A/N – You will notice that I've altered the plot of this part of the story fairly significantly: the main objective was to remove the death of Joseph Buquet. Before everyone starts to beat me for trying to sentimentalise – don't. I am not trying to paint Erik as less than he is: he remains an interestingly psychotic murderer. But that part of the plot, at least in the musical, makes no sense. How could they continue with the performance after a dead body had dropped out of the flies? And if they don't continue with the performance, the chandelier loses all value as a dramatic device. Pfft.
Mary Jo Miller – no, Only Love is still alive and being worked on; it's just taking a bit of a back seat to this at the moment. It will be updated sooner or later, I promise :)
Georgie, Sweet Georgia – thank you for the advice – I should have explained earlier that whilst I know that Leroux Raoul is blonde, mine isn't. Nor does he have the bizarre Patrick Wilson ponytail. My Raoul is based on the ALW musical (not the film) and hence has a healthy dollop of all my favourite stage Raouls, the biggest influence being Matt Cammelle (stop laughing, Steph!) who is dark – for anyone who's interested, type his name into Google picture search and there are a few of him looking divine in his suit. (Ahem.) I also find the idea of a blonde Raoul very irritating – that blindingly obvious symbolism of dark-haired Erik and blonde Raoul (and Schumacher's miraculously original use of a black horse for Erik and a grey for Raoul) annoys me.
Lots of thanks to all who have reviewed – I'm overjoyed to hear that there are others out there who love Meg as much as I do. (As to the question of happy ending or not - happy for whom? I'll never tell ;))
Christine's doll belongs to Christine Persephone (everybody go and read her story Reflections for the most gorgeous scene with the doll you'll ever see).
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The day Meg finally withdrew from Erik a confession of what he felt for Christine marked a turning point in all their lives. Knowing that Christine had seen his face, Meg now understood – or thought she did – why Christine was growing thin and pale, continually nervous. Although she was still subject to periods of disappearance, these were now short, and Meg inferred, with a tiny, guilty internal thrill, that she had not stayed in Erik's house for any longer than the duration of a singing lesson since.
Erik grew progressively more moody and reclusive; accidents backstage doubled; and Meg knew, from the occasional faint twitch of a curtain in Box Five, that he was now attending all of Christine's rehearsals and performances. Christine was rarely seen with the Vicomte except outside the building, and when they were together, they whispered anxiously in corners, like two children hiding from grown-ups bent on expending their wrath for crimes as yet unpunished.
Erik's temper did not improve as time wore on, and Meg began to hope that his infatuation with his angelic soprano might have run its course.
Her mother – less involved, more perceptive, and inevitably proved right by time – knew that it had not.
The whole situation finally came to a head one morning in early January. Meg learned, from the excited gossip of the ballet corps and her mother's harassed expression, that a letter concerning the next production – a traditional, highly derivative opera called Il Muto – had found its way from the Opera Ghost to the managers. This note followed the same pattern as all others: minute criticisms of the orchestra and musical direction of the production, and instructions on the prospect of casting.
Robyn, who had been hiding from a member of the male chorus in a small rehearsal room just next to the managers' office, had overheard much of the discussion of the letter, and came flying into the dormitories bursting with her own importance.
The girls crowded round to listen.
"It's you again, Christine!" she explained with great excitement. "He's said that you are to play the Countess – ooh, Carlotta was furious –" there was a ripple of delighted laughter "– and that there will be trouble if you don't!"
As the other girls pressed in upon Robyn, demanding more details, Meg saw Christine reach out to her bed and take her doll into her arms. She was very pale.
Silently, she rose from the bed on which she had been sitting, and passed out of the dormitories without a word to any of the girls.
Half an hour later, Meg saw her with Raoul, she looking tearful and guilty, he serious and protective; and she returned slowly to the dormitories to sit on her bed and wonder why Erik was so determined to push Christine into a lead role she so clearly did not want.
A week or two later, everything changed.
Rehearsals had been cancelled due to the snowfall that had blanketed Paris in a soft white quilt, and Meg, bored by the inane chatter of twenty ballet rats huddled together over a fire in a dressing room that could only have been built to hold five at the very most, wandered downstairs to pay a visit on Erik.
She could hear him shouting as soon as she closed the mirror behind her and lit her oil lamp.
