Thank you to everyone out there reading this. Reviewers will be invited to attend next chapter's masquerade!

Everything and nothing changed once Erik knew Thelxinoë's secret.

They still saw each other after each performance. They still talked about the cast, laughed at Andre and Firmin's ridiculousness, mocked Carlotta's pompousness, and discussed what shows it would be good for the opera to perform next. They still walked the streets of Paris together at night, Erik showing Thelxinoë all the sights, helping her find her way around her new home. Erik still gave Thelxinoë advice on her singing; little things that would make a slight but certainly present improvement to her voice.

The difference was Erik now called Thelxinoë by her actual name.

For the sake of security, he only called her Thelxinoë when they were alone, and called her Alexandra when others were present. Even so, it was enough for Thelxinoë. She hadn't realized before just how much she missed having someone call her by her actual name. Now, she didn't know how she had ever fared without that.

One night, a few weeks after Thelxinoë's confession, the two of them were sitting together on the roof of the opera house, both seated at the base of the statue of Apollo. They had been talking for a while, and the sky was filled with bright stars. Thelxinoë knew a surprising amount about the constellations, and the two had been talking about the stars for a few hours.

"So…" Erik paused for a moment, knowing what he wanted to say, but unsure of whether or not she would respond well to it, "So how exactly as a siren would you go about singing a sailor to his doom?"

To his surprise, Thelxinoë began to laugh. "What," she responded, "any sailor?" She grinned at Erik. "Or is there a specific target?"

A momentary image of a tall, young man with somewhat curly light brown hair and a ridiculous smile plastered onto his stupid face flashed in Erik's head. "You could say I have someone in mind," he responded.

Thelxinoë laughed, nodded, and, still smiling, closed her eyes. "Well," she said, "the first thing I'd do is listen."

"Listen?"

"Yes," Thelxinoë nodded. "Listening is the most important part. There are certain things you need to find out. What language they speak on the ship, for example. I mean, it would do no good whatsoever if I started singing in French and the sailors on the ship only understood Italian."

Erik nodded. That made sense. "Alright, so first you'd listen. Then what?"

"I'd listen, and then…" Thelxinoë paused for a moment, thinking, "…then, it's just a matter of whether you want the job to be neat or sloppy."

Erik leaned closer. This was not exactly what he'd expected. Neat? Sloppy? "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean, there are different ways one could go about doing this, depending on whether or not you care if other sailors die as well." She leaned back on her hands, looking up at the stars. "If you're satisfied with the job being sloppy, then you just distract the entire ship. The waters around Anthemoessa are not exactly smooth sailing. It's really not a good idea to get distracted there." She looked back at Erik. "It's all too easy for a distracted ship to sink in those waters." She cast her gaze back at the stars. "But…if you want the job to be neat, if you want to only kill that one person, then the job is more interesting." She paused for a moment, and then added, "Apparently it's more fun, too." Seeing Erik's puzzled and surprised expression, she quickly added, "At least, that's what my aunt told me."

"Your aunt?" Erik gave her a curious smile. "Thelxinoë, I've never heard you mention any extended family before."

"Well, I haven't seen her for a while." Thelxinoë blushed and looked down. "My Aunt Parthenope…she's only one of my aunts. I have several." She began to fiddle with her hands in her lap. "Aunt Parthenope's the only one who really accepted the fact that my mom and dad fell in love, I think. I stayed on Anthemoessa for a while, but…well, none of my other aunts seemed to like me very much." She paused again for a moment, and then looked at Erik with a curious question in her eyes. "Erik, what was your family like? Who were your parents?"

"I was never really close to my family." Erik wanted to get off of this topic, and fast. "My father was a master mason, but he vanished before I was born." He shrugged. "My mother and I were never that close."

"Damn." Thelxinoë muttered under her breath. "I could have sworn–"

"Hm? What did you say?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing!" Thelxinoë blushed and blustered. "Anyway, where was I? Oh, that's right, just killing one sailor." She took a quick breath and composed herself. "But…yes, that's where listening really comes in handy. If you can find something about the sailor you're targeting that the other sailors don't like, you can really easily get them to throw him overboard. Then, the blood's on their hands, not yours." She paused again, then added, "My Aunt Parthenope once told me that she got a group of sailors to throw someone overboard because he bit his nails."

