Before M. Richard had a chance to make the call, Mme. Giry popped into the room holding another bright red letter. "Hi, guys. My buddy the Opera Ghost told me I was re-hired."

"Grrr…" M. Richard hissed. His face was bright purple, and he was starting to froth at the mouth. Had this been an animated version, there would have already been steam coming out of his ears.

Mme. Giry patted him hesitantly on the shoulder and held out a small red ball. "Here, monsieur, I think you need to borrow my stress ball for a while."

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHH!" Richard roared furiously, picking her up, lifting her over his head, and throwing her through a window.

Utterly stunned, she got on her feet, snuck back to the window, and beckoned to M. Moncharmin. "Psst, come here," she whispered.

Moncharmin edged back over to the window, peering at her between the few shards of glass left in the frame. "What?"

"I think your partner has some anger management issues. My brother went through the same thing. Here, I have a pamphlet that might help him." She slipped a small booklet into his hand.

Across town, La Carlotta was sitting down at the breakfast table, pouring herself a bowl of Alpha-Bits. After she turned around to take her toaster strudels out and ice them, she noticed that something was different about her cereal. Someone had arranged the sugar-coated letters so that they spelled out the following message:

Call in sck tonight, or I'll hve to commit some srt of unspekably horribl atrocity against you.

P.S.: Plese accept my apolgy for the atrocious spelling of this messag. Ths cereal has an appalling shortage of vowels.

And another funny thing about it was that someone had stolen all of the marshmallow pieces from the bowl.

Carlotta was furious. "Who is responsible for this? Ooh, I'll bet it's that little brat Christine Daae! She's probably upset about all those times I've treated her like garbage, slandered her reputation, and tried to destroy her career. Sheesh, she's so hypersensitive!"

The diva ignored the warning, then ate it, then took a walk down to Seat Fillers Incorporated. "All right," she told the man at the front desk. "Here's the scoop. I'm La Carlotta, from the Palais Garnier."

"You work at the Palais Garnier? Really?" The clerk's eyes lit up. "Say, do you think you could do me a favor?" He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out his autograph book.

Carlotta smirked arrogantly. "Well, I suppose just this once…"

"Could you get me that brilliant Christine Daae's autograph?" he finished.

Carlotta snatched the book and smacked him across the face with it. "Now you listen to me! I need a bunch of screaming fans in the audience to watch me sing tonight so that the new managers will think…uh, I mean, so they'll know that I'm better than that little brat Christine."

"Okay." He whistled to one of his employees in the back room. "La Carlotta needs a couple hundred seat fillers at the opera tonight. Round up as many of our men as you can find by then. Oh, and tell them that I'll give a twenty-franc bonus to the man who gets me Christine Daae's autograph while he's there."

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHH!" screamed Carlotta as she stomped out of the office.

Down at the opera house, while preparing for her performance, Carlotta began to get hungry. So, she decided to order herself a pizza, despite the fact that she was Spanish and not Italian in this version. When it arrived, she was surprised to discover that someone had spelled out the following message in sausage and mushrooms:

Trust me, you really don't want to sing that role tonight

Carlotta rolled her eyes. "Like that's going to scare me off." She examined the pizza-gram more closely. "Hey, somebody picked all the pepperoni off this thing!"

When she stepped out onstage that night, Messieurs Richard and Monchamin were out in the audience along with the hundreds of seat fillers she had ordered, Richard periodically checking his partner's hair for more letters.

After the fifth or sixth time, M. Moncharmin began to get annoyed and batted Richard's hands away. "Will you give that a rest, already!"

"I'm sorry, I'm just slightly apprehensive about that whole opera ghost thing."

"Well, it's your own fault! It was your idea to blatantly ignore his list of demands. You didn't give him the money, or the box, you tossed Mme. Giry through the window instead of giving her back her job, you gave Christine's role to Carlotta, and you're carrying your Mephistopheles bobble-head doll in your pocket where he can't get at it. We'll be lucky if he doesn't blow the whole place up in our faces!" Moncharmin sighed wearily. "You can bet I'll be writing some unflattering stuff about you in my diary tonight."

"Hey, this is no time for us to be bickering. We've got bigger problems to deal with. The Parisian Enquirer just published a wedding announcement for us, for God's sake! Not to mention the fact that our substitute diva is apparently leading a conspiracy against our regular diva."

"Christine Daae? The sweet, innocent little Swedish orphan girl? How could she lead anything against anyone?"

