" I asked.

Julia walked toward the kitchen. "Raoul, would you like something as well?"

He respectfully declined and Julia told me to follow her. The moment we reached the cellar door she turned and glared at me.

"Your disrespect is completely unnecessary," she said quietly.

"Disre--? My what?"

"You know very well what you said was rude. I expect you will be civil tonight for Alex's sake or I will ask you to leave."

She was treating me like a child. I would not be treated like an infant. "So you will be alone with him again? Is that what you want?"

Julia's hazel eyes narrowed. "Are you…jealous? Of the two of us talking?"

"What a preposterous claim," I scoffed.

She sighed and shifted her weight. "I suppose you expected that I would just sit there and stare at him in silence until you bothered to make an appearance?"

My fingers found the folded list inside my overcoat pocket. Longevity and love, I thought, I would hold my tongue for the sake of longevity and love.

I did what I had to do to appease her.

"You're right," I said. My insides were burning. It took every ounce of self-control to say those two words. She wasn't right, there was nothing to be right about, but if it stopped her from yelling at me on the night I wanted to ask for her hand, then so be it.

Her expression changed. Julia was both amazed and delighted about my change of attitude. She nodded slowly. "Thank you," she replied. She patted me on the chest and told me to wait for her. A moment later she returned with a bottle of wine. "Shall we begin?"

I nodded. The sooner the vicomte left the sooner the enjoyable half of the night could begin.

Raoul de Chagny was absurdly prepared for the evening. He brought points, counterpoints, balances, proof of estates and receipts from his daughters' education as further certification of his financial stability.

In the hour and forty-five minutes he spent explaining his plan I kept thinking of how I would approach Julia. My proposal to Christine had been very concise. I gave her the gold band and asked if she would marry me.

She refused.

While the vicomte continued his rambling, fear began to worm its way into my mind. What if Julia rejected my proposal? I had not entertained the idea of her refusing me.

Oh God, she could very well say no.

The thought terrified me.

"Erik?" Julia said.

She startled me. I looked at her and then at the vicomte.

"Do you need more time to decide?" the vicomte asked.

I needed to think things over. "Give me a month," I said.

The vicomte began shuffling papers and filing them neatly into his leather folder. "I have left my address for correspondence with Julia. I thank you both for a pleasant evening," he said as he rose.

He was leaving. I hadn't listened to a word he had said since I arrived.

"Have a safe trip," Julia replied. She stood with him and went to fetch his coat.

The vicomte nervously wrung his hands as we remained alone in the same room. He had no reason to be apprehensive. I couldn't have cared less that he was still there.

"I know you don't want him to have my name and I don't blame you. I would not want my son to carry another man's name either." He paused and licked his lips. "However, would you consider giving him both names? Chagny and Kire?"

"I'll consider," I muttered.

He nodded and Julia returned to the dining room with his cloak, gloves, and hat.

"Well…" he started.

"Well, good night," I said before he could finish.

His face hardened but he said nothing. He donned his outer garb and started to the front entrance. Julia glared at me but followed the vicomte without protest. I rose as well, deciding it would be in my best interest to see him to the door.

"Where are you traveling to next?" I asked in an attempt to sound interested.

"Lyon," he said.

I realized I had nothing to say to him. "Is it…nice….there?"

"Yes, quite," he answered. He apparently had nothing to say to me either.

"Thank you for a lovely evening," Julia said. She faced away from me as she spoke. "When you are in Paris again, don't hesitate to bring your daughters by the house."

"Oh, of course, of course," he said. "You've been a most gracious host."

Apparently I had become furniture in the way of their coupling.

"Good night," Julia said as they shook hands.

The vicomte looked at me one last time. "Thank you for agreeing to meet tonight."

His placid nature irritated me. "Anything for Alexandre," I said.

He finally left. Once the door closed, I wished I hadn't shoved him so quickly from Julia's home.

"If you think I am taking you upstairs you have another think coming," Julia seethed. "I told you last night—"

"I know what you told me." I took the note from my pocket. Longevity and love, I told myself, I would look past her anger for the sake of longevity and love.

She turned her head to the side. "What is that?"

"It's a list."

"A list of what?"

"Of things I wanted to discuss with you tonight," I answered. My hands had started to tremble. She could have at least had the decency to be more civil at such a crucial moment.

Julia started to reach for the list but I pulled it away and shoved it back into my pocket.

"Erik—"

"May we sit down?"

She stared at me a while suspecting I was up to something lecherous. With a sigh she nodded. "The parlor," she said.

I followed her into the study and pulled up a chair beside hers. She folded her hands in her lap and sighed.

"Now what was so urgent?"

"I have something I would like to present for your consideration," I started. She stared at me with an unwavering gaze that made me increasingly uncomfortable.

She rubbed her eyes with her uninjured hand. "Well, say it then, Erik."

"I want you to agree to marriage," I blurted out. She had me so damned flustered that I shouted out my words.

"You…what?"

"Marriage, to marriage, I want you to agree to marriage."

"You're proposing?" She held her hand to her heart.

"No."

"No?"

"Not unless you first agree."

We stared at each other for a moment. She tried very hard not to smile but lost the struggle and let out a soft chuckle. Her response angered me. The last thing I wanted was to see her laugh at my proposition.

"You won't ask me to marry you unless I agree to marry you?" she asked.

I rose to my feet, my skin rising with gooseflesh and my neck flushed with embarrassment. Not even Christine had laughed in my face.

"So now you're going to leave?"

"Are you refusing my offer?"

Julia crossed her arms. "You've hardly made an offer, Erik."

"Good night, Julia," I said gruffly.

She took my hand and had me sit again. "What is the list for? Persuasion?"

"Not anymore."

Julia was quiet for a moment. I couldn't bring myself to look at her.

"May I hear the reasons?" she asked quietly.

"Longevity and love," I said under my breath. "Damned longevity and love."

"Longevity?"

"Five years," I snapped. "We've had five years together."

She considered my words for a moment. "So I should agree to a proposal because you bedded me for five years?"

"If that's how you so crudely want to put it. And because I love you," I said. I sighed and started to stand again. "Forget it. I've changed my mind."

"Erik, you are the most maddening, juvenile creature I have ever known. First you ask me to marry you and make it into the most dreadful-sounding business proposal I ever heard. Then you didn't even give me an opportunity to answer."

"Then answer."

"Fine. My answer is no, I will not agree to your proposal."

I was surprised I could still breathe after she denied me. I looked away from her and wanted to sob. Nothing had come out right. I had made an ass of myself.

"I will, however, agree to courtship."

I turned and faced her. "To what?"