Sorry about the long absence, guys – I've been out of town and now I'm in the middle of a serious work overload and unfortunately writing time is hard to come by. Here's a long chapter to make up for it!

Instead of random trivia, this chapter has an epigraph of sorts: a stanza from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, Duineser Elegien, published in 1923. The translation is from German. (Thanks to Carly for drawing my attention to the book wherein this poem was mentioned.)

Every angel is terrifying. I know it, yet still, alas!
I must sing to invoke you – you, great near-deadly birds
of the soul! Where have they gone, the days of Tobias
when one of those brilliant ones stood at the door
of the unexceptional house? Dressed for the journey
he was not at all terrible, a youth to a youth
who eagerly spied him. But should the Archangel –
dangerous, masked by the stars - should he tread
but a step lower and closer we should be struck down
by our hammering hearts. What are you?

There you go. And now, back to the story.

Please note: The title of this chapter has changed, because I finally found a suitable replacement to "fille", which was originally (incorrectly) used here in the possessive. Thanks to Cathy, Jessica and Lizou for their help in hunting down suitable historically correct terms!

Chapter 24 – L'amourette du Fantôme

Jean reached for the bottle of absinthe on the table and refilled Erik's glass, then Louise's and finally his own. His grave manner gave this the weight of a religious ceremony conducted in the cluttered store-room, by the dusty sunlight streaming through the half-open back door. The afternoon breeze wafting in seemed to carry with it the unidentifiable smell of poverty which always clung to Montmartre, but was particularly angry and bruised today, following the announcement of the new Assembly, composed entirely of right-wing imperialists.

"To France. She will survive this black day." Jean drank, wincing, and Louise tossed hers back as if it was poison.

Erik did not touch his glass. He could not believe he was still here. He and the Gandons were sitting around Jean's sign-writing table, on the same damned crates with which he had interrupted their meeting two nights earlier, the same ones that Christine had fallen against. Erik tried not to remember the terror in Christine's shadowed face when he had crashed down beside her, and everything that had come afterwards...

He raised his glass sharply, and gulped the vile stuff down. He longed to be gone from this room and this city, but yesterday's crowds had prevented even Monsieur Duchamp from opening the office, and Erik had felt an inexplicable reluctance to depart Paris without settling matters with him. This morning, while the new Assembly was being sworn in, he had gone to the office, thrown the Fiaux projects on Duchamp's desk and at last obtained the required paperwork for the languishing work on his courthouse.

It had been an ugly day, and Erik had no interest in continuing its ugliness with pointless drinking to an equally pointless cause. He would not have been here at all had Louise not pressed him into joining them while the store was shut for dinner. There were still several hours before the Sedan train, and it had seemed easier to accept than to explain that what he really wished was that Louise Gandon, her house, her politics, her store, and the rest of Paris would go to Hell in a small and uncomfortable handcart.

Jean moved to refill his glass; Erik did not prevent him, but did not drink. He saw Jean cast a questioning look in Louise's direction, and her answering nod – and finally understood why they had insisted on his company.

"There are several of us meeting tonight to discuss things, Andersson." Jean set down the bottle, sending a toxic whiff of something herbal in Erik's direction. "You might like to come. We can always use a clever man who knows what they're saying down in Paris."

Two days ago, Erik reflected, this offer would have pleased him. Today, he could not have cared less. "I'm afraid I have a train to catch this evening, but I trust you can get by without me."

"You've really made up your mind to leave Paris, then?" To Erik's surprise, Jean sounded genuinely sorry.

"I have."

"Well. Perhaps another time."

"A last drink," Louise decided. She raised her glass, nodding at Jean. "Then you'd best open up before the customers are hammering on the shutters."

Their glasses flashed green in the light; then Jean set down his and turned to Erik. "I'll leave the new Lanterne out the front."

"My thanks." Erik rose for the obligatory handshake and farewell, assuring Jean that he would of course continue to read the Lanterne as closely as ever while out of town. He chose not to mention that for the denizens of Sedan, including its architect, political awareness was not a priority.

Jean went out to re-open the store. Before Erik could extricate himself from Louise's company as well, she clapped her hand to the tabletop, making the glasses clank.

"Right. About the girl."

Erik halted. Louise was glaring up at him from her crate, eyes bloodshot from the drink but her gaze razor-sharp. Under the bandage, Erik's face tensed. He had to force his voice to remain low. "She is no concern of yours."

