A/N: Thank you for the last chapter reviews! :) …If I haven't said so before, this tale isn't always what it seems. Keep that in mind if you're confused by certain events that transpire– the answers will manifest as story progresses.

And now…

VII

Christine lit a lantern and slipped outside with it into the chill evening air.

What would entice the foolish girl to visit the dark maze as twilight lengthened its shadows and night shrouded the land? Or in the warped reality of her perception did she even need a reason…?

A filmy mist crept over the grounds, the wisps of ghostly white not so obscure that Christine lost sense of direction. She hurried to the entrance of the ancient maze of crumbling rock and ivy. With no guests of a ball to roam the grounds, no torches were lit within. She hesitated at the memory of her last time here and her meeting with the masked Count, then shook aside any unwelcome rumination in the urgency of this present moment and stepped inside the labyrinth of stone and dense greenery.

"Lucy…?" She spoke barely above her usual tone of voice. "Are you in here?"

Unrolling the skein of yarn, Christine slowly walked, using the string as her trail of bread crumbs. If Fate were kind, she would find Lucy around the next bend. But Fate could be cruel, as well she knew, and it was best to be prepared.

Having lost her way on three occasions in the month since she had arrived to this remote and turbulent countryside, she had learned that truth all too well.

Unraveling the yarn while holding the lantern proved awkward, her progress slow, but she would never again enter the darkness without a source of light to guide her.

Nonetheless, the light from the flame trapped safely within the glass traveled only so far, highlighting the immediate area before her and the wild foliage covering the high walls on either side. The remainder of the path lay buried in thick darkness. Relying on her memory from her initial visit to this maze, it twisted numerous times, sometimes upon itself, stretching far into the distance.

"Lucy…?" she softly called again.

Only the silence answered.

All too soon she came to the end of the yarn she held. Worried that perhaps she had not brought enough, she tied the end string to the second large ball and anxiously continued her search. Softly she called Lucy's name as she walked.

A sudden wind, chill and crisp, blew against her while a strange cloying heaviness settled around her. Something felt out of place, disturbing, and it took every ounce of resolve not to spin on her heel and flee back to the manor.

"Oh, Lucy, where are you," she pleaded beneath her breath.

The bushes rustled a short distance ahead. Christine went absolutely still, her heart hammering in her throat.

"Lucy…?" she inquired meekly.

A low growl rumbled through the air, scattering chills up her spine, while terror churned in rivulets through her blood. Frozen, she felt powerless to move though every instinct commanded that she run –

But she would not leave her helpless cousin to the danger of some feral beast! All former warnings of mysterious bloodthirsty predators that scoured the countryside to stalk their victims rose in her mind to intensify the horror.

Briefly she shut her eyes. Never had she wished for one of Raoul's infernal weapons more than she did now. All she had to defend herself was a decimated ball of yarn and a sputtering lamp – hardly worthy objects to deter a predator.

The growling intensified, louder now, more threatening – and Christine found herself slowly taking a step backward, then another, her hand shaking so hard she was surprised she didn't drop the lantern.

Another rustle stirred the bushes – this one closer. Some shadowy thing jumped into the path and raced toward her.

She let out a strangled cry, dropping the ball of yarn and gripping the handle of the lantern with all her strength, ready to fling it at the advancing creature once it came in sight.

"Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!"

Christine gasped out a shaky laugh of relief, tears rushing to her eyes and her legs nearly folding beneath her as Lucy's dog scampered into the pool of golden light. He jumped up against her skirts.

"Topsy – you horrible, wonderful mutt – what are you doing here?"

The answer hit her at once. The pup must have come with Lucy.

"Topsy, where is Lucy? Take me to Lucy."

He whined and barked then ran a short distance ahead, turning back to run a few steps. He barked once more, and Christine took his actions as a sign to follow.

Inhaling a tremulous breath, she nervously picked her way after the dog, wending through the closed-in walls, twisting right then left, again and again. Christine had never traveled this deep into the maze and too late, she realized she no longer had her yarn trail to guide her. She had dropped it when she thought she might need to defend herself against some ferocious wild creature. Now she hoped the little mutt could lead her safely out of the dark labyrinth, and questioned her intelligence to put her faith in a pup that couldn't be more than a year old.

Just when she came to the conclusion that she'd made a foolish error in judgment and Topsy wanted only to play – perhaps as lost as she – Christine heard the low, distant murmur of voices, followed by a soft feminine giggle.

Who would her cousin visit in such secrecy? Had Lucy not been in her nightdress?

