The next few days fell into place as though they had been written by an optimistic novelist. She rehearsed all day, ventured about town in the early evening, and waited expectantly for her opening night. The other acts had even become friendlier toward her. Well, some of them, at least. And Christine found she might actually be making some friends for the first time in a long time.

Friends or otherwise, the conversations inescapably turned to Phantasma and its glow upriver. Had Christine gone? Did she enjoy the rides? Had she heard Phantasma's bathing beauty sing? Had she even been through a hall of mirrors before? All answers were no.

When she asked about their performances at Phantasma, the other acts would regale her with descriptions of wild feats in a large, open-air amphitheater where Mr. Y had rigged special electric lights and phonograph pavilions throughout to create a singular experience. The Spectacular, they called it.

Many were excited for the new 'proper' theater in the park. The one Mr. Y had begun construction on no more than a year ago. It was almost ready for its own opening night. They recounted tales of mysterious shipments and expensive velvets making their away from the commercial rail lines to Mr. Y's private ones and then into the new structure, intrigued and envious of the blatant finery.

Christine knew inevitably she would have to take the Spring Song upriver. It was in her contract after all, but she declined every offer to go and had little desire to make the journey unless she had to. There was something lovely about the mystery of the place. Everyone spoke so fondly or excitedly or fantastically about the Phantasma. She was certain it would never live up to her expectations now.

It was on her third day since meeting with Mr. Y's lawyer that Christine woke with an eerie feeling. Not for anything in particular, but that something was slightly off. Like she'd woken up wrong after falling sleep too late. She arrived early to rehearse, tripping up the stairs; Herbert was late – he'd missed the first train from Phantasma; her notes were clogged in her throat; the water was warm at lunch; and Mol had complimented her.

She accepted Mary Packer Cummings' invitation to an early dinner – just the two of them at the hotel – hopeful a change in company would help. Mary did indeed provide a polite distraction from the day, with sweet conversation about warm places she had once traveled to. She longed to see the Alhambra again, and regaled Christine with fine details of Venetian architecture.

Christine was grateful for the conversation and supplied her own tails of Swedish seasides, German palaces, and Paris life. Mary seemed just as delighted. By the time they finished dessert, all strangeness of the day had been forgotten and the sun had only just begun to sink below the mountain line.

The fire in her room had been already lit when she entered through the door and the warm glow bathed her in golden light. She unpinned her hair from atop her head and gathered it at her nape, absently twisting her purple clip to secure it.

Tonight would be devoted to reviewing the new pieces Hebert had given her. Requests from Mr. Y. Hybrid songs, Herbert had call them – something like an aria, but not. Something soaring, but with less power from her diaphragm. A new vocal challenge. She began softly humming the melody of one before her.

Her voice came easier than this morning, warmed from good conversation and better cognac. She slid into the chair by the fire, repeating a complicated trill.

It was not the melody, exactly, or the words, or even the imagined accompaniment, but the combination of all three which reminded her of the dead Opera Ghost. While music always brought fleeting thoughts of him, there had been rare occurrences where Christine swore she could feel him again beside her. It was as though, in those moments, the music itself embodied his very soul. When these hauntings came, loneliness and loss engulfed her.

There had never been a proper goodbye.

She'd not even been able to weep at his grave. She could not sing him away to his next life. Instead, she was forced to hold her tears and requiem until she was alone in her darkened room, wings away from her ardent fiancé. He'd been astonished at her request to attend the funeral and made his irritation to be out in the wintery cold, amongst no one but the Girys and a singular man, known. What a good fiancé he'd been – indulging her request.

He made sure to tell her so. Several times. And allowed her the freedom to retreat to her rooms before their friends arrived that same evening. She was clearly in no fit state to dazzle them.

Raoul could never understand what bound her to the Phantom. He could never understand that in those final moments, when she'd decided to stay by the maestro's side, she'd meant her actions; he could never understand that the Phantom of the Opera had been her love – passionate and intense in his own way.

For good or for ill, his soul had called to hers in the underground of the opera house and bound her to him with his voice. The tether was immutable, inescapable. Only now did she realize what the music had done to her in her youth. After all these years, it still called her to him intangibly, vibrating through her being. She felt him now in the music - a spirit beside her. But tonight, the sprit felt different.

The new music from Mr. Y soothed her loneliness in a way other pieces had not. It made her feel less lost in the abyss of his absence. It made her want to know this new composer – with European sentiments in the middle of the rugged wilderness. She would have to write another letter begging his indulgence. Perhaps Herbert would know who wrote the scores.

.

