The hand pulled at my wrist, spinning me around so suddenly that I dropped my candelabra, which extinguished itself almost before it hit the stone floor with an embarrassingly loud crash. The red light from the boiler room was just bright enough to illuminate a pair of glaring eyes, staring down at me. If looks could kill, I'd have perished on the spot.

Erik's eyes burn with yellow fire from sockets that are sunken and hollow. It's as if someone had lit candle inside a skull, a skull that is bitter, angry and mostly insane.

These eyes didn't look anything like that, so it couldn't possibly have been Erik.

There are worse things than Erik in the opera basements, and wouldn't you know that I was staring right into the face of one of them. If Erik finds an unwary soul in his domain, he just kills them. If the Shade finds an unwary any place where unwary souls ought not to be, he drags them straight up to the manager's office and you don't hear the end of it for months. No, it hasn't ever happened to me, but you should hear what the Persian has to say about it.

"You have no business being down here!" The Shade repeated angrily, through gritted teeth. His grip tightened on my wrist

Having absolutely no idea what to do or say to get myself out of this situation, I did the only thing I could do. I started babbling incoherently and then burst into tears. I don't mean the kind of tears where one glistening tear rolls down a silent, pale cheek. I mean the kind of tears that start with getting red in the face and end with a bad case of the hiccups.

"Oh for crying out loud," said the Shade, releasing my wrist so that he could fumble around in his coats and capes for a handkerchief, "This isn't at all how things are supposed to work out." He thrust a crumpled square of linen at me.

"Thank you," I sniffled and began to gingerly dry my eyes. I wasn't entirely sure where the handkerchief had been after all.

"Come along," said the Shade reaching for my arm, "I'll take you back to your mirror and we'll pretend this never happened."

I stopped dead, "Wait, you know about my mirror? How do you know about the mirror? It hasn't always been like that, has it?"

"Well, Leroux never said that you don't have a two way mirror in your dressing room, did he?"

I was having the worst day.

The Shade started to leave, pulling me along after him. I dug in my heels, "No, I don't want to go back to my dressing room."

"Why not?"

"Because there's an angry mob waiting outside my door to kill me."

"Well, I can't say that I'm surprised about that," replied the Shade in a tone that I didn't much like.

I summoned up another sob- one that was good and loud.

"All right, all right, I give in. Where do you want to go?"

"I was thinking that I could sneak through Christine's mirror and then walk right out the front door."

"Fine." The Shade snapped, and taking me by the arm, he pulled me down a passage off to the right, one that I hadn't noticed there before. He moved at a brisk pace, forcing me to trot after him, holding my long skirts out the way with my free hand. On the whole, I think I'd have had a much better time if it had been Erik who found me.

After several minutes of jogging about in the near dark, we stopped in a small corridor. The Shade had a lantern, which cast just enough light for me to see our dim reflection in the mirrors which lined the corridor. There was only one problem; the mirrored panel that should have led into the dressing room was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing more than a tiny window, or maybe it was a vent, covered with an ornate iron grating and set into the wall. Erik's tricks were in place but the dressing room had vanished.

Even standing on tiptoe, the opening was just above my head. I resorted to bouncing up and down in order to peek through. Behind me the Shade was doubled over with amusement. If the sound hadn't been muffled by the scarf he'd wrapped around his face, the entire world would have heard it.

"Stop snickering and boost me up!" I hissed.

For once, the Shade complied without comment. He hoisted me up onto his shoulder and whispered back, "What do you see?"

For a moment, I was speechless. The imposter Christine Daaé was in the room, sitting on the stone floor and doing who knows how much damage to her dress. Behind her, a blonde ballet girl that I'd never seen before in my life was making idle chit chat about angels and music. For a moment, I thought it might be a dressing room after all, but I quickly realized that was not the case. "It's a chapel!" I squeaked "And it has a stained glass window!"

"A window?" blurted the Shade, with a sudden movement that sent me tumbling to the floor with a shriek. "That's an interior room. There can't be a window in there, not unless a quarter of the opera house has completely vanished."

"Well," I said, dusting off my skirts, "There's definitely a window and there was light coming through it. Christine's dressing room and a very large chunk of the opera house are no more!"

The Shade started to reply, but I shushed him, putting a finger to my lips. I could hear voices coming from the chapel.

"Do you hear something?" said the fake Christine "I think it was my angel of music!"

"I don't think this is a such a good idea, Christine. You're scaring me." said another voice, which I assume belonged to the blonde girl.

"Don't be stupid. I'm Christine, aren't I? The angel of music loves me and I'll love him back and it will be perfect!"

"I'm not sure that's how things work out in this place. That didn't sound like a romantic angel of music to me and in the book, Erik is really evil."

"I know exactly what I'm doing," snapped the Christine girl, "If you don't like it, I can get someone else to be Meg. The phantom is mine, and I can do as I like!"

I could have sworn that I heard the sound a slap, followed by a squeal.

"There is no way that we're going in there, not even if a door and a welcome mat turn up within the next two seconds," whispered the Shade, with what I took to be a pained expression, judging by the little I could see of his face.

"So where do we go? We can't go back to my dressing room and I refuse to be dragged into the managers' office." I insisted.

"Then we have only one choice. We must exit through the inexplicably conveniently located--"

"You don't mean…" I gasped.

"Yes, I do. We're going down to the inexplicably conveniently located entrance to the phantom's lair."