She hastened down the steps, feeling a cold chill of fear down her spine at the anger in Erik's voice, which resounded off the narrow cavern walls to awesome effect. In her efforts to hear what he was shouting, she failed to pay close enough attention to where she was going, and stumbled on her dress in the dark, tearing her skirt on a jagged rock sticking out of the wall. As she bent to check the damage to her dress with a mild profanity, she heard Christine's voice raised, sounding scared.
Disregarding the damage to her dress, she ran forward, heedless of the dark, suddenly very afraid for her little friend.
By the time she reached the house on the lake, Erik was no longer shouting. She should have been reassured; but his voice was now low and chilling, acid with rage, and the tightly leashed fury expressed in low, hissing syllables was somehow so much more frightening than when he raised his voice in anger.
Meg peeped round a stone gargoyle, and found that she could see into the music room, where she could see Christine standing, looking absolutely terrified, as Erik stood with his back to her, his hands clenched white with rage on the piano before him.
They were both silent for a long time: Christine evidently afraid to speak lest she anger him still further, Erik struggling to contain himself and regain his composure.
He finally turned back to face her, and Meg almost gasped to see the fire of rage blazing in his eyes.
"Very well, then," he said at last, his voice very low, carefully controlled, but unmistakably dangerous. "Very well then, my dear ... do explain it to me. Explain to me exactly which part of 'you are not to see Raoul de Chagny outside this Opera House' was unclear to you, and explain to me exactly what I have to do to make you understand!"
Christine visibly shrank back from him. "Erik, please ..." she whispered.
"No!" he thundered, making both Meg and Christine jump. He drew one hand, shaking with passion, back through his hair. "Explain it to me, Christine! I don't doubt it's my own fault for not having been more explicit, for not having made it clear to you, but I would like to know exactly what I have to do to make you understand that I will not have you seeing him outside this Opera House!"
"But why?" Christine suddenly burst out. "I don't understand what you have against him! You've never objected to my going out with Meg, or with Nicole, or any of the others ... he won't be a distraction from my singing, Erik, I swear ..."
Her voice trailed off as he approached her, every motion leashed with the powerful feline grace of the wild cat, every inch the predator, smouldering with barely-controlled fury as he towered over her.
"No, Christine," he said, very softly, his voice a low hiss. "He will not be a distraction from your singing. He will not be a distraction from your singing, because you will not see him again."
Meg could see that Christine was visibly trembling as Erik towered over her, but somehow she managed to gather the courage to speak.
"Erik, please ... this isn't fair ..."
Erik laughed shortly, making a dismissive gesture in the air with one hand, drawing away from Christine and turning his back on her. "No, my dear, I daresay it isn't." He whirled back on her suddenly, and Meg could see his anger blaze again. "But then, I suppose, it is fair that you should lie to me. Fair that you should go out and forget all of this, that your voice should mean so little to you that you disregard it as soon as you are out of this building ... fair that you should leave me waiting for you, expecting you, watching the minutes tick away, wondering whether you're all right, whether something terrible has happened, fearing God only knows what ... because you are with him!"
He raised one hand in a gesture of acutely impotent frustration, and for a moment Meg cowered, certain that he would hit Christine; but instead he turned and swept a vase off the piano into the hearth, where it shattered with an awesome crash. The momentary explosion of his anger over, he turned wearily away from her and drew a shaking hand across his face.
"Do not speak to me of fair, Christine," he said, very quietly.
There was a long silence, in which Erik stood like marble with one hand on the fireplace and his back to Christine, and his pupil hesitated behind him, irresolution showing in every line of her bearing.
Meg found herself holding her breath. Christine's voice reached her at last, tentative and very small.
"Erik …" she ventured. "I'm sorry."
He turned to face her, and Meg saw with fervent relief that the anger had drained out of him. He reached out, and although he did not touch her, the smooth motion of his fingers tilted her face up to look him in the eye. His other arm, still without touching her, brought Christine a step closer, his hands tender now, his eyes soft.
"My dear …" he murmured, his voice soft and wistful melting over her, an aural caress. Meg could see tears sparkling in Christine's eyes, but at Erik's tenderness – a caress any woman would have invited, had it only been from another man – the dawn of a smile appeared on her lips, and she lifted one hand to touch his own.
"No, Christine," he said, very softly, and suddenly all tenderness was gone. His hand came away from her face, and a terrible cold fear flooded through Meg again. "You speak to me of unfairness?" He gestured around the house. "This place is silent when you are not here. Silence is a terrible thing in solitude – as you will learn."