"Nor anyone else's, obviously. For pity's sake, sit down."

Erik remained standing. "I am rather in a hurry."

"For your evening train? I bet." Louise lumbered to her feet, pushing her kerchief back over her hair and assuming a determined expression. "Look here: if a pretty bed-warmer is what you're after, you find yourself a good sturdy working-class girl and have your fun. But that little creature from the Opéra is a different sort. You leave her alone and she won't last a week."

"Madame," Erik said coldly, "You may recall I once asked you not to discuss Mademoiselle Daaé. I do not like to have to ask again. Now, if you'll permit me to take my leave—"

Louise gave an impatient snort, like a horse badly harnessed. "You ass. She looks at you like you're Christ transfigured, the Devil knows why! Now you've taken her for a tumble, she'll fancy herself in love, I know her kind – all dewy skin and great big eyes, then one day a man comes along and there you have it: it's high tragedy, and she's a wasted old maid at twenty-five!"

Erik's eyes felt suddenly hot and it was painful to swallow. He wished he had been born tone-deaf and without a voice. "Mademoiselle Daaé will find a suitable husband when she wishes to."

"Well, isn't that noble! And was that what you were thinking two nights ago when the bed was doing a jig over my head? Suitable husband! You don't just take her like she's a laundress, you great fool. A girl like that wants fine dresses and a wedding, and what'd you leave her? Here I thought your Opéra 'demoiselle was one of them actress-women, a vixen, knows a thing or two – not a dirty little mouse, all tears and snot, with a lover who stands here telling me she'll find herself a husband! She'll melt like a candle the moment you've gone."

Erik picked up his hat off the nearby crate, dusting it off to conceal the shaking in his hands. It was intolerable to listen to this woman speak about Christine. He should never have allowed this to happen, should have left Paris the moment Christine was gone. Louise Gandon knew nothing of Christine's life or his; she understood nothing. He did not want to harm her. He just wanted to leave. "If you are quite finished?"

Louise looked him up and down, taking in his travelling clothes. She made a grimace of distaste. "That girl is best off without you."

"You are quite right. She is." Erik put on his hat, located his gloves and put on those as well. "Good day to you, Madame Gandon. A pleasure to have met you."

"Pah!" spat Louise. It was a sound of such revulsion that for a moment Erik thought his mask had slipped. He grabbed at it, but it the bandage was firmly in place.

"I told Jean, I said, we'd do well to have him on our side. He's a brave man, made a better scene at the Opéra than any of us could've done. That's what I told him. Pah!" she spun around to the door leading to the shop, and slammed it shut behind her.

Erik heard her clomping away into the store. There was a heavy pressure in his chest that was not anger; it seemed to go with the moisture seeping uncontrollably from his right eye into his damaged side. He stood there for a moment, then picked up his travel-case, newly bought and still smelling of glue, and walked out.

He did not realise until after the cab had turned down the Boulevard Montmartre that he intended to stop there.

"The Variétés, monsieur," the driver called from his box, as if Erik needed to be told.

"Yes. Right here."

o o o

Christine almost tripped over the little boy who tugged at her skirts in the noisy corridor, when she and Meg came out of the ballet dressing-room to go home after the matinee.

"Please, mademoiselle, are you Christine Daaé? I have a message for you." He dragged his cap off his blonde head, looking awestruck by the backstage chaos and the exotically painted people darting around them in the corridor.

Christine frowned. "Yes... What message?"

"There's a fancy gentleman outside wants to talk to you."

Christine glanced at Meg's puzzled expression – then brightened: Raoul! She had not heard from him at all since the end of their engagement. She could not blame him for needing this silence, after what she had done. Yet, fairly or not, she had missed his friendship, longed to know what was happening in his life. Almost at once, hope became a nervous knot in her stomach. What would she say to him?

"Mademoiselle?" The boy was waiting, kneading his cap in his small hands.

Christine turned to Meg. "You have to come with me! It's Raoul..."

Meg squeezed her hand, understanding. "Lead the way, monsieur," she said gravely to the boy, who blushed a vivid radish colour all the way to his hairline, as though paid a deep compliment.

Twisting on his heel, he made for the exit and Christine and Meg followed close behind. A group of chattering ballerinas swept up behind them when they rounded the corner. The group was smaller than usual, Christine noted, wondering at the absence of a few familiar faces.

Helena Weiss hooked her elbow through Meg's, grinning. "What's the hurry? Are you not coming to the Café Anglaise?"

