"There are just three more nights of performances." Cassandra told herself before taking the stage.

Cassandra was exhausted after that evening's performance. She fell into bed but found sleep elusive, tossing and turning in an attempt to find a comfortable position. She rose wearily and wrapped the chenille afghan around her before going out to the corridor. Everything was quiet, everyone was in bed. She padded softly to the kitchen and got some tea to drink. She nearly burned her tongue and lips on it and had to get some ice for it, grumbling as she did so that she would never get to sleep at this rate. She brought a small bowl full of ice chips back to the table where her steaming cup of tea sat. Cassie absentmindedly dropped ice cubes into it and drank slowly as she read over the day old headlines in the French paper that had been left on the table by one of the techies. She tasted the sweet flavor of almonds, or vanilla and looked into the mug disgustedly. Whoever had used the mug before her hadn't washed it well. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant taste though. She got up when she was finished and washed the cup thoroughly before returning to her room. When she got back she quickly locked the door and went to her bed. The tea had done more than she had thought as she was thoroughly prepared to let sleep overtake her. She didn't even pull the sheets up over her when she fell into a deep sleep.

It was dark and everything swam around her dizzyingly, as if she had drank too much liquor. She was not in the rose room, that much she could see and she staggered from the bed she found herself on and into the faint yellow glow of the exterior room. She fell to her knees at the top of a short flight of stairs. The room she looked down on was more lair than anything else. Papers, molded and cracked with age lay scattered all over. The writing was much too tiny and faded for her to concentrate on in her seemingly inebriated state. There were candelabras everywhere, most only half lit, bathing the room in shadows and haze. At the far side of the dark room she could see herself reflected a dozen times over in a broken mirror. Someone said her name and she clasped her hands over her ears as the sound seemed foreign and unnaturally loud. She could not tolerate the view of herself reflected time and time again in the spider web of the mirror's cracks. She felt a hand on her shoulder gently and she turned her face up slowly and looked for the source of the hand. She realized the person must be behind her and she craned her neck around to see who was there. She never got the chance to see before she felt lips pressed gently to hers for the briefest of moments, a hand touched gently to her chin. She tried to focus on the dark figure behind her but everything swam around and she became disoriented. The voice came again, this time softer, but it echoed horribly in her ears.

"Come now angel, what are you doing out of bed?" The voice bounced around inside her head and it took all she could do to concentrate on it. She did not trust herself to talk, the very idea of her own voice was appalling to her. She reached up and grasped at the person behind her, hoping they would steady her for she wasn't entirely sure she could trust her own legs. The figure stooped down and helped her to her feet and she again tried to focus on the face but couldn't do it in the dim light. The room started to spin again and she moved to take a step back, fearing that she'd fall off the earth.

"I really wish someone would tell the world to stop spinning so I could get off." Cassandra thought as she began to teeter precariously on the top step. Two strong arms grasped her and she was pulled close to the other person. She could feel tight chest muscles beneath her hands as he stood with her in his arms.

"Angel?" She shook her head slowly trying to clear enough cob webs to get a bearing on her surroundings. The man before her gently pushed a wayward strand of blonde hair off her face and bent his head to place a gentle kiss on her lips. Slowly, the kiss deepened, his tongue parting her lips and tentatively brushed hers. He held her tightly to him, one hand pressed to the small of her back, the other to the side of her neck, holding her to the passionate embrace. She was hesitant at first, not sure what was happening, but then, realizing that this must indeed be a dream decided that there was nothing to do but to yield to the fire this dream man had stoked within her. She moved her hands slowly up his well muscled body and over his shoulders and deepened the kiss they had been sharing. His lips moved away from hers and across her jaw and down her neck, his hand left her face and drifted to her breast. She moaned softly as his palm came in contact with her slowly stiffening nipple and his mouth covered hers again.

"You are mine….you will be mine forever…" He whispered close to her lips before he pulled back slightly. Her eyes were closed, her breaths coming in short gasps from the excitement of the moment. Who was the dream man? She opened her eyes hoping her vision had sharpened enough to see through the haze of the hallucination but she could focus on little as the man brushed his fingers softly over her lips. Reflexively she licked her lips and tasted something sweet on them. She was engulfed in a swirl of green and she closed her eyes and lost all control of her limbs and fell into the arms of the man she was so entranced with. Lifted up into strong arms, she slipped into the black abyss that seemed to sandwich dreams as she was carried back to dark room from whence she had first come.

