After a crazy few weeks and a lot of work and travel, I'm finally back. Apologies for the snail-like updates. Lots of reviewer questions this time, which I hope I've addressed via PM and/or Twitter — but please let me know if I missed anything!

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OK. That's enough housekeeping, back to the story!

Chapter 59 — Mademoiselle Daaé In Concert

"Marguerite, Christine!" Madame Giry called impatiently, rapping on Christine's dressing-room door. She opened it and looked inside, meaning to ask when they intended to join her for the bean soup that was to be their meagre lunch — and stopped.

The tiny room, little more than dressing-table and cupboard, was today bright with sunlight and full of the smell of fresh coffee. Wisps of steam rose from a coffee-pot, leaving momentary clouds upon the mirror that dissolved as soon as they appeared. The usual dressing-table clutter had been pushed to one side to make room for a serving tray, and before it Meg and Christine sat huddled together like two skinny students in their dormitory, both still in their coats, tucking hungrily into what was certainly not bean soup. The meal was already half gone.

Madame Giry surveyed the plates, and felt her heart sink into that old, painfully familiar place. Bread with dripping; tinned fish; coffee. Siege fare, but certainly not of the sort served by the municipal soup kitchen, nor anything a well-meaning local might bring.

"Thank you for all this, maman," Meg said, putting down her knife and fork, "but what about you? Come and join us."

The food itself might have been simple enough, Madame Giry thought wryly — but she would have given much to know just how their unfortunate ghost had contrived to make the coffee.

Christine stood up so quickly that she almost knocked her empty cup from the table. "Take my seat, Madame Giry, I'm finished. I'll be with Marie if you need me; we still have two songs to run through."

She brushed the crumbs from her hands, pushed her hair back into its pins, and was about to dart past, but Madame Giry stopped her at the door.

"One moment, please."

Christine reluctantly drew her hand back from the door handle and remained where she was. "Is something wrong?"

Madame Giry glanced over to where her daughter still sat with her coffee-cup, curious but uncertain as to whether she would be permitted to stay, and knew if she spoke now, it must be to tell them both, or not at all.

Ah, it was hard to speak; harder than she could have anticipated. Habits of half a lifetime did not die easily or well, and she was too used to keeping Erik's secrets.

She commanded herself to look into Christine's serious, attentive face, acknowledging how far this young woman had come from the awe-struck waif rising to sing her first aria. Still, it took a great effort to break her silence. Pinpricks of sweat stood out at her temples.

"Erik is here, in the theatre. I spoke to him last night."

Christine did not reply. A faint noise from Meg sounded halfway between curse and whimper; she had realised who was responsible for their meal. Madame Giry continued to hold Christine's gaze, bracing herself for the hurt that must come.

"I ought to have told you at once. I could not do it... He is playing the ghost again. My dear, I'm so sorry."

The line of Christine's mouth quirked slightly, and then to Madame Giry's great shock, she reached out and laid one hand over hers, in unexpected camaraderie.

"Don't be sorry," she said softly. "I'm glad Erik is here."

Madame Giry looked down at Christine's hand, at fingernails cut ruthlessly short for the piano and the gold band on her ring finger, and sighed. She covered her hand with her own.

"You knew." She supposed she should have expected it.

Christine gave a small nod.

"He has been here all along then?"

"I cannot tell," Christine said honestly. "He will not let me see him. But I guessed he was here today." She glanced at the tray on the dressing-table and the empty plates: "To think we used to despise tinned fish."

With a cry of exasperation, Meg replaced her cup on the tray, jumped to her feet and went to the side of the dressing-table. She gave it a hard shove, sending the table with its mirror to skid an inch along the floorboards. The silverware jangled and the coffee pot almost fell, but there was nothing behind the mirror save a less faded square of the same patterned wallpaper.

"Try the cupboard," Christine suggested.

"Don't you dare laugh!" Meg cried defensively, looking between Christine and Madame Giry. "You are both mad if you mean to humour this. Christine! Does it not bother you to know you are being watched? You know he is no ghost, and I tell you, it bothers me!" She picked up a fork and dropped it back on a plate with a clang. "What next? Roses, notes, accidents? More marriage proposals? Another fire if you continue to refuse?"