"I can't—" Meg began.

"You two are always so serious!" Blanche pouted, her tiny pink mouth becoming no bigger than a child's. "Come along, girls, they're off to the Bourse tonight to watch for war news or something."

"Blanche." Helena's rebuke silenced the laughter for only a moment. "Will you come, later?" she asked Meg, more quietly.

"Later," Meg agreed, and much to Christine's relief Helena and the others continued on their way, resuming their chatter.

"Lighten up, amourette du Fantôme," Blanche winked at Christine in passing – but instead of the usual sting of anxiety, Christine felt an unexpected relief. Nothing had changed. Nothing at all.

They followed the errand boy out the side entrance to the street. Several carriages were still waiting at the kerb, but people were few; the performance had finished some time ago, and most theatre patrons were long gone. The warm afternoon breeze was a welcome change after the stuffy theatre and Christine inhaled a deep breath, searching apprehensively for any sign of Raoul's carriage.

"Over here," the boy caught their attention, pointing, before dashing off out of sight to find new errands.

Christine's only warning was a faint exclamation from Meg. She stared at the occupant of the cab in front of her, her skin prickling.

"A fancy gentleman..." she echoed the boy's words with an inflexion she herself could not recognise. Perhaps she was glad to see him. Perhaps.

"You don't have to." Meg gripped her wrist urgently. "You don't have to talk to him. We can just walk away."

Erik stepped down onto the pavement. He was dressed for travel, in boots and a light coat, and there was a sturdy case of some kind on the foot platform of the cab. He made a small bow to each of them in turn:

"Mademoiselle Daaé. Mademoiselle Giry. I am sorry I could not attend your performance this afternoon."

"You're leaving," said Christine, flatly.

She saw the tiniest movement of his cheek that could have been a wince, or nothing at all. "This evening; yes. I must return to work, but I had hoped to..." He trailed off. "I would like to say good-bye, mademoiselle. If I may."

Christine hesitated.

"Would you care to join me?" He indicated the cab. "Perhaps we could go for a walk. I will not keep you long."

"Christine..." Meg muttered, very quietly. "This isn't a good idea."

There was a glimpse of dread in Erik's eyes: he understood that Meg knew.

"Mademoiselle Giry." He addressed Meg, but continued looking at Christine. "I would be obliged if you let your mother know where Mademoiselle Daaé is."

He was silent long enough for Christine to recognise he was offering his life as security. He looked as tense as Christine had ever seen him. She wondered if he expected her just to walk away.

"Meg," she took a deep breath, "I will see you at home, soon. Before you leave for Helena's."

The concern did not leave Meg's face, but she nodded reluctantly. "All right."

Erik held out his arm for Christine. She hesitated another moment, then gave Meg a tense smile, and went to the cab.

She did not dare take Erik's arm. Awkwardly, her legs still sore from dancing, she climbed to the seat herself, settling down on the far side of the bench. Erik mounted the step after her. He left as much distance between them as the narrow bench allowed, but even so he was close, so close that Christine was aware of his warmth. She felt ambushed, confused by his sudden appearance. This man who belonged to her nights had burst through the fabric of her day, taking the place beside her that had belonged to Raoul... She glanced at Erik, but all she could see was his mask.

The reins tightened overhead at a word from the driver, and the horse trotted off. Warm air blew Christine's curls into her face.

"Where are we going?" She pushed her hair from her eyes, wishing Erik would turn around so she could read his expression. Meg was still watching them from the pavement as the cab turned into the boulevard, joining the rest of the wheeled traffic.

"The cemetery."

Christine's heart gave a thump. "That isn't funny."

"No. I would be concerned for your sense of humour if you found it so."

"Why are you taking me there?" She tried not to panic. Erik's mask was as impassive as his voice.

"It is nearby and the grounds are beautiful. We can walk."

"Around the cemetery!"

Erik half-turned to face her, and Christine saw the tension was still there, in his eyes. "If you would like to stop, you need only call to the driver."

Christine glanced around; the ornate façades of the Boulevard Montmartre were falling back quickly. Despite the crowds of people everywhere, strolling, riding in carriages, chatting and eating at the outside café tables, nobody spared their cab a second look. She felt at once invisible and exposed.

This was ridiculous, Christine decided. She could not fear Erik. She would not.

"All right. The cemetery, then."

He turned away again, apparently satisfied.