He walked away from her. He was all coldness now; no vestige of either his tempestuous rage or the gentleness of only a moment ago now remained about him.
"Your dressing room will be silent until you can call for me in the full and true knowledge that you are prepared to be faithful to me. The mirror, you know, does not work for you; it obeys only my hand." He settled into a chair, appearing perfectly at ease, and made an elegant, swirling gesture in the air with one hand. "I am no longer prepared to expend my tutelage on you without a better proof of fidelity than you have thus far provided."
Christine took a protesting step towards him, but he held up a hand and she stopped in her tracks.
"It may seem unreasonable to you, Christine." He crossed his hands before him. "But I will tell you now that I am not prepared to experience another night like yesterday's – time passes slowly and the mind conjures up unwelcome images when expected guests do not arrive."
"Erik, please, I said I was sorry …"
"You could have been lying at the bottom of the Seine for all I knew." His voice was very low, and tightly restrained. "You could have been raped and murdered in the street. Anything could have happened to you – do you have any idea of the possibilities that went through my mind last night, because you had forgotten you were to have a lesson?" Acid seeped into his voice. "Because you were with him."
Christine bowed her head, and Meg realised that she was crying.
"No tears, my dear," he spoke crisply. He rose, and strode away from her. "You have one week. If you have not called for me by the end of the week, I shall know that you have made your decision, and that adding your name to the inestimable list of Raoul de Chagny's conquests is still more palatable to you than my instruction." He turned briefly to glance at Christine. She had not moved, her head still bowed, and Meg desperately wanted to run to her and put her arms around her. "You know the way out." He turned away from her to look through the bookcase under the pretext of selecting a book.
Meg watched Christine look up slowly, her tears standing on her cheeks, and stare at Erik's back. Her friend remained still for a moment, before giving a sob and fleeing the room. Meg heard the door to the Rue Scribe exit slam, and saw Erik's head come up in response.
He dropped the book he had been holding – upside down, Meg noticed sadly – and walked slowly, stiffly to his chair. He sat down like a man suddenly old, and buried his face in his hands. Meg automatically released her hold on the stone gargoyle, realising with surprise that her skin was bruised and grazed from the tightness of her terrified grip on the stone-carved monster and scrambled down from her vantage point to go to him.
She was almost at the door when she heard the sound that stopped her in her tracks and caught her heart mid-beat. A gulping sob, barely audible against the perennial backdrop of the waves washing softly up against the shingle, caught her ear and sang anguish into her heart. She shrank back against the rocky crag that served as the outside wall of Erik's house and listened intently.
The sound did not come again, and she almost began to wonder if she might have imagined it. She stood on tiptoes, seeking to see into the window that Erik had, with the typical disregard of tall men for the small ballet rats of this world, placed a good foot too high for her to see into.She was forced to scramble back up to her vantage point on the path above to see in through the window; but when she did, she saw that she had not been mistaken.
Erik was sitting in his chair, his face hidden in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Meg stared, aghast. She had never seen Erik cry before; he was the strongest person she knew. To think of him as subject to emotional weakness like any other person was incomprehensible and terrifying …
But then another thought occurred to her.
Why would he send her away if her absence made him so very miserable? Meg shook her head. She could not understand it. Erik had always been beyond her, a source of facts and philosophies that she could never share or absorb; but ever since Christine had walked into his life he seemed so much more irrational, so much more enigmatic and downright incomprehensible than ever before.
She did not dare to go to him. She walked slowly away from the house, absorbed in her own thoughts.
Meg did not see Erik for the next two days: he did not come to bring her down to his house for tea as he was accustomed to do, and when she ventured down there of her own accord, the house was in silence, and no reply came when she called his name through the door.
During those two days, Christine was often to be found sitting in a small rehearsal room by herself. She avoided her dressing room, and Meg inferred that she wanted to be quite removed from the influence of both Erik and Raoul to enable her to make her decision. By the end of the second day, however, Anna reported having seen her in a mumbled, intense conference with Raoul that left both of them in tears; and when she did not turn up to rehearsal on the third day, Meg knew, with a slight sinking of the heart, that she had made her choice in favour of Erik's instruction.
Perhaps even worse to Meg than the sickening jealousy was the feeling of guilt that accompanied it. She knew she should be happy for her friends: both so lonely in their separate ways, they needed each other so desperately. Were they not both so afraid – Christine of relinquishing the safety of Raoul's protective love and opening herself to the fire of Erik's devotion, and Erik of allowing her to see quite how deeply that devotion ran inside him – they could have been so happy.
