Chapter Sixteen - Cupids and Summery Skies

With each croak of Carlotta's voice, the chaos on the stage increased. So did the barely controllable laughter of the audience.

With the exception of the stunned managers and her usual hangers-on, there were few who did not find the proud diva's unexpected humiliation to be very, very amusing.

Christine was not laughing, she glanced nervously up the box where her childhood sweetheart sat.

It had to be his doing, it had to be some trick of his.

Meg looked up towards the murals where she thought she had spied him, dark and tall against the blue and gold of cupids and summery skies.

He was not there, but she saw Joseph Buquet's seedy figure running along the narrow walkway and vanishing into the discreet service door.

Somehow, Messieurs Firmin and Andre managed to scurry from their private box down to the crowded stage.

One of those two aging dandies caught Christine by the arm and pulled her in front of the just-closed curtain to announce to the still snickering audience that Mademoiselle Daae would take the role of the Countess for the remainder of the evening.

"Meg, quickly, change your costume," Madame Giry ordered her daughter as she ushered the ballet girls into place.

The older woman then took Christine by the hand.

"Come, child, you must hurry and change, too."

Meg seized her costume from one of the assistant dressers as her mother led Christine away.

As she hurried undid her stripped maid's bodice to exchange for the light green one of the shepherdess gown, she heard a heavy creaking and sudden rustle in the flies above her.

She craned her head and saw the one of the catwalks was rocking as if someone had run across it. Her fingers moved faster, closing the tight bodice over her chemise…

Then Joseph Buquet came plummeting down, hurtling into the midst of the swirling skirts of the dancers.

Meg's scream was one of many that replaced the giddy, pastoral music of the ballet as the scene-shifters body jerked back and forth.

Backing against a piece of scenery, Meg found the hideous spectacle reminded her…for the briefest of breaths…of Lefevre in the depths of passion.

Even as the horror of seeing Joseph's corpse dangling before her, Meg felt a sudden and guiltless relief at his death.

She knew at once that the man had not hanged himself, even as one of the managers stammered something about a tragic accident.

The Opera Ghost had killed Buquet and Meg found herself strangely grateful to him for this act of murder.

Shaking, she allowed herself to be pushed along with the crowd of panicking dancers flocking to her mother.

Looking back once at Buquet's now still body, she saw the Vicomte pushing through the crowd.

She saw Christine, a scarlet cloak over her bodice and underskirt, pulling him off the stage, toward the iron stairs.