A/N: Not really much to say on this end. Other than the fact that the Christmas chapter might be a bit late in coming. I have a bit farther to go to get there than I thought I would. But fear not, readers! It'll be up by the end of the month, or the end of the year, depending on how look at it.

Oh, and one more thing. It was brought to my attention by my reviewer, MusicOverMatter, that kissing was unlikely to have happened in an opera performance. It's true, it was unlikely, but since Carmen is such a lust-driven opera, I think I'll plead to creative liberty and leave it in. Pardon the historical inaccuracy.

"Keep all the secrets you like from me, mademoiselle. I'll find out what you're hiding sooner or later."

Juliet was left rooted to the spot in the middle of the dance floor. Thoughts flurried through her head in a massive, snowstorm-esque fashion. She didn't know for sure who or what could have possibly alerted him to the fact that she was keeping secrets... the mirror incident, Juliet remembered, internally groaning.

She would have to be far more careful. Compromising Erik's safety was simply not an option.

Even though she had vowed to be more cautious, Juliet found herself spending nearly all of her sparse free time with Erik. As he slowly began to get better, she spent less time being his nurse and more time just being there. As it was an opera, there were very few spoken lines but Juliet practiced them in front of him sometimes to get his feedback on her delivery strength. She took care not to sing, though. Music of any sort still caused him a lot of pain.

By the end of the two weeks, Erik was nearly better. His illness had left him somewhat weak, however. "You're a fine actress," he told her the night before the rehearsals. She was practicing her lines and he was sketching something on a pad of paper.

"Thank you," she said in surprise. He didn't exactly seem like a person inclined to praise very often. "You don't mind that I've been spending quite a lot of time down here, do you?" Erik quirked an eyebrow in question.

"Well, I'll admit that it's taken some getting used to, not being the only one capable of human speech most of the time—" At this, Ayesha meowed loudly and leapt onto Erik's knees to stare at him in the face. Juliet laughed at her irritably twitching tail. "You're a fine listener, Ayesha, but let's be honest. You rather lack the capability of speechmaking." He scratched the cat's ears, soothing her somewhat. "But," he continued. "It's been quite nice, surprisingly."

"I never thought I'd be making conversation with an Opera Ghost," Juliet chuckled lightly.

Erik allowed himself a rare smile. "And what are your thoughts on it?"

"You're definitely not as frightening as you make yourself out to be," she replied, curling up on the plush, black couch in Erik's sitting room.

"Dear me, I've been letting my composure slip, then," Erik joked. Juliet looked mildly astonished. Thus far, Erik had only ever been drily humorous, never earnestly joking.

"It would seem so," Juliet quipped, feeling slightly drowsy from the warmth of the fire. She'd been working hard lately and hadn't had much sleep in the past few days. Her head nodded closer and closer to the paper of her script...

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Around nine-thirty, Erik looked up from his work to see that Juliet had fallen asleep on top of her musical score and script. She was crumpled over in a position that Erik knew from experience would be murder in the morning.

Suddenly unsure of what to do, he hesitantly made his way over to and quickly and gently straightened her out. He had been planning on waking her up, but she looked far to peaceful to allow him to do it without feeling guilty about it.

Possibly because of the large amount of sleep he'd gotten while sick, sleep was dancing around out of his reach. Sighing, he pulled a book off the shelf and settled into his favorite armchair—a present a number of years ago from Antoinette Giry—and soon felt the furry warmth of Ayesha settle on his feet. The next hour or so was fairly uneventful.

Erik was just beginning to get drowsy when a shrill, pained scream sliced through the air roughly. His head snapped up to see Juliet writhing on the couch, wailing and crying out.

He was on his feet and striding across the room before he realized that he had no idea how to deal with this situation. Do something you idiot! His mind yelled at him. Placing a nervous hand on her shoulder, her cautiously shook her. "Juliet, wake up, you're having a nightmare." Well, of course she is, he thought in self-exasperation. People don't often scream when they're having good dreams. He shook her shoulder a bit harder. "Mademoiselle, wake up!"

Suddenly, she shot straight up, her eyes wet and wild. "Lola—" she gasped, staring straight past Erik in fear and hysteria.

"Mademoiselle, you were dreaming," Erik said, delicately sitting down beside her.

"Who, what—" she sputtered for a few seconds more before utterly breaking down into shoulder-shaking sobs, right into Erik's chest. She slumped against him, her fingers curling loosely around his lapels as though trying to anchor herself so she wouldn't float away back into the dream world. Erik froze, completely out of his depth yet again. Slowly, he put a hand on her back and patted gently, waiting for her sobs to subside. A warm, wet spot appeared on his shirt, but he didn't really mind.