She was forced to admit that she had liked both Erik and Christine far better when she had been their sole ally in a world that seemed determined to crush their respective spirits.
Erik was, at present, hidden in Box Five watching the dress rehearsal. He clenched his fists as Carlotta stepped up for her aria; frustration coursed through him. His eyes sought out Christine to see how she was reacting to the elder woman's performance; and his anger melted.
Christine was sitting on the floor at the side of the stage, her white ballet dress pooling around her. Her hands were folded in her lap, and although she was surrounded by the other ballet girls, she looked singularly isolated. As he watched, she glanced anxiously around the auditorium, hastily returning her eyes to stare fixedly at her hands as they compulsively smoothed and plucked at her skirt. She was always so nervous these days: the trusting innocence that had always so enthralled him had gradually slipped away from her to be replaced by a constant state of apprehension. When she was with him now, she was jumpy and quick to apologise for mistakes; if he asked her a question, her reply would be hasty and non-committal. The expression of intense relief that had greeted his suggestion that she might prefer to resume her lessons in one of the music rooms of the Opéra rather than making constant journeys to and from his house had hurt almost as much as her first screaming reaction to his face.
As for her beautiful smile – that captivating burst of sunlight which gave her pensive little face passion – he had not seen her smile in weeks, save the awkward, forced little twitch of her lips with which she now responded to him.
As Erik watched her sitting curled on the stage, looking so sad and alone, the angry frustration brought on by Carlotta's inept performance slipped away. His chest gradually became an aching hollow; guilt began its insidious, seeping crawl through his veins.
Her increasingly nervous state reflected the failure of her trust in him; her sadness he could only attribute to her separation from Raoul. She had promised that she would not see him again, and had so far been true to her word; but as Erik watched her pull miserably at her skirt, her eyes clouded and distant, he knew she was wondering if the price of fame was too steep.
It was necessary, of course. She would see that one day: romance was a distraction she could not afford if she wanted to excel in her chosen career. Bile rose in his throat as an image of Raoul's arm around her waist came to mind; to push away the unwanted mental progression to the vision of her as his wife, he transferred his attention back to Carlotta.
Erik had been willing to sacrifice his demand that Christine should sing the Countess: it was not a role for which she was particularly well suited, and, as she shrank ever further away from him, her voice was not progressing as he would have liked. But he wished …
Oh, how he wished that she had possessed the courage to demand the role. She would have been so beautiful; so charming.
Erik sat back in his hard-backed chair and steepled his fingers together musingly, only distantly hearing Monsieur Reyer's weary address and the rustling and giggling chatter that heralded a brief recess in rehearsal.
He dared not allow himself to dwell on all the other wishes Christine aroused in him.
The night of the first performance of Il Muto was one no one in the Opera House seemed likely to forget in a hurry. Somehow – Meg rather suspected through the insistence of Raoul that a madman's demands must not be honoured – the managers had found the courage to cast Carlotta in the lead soprano role of the Countess; and to her astonishment, six weeks of rehearsals had passed peacefully away with no reprisals from Erik.
Meg had not been able to find the courage to ask him why: with every passing day, Erik grew more and more distant, and Meg did not dare to broach the subject of Christine for fear of driving him away from her altogether. As it was, she felt she was clinging to shadows which subtly withdrew from her touch, and the slightest wrong move could take Erik's love from her forever. She dared not mention Christine; and now their conversations were frivolous, empty things: ballet corps gossip and trivial popular news of the day, but never touching on anything personal or important to either of them.
Everything that had made him so wonderful, so uniquely special among all the men she had ever known, was fading now in the overwhelming brilliance of his love for Christine. While they had been accustomed to sit in comfortable silence by the fire, Erik reading or working while Meg sewed, he was now always restless, frequently getting up to poke the fire or rearrange papers on the piano, all the while glancing surreptitiously at the clock, watching the cruel minutes tick by, each passing revolution of the hands bringing Christine closer to him again.
When they talked, the wistfulness in his eyes – distant and hastily suppressed – let Meg know that he was still thinking about her.
He was losing his individuality in his total absorption in another person; and Meg hated him for it. She was surprised that he had not insisted on Christine's taking the role he had designated for her, but could not bring herself to care: perhaps this was the first sign of the cords of his attachment loosening, his love passing into apathy as time wore on and still Christine showed no signs of reciprocating his feelings.