"No," Christine said, "none of those. You are right, Erik is no ghost. And this is hardly the Opéra. Look."

She went over to the small cupboard by the window and opened it, then swung open what Madame Giry realised was its false back, and stepped aside to allow Meg to see. Inside was an ordinary tin that had held ship's biscuits, such as had become a siege staple of every middle-class kitchen.

Meg's eyes widened. "Here? He has been hiding out here? In your dressing-room?"

"No! That is," Christine cleared her throat, "he must have stayed here at night, after everyone's gone... I thought I caught sight of him backstage once or twice, but I wasn't sure, until today."

Meg eyed the false back of the cupboard as though waiting for it to fly open in turn. "Why?" She asked finally, at a loss. "Why would he do that, if not to return to what he was?"

"His house was searched; you saw it yourself, Louise and Jean were arrested. He must have needed shelter. And I suppose..." Christine trailed off, then shut the cupboard door quickly, with a remorseful air that Madame Giry recognised: she too knew that secrets were promises and sacred, meant to be kept. Christine squinted up at the sunlit window. "And I suppose he has missed it. Erik needs the theatre, like all of us."

Meg was shaking her head even as Christine finished speaking, but Christine only lifted her chin and repeated, "He needs the theatre."

There was a bright, brittle edge to her words that spoke more of hope than conviction, but Madame Giry did not have the heart to test its strength. Not today.

"Very well," she declared, breaking up the argument before it could arise, "it's curtain up in less than three hours, and there is still much to be done. Let us get back to work."

"Yes," Meg agreed, grateful for the deflection. "Monsieur Ballard was worrying earlier that we don't have enough seats."

"He has found more chairs at the school. And more glasses and wine casks too, since he is determined to make an evening of it."

"He is convinced we're to expect all Montmartre here," Meg said doubtfully.

"Not only Montmartre. Ah, that reminds me!" Madame Giry turned back to Christine, "Camille Michaud from the Variétés was at the butcher's this morning. He tells me your poster there caused a great deal of excitement. He may be coming to hear you."

But Christine was not listening. She moved past Madame Giry to the door, and with a strange, tense look, pushed it open.

The corridor beyond was completely unlit.

Meg frowned. "Didn't Ballard promise we would have gas today? The lights were on before. It looks awfully dark…"

Christine stepped out into the corridor, with Madame Giry and Meg following close behind. The only light came from the open dressing-room door behind them; beyond it, the long narrow passageway disappeared into darkness. The gas globes that lined the walls at intervals had gone out.

Christine touched the nearest lamp, disturbing a cobweb.

"Don't!" Meg gasped, catching at her sleeve. "Just leave it alone. You don't know what's going on."

But Christine only tried turning it up, producing not so much as a hiss from the jet, then looked back at them. "There's no gas, that's all."

"That's all?" Meg echoed in disbelief. "That's all?"

"It's fine. We have lamps."

"Next you'll tell me these things happen. Christine, you know what this is."

Christine whirled around, curls flying. "As do you — we're short on gas, we have been short on gas for weeks! Madame Giry..." Her voice dropped to a plea, and she looked very young all of a sudden. "This is nothing to do with Erik. It isn't."

Madame Giry considered her thoughtfully, then looked along the deserted corridor. "How many lamps do we have?"

"At least twenty, and another dozen or so if we take them from the offices. Ballard may know where to find more."

"And oil?"

Christine huddled into her coat, tugging it closed. "I don't know," she admitted. "There should be a spare drum backstage. It may not be enough."

There was a long silence.

"Why don't you ask Erik," Meg said in a defeated voice. "For all we know he may be here right now."

"He isn't," Christine said firmly.

"How can you be sure this isn't his doing?"

"Why would Erik try to stop my concert?"

"I don't know. Why does Erik do anything?" Meg pulled her gloves from her pocket and drew them on with rapid, jerky motions. She was upset and angry, Madame Giry saw, as she had every right to be, but there was not a thing to be done for it. "I don't know why he does what he does, and I don't want to know. He is your — friend, suitor, whatever he is, and I suppose you must have some idea of what he's about. Maybe you think it's all right when he avoids you for weeks and sleeps at the theatre. Maybe you even like it a little, it gives you a thrill."

Madame Giry bit back an exclamation of dismay.