Cassie woke up and shook her head slowly. The dizzying dream still clung to the far back reaches of her mind and she tried to grasp at details of it but before she could it was gone; like a wisp of smoke in the night. She remembered getting tea and then a cave and a mirror and candles. She remembered kissing someone. This was all coupled with a Ferrari driven by a penguin with the voice of Sean Connery, a beach with a purple sun and a tea party at which everyone in attendance was cross dressed. None of what she had in her mind made any sense and she attributed it to hunger as her stomach made its presence known at that very moment.

She ate her breakfast slowly, her stomach, though gnawing on itself felt uneasy and she didn't want to risk losing breakfast by feeding it too quickly. She went out to the big foyer and looked down on the few vendors and people buying last minute tickets. Sun slanted in through the big sky light above and filtered down onto the shiny polished marble floor below. She returned to the world behind the stage and talked with some of the younger cast members before she went back to her room. She found a note taped to the door.

Come to the usual spot if you want to play the greatest game ever.

MMR

She smiled and turned quickly and went up to the costume loft where Mia, Matt and Ryan were playing Old Maid.

"There you are." Mia said scooping the cards up and beginning to shuffle. "What have you been up to?"

"Just eating breakfast and wandering around for a while."

"Where were you last night?" Ryan asked.

"In bed, I was exhausted."

"No you weren't. I went to check on you and you weren't there."

"Oh, I went for some tea to help me relax before I went to bed….it knocked me out when I got back….gave me some really loopy dreams though."

"Dreams again?" Mia said as she slapped at the cards, narrowly beating Matt out. "The masked man wasn't back, was he?"

"No, there was no masked man in this one." Cassie said, smiling at the thought of her mystery man's lips on hers. She counted out four cards and smiled as she laid down a jack for Matt to try to beat. "I couldn't even see his face."

"What?"

"Guys, it's no big deal…this dream was exactly that…a dream, and it was so cracked out I can barely remember any of it." Cassandra smacked down onto a sandwich, punched Matt's hand with her closed fist as he tried to sneak in beneath her, and pulled a substantial number of cards from the pile. "I mean, I remember feeling as if I was totally buzzed….you know when the police come to school and we wear the beer goggles and try to do everyday stuff?"

"Yeah." Everyone replied.

"That's what I felt like. Sound hurt, the light wasn't bright enough to see much, but I think even light would have hurt….it was just my brain coming out of a deep deep fog." Cassandra relayed everything to her friends, including Sean Connery the Ferrari driving penguin, the purple sun, and the fact that they'd all been present only in drag. She strategically left out the passionate moment shared between her and her dark figure of the night.

"You two actually make remarkably good women." She said as Mia grabbed up a stack of cards. "and Mia looked like some magnificent poof with a monocle and Hitler mustache."

"No more weed before bed, unless you're going to share with the rest of us." Mia said frowning as Matt picked up the pile. "Seriously, where do you get this shit?"

They had an afternoon performance that day and so only had a little while before it was time to get dressed. It was a whirl of costumes and make up that night. Mark had to have his make up repaired twice during the first show because he'd either sweated it off or had it ripped off when Cassie took the mask off of him. They had only two hours to rest up and re-dress between performances. Cassie was laying on the settee in her room in her corset and petticoats when someone knocked on the door. She wrapped her robe around her and went to answer it. Mark stood there, his mask in his hand, his prosthetics newly repaired for the evening performance.

"Cassandra, could I talk with you for a moment?" His speech was slow with the weight of the prosthetics pushing on his lip. "It's important."

"Sure Mark, come on in." Cassie let Mark come in and he sat down heavily in the chair she pointed to. The corset kept her sitting erect and stiff in the other chair and she watched as Mark fiddled with the mask in his hand.

"You sing wonderfully Cassandra, I'm sorry I ever doubted you."

"That's water under the bridge Mark…We've both come so far since then."

"I want you to be careful Cassandra…."

"What?" Mark's eyes met hers and she saw how serious he was.

"I mean it, I don't think you're safe here….if there was an understudy, I'd tell you to get on a plane and go home." He turned his head away from her and coughed. "Damn dust….I don't trust this place at all."

"Why not? They caught the coot who attacked me, we haven't had any problems since then….have we?"

"Some of the dancers have seen a shadow moving in the lofts and along the catwalks, I've heard things in my walls…things much bigger than rats and it's not this old place settling…it sounds like footsteps." Cassie stared blankly at Mark. "And last night I think I was drugged."

"What!" Cassandra was shocked.