As she changed into her costume for the performance, she felt almost light-hearted.
On later reflection, the night had been doomed before it had even begun. Erik's nerves were on edge that night before he even arrived in the auditorium. His earlier lesson with Christine had been an unprecedented disaster: she was always nervous before performances, but today her concentration had been utterly absent, and her continual mistakes and nervous apologies combined to drive him into a state of irritated frustration which her every word seemed to heighten.
But the sight of Raoul de Chagny sitting with the natural, graceful elegance of a man well accustomed to society in Box Five infuriated him: and goaded by the fond way the young man watched Christine dance onstage, it was really little short of a miracle that Erik managed to restrain himself from sealing his lips forever.
And as he hovered above the stage in the wings like a great black bat, the sound of Carlotta's voice rising shrilly into the air was the final straw.
Less than thirty feet below Erik, Meg waited in the wings, absently stroking the hand of a young dancer called Rachel, who had never danced in front of such a large audience before and was suffering from the stage fright that must inevitably accompany such a momentous occasion as her first public performance.
Rachel was whispering anxiously, "Are there so very many people out there?" when a voice, seeming to originate somewhere in the ceiling and fan out to envelop the whole auditorium in tones of steel wrapped in velvet.
"Did I forget to make it clear that Box Five is not available for sale to members of the public?"
His voice was acidic, dangerously calm; Meg felt Nicole catch at her arm in panic as Rachel clutched her hand even tighter.
"And did I neglect to mention my casting recommendations?"
Raoul sprang to his feet, his eyes searching the flies, his hand reaching inside his jacket for his pistol. At this movement, the voice's tone changed, fury replacing control.
"I will not be disobeyed!"
Meg cowered, feeling the corps press around her in a comforting huddle as her mother pushed through the crowd to stand at the side of the stage.
It happened so quickly that – although afterwards, all the ballet rats swore blind they had seen a shadowy figure lurking in the flies – Meg could not see exactly what happened. There was a loud crash; screams rose from the cast; and the shout went up that Carlotta had fainted. It was only much later that Meg saw the metal weight – usually used to hold down the heavy backdrops – which had plummeted from above the stage towards Carlotta. Only the diva's astonishingly quick reflexes had saved her: no man living could have survived the impact of such a weight.
Andre was standing in his box, futilely attempting to shout calming reassurances to the audience; Firmin stood behind him, scanning the roof for any sign of his invisible opponent. Carlotta, hastily revived by a chorus member's smelling salts, was wailing in Spanish; Piangi frantically trying to soothe her; and it was, in the end, Raoul who took charge.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" His voice was loud enough to make himself heard over the cries of the audience, and its natural authority gave him control. The audience quieted. "We crave your indulgence for this unfortunate incident. The performance will continue after a short recess –" a glance across the auditorium at Firmin, who nodded quickly "– when the role of the Countess will be taken by Mademoiselle Christine Daaé.
Meg saw Christine look up at Box Five, startled. Her mouth formed the word "No", but the tumultuous commotion onstage prevented any sound rising to touch Raoul, who disappeared momentarily to reappear in the wings.
"Raoul!" Christine rushed into his arms, sobbing and clutching at his shirtfront like a frightened child after a nightmare. He enfolded her in his arms, pressing her face into his shoulder and kissing her hair, his touch fraternal.
She clutched at his jacket. "I can't. I can't do it!"
He stroked her hair, murmuring soothing words into her ear. "You must, my love."
"I can't. Raoul … he's so angry with me …" Her tears deprived her of the power of speech, and she bent her head into Raoul's chest.
Raoul stroked her hair, and waved away the harassed-looking woman from the costume department who was approaching with a tape measure to take Christine away and give her her new costume.
"Five minutes," he mouthed over her head, and the woman nodded. Raoul took Christine's face gently in one hand and spoke softly to her.
"Come with me."
Christine, teetering on the edge of hysteria, was in no fit state to resist as he hurried her up the steps to the roof. It was logical enough, Erik mused as he watched: Christine had told the Vicomte that his rival lived in the cellars, so where better to escape his watchful eye than the roof?
He snorted and concealed himself behind a heavily gilded wing, resting one hand on the carved lyre, his fingers stroking absently along the unyielding stone strings as Christine's guilty conscience spilled forth in a stream of confused confession.