"But me, I'm just a regular person, Christine. I can't live like this. I can't go back to how it was at the Opéra, always looking over my shoulder, wondering what will come next. I will not go back to it. Let me past, please, I need to go."

"Meg!" Christine caught her elbow. "Where are you going?"

"Out."

After a brief hesitation Christine released her elbow and stood aside, hanging her head. "All right."

Meg softened. "I'll go see if I can talk to Victorine, she has been buying oil for Monsieur de Gas. She may know where we can get more, and quickly."

"Thank you." Christine let out her breath in relief. "I appreciate it."

Meg wrinkled her nose at her in mock indignation, and walked away into the gloom.

Watching her, Madame Giry adjusted her shawl to lie more securely over her arms, then said, "You know Meg is right. It is dangerous, this new masquerade."

"It is not like before," Christine insisted. "I don't believe Erik means to play the ghost. He has left us some food; that is all."

"And the lights?" Madame Giry waved her shawl at the extinguished lamps. "I do not like where this is heading."

"Not you as well, Madame Giry! Erik would not stop my performance."

"Would he not? You must have considered that he could see this ambition as an impediment to marriage. Perhaps if he thinks he can divert you from it…"

"It is an impediment!" Christine flared, and Madame Giry realised she had unwittingly struck the heart of it. "I need to sing. And it is an ambition Erik used to share."

"The Phantom used to share it. I daresay Monsieur Erik Andersson may not."

"They are one and the same."

"Yes," Madame Giry said, "that is what I'm afraid of."

o o o

The day had been bright but cold, all the colder for the lack of cloud, and as soon as the sun disappeared beneath the rooftops, the breeze took on an icier edge. Erik found he was shivering even in coat and gloves, and had cause to be grateful for the scarf he had bought in the city after walking the Vicomte back to his gilded cage. This weather did present him with one welcome advantage: the populace of Montmartre, young to old, was so swathed in layer upon layer of scarves, shawls and blankets, that the crowd waiting outside the theatre could well have passed for a tattered chorus from L'Africaine. All around him were faces drowning in scarves, and kerchiefs pulled low over the eyes.

Nonetheless, it did no harm to be prudent. Erik kept his own bandaged head down and did his best to blend in with the swelling buzz of the people around him, stamping his feet against the cold as he waited for the doors to open. He tugged his scarf higher, up to his nose. The last thing he needed was to be recognised as the infamous franc-tireur singer and be set upon by the Gandons or their neighbours, pestering him with questions and distracting attention from Christine.

No, this evening belonged to her.

Mademoiselle Christine Daaé in concert. One night only.

He felt as nervous and excited as a young gallant at his first rendezvous, and could scarce keep himself from slipping out of the crowd to take one of the other, quicker and simpler ways into the theatre. To catch the merest glimpse of her now, before she was seen by anyone else...

Patience, Erik counselled himself. Those other paths belonged only to ghosts. He might not yet be a man so fully formed that Christine would take him for a husband, but a single discreet glance through the window had confirmed what he hardly dared believe possible: Christine had accepted his offering.

She had eaten the bread and drunk the coffee, knowing all the while they had come from his hands… That was something at least. It was worth any risk to know that she would not be hungry today and he had been able to provide it; that she was willing take at least this much from him. It was a restoration as small and tentative as the first feeble steps he had forced upon the convalescing Vicomte, but it gave him hope. He could build on that.

"How much longer?" a girl next to him asked plaintively of another, stockier one next to her, pulling down her scarf to blow on white-cold fingers. "I'm freezing. What's keeping them so long? The posters said six."

"Here, have a drink." The other passed her a flask from the folds of her shawl, unstoppering it with a practiced flick of her thumb. The scent of strong wine stung Erik's nostrils. "Warms you up a bit, eh? Hey, leave some for me!"

Erik moved aside a step or two, behind another gaggle of young women wrapped in blankets. An off-duty army cantiniere, smelling business, was moving between them with her canister and ladle, filling cups of wine for a couple of centimes each. She had no shortage of customers. At this rate half the audience would be inebriated before the performance commenced, and the evening risked degenerating into squabbles and blows. He, too, wondered at the cause of the delay, but only mildly: Christine was Opéra trained, and she had the most capable of assistants in Madame Giry. Her show would go on.

