The day I came home and Christine was nowhere to be found, I did not immediately feel the slightest notion of panic.

I at first supposed she had sequestered herself away in one of the rooms, silently reading or sulking or primping or whatever it was women did when they were alone.

But to make sure, I called for her, in a moderate tone at first. When no answer came, I forced myself to shrug. Perhaps she was sleeping.

A few moments later in the deafening silence of the house, however, a strange feeling began to claw gently at my chest, and I called for her a bit more loudly.

When an answer still did not appear forthcoming, the strange feeling began to squeeze a bit more forcefully, but I pushed it back with an iron will. She was here, of course – somewhere in the house. She must be here. Where else could she be?

I pushed back the feeling of dread once again and began to methodically search each and every room. The sitting-room first – but despite the fact that the fire in the hearth burned merrily, the chairs and chaise were alone, and the writing-desk was abandoned.

Her room, then – but the door was open wide and the room itself was empty but for all of her frills and feminine things, and they were neatly stacked or hung in the armoire—she certainly did not hide among them, although I confess I did swiftly check behind the clothes-hangers to make utterly certain.

Her bath-room was further inside and I furtively knocked on the door, to which I received no response. I proclaimed my intention to enter, and again heard nothing. Taking a long, shaky breath, I opened the door in one swift movement and saw – nothing, except for her hair-brushes and hand mirror and robe and all the other little accoutrements that ladies seem to like in their places of cleanliness. I was, to be frank, a little relieved that she was not there – after all, it would never have done for me to have stumbled upon her in a state of compromise.

But after giving her bath-room that cursory glance and turning back to the bedroom, the feeling of dread returned. Where could she be?

I felt like a complete dunce when I got to my knees and looked under her bed, but I simply had to make the cold feeling in my gut – and the increasing panic rising in my breast – go away. No, she was nowhere in her room, of that I was sure.

When I looked in the kitchen, nothing indicated her presence. There was no food or drink on the table; all of the dishes and cups were stacked prettily in the corner cabinet and both chairs stood neatly aligned in their proper place.

The feeling grew more and more uneasy. I still fought it back.

My room next – although I doubted she would be here as I always kept the door locked, I still needed to be thorough. But there was no Christine, not at the piano, not fiddling with any of my things, not asleep on the chaise longue and certainly not trying out my coffin for size.

I began to grow frantic. I did things that made little sense – I swept away a sheaf of papers as though I expected to find her underneath and I closed the lid of the coffin and opened it again as though I expected to find her inside.

My voice sounded harsh in my ears as I shouted her name again and again; I was not only frantic, I was beginning to grow strangely angry. What was she playing at? Was she, a mostly grown woman, playing some twisted game of hide-and-seek?

There was one place left – the workroom. That door was always locked as well, but I could not ignore any possibility, however remote.

I stumbled down the hall to the workroom; I fumbled with the lock like an incompetent fool, and at last pushed open the door with a noise akin to a sob.

She was not there. The workbenches and tables and tools sat like wood-and-metal ghosts in the darkness, and even when I lit the lamp and shoved it into every corner, I could not find a trace of her.

My mind broke for a moment, and in a few seconds of madness, I let out a shrill scream.


She'd escaped me.

After all I'd done for her, she'd escaped.

I always should have been careful not to let her see me manipulate the impossible locks on the front door. I should have known, should have been more conscious of it. Could I not always feel her eyes on me? I always knew when she was there, even if I could not see her directly with my own eyes.

Her presence was ever a sweet, suffocating drug, blurring the edges of my reality and making me far less coherent and sharply aware than usual. The faint scent of her alone was enough; all the blood in my brain would abruptly be driven down to that point where I ached and throbbed, wanting to possess her as badly as a bitter miser ever wanted to squirrel away a storehouse full of gold, as badly as any dragon wanted to devour a maiden whole in one delicious swallow.

I had kept her here for two months – two long, god-awful months of wanting and not having, needing and not taking. I was afraid to touch her. I thought I would make things utterly worse if I did. And yet it wasn't enough. Simply having her here in my house all to myself wasn't enough. I needed her. I needed her gentle fingers to trail across my twisted devil's lips, leaving fire in their wake. I wanted to claim every part of her with my mouth. Her fingers and palms. Her smooth, gleaming wrists. And what I imagined lay beneath her yards of clothing – small round breasts, soft belly, parted thighs, warm and terrible secrets.

No. It was enough, to have her here. It had to be enough.

I had behaved. I hadn't touched her. Not once. Not even innocently had I dared lay a finger on her for fear I might lose my head, or frighten her.

And yet she had run away.