Shivers of disquiet traveled along every inch of Christine's flesh. The faraway laughter and conversation were indistinguishable and eerie – but not as frightening as the sudden sharp cry that came from somewhere beyond the wall to her left.

"Lucy?" she called, louder than before. "Are you alright? Oh, why won't you answer me...?"

There came the sound of running footsteps, followed by the heart-stopping lull of dead silence.

With her heart hammering against her ribs, a mutineer wishing to escape and abandon her to her fool quest, Christine forced herself to walk forward. She took the next bend to the right, the only direction to go. A quiet rustle came from the other side of the wall. Topsy? Or something more ominous than a growling mutt? As she continued along the path, the flame suddenly extinguished in her lantern.

"What the devil," she whispered.

The abrupt wind of earlier was absent, there wasn't even a faint breeze. Even if there had been, the flame was enclosed in glass. The oil must have run out. Oh, botheration…of all times for this to happen! The torch had blown out her first time through this warren of stone walls, and now this. Surely, one incident had nothing to do with the other; surely, it must be due only to a dried wick…

Perhaps that could explain the lantern. But nothing could explain the torch.

Christine's breaths came more ragged as she gripped the handle of the useless lantern more tightly. She could not allow her mind to travel down bizarre trails of no return, fed by frightful stories of lore she'd been plagued with since her arrival at Montmarte. Not now, when she was lost in the midst of this endlessly dark maze. There had to be a rational explanation for everything that had happened here tonight…and before.

The moon slipped free of the clouds – no longer full, but giving off enough light to dimly map out the path before her. She let out a relieved breath and took the next bend to the left, moving into a small clearing of what appeared to be the center of the maze - then stopped frozen in her tracks.

In the wash of pale moonlight, a stone bench stood and upon that bench, Lucy lay in repose, still as death. In her bone-white bed gown, with her long fair hair shining almost silver against porcelain skin, the girl might have been a ghost.

"Lucy…?" Christine whispered. She broke from her shock and hurried toward her cousin, falling to her knees and putting an insistent hand to her shoulder. "Lucy!"

Beneath the thin muslin Lucy's skin felt cold, which came as no surprise since she was barely dressed for the chill autumn night.

Desperate to wake her, Christine shook her cousin's shoulder harder and called her name a third time.

Suddenly the girl's eyes sprang wide open.

Startled, Christine jumped back a little – then experienced a wash of relief, so intense it made her tremble, to realize the girl wasn't dead as she'd begun to fear.

"Lucy – why the devil did you come out here? What happened to you?"

Her cousin's eyes never left the night sky above, and Christine wondered that she actually believed Lucy might respond to her, when she rarely had done so before.

"Can you sit up?" Christine urged softly. "Here, let me help you. We must return to the manor before anyone discovers you missing. It's frightfully cold out here – too cold to be wandering the grounds dressed as you are."

The girl offered no resistance, malleable as a puppet that Christine aided to rise. With the motion, Lucy's curtain of hair fell away from her shoulder, revealing a dark smear on her neck, what appeared to be blood.

"Lucy, you've hurt yourself! What happened?" She recalled the distant murmurs of earlier. "Was someone here with you?"

Lucy blinked slowly and lifted her hand to the side of her neck, holding it there.

"I scratched myself on the leaves – it's nothing."

Surprised and encouraged to receive that much of a response, Christine helped Lucy to stand, then decided to press the girl further for answers.

"I heard voices."

"I was talking to myself."

Christine supposed that made sense; the girl did it often. And yet…

Lucy swayed as though she might collapse. Christine tightened her hold around her cousin's waist, thinking perhaps she had risen too quickly, and gave her time to regain her balance. Even so, Lucy seemed no better. She was weak, barely able to stand, much less to walk, and Christine didn't see how she would get them both through the maze and back to the manor, but what other recourse was there? She certainly had no wish to wait within the green darkness for someone to find them! It could be hours before their absence was discovered.

With the extinguished lantern no more than a hindrance, she left it on the bench. Thankfully she could hear Topsy snuffle and paw at something beneath the bushes and called to the mutt, hoping the little beast could somehow lead them from the maze.

The dog ran their way, jumping against Lucy's legs in apparent glee, its slight weight almost knocking the girl over, then Topsy let out a yipping bark and ran to the area from which Christine earlier emerged.

She followed, bringing Lucy with her, hoping the pup wasn't simply on another playful romp.

"Why ever did you come out here this late?" Christine asked again.

"The dark faerie wanted to play," Lucy said in her childlike manner and quietly giggled, as if at a secret.

Christine sighed. Clearly the girl's visit into lucidness had been brief, and she would offer no further coherent information.