Christine did not hear the knock at her door when it first occurred. It was the steady cadence of it that made her turn and rise. She hadn't requested anything. Sam's ruddy, welcoming face smiled back at her when she opened it, and she couldn't help but smile back at the boy. "Hello, Sam."

"Hello, Miss. I have a letter for you." His hand presented it with a flourish, as a solider would present a missive of great importance to his general. His seriousness amused Christine. She took the envelope from him, noting its strange, lopsided weight.

Her name was not on the outside of the envelope. The seal was a deep, blood red marked with a very vertical and sharp "Y" at its center. She snapped it in half, as one would do in her childhood, and lifted the flap, turning the whole thing over in the process. A small piece of metal fell into her hand – an e with accent aigu.

Her smile deepened. "Mr. Y wanted you to know he was sorry the type did not come sooner. This is your copy. He already sent one to the newspaper this morning. They take a while to make." Christine was only half listening. There was a note still in the envelope; curiosity burned within her to read it. It was written on the back of blank sheet music.

Forever your servant.

The writing was in red ink, cast in his unforgettable tight slope. At first she froze, stunned. It couldn't possibly be. It was the sharp "s" that set Christine's heart to racing in her chest, her breath struggling in short gasps. It was the same "s" he has used in her name throughout the folio for Don Juan Triumphant. The words before her jumbled as a tremor coursed through her body.

He was alive?

He was alive.

Her whole world shifted irrevocably.

Her pha– The phantom was alive. And thriving. And sending her notes and music and contracts again. Emotions swirled inside Christine – fear, astonishment, denial, and other more complicated feelings she refused to put names too. He was alive and that meant he was man again. A man capable of the most beautiful and horrible actions.

Did Raoul know he'd sold her to the Phantom of the Opera? How long had her ghostly maestro known she was in America? How long had he been planning his capture of her? Because surely, he wanted her.

And she wanted that.

And yet did not want that.

Her conversations with the other acts nagged in her mind. A new theater. Nearly ready after construction began less than a year ago. A whole year. Cursing heaven at her own foolishness for walking into his trap, she crumpled his note in her hands.

Anger provoked her action. He had done such cruel things. She had to see for herself. It was unbelievable. It was wildly impossible.

"Christine?" Sam asked.

She did not feel the chill as she exited the hotel and made the short walk to the train station. The Bluebell sat on its track, the horn already bellowing a planned departure. She sat facing the glow of Phantasma's lights in the open-air coach. Her mind raced. Her sorry madman was alive. Her angel of music has returned to her. He'd known. He'd planned. She'd signed a contract to sing for him again. She signed his contract. She'd signed her soul to him. She was bound to him again.

Foolish woman! Ten years gone by and still she could not see the danger before her. It had been too good to be true. Everything always had been.

Like sin – unbidden, unwanted – the memory of his kiss seared her worried lips. Hundreds of kisses had occurred between that time and this and still nothing compared to his tenderness, his desperate, restrained passion. Nothing made her body and heart ache like the memory of that kiss. Her desire to return to his side overpowered her and twisted her stomach in shame.

The train lurched forward, beginning its trek to Phantasma. "Miss! Miss! You must be cold!" Sam draped Christine's coat over her shoulders and sat down beside her. She shook her head out of dangerous thoughts best left buried and looked to the boy. He was concerned for her. She could see it in his eyes. Concerned and confused.

"I need to see Mr. Y tonight. It is very important." She wished her voice hadn't cracked.

"He doesn't like visitors, Miss."

"He will see me." She took Sam's hands, "I am not a visitor. I am an old friend." The boy nodded, careful not to startle her anymore in her state.


'God give me courage.' Christine's breath fanned across his face – her poor, tortured angel's face – in a ghostly whisper. It was monstrous in the shadowed light. Tears fell from his eyes to the dirty cloth of his evening jacket. It had always been so pristine before. Now it was as ruined and torn as the pain behind his eyes. Those eyes pleaded with her for mercy, begged for her pity if it would bring with it her love. In his own, monstrous and passionate way he loved her.

She did not doubt him when he said he loved her more than himself. She did not doubt him when his demands showed her a man that loved beyond all reason.

'Make your choice,' he ordered.

There was no choice to make. She had been denied her choice before Don Juan opened. She had begged to flee, and her voice had fallen on deaf ears. Now, the man who had taken that choice from her hung from a rope, his feet barely brushing the floor. She loved him in his bravery, but wished he'd been less foolish.

And her dreadful fallen angel: whom she did love for all his wild creativity and strange, cold innocence, required a choice from her which stripped her of her voice again. Choosing him meant saving Raoul. The Phantom would never believe she would choose him separate of this fact. He did not trust her to love him alone. And truly, he'd given her very little reason to.