"What?"

Thelxinoë laughed. "Yes, I know, I was surprised too when I first heard it. Apparently she made it sound like he was a cannibal."

For what was quite possibly the first time in his life, Erik was unable to fully imagine what that piece of music would sound like. "He bites his nails…" Somehow, he couldn't quite put it into a song. He shook his head and smiled. Sirens truly were interesting creatures.

But that wasn't how he thought of Thelxinoë; she wasn't simply a siren to him. He knew that she was half Siren by birth, but that didn't really impact anything. She was still Thelxinoë: silver hair, storm cloud eyes, clear soprano voice, white cotton dresses, fluency in four languages, a golden lyre, large silver wings starred and feathered with ivory. No more, no less.

He looked up at the statue of Apollo. It had never occurred to him that any sort of God could exist, but he supposed that perhaps there was more truth to the myths than he had realized before, considering that sirens were real.

Thelxinoë was humming a soft tune as she looked up at the stars. It was a song that Erik had never heard before. "What song is that?"

"Hm?" She stopped humming for a moment. "I actually don't know what it's called. It's just a song that I know somehow. I'm not even sure where I heard it. I'm sorry." Erik nodded. "That's okay," he said, "it's a lovely song, that's all."

Thelxinoë giggled. "Thanks." She smiled, her musical voice bubbling in delight. She laughed softly, then spoke again. "Erik, what do you know about Christine Daae?"

The question hit him like a bullet to the chest. For a moment, Erik felt as if his heart had stopped beating. "What have you heard?" His heart still frozen, he waited for the guillotine of her response to drop.

If he was behaving strangely, however, Thelxinoë did not seem to notice. She merely shrugged and responded, "Not a lot, really. I know that Carlotta detests her, that she has a lovely soprano voice, that she's very pretty, that she's only recently become married to some Viscount de Chagney character, and that she's returning to the opera soon. Other than that, I don't really know anything about her. No one in the cast seems to want to talk about her much." Erik didn't respond. He didn't know how. How much could he tell her? How much would she accept? Thelxinoë looked up at him and gently tapped his shoulder. "…Erik? Are you alright? Is something wrong?"

"…She was…beautiful." At last Erik was able to find his words, even if he could not bring himself to look Thelxinoë in the face lest she discern what he was feeling. "She was beautiful, and perfect, with the most angelic voice of anyone on this earth. She was gentle and kind, and she was good friends with everyone in the cast and crew." He paused. "Well, almost everyone."

"Who didn't like her?"

"Well…Carlotta for starters. I never really met her." Erik didn't like lying to Thelxinoë, but he also didn't know what she would think of him if he told her the truth. "I only ever saw and heard her from a distance. I'm sorry; I guess I'm not much help." Thelxinoë shook her head. "It's okay," she responded, "I guess I'll just have to meet her myself at the masquerade next week."

That was unexpected. Erik looked at her sharply. "A masquerade?"

Thelxinoë nodded. "Andre and Firmin are holding it to welcome her back to the opera. Everyone will be there. There's a lot of talk in the cast about who will be attending with whom."

Erik made a mental note to write to Andre and Firmin later. "Who are you going to go with?"

"Ah, yes, I actually wanted to talk to you about that." She was blushing furiously. Her eyes pointed towards the ground as she twisted her hands in her lap. "I don't really know anyone outside the opera, and I don't really think there's anyone in the cast I could ask to attend with me." She looked back at Erik, blushing even more. "Erik, you…you're the closest friend that I have here in Paris, you're the only one who knows what I really am, and, I was wondering if, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, if…if maybe you would be willing to go to the masquerade with me?"

Erik was faced with a dilemma. It had not been his initial plan to attend Christine's return; he'd planned on merely watching it from one of the many secret rooms in the opera. If Christine saw him right away, she'd run for sure. But on the other hand…there was something about the way that Thelxinoë asked…she was a good friend, and it was a masquerade…

Erik smiled. "Of course I'll go to the masquerade with you, Thelxinoë."

She started. "You will?" Erik nodded. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."