"I dunno." Richard shrugged. "Maybe the Comte de Chagny over there is helping her out. The guy seems to like Christine. He was gushing so much over her the other night I almost thought she was having some kind of sleazy affair with him. Then I realized that job was taken." He indicated Sorelli sitting next to Count Philippe. They were handcuffed together either again or still.

Count Philippe noticed their eyes on him and glared defensively. "I accidentally swallowed the key, all right?" He turned to Sorelli with an annoyed look. "Jeez, you'd think they'd never seen a nobleman handcuffed to a ballerina before."

"Yeah. We usually get that at least twice a night around here." Sorelli waved her hand at the managers dismissively. "They're new. They just don't understand the opera biz."

"Uh…right." Moncharmin cleared his throat awkwardly, searching desperately for any excuse to change the subject. "So, who's the pale, sickly looking kid sitting on Philippe's other side?"

Raoul was deeply offended when he overheard that. "Hey, now, you'd look a little off too, if you'd just been attacked by a singing skeleton man and bombarded half to death by a barrage of flaming skulls."

Count Philippe gently patted his little brother on the head. "Right. Listen, sport, maybe you ought to postpone sailing to the North Pole for just a little while. The salt air might not be too good for your brain while you're in this…state."

"I'm not crazy!"

"Could have fooled me," Sorelli muttered.

Philippe leaned over to whisper in her ear. "It's not his fault. It's that horrible little Christine Daae girl he's taken up with. He went to see her a couple of days ago and came home with some nasty head injuries and a mouthful of second-degree burns. We're still not entirely sure what she did to him."

"She dumped me," Raoul explained glumly. "And, as if that wasn't bad enough, she went and sent me a Dear Jean letter after she did it, just to rub it in."

Carlotta's poor seat fillers didn't seem to be having a very good night, either. Carlotta's performance wasn't bad, but they were all impatient to get autographs from that brilliant Christine Daae. But, since they were getting paid, they obediently applauded and screamed Carlotta's name every five minutes, held up banners with her picture on them every ten, and started The Wave every fifteen.

Only a song or two into the performance, something happened to Carlotta's voice, and she began uncontrollably croaking like a toad. The poor seat fillers weren't sure what to do when their watches told them it was time to start screaming and applauding again. Not wanting to risk a pay cut, they looked at each other, shrugged, and began to cheer wildly, ignoring the strange looks the real audience members gave them.

M. Richard tugged at his collar nervously. "Uh-oh."

"Damn right!" the Opera Ghost's voice roared all around them. "What part of 'or else' do you two morons not understand!" And with that, the ghost tore down the chandelier, dropping it on the head of Mme. Giry's replacement.

"Don't blame me," the poor woman mumbled as she lay dying. "I was only a temp."

"Oh." The ghost's voice echoed through the theater, sounding a little embarrassed this time. "My bad."

Mme. Giry poked her head in the door. "I take it I'm re-hired again?"

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!" Richard began to kick and punch the nearest wall, sputtering unintelligibly and sounding an awful lot like a Tazmanian devil.

Mme. Giry looked sternly at Moncharmin. "You didn't give him the pamphlet yet, did you?"

The next day, Raoul went down to the managers' office to see if they knew where he could find Christine. He rapped softly on the door, and heard two startled voices shrieking on the other side, followed by some loud thumping, then total silence. The vicomte waited patiently for a few minutes, then got fed up and tried opening the door himself. The doorknob was locked, though, and they had never taught lock picking at boot camp. Raoul pounded impatiently on the door. "Open up in there!"

"Wh-wh-who is it?" Moncharmin's voice inquired shakily.

"Just me, Raoul de Chagny."

"Don't listen to him!" the vicomte heard M. Richard hiss. It's probably just you-know-who with his voice disguised!"

Moncharmin gasped. "Lord Voldemort? Here?"

"I was talking about the Opera Ghost, you insufferable idiot!" Richard roared. "Ugh, just open the damned door!"

The door swung open, revealing Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin heavily armored in construction helmets, safety pads, and hockey masks. Richard was wielding a golf club, and Moncharmin was clutching a tennis racket. The office was filled with booby traps, but Raoul didn't have much time to examine them. The second the door was open, Moncharmin reached out, seized him by the collar, yanked him inside, and slammed it shut. Then he locked the doorknob, slid the bolt shut, fastened the chain tightly, and reinforced them with two sets of padlocks and chains.