To Christine's frustration, the inconstant moon once more slipped behind a thin cover of grey cloud, making the way dim. She used her free hand to skim the ivy at her right, to achieve some sense of direction in the darkness, apprehensive of walking into a wall. At least the girl could walk, though not swiftly and not without Christine to support her. The pup rustled somewhere ahead. Christine followed the sounds, hoping she wasn't being twisted and turned to another area of the maze. She nearly collapsed with relief to suddenly come upon the yarn trail.

In the darkness, she had to strain to see the faint line of pale color in the grass, but at long last they emerged from the complex warren of ivy-covered stone.

"Please," Lucy said, "Don't tell Papa I was here. He doesn't like me to play with the dark faerie or speak of him."

Small wonder, if this was Lucy's idea of playtime. The girl shivered in a thin nightdress in the dark of night and bare of foot, though Christine shared her cloak with her as best she could to give her some warmth.

"Please," Lucy begged again, grasping her arm almost painfully, her nails digging into her sleeve, when Christine gave no response. "Promise you won't tell. Papa will lock me away in the tower forever if he knows – he said so…"

With her knowledge of the tyrant-earl, Christine did not believe the warning to be an idle threat.

"Very well," she said against her better judgment. "But, Lucy, you must promise never to leave the manor again without telling anyone. You might have frozen to death had you stayed out here all night, with no one even aware of you being gone! If I hadn't looked out the window when I did, I wouldn't have known."

Lucy said nothing, drawing within her private world again, and Christine sighed, hoping her cousin's silence was her agreement.

At last they reached the manor and slipped inside, Topsy scampering ahead of them. Christine helped Lucy up the staircase, but the girl could barely manage the steps, by this time shaking so hard her teeth were nearly chattering.

"Where have you two been?"

At Raoul's impatient query coming from behind, Lucy shot Christine a pleading look filled with alarm, the message clear - to keep the secret between them.

Uncertain if she was doing the right thing, Christine addressed Raoul over her shoulder.

"Lucy went outside for the pup – she…fell and twisted her ankle. I was helping her to her room."

She hated any form of deceit, but had given the girl her word, and from experience knew Raoul wouldn't relent until he had an explanation that satisfied. Lucy smiled softly at Christine in appreciation.

"Allow me." Raoul came up from behind, and Christine gladly shifted Lucy to his arms, weary from the entire excursion.

Replaying the last half hour, she stood and watched as he carried their younger cousin to the second floor landing, before following in his stead. Something still made no sense. She had heard more than one voice in the center of the maze, was sure of it. The conversation had been at a distance, but there had been differences in pitch. A tone much lower than her cousin's…

Someone other than Lucy had been there.

Raoul laid the girl on the four-poster bed as Christine stepped inside Lucy's room and waited near the doorway.

"Thank you, Raoul," she said, circumventing the questions she could see in his eyes. "I will tend to Lucy."

Her order for him to leave clear, Christine glanced at him only briefly as he came alongside her, before averting her focus to Lucy. She was still angry with him for the morbid little sightseeing tour he had sprung upon her, but it wasn't for that cause she wished him absent.

"Goodnight then," he said in parting, a thread of hurt confusion in his tone.

Christine nodded once. "Also, if you could find Daisy and ask her to bring up a hot water bottle..."

At his nod, she closed the bedchamber door and moved to sit beside Lucy, who had snuggled under the thick gold duvet. The girl hugged one of her china dolls close but didn't look away.

"Now," Christine said softly, "I would like you to tell me all about the dark faerie."

xXx

The morning inevitably dawned, and Christine met it with grim resolve, Lucy's words darting relentless along the periphery of her mind.

He's tall and quite handsome…

Slowly she prepared for the unwelcome day, choosing her least flattering dress of ash-grey wool embellished with a modicum of decor, the material covering every inch of her skin from throat to wrist and doing little to enhance her figure. It was what she called her cleaning dress and what she wore when chores must be done. At the Opera House, Madame expected the girls weekly to keep their dormitories clean as well as to do their personal laundry. The dress was a perfect choice for today's tedious chore.

Christine brushed her hair out but instead of leaving it down, as she preferred, she braided the thick mass of curls and tenaciously pinned them at her nape, spinster-like, hoping it would make her look uninviting and coldly severe. A dusting of ivory face powder did its job to blanch the healthy rose color from her cheeks and lips.