"I've never been so tired in all my life…I took some of the cough medicine I've been taking for a while now and slept so hard I didn't think I'd ever wake up. I did though…only once and the whole room was spinning around me like I was drunk." A snippet of Cassandra's dream came back to her for she'd felt that way down in the cave part of her dream.

"Did you take too much of the cough medicine?"

"No, I took half the dose I'd been taking….not even actually….just enough to coat my throat for the night."

"You're not still taking it are you?"

"Just drank half the bottle." He said dryly, glaring at her. "Of course not….I threw it out as soon as I could get up this morning."

"What should we do?"

"Nothing until I figure out what's going on. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open though. And warn the others…you're closer to them than I am."

"I will…"

"Thirty minutes!" Mr. Giles came up the hall and was banging on doors and bellowing for everyone to get into their final costumes and into their places.

"You have to get ready." Mark stood to leave and went out the door just as Mr. Giles was walking past. Cassandra sat at her dressing table and combed out her long blonde hair, tying it back with the gold and scarlet ribbon for her Hanibal costume. A knock at the wall signaled Ryan wanting to come through the wall. Cassie leaned over and knocked back. Ryan strode in, his hand behind his back as he left the wall slightly ajar.

"You look beautiful." He said as he came to stand behind her. She watched his eyes in the reflection and watched as they centered on where her breasts could be seen constricted as they were in the corset, rising and falling with her every breath at the open neck of her dressing gown.

"Ahem." His eyes snapped back to hers in the reflection and he grinned sheepishly.

"Sorry, couldn't help myself." He kissed the top of her head as she smiled indulgingly at him and then took his arm out from behind his back where he'd been hiding two white roses.

"What are those for?" She said turning to take the two flowers from him.

"One is for 'I'm sorry' the other is 'I love you.'" She stood quickly and kissed him and grinned at him as he left. She put the roses on her dressing table and went to get dressed for the play.

Afterward the performance everyone was assembled into the cafeteria for some last minute announcements for the next day's performances. Since it was mandatory, attendance was taken.

"Mark?" Mr. Giles called out, but there was no answer. "Mark?" Everyone shifted as they looked around the cafeteria, but couldn't see Mark. "Where the hell is he?"

"I'll check his dressing room." Mrs. Giles said as she made to leave.

"He may still be getting his make up off." Cassandra offered. "It looked like it was bugging him during the last act."

"I'll check make up too then." Everyone else was present and Mr. Giles began to make announcements. The meeting was almost done when Mrs. Giles returned looking very pale. She grasped Mr. Giles' hand and pulled him to where she could whisper to him.

"What do you mean he's gone?" Mr. Giles suddenly yelled.

"I mean just that, and lower your voice, you'll scare them." Mrs. Giles admonished. Matt and Mia looked at Ryan and Cassie.

"How can he be gone?" Mia asked.

"I don't know…WHY would he be gone?" Ryan looked around at the other students who were having much the same conversation as them.

"I dunno…." Matt answered. Mr. Giles banged loudly on the table at the front of the room and called for attention.

"Mark would seem to be missing." He said. "I want everyone to return to their dormitories immediately. Mr. Escrime will take the boys to their rooms. You are not to leave for anything. Mrs. Giles will escort the girls to their rooms. The leads will go with Messier LeBesprit." Everyone was evacuated under guard to their rooms. Though they were allowed to talk to each other from door to door, no one was allowed to set foot over the thresh hold. Mr. Villefort stalked past everyone's doors and went into Matt's room. He exited and looked at everyone as the craned their necks to see what was going on.

"Mr. Villefort?" Cassandra called as he made ready to leave.

"What?" He turned quickly, his voice sharp and impatient.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" Ryan watched as Mr. Villefort stood close to Cassie and tried to make out what she was telling him. Mr. Villefort's head snapped up and looked around.

"Does anyone else know about this?" He asked.

"No." Came Cassie's quick reply.

"Come with me." Cassie followed Mr. Villefort out of the room and up the hall towards the offices. Ryan stopped her as she walked past.

"What's going on?"

"I can't tell you yet…." Cassie said pulling away to keep up with Villefort's long quick strides. "I have to go." She ran after Villefort and caught up to him before he turned the corner.

"Miss Davagé has something to tell us Horrace." Villefort said when he brought Cassandra to the office. "Go ahead."

Cassandra told Mr. Giles everything Mark had told her that afternoon between performances.

"He seemed really scared Mr. Giles. He was afraid someone was going to do me harm…but I think they might have been after him all along."

"I'm calling the police."