After an undefined length of time, Juliet appeared to run out of tears. Hiccuping slightly, she pulled away from him and scooted over to the far end of the sofa, wiping her eyes. "I'm sorry," she croaked in a tear-clogged voice.

Erik waved it off, twiddling his thumbs awkwardly. "Who's Lola?" he finally asked, wondering too late if it had been a tactless question.

"She was a friend," Juliet said in a flat, small voice.

"What happened?" he asked softly.

"Why do you ask that?" she inquired, wiping her eyes again and examining her nails.

"Perhaps because you started screaming in your sleep and you just spent the better part of ten minutes crying into my jacket," Erik replied in exasperation. Women were strange creatures. They didn't mind being comforted, but it was like pulling teeth to get them to tell you what was wrong.

"She died, are you satisfied?" Juliet said, a muddle of emotions flashing through her expressive brown eyes. Erik looked away, feeling ashamed of himself. Damn his prying nature.

A long, stuffy silence ensued. Erik, for one of the first times in his life, was lost for words. What to say? What could he possibly say? I'm sorry seemed so weak, and asking how was definitely out of the question.

"Morphine," Juliet blurted out at last. Erik glanced at her out of the corner of his eye in question. "She died of a morphine overdose," she repeated. "She was addicted, I was trying to help her quit. And it was all my fault." One single tear welled up brightly in her eye.

"An addiction is no one's fault but the person addicted," Erik said, turning to look at her. "It's not possible for you to be at fault." Her sensitivity to his talk of needing the drug and her willingness to help him was beginning to make at least a little sense now.

"Isn't it?" she asked in a voice that sounded like a thin pane of glass trying to hold back a tidal wave. Fighting a losing battle against a swell of emotion. "Tell me one thing, Erik. If you had been trying to help your friend get over an addiction and they died because you left the room for just a moment to make them some soup and you found them with an empty syringe in their hand from a secret stash of the drug, how would that make you feel? If you knew, just knew if you hadn't left the room, hadn't left their side for even an instant, waited for someone to be with them while you were in the kitchen, would you truthfully be able to say that you didn't think you were the reason you found their cold, dead, body on the floor? I don't think so." She stood up and began to walk away.

"Juliet, wait—" Erik ran after her, lightly latching onto her arm to pull her back to him. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'm very sorry." Her words had sliced him to his core.

She pulled out of his grasp. "So am I," she whispered, disappearing before Erik could do anything else.

When she was gone, Erik punched a pillow with a muffled curse, sending it flying across the room. Every time something seemed to be taking a turn for the better, he just had to open his big mouth, didn't he?" Or do something monumentally idiotic? Giovanni and his daughter, Christine, and now Juliet— Maybe it would have been better for all involved if the gypsies had just killed him and been done with it. For who could ever love a Devil's Child?

One thing was for sure, sleep was not coming tonight.

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"I'm telling you, Phillipe, I think that monster is still alive," Gaston tapped the table for emphasis, taking a swig of his heavy, amber colored ale. It was late and the two men were in a quiet, well-to-do pub in Paris. Neither were drunk, at least in the traditional sense, on alcohol. What they were drunk on was a powerful, all-consuming need for revenge.

"Raoul never did say if he was dead or not, he just said that they'd barely escaped with their lives," Phillipe mused, tracing idle patterns on the wooden table with his index finger. A lock of dark brown hair fell into his eyes and he pushed it away.

"In Christine's dressing room, did Raoul say if there was a storage compartment behind the mirror?" Gaston asked, folding his hands across the tabletop.

"No, I don't—" Phillipe stopped, slate gray eyes growing ever so slightly wider. "In Christine's dressing room, did you say?" he repeated the question.

"Yes," Gaston said slowly, not seeing the point.

"Why do you ask that particular question?" Phillipe looked positively strange now.

"You remember I told you about Mademoiselle Juliet Leroux, don't you?"

"The new prima donna? Yes. I don't blame you for pursuing her, she's a lovely young thing." A brief, lecherous smile crossed the younger vicomte's face. "Why do you ask?"

"That's her dressing room now. I took her to dinner a few weeks ago. When I went to collect her for rehearsals, she was closing the mirror as though it were on some sort of hinge. She said it was like a closet, I'm not entirely convinced of that fact." Gaston flicked a bead of moisture from the glass holding his drink.

"Now that you mention it, I believe Raoul did say something about a passageway to that lair from Christine's room. I can't be sure of it, though. I'll wire him tonight before I return home." Phillipe stood up. "Good evening, mon ami. I believe we may be one step closer to our revenge."