I couldn't make sense of it in my head. Hadn't I given her everything she wanted? I constantly spent what was left of my fortune on dresses and trinkets and sweets that I knew she liked, cossetting her and catering to what I thought should have been her every whim. I'd gladly have given my life for just one of her smiles, and my heart thumped painfully when I was graced with such—and yet…oh, and yet when those smiles came, if they did, they were always thin and fleeting, hardly more than a brief flicker of upward movement from her lips. It was enough, and yet not nearly enough, and I hated myself for wanting more than she could possibly give me. I was a monster, after all, and while one might very quickly get used to monsters if they were kind, it might still be nigh impossible to ever truly care for one. I was no fool. I was conscious of this. I still kept my face hidden away from her, sometimes even—oh, and this was a foolish even—wearing my mask at night while I rested, thinking perhaps she might want to trouble me for something and stumble upon me with my face exposed in hideous glory. I could not bear the thought.

But then again, aside from petty trifles such as a glass of water (which she could and would almost certainly get herself, now knowing the way around my kitchen with perfect aplomb), why should I think she would ever try to disturb me at such late hours?

My treacherous body hoped for a particular answer to that absurd question, an answer which my mind all the while knew was patently impossible. But even so, embarrassment and confusion and a thousand other matters of the heart and brain and body kept me in a perpetual state of the preservation of my ego—what little was left of it, at any rate. I couldn't stand the thought of her seeing me—the real me—without first asking.

But that, too, was an absurd thought. She would never ask. I knew my girl.

I was suddenly overcome by that dreadfully delicious thought.

Mine.

Had she ever really been mine? I doubted it. She belonged to the strangers in the upper world, the cheerful and yet somehow utterly cheerless denizens of a sunlit realm in which I had no place or function.

And yet—she belonged here, too. I had occasionally caught sight of her tracing the dark patterns in the wall-paper, wandering through the house with a dreamy sort of abandonment, a sweet half-smile on her face which itself seemed a bit…out of place.

She had even told me once, in a hushed, reverent voice—and this was an insupportably happy memory—on one of the rare occasions when I deigned to allow her to come with me to the underground lake for a bit of a stroll, "It's so beautiful here, Erik. The sounds, the flickering bits of light. It's as though I've been spirited away to the otherworld, like a girl in one of the old tales."

I had almost touched her then. Almost.

Fear—the fear of what, exactly, would happen if I ever did touch her—was such a powerfully toxic antithesis to desire. And yet it was also the poker that stirred the flame, making the longing that much more potent and difficult to bear.

I never could win when it came to my emotions. No-one had ever taught me how ordinary people felt, after all. My mother certainly hadn't. She'd taught me—inadvertently, perhaps, but successfully nonetheless—that fear meant one didn't touch any other people, or let any other people come near. I was indeed my mother's son in a few ways, at least (barring my appearance, of course), but I never would have counted that as a compliment.


There was a part of me that had been tempted not to go after her. She'd made her choice; she wanted to run away. Let her, then, the callous part of me murmured. Let her brave the dangers of the dank and dark, if she so wishes. Let her die when she falls prey to one of your traps; she'll vanish down here and never trouble you again.

Should I have been comforted by these thoughts? It seemed I was attempting to comfort myself, but these thoughts alone seized me with such terror I could hardly contain myself. No, not my little bird. She could not die. I would not let her die. I could not allow her to fall prey to any sort of bodily torment, no matter how swift or slow.

A thousand scenarios flitted through my head like fire-flies in the night – she could drown; she could become trapped in a narrow passage and suffocate for lack of air; she could stumble into one of the wire traps, which were taut enough to take a grown man's arm or leg off in a single blow. She could bleed out or break a limb, and languish away from pain and starvation. She could lose her voice from screaming until no one could hear her or help her.

I had to find her. There was no other choice.

I burst out of my house, taking great care even in my panic to lock the door behind me. It wouldn't do very well for some interloper to find the way in while I was gone, after all – and I had no intention of letting Christine creep back into the house unnoticed, either. Face me she would, if she were still alive, and she would explain herself. I would make her explain. The alternative – finding her other than alive – no, that was too terrible. I was conscious of it, aware that it was a possibility, but for now I focused my senses on finding my girl alive. Unharmed.

While I had overheard a great many fanciful fright-tales up above from the ballet rats and stage-hands about my purported ability to see perfectly in the dark, reality was far more practical. To be sure – I was used to the dark and my senses were heightened in it; I could, of course, "see" by sound and by feel, far better than most, and I supposed my strange eyes were able to adjust more swiftly and efficiently than an ordinary human's – perhaps. I was not blind in the dark, in a complete sense. But I possessed no preternatural ability to see perfectly in the darkness with my eyes, like a cat or a night-bird. And this time – unlike other times I stole about in my underground domain – I did not wish to be stealthy; I wanted her to know I looked and was coming. I had no wish to surprise her in the passageways and have her take ill or die of shock.