Sometimes he dances with me …

She ate very little, certain her churning stomach would manage no more than a hard biscuit with the black tea, foregoing her usual two lumps of sugar. When the dreaded hour came, and Daisy came for her with the message of her guest, she dutifully arrived to the front parlor, not missing her great uncle's stern, narrowed eyes at her altered appearance.

Lord Lomax, however, did not seem either insulted or deterred. For their entire carriage ride, he proved the opposite, and in disgust she wondered why no requisite chaperone was present, unless his driver, who sat outside the closed vehicle, was considered an escort.

During her unceasing spiel of chatter and frequent vacuous laughter – all of which Daisy told her would annoy the man and remind him of his deceased wife whom he detested – Christine continually needed to slap his roving hands away from her form. And if she scooted any closer to the wall of the carriage to create futile distance, she very well might have broken through the thin-walled contraption.

Frustrated near tears by the time they arrived back to Montmarte, Christine begged away any further interaction with the leering lord, who lingered with expectancy as if waiting to be invited to tea. She pleaded the beginnings of a headache, which wasn't far from the truth, and hurried into the manor and up the stairs.

Thankfully, the earl wasn't present, and she found blessed solitude in her room. The first thing she did was to remove all the little stabbing hairpins and let the thick braid swing free down her back, though she did not bother with the task of unfurling it.

The box of journals stowed beneath her bed seemed to call to her, but she could not yet rouse either the desire or the courage to look between their vellum sheets. Recalling the abandoned lantern, she decided a dose of fresh air was much needed, and it would be wise to revisit the maze while daylight yet remained.

He dresses all in black…

Retracing her steps created little problem, the yarn trail still winding over the grassy corridors within the intricate pattern of walls. Beyond where the pale string ended, the blades were crushed, showing where Christine had practically dragged Lucy along with her. In the center of the maze, the lantern sat waiting, and Christine plucked it up, also scouting the area for anything amiss, though she had no idea what she was looking for. Evidence of another being, perhaps, who shared those minutes alone with Lucy…?

And how many more minutes within how many more nights besides?

He speaks to me in poems and stories…

Christine approached the area where the pup had been digging. There she found an odd piece of carved ivory, perhaps a button, approximately one inch in length and oddly shaped like a bone, though certainly it belonged to no skeletal frame.

Noting the skies were growing darker and not wishing ever again to be caught within when night fell, she left the maze and stopped just outside of it, staring over the expanse of lawn toward the manor… evading the steps that would take her to its imprisoning doors, back to the confinement of hollow chambers, back to the family she wished to avoid…

Raoul, with his persistence to train her.

Her great uncle, with his proclivity to dominate her.

And Lucy, who teetered on the precipice to madness.

The sun made no appearance today, hidden beyond a thick veil of cloud, the skies glowing like a luminescent pearl cast in shadow, its sheen dim as violet dusk began to settle over the shadowed land.

A strange awareness tingled her senses, and she looked around the area, her gaze wandering to the far right.

The sight of a cloaked figure in the distance wearing a wide-brimmed fedora and heading toward the forest had her blink in astonishment. At first disbelieving of his actual presence there, sure her eyes tricked her, she stared. For a moment her heart ceased to beat within her breast.

His eyes are beautiful, and when he's angry, they glow…

Balling her hand into a fist so tight she felt the nails mark her flesh, Christine took several quick steps in his direction. He was too far away to hear, and she had no desire to shout.

Setting down the lantern, she picked up the hem of her skirts and ran to catch up until she came within acceptable speaking distance, then slowed to a walk.

She worked to control her panting breaths as she followed a short several feet behind their elusive masked neighbor.

"Count cel Tradat…"

He continued to walk as if unaware, though she knew even a man going deaf would have had to hear her rapid footsteps rustling through the dry grasses.

"My lord Count…"

She had no idea if she even used the proper form of address, having never been educated in social refinements beyond anything a thespian would know. But a spark lit her blood at how blatantly he ignored her – and Christine watched him continue to shun her in angry disbelief.

His cloak billowing behind him was suggestive of the flutter of a bat's wing as he increased his already rapid gait. His steps, now at a walking run, even still possessed such power and animal grace that for a fascinated moment she lost herself in the dark magnetism of his tall, lean form.

She recalled the night of the ball, recalled the events that followed and the dream that felt like no dream…

"Erik."

At her clipped use of the name coming softer than previous attempts to gain his attention, he halted abruptly in his tracks as though suddenly turned to dark marble.

Yet he made no move to turn and greet her.

xXx

A/N: I know, - bad authoress for leaving it there, but I didn't want you to have to wait another week. I figured short and sweet is good when I post earlier- right?…. *smiles sweetly and dashes into the convenient maze…