Gaston pulled his cloak over his shoulders in preparation to leave. "Good evening," he murmured, setting out into the dimly lit streets of Paris. It was harshly, bitingly cold, but he didn't feel it. Inside, he was lit with the fire of being that much closer to revenge. That much closer to claiming what was his.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Juliet woke the next morning with butterflies in her stomach. Today was the first day of all-cast rehearsals, off score, off book. She couldn't afford to make any mistakes. She looked over to her bedside table and saw a beautiful red rose and a cream-colored envelope lying beneath it. A shiver of adrenaline ran through her. Someone had been there while she slept.

Careful not to prick her finger on the rose, Juliet pulled the note free and opened the envelope. In elegant script it simply read, Good luck. ~OG (Erik) A smile touched her lips and she poked the letter into a drawer. She knew he was trying to apologize for upsetting her the night before. It was touching.

Wiggling into her rehearsal garb, Juliet headed for the stage. Thankfully, her walk there was blissfully Gaston-free. She was able to breathe freely all the way there, but as soon as she got on the stage her heart began to pound again. Gaston, in all of his sinister glory, was chatting casually with Monsieur Andre. Without breaking his stride, his eyes traveled to Juliet and focused in on her like a homing beacon. She ignored it and proceeded to go over to the ballet bar and stretch for a bit.

"Bonjour, Juliet," Meg said, putting her leg on the bar and stretching her upper body while Juliet brushed up on her pirouettes.

"Bonjour," she replied, focusing on proper leg placement. "Ready?"

"Of course, are you?" Meg arched an eyebrow, her question going beyond Juliet's readiness in her singing and line memorization.

"To sing and act? Yes," said Juliet, practicing her splits. "But singing and acting with him? That's another story altogether." As she spoke, she kept a wary eye on the wily leading man. Even though she was discreet he caught her eye and began to come over to her.

"Well, speak of the devil," Meg muttered, swinging her leg down from the bar. "Here he comes now."

Juliet made an attempt to slink away, but he caught her by the wrists, drawing her far too close to him for comfort. "Bonjour, mon cherie, are you ready for full cast rehearsals today?"

"Bonjour, Gaston," she said, trying not to sigh in exasperation. "Yes, I am. Are you?"

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "When one has such a lovely costar, one's job is so much easier." He smiled at her, but it came across as more of a leer than anything.

"Thank you," Juliet said, extracting herself from his grasp. "I must go warm up my voice, excuse me."

Midway through her vocal warmup, a cry of irritation and disbelief exploded from where the managers stood. "I thought we were done with these blasted things!" Firmin burst out, waving an envelope with a blood-red seal on it in the air angrily. Madame Giry snatched the letter out of his hand and opened it quickly.

"My dear gentlemen," she read. "Have you missed me? I am certainly not dead, no, I've merely taken a bit of a break. I just have a few notes to make before rehearsal starts. The dancers must have more work done on their technique. To say that it is sloppy would be an understatement of atrocious proportions. The first clarinet player should either learn how to tune his instrument or go in search of a new job. The sound is simply horrid. Our harp player must refine his technique as well so that he looks and sounds less like a monkey has been hired to do his job. And finally, our Don Jose. I have no qualms with your talent, sir. None at all. However, I do have a bit of a problem with the fact that you continue to pester and pursue the prima donna when she has made it clear that she will continue to reject your attentions so long as you give them to her. When a woman says no she usually means no, monsieur. That is all. I shall be watching. Your humble friend, OG." Madame Giry lowered the paper slowly.

Juliet saw that she was attempting not to smile and she could feel a chuckle being held back in her own chest. Now would not be the appropriate time to smile. Erik's warning was evidently taken to heart, the dancers were exactly on point in their technique, if not a bit stiff with nerves. The clarinetist took a full five minutes before rehearsal began to tune his instrument and was quite significantly more in tune. Clearly miffed, the harp player improved his playing, but with a scowl. Gaston took his little message the hardest of all. It had been a pin prick in his ego and that was something he could evidently not stand. He ignored the warnings and continued to bother Juliet in their offstage moments.

"Mademoiselle, he is just a ghost. What could he possibly do to me?" the leading man had sneered when she'd reminded him of the Phantom's note.

"Be that as it may, we don't have time to stand around like this," Juliet said. "The final scene is coming up." That was the one where Don Jose, in a fit of jealousy, stabbed Carmen in the chest and she died in his arms. They had a collapsible knife, but Juliet was a little scared that the knife might get replaced with one that couldn't retreat into it's handle.

"Of course," he said.

The scene was nearly flawless, but the flash of real jealousy through Gaston's eyes as he whisked her out of the man playing Escamillo's arms made her think that he wasn't thinking like his character, but rather like himself.

"Oh, bravo, you two!" Monsieurs Frimin and Andre said. "This is sure to be our finest opera yet."

Juliet, feeling Gaston's possessive hands on her hips, could agree to that. It would be well performed. But nothing else would be quite right.

A/N: Ta da! Hope you liked it!

Review? :)