They call me 'l'amourette du Fantôme' at the theatre, she wanted to tell him, but didn't. She wondered whether he really was going back to work, and whether it was anywhere near the war. In recent days the front seemed to have moved away from the Belgian border, but the papers contradicted one another and it was impossible to discover what was happening. Perhaps he was going somewhere else entirely... She had no answers, even now.

They travelled the rest of the way to the Montmartre cemetery in silence. Every time the cab slowed to allow other traffic to pass, Christine half-expected to see a gendarme or hear a passerby shrieking, but nothing happened. Gradually, her heartbeat slowed down, and she found herself growing accustomed to the notion of sharing a cab-seat with Erik, of driving with him in broad daylight through the bustle of Paris.

The cab passed through the cemetery gate, jolting over the uneven paving-stones, and rumbled down the wide leafy alley between the oldest of the graves. The tree canopies above them scattered the afternoon sunlight over the pathway, and birds called to one another intermittently, clear and very high. Christine could almost believe this strange outing was nothing more than a carriage-ride in the Bois de Boulogne.

"The next left," Erik called to the driver when they passed Adolphe Adam's grave. "At the end of the rue."

Christine turned sharply at the familiar directions. "Erik, not there. I don't want to talk with you there."

Erik locked his gloved fingers together, staring ahead. "It will only take a minute, Christine."

His voice lingered for the briefest moment on her name, and Christine felt a small shameful thrill at hearing him say it. She remembered his whispers against her skin in the night, and had to look away.

They dismounted near the entrance to what she had once thought of as the Angels' Garden, when she had been young and Madame Giry would bring her here to pay respects to her father. Now that she was older she could see it was not really a garden, but only a fenced-off block of cemetery land owned by the Opéra, where several of the performers were buried. The graves and crypts were half-hidden by trees, and among them stood figures of angels with wings folded, bowing their heads under veils of white marble.

"Wait here," Erik directed the cab driver, who shrugged indifferently in agreement. Erik held the gate open for Christine.

She shook her head, perturbed. "My father's grave?"

"Would you rather visit Piangi's?" He nodded at a crypt on their right near the fence, with a massive wreath of slightly wilted pink roses.

"I would rather not visit either!" Christine flared. "Erik, this place is – it's special, it means something to me..."

"I know." Something in the way he said it made Christine fall silent. He did know. He had not brought her here to torment her with the grave of Piangi, a man he had murdered; he did not like being here. This was something else.

Christine stepped through the gate into the garden. It was shady under the trees, cooler than the path. She had not been here in a long time. Guiltily, she noticed the fresh flowers in stone vases at some of the graves. Her own father's crypt stood grey and bare, the steps unswept, as a wordless rebuke to a daughter who could not face the ugly memories she might encounter here. There were too many of those, crowding her mind: the clash of swords; Raoul's blood dripping in the snow; and a strange light beckoning to her from within the tomb, luring her away from the world, seeking to break her will.

Erik did not stop when they reached her father's crypt, but continued up the steps towards the tomb itself. He turned around when he saw Christine was not following.

"Come. There is something you must see."

She looked up at him uncertainly, biting her lip. His figure was dark against the pale stone and the breeze lifted the edges of his coat, so that the whole effect was disconcertingly theatrical. She recalled Madame Giry saying, he has been too long a ghost. Perhaps that was true. Steeling herself, Christine went up the steps after him.

A wrought-iron grate covered the entrance to the tomb. Erik gave it a hard push and the grate swung inward with a long thin cry.

"Up there." He pointed to the lintel above their heads.

Christine frowned: it was dim inside the crypt, and she had trouble seeing anything but the dust on top of the open grate. Then she noticed it: a tiny pulley. The moment she realised what she was looking at, the entire mechanism popped into view, standing out from the black iron as if by magic. Twin pulleys were attached to the top of the door and the lintel, joined by a thin strong cord of catgut which looped over them and continued into the gloom within.

"There are air vents under the roof on the side," Erik indicated the wall to their right. "I cannot imagine their intended purpose in a crypt, but nevertheless there they are; you may satisfy yourself as to their location if you wish. The rope leads out through them."

Christine looked at the pulleys, at the whole silly rig. She could not tell if she felt more angry or stupid. "And the light in the niche?"

"A lamp inside," Erik admitted. "I fed the lit taper through the same vents."

"It looked like magic."

Erik studied the tomb intently, his shoulders stiffening. "It was intended to. You had to believe it was real."