Raoul glanced uneasily from one manager to the other. "Uh, is everything okay around here?"

"Of course! Fine! Just peachy-keen!" Moncharmin squeaked.

"Everything is completely and totally normal!" Richard announced, a little more loudly than was necessary.

"Are you sure? There's something weird about this office, and…hey, what happened to that cute little bobble-head doll you used to have on your desk?"

"That? He gave it away to--"

Richard elbowed his partner sharply. "To…the, uh…Goodwill store! Yes, that's it. But never mind that now. What do you want?"

"Well, I'm looking for Christine Daae. She sent me a Dear Jean letter the other day that led me to believe she might be in danger."

"Christine Daae? Uh oh."

"Maybe you should come back some other time, like tomorrow, or next year, or some time after we've retired."

"Why?"

"She can't talk to you right now. She's uh…help me out here, Moncharmin."

"Sick!" Moncharmin supplied at the exact moment Richard blurted out, "washing her hair!"

"Huh?" Raoul regarded them curiously. "Wait a second, are you guys trying to get rid of me?"

"N-no!" Richard insisted at the exact moment Moncharmin exclaimed, "Yes!"

"What?"

"We can't explain," Moncharmin apologized.

"Oh, just get rid of him before her other boyfriend comes and drops a piece of furniture on our heads!" Richard whistled for Mme. Giry.

She entered the office, wearing a luxurious fur coat and several strings of pearls draped around her neck. "Yes, monsieur?"

Richard gave her a nervous, tight-lipped smile. "Mme. Giry, dear, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could find the time to escort the Vicomte off the premises?"

"Of course, monsieur. Will there be anything else? I'm getting kind of bored just sitting around trying to find ways to spend all the raises you've been giving me."

"Well, we can't have that! Take the rest of the day off and go find something fun to do!" Richard handed her his wallet. "Here, have a blast!" He shoved them both out of the door, and they could hear the many locks clicking shut behind them.

Raoul looked to Mme. Giry, as though hoping for some sort of explanation. She just smiled and thumbed idly through M. Richard's wallet. "Gotta love that Phantom."

Raoul backed away from the box-keeper warily, eventually backing clear down the hall and out of the opera house. "This place is full of nutters! I wonder if there's a gas leak somewhere in there? Or maybe they've fumigated recently." Afraid that the effects might start to damage his concussed brain, he decided to go look for Christine at her foster mom's house instead.

Christine's foster mom, Mamma Valerius, was old, ill, and usually tanked out on painkillers, so she wasn't much help. When Raoul appeared in her doorway, her face lit up. "Wow! Enjolras from Les Miserables, here in my house! Oh my gosh, this is so cool! Can you introduce me to Javert?"

"Uh, no, Mme. Valerius. It's just me, Raoul de Chagny." He closed the door behind him.

"Oh. What are you doing here, honey?"

"I'm looking for Christine. Do you know where she is?"

"Yeah. She's with the Angel of Music. And if you're trying to track her down so you can babble more marriage proposals, don't bother. The Angel of Music doesn't want her marrying, dating, touching, looking at, talking to, or going within five hundred feet of anyone but him."

"Oh, lord, not you too," groaned Raoul.

"No, really. He's been giving her lessons in her dressing room at the Opera house for three months now."

"For the love of--that's not the Angel of Music! That's just her secret boyfriend, the singing skeleton man!" And he was off like a shot.

Mamma Valerius clucked her tongue sadly. "And they call me crazy!" She popped another pill into her mouth, and her eyes immediately glazed over. "Mmm, pretty colors."

Raoul ran home, went straight to the icebox, and pulled out his pitcher of leftover milkshakes from a few days earlier. Philippe, the severed chain from a pair of handcuffs still dangling from his wrist, swung an arm around his brother's shoulders. "Women troubles again, huh sport?"

Raoul heaped his glass with whipped cream and took a swig. "That cheating tramp! I can't believe she threw me over for a singing skeleton man!

Philippe coughed nervously. "Uh, sure. Really terrible of her. Listen, sport, maybe you ought to go take a walk in the park tonight. Get some fresh air, maybe clear your head out a little."

"No. I'm not in the mood," Raoul replied sullenly. "Could you hand me the chocolate syrup and that little sprinkle shaker over there?"

"Would you be in the mood if I told you that some of my friends saw your little girlfriend and her other dude hanging out in that park the other night?"

Raoul poured his milkshake into a sports bottle and bolted off toward the park. "I'll be back later!"