And he would be in her audience. Not concealed, but seated in plain view amongst the others, his very presence a question. And if Christine answered… If only she did answer, she would find her Erik ready to be contrite, to accept his punishment; ready to do anything if she would permit him to begin their courtship anew. He was resolved to be the humblest of men this time, to demand nothing and wait on her verdict. After all, even Chagny had managed to restrain himself from pressing his suit for the better part of a year. He could do no less.

"Hey, you there," a hoarse female voice broke into his thoughts, and Erik instinctively jerked his head up to see the girl with the flask again. She had pushed her thick scarf off her face and now had the reddened complexion and high spirits of the slightly drunk. "Don't I know you from someplace?"

Erik shrugged mutely, turned away and did his best to lose sight of her among the scarves and greatcoats.

"Wait," the girl was right behind him, "hey, hold on! Listen, aren't you the—"

Here it comes, Erik thought — but before she could expose his flimsy cover to the crowd, there was a commotion and somebody up ahead raised a great shout:

"They've opened the doors!"

The people on either side of Erik surged as one towards the long-awaited opening of the theatre, suddenly animated despite the cold, eyes gleaming with curiosity. Exclamations everywhere were marked by puffs of frozen steam in the blue evening air:

"Can you see?"

"Is Christine Daaé there?"

"Go on, don't just stand there, go!"

Erik was jostled by elbows and sleeves of those eager to secure the best seats, but he did not mind. A seat at the back or off to one side would do very well; the acoustics of the theatre were such that he would miss nothing there. Then he was at the entrance to the foyer, level with the posters Meg Giry had so carefully inked, his two sous at the ready.

"Thank you, monsieur," said the dirty-nosed child of eight or nine whose job it was to collect the coins into a roomy hat. She wiped her nose on her patched sleeve and then peered at him more closely.

"Wait a minute, aren't you—"

"No," Erik interrupted, "I aren't. Two sous, isn't it?"

The girl was unsatisfied, but the crowd pressed impatiently and she had no choice but to get on with admission.

"Through the main doors," she instructed sulkily, and added as she took his coins, "You're Mademoiselle Daaé's man, I know you are. Well, she left a message for you."

Erik felt himself choking on his breath. "Message."

"Aye. She said you're to come to the stage door after the performance, and you're not to run off if she's not ready but to wait there for her."

It was all Erik could do to acknowledge this and make briskly for the doors to the hall itself, which still remained shut.

"Bloody hell," someone swore, and Erik suddenly saw what had prompted it.

The doors were opening inwards — very, very slowly, as though gliding of their own accord.

A hush fell over the waiting crowd.

Another inch, and another — and then the doors were flung wide by somebody behind, in mute invitation to enter.

Within, the house was dark and silent as the deepest starless night.

The audience paused uncertainly. Nobody seemed to know whether they were expected to proceed into an empty, windowless, unlit hall. There was no one to welcome them, no usher, no sign of an orchestra, nothing visible of the stage. The vivacity of a few moments ago gave way to an anxious muttering.

Erik strode to the front and crossed the foyer, his footsteps echoing a rhythm on the tiles. When he reached the open doors, he did not pause, but went straight inside.

Behind him, a few of the others shook off their stupor and followed.

The house was not absolutely dark after all — there were oil lamps set against the perimeter of the hall and along the central aisle, burning so low that their reddish light barely touched the edges of the rows of empty seats. Beyond the front row, the stage was a black velvet void, and the walls above receded into darkness.

It was beautiful and it was terrible, and it seemed to tug at his very soul. Erik felt the cold breath of memory raise the hairs on his flesh. What had Christine done here? Nothing in the rehearsals had resembled this.

He walked on in a daze, only vaguely aware of the rest of the audience continuing to file in behind and around him, milling in the aisle and spreading out along the walls as they tried to see their way. People bumped into each other, stumbled and trod on each other's feet, and their confusion reverberated through the house with a low, deep buzz that served only to emphasise the larger silence.

At length the press of bodies became too much, and the braver among them began to sit down: only a few at first, here and there, then more and more until the hall was filling fast. Children, nimble and irreverent, snatched up lamps and used them to guide others to their seats, earning themselves a coin or two in the process.