"I did, Erik. I always believed you."

Christine left him and went around to the side of the tomb, finding the air vents in the wall. She would never have noticed it had she not known to look for it, but there was the end of the cord, knotted around a metal protrusion from a rough patch the masonry.

So simple. A clockwork trick desecrating the grave of her father.

"Erik, how long..?"

Christine started; he was right behind her.

"Enough of this."

Erik jerked the cord forcefully and it came off the metal bolt, snaking back inside the tomb. He vanished around the corner and a second later there was the sound of brackets giving way. Christine rushed back and saw him breaking off the last of the pulleys, crushing them with such explosive, manic violence that it looked almost like an act of revenge.

Erik bundled the broken pulleys together with the catgut into his hands, and offered the tangle to her. "An angel's wings." His voice was harsh with irony. "There, keep it."

The wooden wheels spun madly in his wide palm, like beetles turned on their backs. Repelled, Christine stepped aside. "I don't want it. Throw it away."

Erik closed his hand slowly. Then with a sudden twist of his arm, he threw the tangle sideways, into a patch of shrubbery beyond the stairs. The string caught on a branch briefly, slipped and disappeared.

Christine looked back from his empty hand, to his eyes. Erik met her gaze unwillingly and with a sudden clarity she understood what he was trying to do. He wanted to give back to her the memory of her father.

Christine felt her chest expand painfully, her breathing growing shallow and quick as though she would cry, but she did not want to cry at all. There was sunlight on the wall of the tomb, patches of it dancing on the stairs and on her dress and on Erik's coat... The Angels' Garden was beautiful.

"Thank you..." she said, when she could speak.

Erik turned his face aside, his jaw setting. Christine saw the sun touch his bare cheek, and for an instant she trembled because the light seemed within him, calling to her – because he could be like this.

When he looked back at her he was completely himself. "Let us return, Christine."

"Sing," she said abruptly. "Something, anything. Scales."

Erik studied her as though trying to find out the cause of her madness, but Christine saw the thirst in his eyes. "Scales?"

"You remember. Do-re-mi-fa-so..." She spoke the words, but they came out as a half-smile. She waited – and then Erik was singing.

His throat moved to shape the note, and it sprang fully formed from his lips and flew, soaring in freefall like a man launching himself off a precipice, gliding on thin air, indifferent to the inevitable death from the earth below. Not scales, not opera; it was a song Christine knew, a very old song she had once heard coming from the walls of the chapel in the Opéra.

Without thinking about it, she opened her mouth and then the harmony was there, entwining with the melody Erik showed her, while in her heart a child asked of a grey stone-faced wall: "Angel of Music, why do you cry?"

Erik stopped, and so did she. A verse, no more. Christine felt rest of the music become tangled again in her throat, all the unvoiced songs coiling like strings of a broken violin. She didn't care. She breathed as if she had been flying.

"Christine..." Erik spoke into the returning reality. A cemetery, the tomb of her father. They could leap from the precipice, but there was always the ground beneath. "We must go."

Christine smiled at him, just because she wanted to.

"Yes... In a moment."

Erik touched a lock of her hair where it lay against her arm. Christine watched, her heart knocking in her chest, as he brushed his knuckles against the curl, barely disturbing it. There were calluses on his thumb and his index finger from holding a pencil, and a smudge of charcoal under a nail – no blood. Then he took his hand away.

They walked down the steps side-by-side into the shaded garden, strolling slowly between the trees and graves, back towards the waiting cab.

It was not enough, Christine thought wistfully. In another world, perhaps, there were two people who looked exactly like them, save that one was not a murderer, and the other had never raised her voice before a wall in prayer to a made-up angel. She could sing by herself in that other world, and Erik could find freedom from the darkness tainting his mind, and then they could touch willingly, as lovers.

"Erik? Do you think there are other worlds?"

He stopped just inside the open gate of the garden, on the edge between shadow and sun. Her question made him raise a brow. "There are millions of them, I'm sure. It is only our rotten luck to be condemned to this one."

"I think there is only this one. No angels, no demons. Only this."

"That is a sad philosophy," Erik said grimly. "I would hate to miss out on my share of the brimstone."

Christine smiled. She wondered what he would do if she asked him to stay. Then the moment was gone.

Erik offered her his arm and she took hold of it lightly, thinking that perhaps there were other worlds hidden inside this one, worlds within worlds. They left the cemetery together.