And so rather than steal away into the darkness armed only with my wits and other senses like a burglar or bandit, I took with me a stout torch to light my way.

My sense of smell was a fickle thing, due to the nature of my physiognomy (to be precise, my execrably ugly nasal orifice, lacking altogether the cartilage and extra flesh to make a proper nose); at times scents were sharp and abrupt and overpowering, and at other times I could barely catch a whiff of a fragrance or odor. As such I did not generally depend on that particularsense to guide me in a pursuit, but this time – oh. Oh, Christine.

I caught the deep scent of her perfume, the far too sensuous perfume I'd given her, the perfume she hardly ever seemed to wear (or perhaps that was simply my olfactory sense being fickle again and I hardly ever noticed).

The scent caused my mind to hurtle back to a particular occasion when she had been wearing a particular dress which seemed, to my mind, to dip slightly lower about her clavicle than was her general custom. I had smelt that perfume and turned my head and caught the most fleeting glimpse of the cleft between her breasts as she bent terribly close, her eyes not on me but on the music I had been furiously playing like a madman as I scribbled and pounded in a strange frenzy. I had, unwittingly, left the door to my bedroom open. Up until that moment, I had forgotten her almost completely.

"My room," I had said like a truant dunce, hardly knowing what I said as I said it, "why are you in my room? Go away. Can't you see I'm working?"

Her brow had furrowed, her gaze narrowed as it turned toward me, and with an odd sigh, she had swept herself away with a soft swish of crinoline, saying, "Forgive me, Erik, I was merely curious…I shan't bother you now."

Later that evening I had remembered that fleeting, tantalizing glimpse of forbidden territory and wondered if perhaps I should have let her linger. Perhaps, she…but that was folly. She was innocent of such things. She did not come to my room to tempt me, that was certain. She was curious. Of my music. And she had been little more than a distraction.

A very pleasant distraction…

I dug my fingers into the wall closest to me, sweeping the torch round about me as I looked for her in one passage after another. Back to the present, Erik. Tart and treacherous thoughts were of little use, and if I continued to delay and allow myself to dully linger on distracting memories, I could count myself lucky to merely find her in one piece, alive or not.

More terrible scenarios stirred my limbs and chilled my blood, and I opened my mouth to call for her, but pride shut my lips. She would see the light from the torch if I happened to be close to her, would she not? No need to make myself appear desperate. I had no intention of letting her be the ultimate victor in her little game of cat-and-mouse. I planned to remain utterly aloof when I caught her, cold as a north sea and as immovable as Atlas.

At last, I heard it – the soft step of a feminine shoe, the unmistakable brush of heavy skirts against stone. I wanted to dash, but I paced myself. Reflexes or no, I was not fool enough to lose my head so that I should trip over a loose stone and set myself – or Christine – aflame.

I rounded the corner, and there she was. Had been, from the looks of it, for some time. The bottom of her skirt was caked with filth, her shoes ruined. She wore no gloves, and her fingers were dirty, as though she'd been using them to feel her way along the walls.

She grimaced at the sudden light, held her hand in front of her eyes to shield them from the blaze of the torch. For a moment, a fleeting moment, I felt a sudden pain in my gut, forgetting that I was wearing my mask. For that brief second until I came to my senses, I thought instinctively that she was shielding her eyes from my face.

Slowly, she lowered her hand, and her face was strange and inscrutable. There was silence all around us, nothing but the flickering light of the torch to illuminate ourselves. We regarded each other for a moment, the predator and the prey – but which was which? I was damned if I knew for certain.

I clenched one fist at my side, without meaning to – that perfume, my God, it was invading my senses – and her suddenly sheepish gaze seemed to take in my stance, the language of my body. Although she no doubt had little to no idea of my struggle against the intoxication of her scent and nearness (and the sheer relief I felt at seeing her alive), she almost certainly knew, at the very least, that I was furious at her without my saying a word.

"I…I am sorry," she said, and I blinked, not quite comprehending. If she was sorry, why had she left?

"Were you…were you very worried?" she asked in a whisper, her teeth catching briefly at her bottom lip as she nervously bit down, and I closed my eyes for a moment to block out the sight.

"Worried," I said calmly. "Ah. Worried. You ask me this – you dare to ask me this. I thought – I…"

Abruptly I caught hold of myself, noting that my voice had begun to crack. I drew myself up to my full height, and surprised myself only a little by reaching for her arm, taking it less gingerly than I ever might have dreamed but a few days ago. "We're going," I said none too gently, and turned about with the torch. "Come."