The sight of those crazily swaying lamps finally shook him from his daze, and Erik hastened to find a seat. He chose a wooden chair by the wall, close to where he could just guess at the outline of the side door. The side door itself was firmly shut, but it felt a comfort somehow to have at least the possibility of escape.

The audience, so rowdy only a few minutes ago, was now settling in an eerie subdued mood. The silence, the near-darkness, the seemingly vast cavernous space, could not help but impress on them that something astonishing was happening here, and nobody quite knew what to make of it. Curiosity, however, would always triumph over fear, and the remaining seats were filling up as quickly as the darkness permitted.

Two people were stumbling in his direction. "There are seats here, sister, near the door."

Erik half-turned to look beside him. "Chagny." He shifted his chair to make space for the crutches.

"Andersson?" The Vicomte peered warily in the direction where he perceived his voice to have sounded. At length he gave a nod of thanks and took the offered seat next to Erik, resting the crutches to one side. The nun who accompanied him lowered herself primly to a chair in the row behind, murmuring what sounded suspiciously like an invocation against evil spirits.

"I see you have risen from the wheelchair," Erik noted. "A remarkable recovery, for a man who could hardly manage to cross the street this morning."

The Vicomte shrugged. "I left it behind in the carriage. It draws too much attention in this crowd."

"If you intended to travel incognito, you might have done better to leave the nun."

The sister in question was turning this way and that, crossing herself nervously. "How dark it is here," she murmured.

"Yes. It reminds me of something..." Chagny's eyes searched the darkness for the invisible stage, and Erik was surprised by his wistful tone: "The beach in Perros. It looks just like this at night. The water is black, and the lights fall away before it. Complete darkness."

"Before you ask," Erik cut in adamantly, "this was not my doing."

The Vicomte blinked. "What was not your doing?"

"The lights." He gestured at the faintly burning lamp near the edge of the row, and the others like it that had been set against the wall. "I have no more idea what this is about than do you."

"Christ," the Vicomte said impatiently, breaking from his reverie, "everything is a mystery with you. I presume there is no gas. Nor heat, for that matter. Pierre Ballard must be tearing his hair out." He removed his gloves and rubbed his hands together to warm them. "It is barely warmer than outside."

This was true, Erik realised; the theatre might have been warmed a little by the breathing of a multitude, and the absence of wind was a relief. But of heating there was none, and his breath fogged before him just as it had done in the street.

"Are you warm enough, Monsieur?" asked the nun solicitously from behind the Vicomte's back. "You know it did your wound no good to chill it so badly this morning." She made to stand, blanket at the ready, but Raoul raised his hand to stall her:

"There is no need; thank you, sister." Dropping his voice to avoid her hearing, he said, "You're a lousy physician, Andersson. My leg hurts something terrible after your walk."

"Good. Then you're still alive."

"I am beginning to wish I was not. But you may be right." Chagny rolled his knuckles over his damaged hip, trying to ease a cramp. "I suppose I should thank you."

"Don't," Erik said curtly.

There was a sound. It was very deep, like a tolling of an enormous bell or distant thunder, but it was unmistakably there and growing louder. Most of the audience seemed still unable to hear up, but as it went on, Erik could see a few turning this way and that, looking up towards where they guessed the stage to be.

The sound grew louder still, becoming a true note, low B flat, coming from beyond the velvet nothing that had to be the curtain, where the piano was hidden.

Erik listened.

The walls copied the sound, changed it, broke it into its component fragments until it seemed a chorus of pianos and a myriad voices. The rest of the audience sat motionless — or perhaps it was he who had forgotten their existence.

A soft susurration joined the chorus, seeming to rise from everywhere at once, like smoke filling his hearing and clouding his head. Through it, the low note went on. The music itself seemed to be stirring, coming to life to take its first breath.

It was a long moment before Erik placed the hissing sound: pulleys, raising the curtain.

A sharp high squeak, ropes tugging, and the sound stopped. In the darkness, the opening chords Erik recognised unfolded and tumbled down, like a cascade of dark curls falling loose from a pin. Then all was still.

With a gasp of air, a single candle stage centre came alight. Its glow was a circle of gold in the black cavern of the stage, burning steady and high, and the infant flame seemed to summon the music.

Somewhere beyond the light, Christine began to sing.