"It's all my fault…I should have told someone sooner…I should have made him tell." Cassie said quickly.

"It's not your fault." Mr. Giles said as he waited for the call to go through.

Cassie had to give statements to two different police officers. By the time she was finished she was weary, but still deeply worried for Mark.

"I'll take you back to your room Cassandra."

"No. I'll stay here. I want to stay awake until he comes back."

"Cassandra…."

"I'm staying!" She said stamping her foot. "I'm not going back to my room until Mark is back here. What if he just needed out, the stress was getting to him…what if he's wandering Paris and is lost and he calls back here for a cab…someone should be here to answer the phone. You two can go look and I'll stay here to answer it." Mr. Giles nodded his consent and the two men left with the inspectors to search the streets for the missing actor.

Cassie sat on the big leather couch for hours and stared at the phone, willing it to ring and for it to be Mark on the other end of the phone. She didn't know how long she'd sat in the office when she began to feel drowsy. Her head became heavy and she frequently found herself nodding off, only to wake up when her head dropped.

Mr. Villefort and Mr. Giles returned around three in the morning exhausted. Mr. Giles rubbed his face.

"How can this be Rick? How can we have lost a student?"

"He'll turn up Horrace…."

"Dead or alive?" Mr. Giles looked wearily at the younger teacher before him and voiced his fear for the first time. "What if there is a second lunatic running around these walls and now Mark is dead at their hands?"

"You need some sleep Horrace….go. We'll search again tomorrow." Mr. Giles nodded slowly and went to the room he was sharing with his wife. Mr. Villefort was heading to his room when he noticed the light shining out from beneath the office door.

She can't still be in here…he thought as he pushed the door open and looked inside. Cassandra was curled on the leather couch sleeping soundly.

He stood over her and looked down onto the slumbering form below him. The fair haired beauty on the couch looked like a fairy princess; golden hair spilling over her shoulders in generous waves, a delicate rose hue touched her pale cheeks, full pink lips curved into a sleepy frown, the only sign of worry on her perfect porcelain face. The night outside had turned cold with the coming of a rainstorm and with it the inside temperature of the opera house had also taken a significant drop. Goose bumps dotted her strong arms and he took his jacket off and tucked it around her. He gently pushed the hair off her neck and out of her face.

"If she sleeps here tonight, she'll have a crick in her neck tomorrow." Villefort's thoughts were well intentioned enough, but another voice in the back of his head had other things in mind. "If you move her back to her bed where she'll be more comfortable, you'll get to hold her close to you." Villefort stroked his thumb across her jaw and made up his mind to move her back to her room. She did not groan at all as he lifted her effortlessly into his arms and carried her out of the office towards the Rose room.

Cassandra had sensed someone enter the office but didn't much feel like waking to see who it was. She opened her eyes slightly and dared to peek out onto whoever had entered the room. It was Mr. Villefort. She did not move as he stared down onto her for what seemed like eternity. She knew he was staring at her, you always knew when those emerald eyes were on you….it was like being engulfed in jade fire. She suppressed a tiny shiver as his cold hands pushed the hair off her neck and his thumb gently brushed across her jaw and strayed towards her lips. Her body was filled with a cold heat…hot because she wanted him to touch her or kiss her…cold for the same reason…what would Ryan think? She was shocked when he picked her up in his strong arms and carried her out of his office. Her head was nestled against his shoulder, his arm wrapped under her back and under her legs. She could hear the faint sound of his beating heart as her ear pressed against his well muscled shoulder. She relaxed in his arms and allowed him to carry her to her room. She felt him crouch down to open her door without dropping her and he turned sideways to carry her in.

He was thankful that the bed had already been turned down. It would make it much easier to tuck her in. He carried her over to the big beautiful bed and placed her gently onto it. "She must be exhausted" he thought, "She hasn't stirred once in all of this."

Her chest rose and fell evenly with her breath, her beautiful curvaceous body had felt wonderful while it had been held to his. He pulled the blanket up over her and tucked it gently under her chin. A contented grin spread across her lips and Villefort bent down and placed a fatherly kiss on her forehead before beating a quick retreat for her door.

Cassandra, still peeking at him through her lashes watched as he bent towards her. "He's going to kiss me…." The thought skipped and rolled across her brain. It was terrifying, and electrifying at the same time. She was almost disappointed when she felt his lips brush across her brow instead. She heard his footsteps move across the room and the soft sound of the door latch shut. She heaved a sigh of frustration and curled deeper into her covers to go back to sleep.