She didn't struggle. She came with me – as meekly as a lamb. I might have been surprised by this too, but then again, the passages beneath the Opera were no picnic tableau, and for all I knew she was quite glad to be rescued.

When we had reached the house, I swept her inside and thrust the torch into the lake, where it fizzled and died. I regarded her, standing in my doorway looking like a lost and dirty orphan dressed in very fine clothes, and then I swiftly came inside myself and slammed the door.

She jumped – she looked positively startled now. I thought I should probably stop myself, I ought to probably be more the soul of deadly calm than of smoldering rage. But I couldn't seem to help it. My emotions were riding a wave of chaos, and Christine was unlucky enough to be a victim of the tide.

I opened my mouth to say something very nasty, but before I could say a word, she whispered, "Don't be angry, Erik…" and whatever verbal horrors had been bubbling up in my breast died a quick and undignified death, along with the breath from my lungs.

I leaned my back against the door. "Don't be angry," I muttered. "Don't be angry, you say? Pray, why should I not? As far as you are concerned, I ought to be fairly apoplectic with rage."

She opened her mouth and shut it again. "Erik," she said softly, and the sound of my name on her lips was an awful mix of heaven and purgatory, "I have apologized, haven't I? What more would you like me to do?"

Explain yourself, my mind shouted, but my mouth refused to say the words, and my shoulders slumped a bit. "I'm changing the configuration of the locks in a few moments," I said in an icy tone, "and I will thank you to remain in your room while I do. Further than that…" I trailed off, searching for something to say, and I abruptly kicked the door behind me with one heel in frustration. She backed away slowly.

"The washer-woman will of course see to your soiled clothes, when I have them delivered over to her Sunday next," I said in a voice that did not sound like mine. It was flat, lifeless. "Don't get any foolish ideas about including some sort of pleading note for anyone, either. If you…" It overcame me, suddenly, the horror of it all, and I turned away so that she wouldn't see the expression in my eyes.

"Why?" I gasped out. "Why didn't you tell me you were unhappy?"

I heard her let out a swift breath behind me and I suddenly felt the warmth of her hovering only a few inches away. Was she just as afraid to touch me as I was to touch her? I hardly blamed her if she was. It was difficult to imagine her wanting to touch me at all.

"Erik, I don't know how to speak to you about these things. When I try – when I want to – when I attempt to get up the courage and come to you – you shoo me away and make me feel like a disobedient child."

That day in my bedroom came back to me once again like a bolt of lightning and I felt like the lowest worm imaginable. I couldn't speak. I kept my face turned away from her, my back to her. I didn't move. I thought perhaps I was imagining her warmth approaching even nearer.

And then I felt it – her fingers grasping ever so timidly at my sleeve – and I panicked. I could not say what inspired it, but I could not fathom why she was trying to come anywhere near me at all, and I reacted like a wild animal baring its teeth when cornered by a kind stranger attempting to feed it meat.

"Leave me," I rasped, pulling my arm away from her seeking hand and flattening myself against the door-frame to pull farther away from the emanating warmth of her body behind.

I felt her pull back. I could practicallyfeel the expression on her face, one of wounded confusion, but I still did not turn. "Very well," she said in a trembling voice. "I'll be in my room."

"Yes," I said flatly. "That would be prudent. I should think you will remain in your room for a very long time, if I have anything to say about it."

"I am not a child, Erik!" she shouted suddenly, her voice filled to the brim with some unidentifiable emotion, and I finally whipped about, narrowing my eyes.

"But you slink away like one," I said between my teeth, "the way I stole away from my mother's house when I was of a very tender age. I wanted to escape her too, because she was horrible. Am I very horrible, Christine?"

She stared at me with a face that seemed to drain of all its blood for a few moments.

"Yes," she said, "sometimes. Like now."

I slumped back against the doorframe again, regarding her with a kind of vitriolic defeat. "Go," I snapped. "Go to your room. Take off those dreadful clothes and…" I paused for a moment, glad she couldn't see the sudden rise of heat in my cheeks behind my mask. "What I meant was – you have dozens of fresh things to change into. Your shoes and skirts are caked with grime. I don't want you dirtying my house."

Her eyes flashed at me. She was angry now, too. "And yet you brought me back," she snapped, "although you clearly want nothing to do with me at all."

"That's the most ridiculous thing you've said all evening," I said with a voice like granite. "Go."

She went to her room then, shooting me another glance as she left that might have been the end of me if looks could be lethal. I didn't care. Let her hate me.

It was better than wondering if she was dead.