"What raging fire
Shall flood the soul?
What rich desire
Unlocks the door?"

~ The Phantom.

Andrew Llyod Webber, The Phantom of the Opera.


"What's the infamous Opera Ghost doing now, eh?" I leaned as far as I could over the organ to peer at his music sheets. Erik smiled his usual smile: soft, almost nonexistent, and hardly recognisable compared to a frown.

"What he always does," he answered in a quiet voice. "Erik is composing."

"Of course. And speaking of music, where's Christine?"

His pen stopped scratching the parchment.

I raised an eyebrow as Erik scowled, screwed up the sheet and tossed it over his shoulder. It bounced against the stairs once and plummeted into the lake. My chair shrieked as I pushed it back and stood, mirroring his scowl.

"Don't you waste your parchment!"

"Don't you tell Erik what to do!" he snapped back, standing up as well and towering over me even across the organ. His amber eyes glared against their dark backdrops, one shadowed by his mask, the other narrowed like a prowling cat's.

"Use that tone of voice with me one more time," I growled, scowling, crossing my arms and tapping my foot with clunky echoes against the stone, "and I'll drag you upstairs to explain yourself to the managers!"

Erik held my glare for a long moment. His eyes flicked between my scowling eyes and the neutral mask, as if wondering which Nikki to believe, then back at the stave and, rolling his eyes, set to playing a petulant tune. I stuck my tongue out at his stab of revenge.

The music intensified, reaching, growing to a crescendo like no other. I picked up my pen and began to doodle violently, racing against the melody as it grew darker and darker, louder and louder, faster and faster. Erik slammed his fingers onto the lower scale, creating a dramatic death sequence and glaring at me. I held up the parchment, biting back triumph as his frown set deeper into his forehead.

"Why is there a ballerina hitting Erik with a shoe?" he asked as the walls shook with the vibrations of the death march he'd just composed for me. I frowned and looked back at the drawing.

"That's me, you halfwit! Those are evening clothes, not a tutu! I'm dressed as a box-attendant in this."

"Oh, for Heaven's sakes, Kitty!"

"Don't you think I've earned it?" I interrupted, inserting the doodle amid a pile of other random papers. Erik pressed his head into his hands. "All I've done all my life is scrub floors and polish golden armrests! It's time you repaid me for all the times I got you out of trouble."

"If you turn into a miniature Daroga," Erik snapped, pushing himself back in his chair, "you'll have no job whatsoever. And then we'll see just how much you like cleaning."

"Then I'll be down here in a flash and take up permanent residence in the Louis-Phillippe room; I'm thinking a nice pastel pink might suit the walls, with some sort of beige along the panels."

He sighed, looking about the parlour in thought.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"Box-attendant," he said at last, pulling off his mask and abandoning it on top of the organ. I raised my chin, coaxing him on. "If I order your reinstatement, you'll stop pestering?"

"You have my word."

Erik grunted and prepared a fresh music stave. "I'll see what I can do."

"I have something else to ask of you," I said, leaning back in my chair and straightening my gloves. Erik's eyes shifted up, semi narrowed.

"So many requests. Would you like a rope around your neck?"

"Would you like your bedroom painted pink and yellow?" I sat straight in my chair and bundled a few notes together into a folder. "It's Jeremy."

"Finally bored of him?" Erik dipped his pen and went back to composing, scratching it against the parchment with little scuffles. "Erik has other things to do than kill people."

"Don't start. Now, you're aware the poster maker was recently fired." Erik didn't look up. "Well, you'll still need to advertise the productions, and just last night I discovered that Monsieur Desrosiers likes to paint."

The pen stopped scratching.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Erik's voice was quiet and as hard as iron. "What?"

"Don't bother playing that game with me. You have the best pair of ears I've ever known." I set some papers on top of the organ out of the way and pretended to write down some more notes.

"Jeremy Desrosiers?" Erik frowned, staring at me as if I'd grown another head. I looked him dead in the eye and he scoffed. "Have you lost your mind completely?"

"I saw him on the stage last night with an easel and brush. Perhaps he could paint a scene from Faust and use that for a billboard. You know you're still going to need to advertise, Erik; you'd be a fool to refuse! Come with me tonight and see for yourself."

"I already have an evening planned," he said, standing from the organ and straightening out his shirt. I frowned, opening my mouth to remark on that. "If you wish to put more of a burden on his shoulders – and mine, mind you! – you'll need to procure some sort of evidence that he can actually paint."

I waved that away. "An evening planned, you say? Christine?"

The shuffling ceased. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

"It depends," I said, embracing my nonchalant side as I dipped my pen back into the inkpot, "on what you intend to do with her."

I could practically feel Erik glaring as he drew himself up to full height. "I don't particularly care for what you may be insinuating, Nikki."

I frowned behind my mask and looked up at him. He stood the other side of the organ, six feet of towering shadow. The pipes were cleverly placed at the side, connected in such a way only Erik could have been responsible. It meant keeping the top of the instrument free for passing notes back and forth, for eye contact. And for arguments. His amber eyes were narrow, ready to accuse me for every little thing.