His calm endured far longer than he would have expected it to. He bore her tears, her vividly cruel descriptions of his face, her desperate pleas for salvation – even the look in her eyes as the Vicomte asked her to marry him! – with no physical reaction other than the gradual tensing of his muscles until the tendons stood out on his hands as they gripped the statue. He crouched, as still as the cold marble angel beside him, frozen. It was not until the Vicomte leaned forward to kiss her, and she allowed it, that the flaming heat of pain began to melt the frozen reserve which preserved his silent, unmoving shell; only then did the tears of ice and fire begin to ease from behind the mask.
His mouth formed her name: no sound emerged; the Vicomte kissed her again, suddenly boyishly exuberant in his joy – so young, they were both so young – she laughed; he pressed his face against the cold marble of the statue. It burns …
The cold surface of the statue did little to cool his burning cheek as he laid his face flat against the gentle, stroking fingers of a muse.
Would that his own would so allow his touch.
The pain was almost physical: his heart scalded within him, corrosive and agonising, and the tears that slid down his face – once such an unfamiliar sensation, and yet how often had he cried this past year in certain knowledge of what could never be his? – were acid against his face.
Deep within the layers of pain lay the one root of unalterable certainty: he couldn't lose her. Not now: in only one short year she had changed every aspect of his life; stripped him of his dignity and self-reliance, and he could no longer bear to imagine life without her.
Before her, his only desire had been to be hidden from the world, never knowing or imagining what others suffered and exulted in in the name of love; and how abruptly had she turned that single desire upside down.
Now all he wanted was her, and he could not lose her.
He saw now how empty his world was: everything he had ever loved – his music, his books, his art – now seemed hollow distractions, pale imitations of life. He had buried his childish longing to be loved so many years ago, thrust it deeply down into the sealed chamber in his heart into which he had crumbled every hope and dream he had ever had. He had thought he had sealed his heart with marble, granite; now he saw that what he had mistaken for resolve was only ice, waiting for an angel to come and melt it to expose the vulnerable flesh beneath.
That vulnerability enraged him: he hated the constant anxiety, the tortuous uncertainty he felt when he thought of her; the temporary joy of her presence and the pain of her absence all combined to raging frustration the likes of which he hadn't felt in years.
Erik stood out on the roof for a long time after the lovers had ventured back downstairs to continue the performance, the cold bleeding through him. Slowly, the pain receded, anger seeping in to take its place; and when he finally returned to the theatre, numb with cold, to see the Vicomte standing in his box to cheer enthusiastically as Christine's aria ended amidst a storm of applause, his temper snapped.
"Erik!"
He turned to see Meg running towards him, her expansive pink dress tripping her up.
"She loves him, does she?" He pushed past her, his eyes blazing. "By God, she will not love him long!"
Meg, astonished by his roughness, caught at his sleeve. "Erik, don't!"
With violence unanticipated by Meg, he threw her hands from him. The words he spoke – in a hissing tone of savage fury that frightened Meg easily as much as it surprised her – continued to haunt her for weeks afterwards. "Don't interfere."
He disappeared as abruptly as he had arrived, and Meg, with a sinking heart and a feeling of dread veiling her, made her way back to the stage in time for curtain calls.
She was just in time, but so distracted that, had it not been for Nicole, who seized her hand and pulled her out onto the stage with the rest of the corps, she would have missed her bow altogether.
It was not until Piangi came out for his bow, and made way for Christine, that the laughter began: demonic laughter that seemed to come from nowhere and penetrate the entire auditorium. Meg felt Nicole clutching at her hand, and heard little Robyn whimper her name. She saw Christine take a step back, horrified terror frozen on her face, and reached out to her, fearing that she might faint.
There was a loud scraping sound of metal on metal, and every eye in the auditorium looked up to the roof. The enormous chandelier, Garnier's pride and joy, was rocking ominously back and forth. Cries rose from the audience; Meg felt the press of bodies around her as the corps crowded together, some of the younger girls in tears. Men were shouting; women screaming; there came a slicing sound of a sword cutting the air, and the chandelier, with an almighty shudder, came crashing down from the ceiling.
Meg screamed; the flames of the falling chandelier illuminated a man standing tall in the rafters, arms folded beneath a thick black cloak.
His eyes were empty as he watched the second tenor leap forward to sweep Christine out of the path of the wreckage of crystal and flame as it crashed into the orchestra pit.