"I'm just worried that your dealings with her might amount to something more sinister than love."

"And what do you mean by that?"

"Oh, for goodness sakes, Erik!" I sank back into my chair and tried not to pull my hair out. "I came down here, here being five stories below street level, at two in the morning and found both a dressing woman, where there never normally is one, and a panicking bachelor. What else was I to think? For all I knew, she could have been kidnapped!"

"Enough," he muttered, striding away to the edge of the lake and kicking a loose stone into the water. I stood from my seat and stepped around the organ to lean against the side panels.

"Erik, I'm worried about you! Who knows what she might say, who she might say it to! What if she betrays you to les gendarmes? What if she breaks your heart? I can't be here to protect you all the–"

"Enough!" His hand lashed out, catching a standing candelabra. It clattered to the floor, sending hellish echoes around the parlour. He kicked the golden frame, sending a lone candle to the floor, and stormed across to the furthest side of the parlour. "For Heaven's sakes, woman, enough!"

"Erik, you cannot simply–" I caught sight of the candle.

For just a moment, time seemed to stand still. My mind stopped thinking, my heart stopped beating and my lungs stopped breathing. I froze against the organ, staring at the wick and dripping wax. My arms crossed over my chest, so tense I wondered whether they'd snap.

I seemed to watch the scene from afar, not myself anymore but a spirit floating in the background, and when I spoke, my words were not my own. "Erik..."

He turned on his hip with a snap. "What is it now?"

The flame snuck away from the wick, taking a fancy to one of the sheets he'd abandoned to the floor and biting into it, slowly at first, like the bites of a teasing lover under the cover of darkness. My knees locked, feet grounded in place. Erik followed my stare.

The flame matured, catching the other sheets nearby. A horrified yelp ripped its way free from my throat. I clutched the organ, my heart drumming in my throat.

Erik cursed like a sailor and sprinted back, stamping on as many flames as he could. But they spread, coming right for me. I could only watch on, silent in the folds of time and I crumpled to the floor, burying my masked face in my hands. Every breath came out as a broken gasp, loud and uncontrollable, just one noise amongst the rest of the screaming in my mind. I let out a shattered sob. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only crawl away on shaking arms. Erik jumped about on the flames, picking some papers up and throwing them into the water, dropping others as the wolves tried to snap at his loose shirt.

Smoke. It was everywhere. Filling the house, filling the rooms, filling my lungs. A thick, black soup everywhere I looked. I choked and collapsed to the floor, tripping over the top stair and landing on my chest on the landing. A pair of small hands grabbed me by the arms, hauling me somewhere. Erik...

"It's alright, Nikki," he said, skidding against the stone and hauling me into his skinny arms. He rocked me back and forth like a child, holding me to his chest. "The fire's gone. No more fire."

But it wasn't enough. Smoke wrapped around me, I could smell it through my mask, and the thick, black clouds smothered my vision.


The flame leapt for me.

I gasped and forced my eyes open, the snap of survival shocking me awake. A cold sweat coated my forehead and my head spun like a top. The stone ceiling stared back at me, a patch of water threatening to drip on my mask.

My mask. I sighed and reached to straighten it but winced at the feeling of my skin instead.

"Looking for something?" I turned against the pillow to stare at Erik. He sat beside me on the sheets, his legs crossed at the ankles and nearly hanging over the end of the bed, and passed the mask to me from his lap, keeping the page of his book with his thumb. I groaned and batted it away. Erik shuffled about on the sheets and slipped his hand behind my back. "Sit up, Nikki. And please, cover yourself as you do."

I frowned and touched my side. "Erik, why am I in my underclothes? Where is my corset?"

"What amuses me is how you think you could resume breathing properly with it on," Erik said, catching my worried glare with a small, humourless chuckle. "Why on earth did you feel the need to tie it so tight?"

I shrugged and sat up a little more, leaning against the headboard. "Women always tie them tight. Doesn't mean the gentlemen ever notice though."

"You should write poetry," he said, closing the book with a soft clap and setting it back on the bedside cabinet. "Deep, soulful poetry, right from the heart. Blake would go green and turn in his grave with envy."

He swung himself from the bed and checked his pocket watch. "Six o'clock. There is somewhere I need to be."

I sighed, closing my eyes against a bolt of dizziness for a moment. "Christine, I'll wager."

"She's coming along so well, Nikki," he insisted, tying a cravat. "I wish you could have heard her as Siébel."

"I'm distraught at missing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Truly."

"If you see her Up Top, at least talk to her. You'll be pleasantly surprised." He straightened his clothes and pulled on his cloak, almost knocking over my books on their shelf as he did so.

There was no getting around this. I could only sigh and mutter an 'I suppose I'll try,' and hope I never had to be held to it. Erik nodded adding a feathered fedora.

Within moments, there was only me in the House on the Lake, which had been tidied throughout: the charred music sheets were thrown into the fireplace in the sitting room, the extra candles had been doused and put away and Erik's room had been cleaned from top to bottom, all clothes neatly folded away in the right drawers.

Six o'clock, I thought. What could I do in three hours?