Her blood roared in her ears as her hands rose to his face, making her non-existent choice. Her fingers glided along his rough jaw upward, careful to brush them above the distorted flesh of his right cheek. He was so cold.

She searched his face for understanding, but found the same desperate stare as before. Careful to move slowly, she pulled him down to her and brought her lips to rest upon his. The world shifted underneath her. The shape of his lips was strange, bulbous and uneven, but soft and warm. His body froze under her hands and the wildness of before seemed to melt from him. For all the passion bound up in this man, he had no idea how to take his pleasure. Christine nipped lightly at his lower lip and pulled away.

The Phantom's eyes glistened with wonder and unshed tears. She dimly heard Raoul yelling behind her, yet she could not make out his words. An inexplicable type of hunger tingled on her lips and she pulled her angel to her once more. This time, his arms came around her and crushed her to him. Christine's head spun as the Phantom returned her kiss, devouring her lips and sparking a treacherous desire deep in her body.

He ripped himself away from her, a broken sob escaping as he turned. Christine struggled to find her footing, throwing her hands wide for balance. She didn't realize he'd spoken until he turned and yelled again – 'Go now! Go now and leave me!'

Raoul rushed, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her away.

Later he would tell people Christine's actions had been a heroic display of female sympathy; that afterword she had been in shock for weeks. He wasn't wrong. He was simply wrong about the cause. One moment she had been in her angel's arms, worshiped despite the situation, and the next he'd rejected her. She'd done what he asked, and he'd sent her away.

She had been right. Her choice was no choice at all.


By the time the Bluebell slowed, Christine was seething in rage. How dare he. How dare he lie to her like this. How dare he leave her, feign death, and curse her to ten years of guilt and sorrow. That selfish, monstrous man! No one had listened last time and by God they would listen this time. He still loved her voice? Well then, he would damn well hear it. She would make him listen; she would make him hear.

The glow of Phantasma transformed into the brightness of day before her. There were thousands upon thousands of electric light bulbs affixed to every building and walkway, illuminating strange patterns in the low night sky. And there must have been as many people as bulbs buzzing about under them. Hundreds and hundreds of people, laughing and running to get closer to the strange contraptions and entertainers.

Old and young alike jostled through the main entrance: a grotesque, malformed mask as smooth as porcelain. If she had any doubt who this place belonged to before, she did not now. A shiver burned through her spine, settling in her stomach. Bawdy, loud music filled her senses. It reverberated through her from her head to her toes.

"They're just rides, Miss." Sam advised when he saw her head quirk to the side. A man was swirling fire about himself, trails of smoke leaving lovely patterns in the fire's wake. Children hollered from a swinging ship across from him, parents looking on with glittering smiles. Sam pointed to the only contraption Christine recognized, "That's the carousel. You'll like that one. Do you want to try it?"

"Not now. Let's find Mr. Y." She was thankful for Sam's hand in hers as they traveled deeper into the carnival-city. Without it, she would have lost herself in the panorama of flashing light and darkness. The lane they traveled down sat between entrances to other attractions. Some Sam called performances, some he called rides. This area was for children, he specified with a flourish of his arms. The real fun stuff was for adults up ahead. Just beyond the coliseum of the Spectacular.

Let your mind start a journey to a strange new world. Christine couldn't help remembering the Phantom's impassioned words in her mind. It did not surprise her that the farther they walked, the deeper into the strange and strangely beautiful they would go. Was that not the definition of the Phantom's mind?

When Sam slowed his steps, Christine realized the world had become darker around her. There were less bulbs and fewer rides. Music played from hidden places, lonesome and melodic. They passed through yards and yards of sheer red fabric ruched so close together you could not see through it. "Stop right there, my boy." Christine's eyes went wide. A tall man – impossibility tall – stood before her with a much, much smaller woman on his shoulders.

"You're not supposed to be here Sam," the small woman glared at them both. "You know Mr. Y's rules." The three continued talking, but Christine could not hear them. The spot between her shoulder blades began to tingle, the touch ghosting to rest at the nape of her neck.

Such graceful haunting of her skin, used in the past to calm her, released the gaping despair she kept a despotic hold of. in the wake of it, she couldn't breathe. He was here. He was watching.

She rolled her shoulders, desperate to scrub the feeling of his transparent touch from her body. She gasped when she heard her name. Both the impossibly tall man and the very little woman gaped at her face, eyes wide and mouths open.

She cleared her throat and looked to the woman, "I would like to see Mr. Y. Will you take me to him?" The woman tilted her head to the side. He was whispering to her. Bitter and sudden jealousy constricted Christine's throat. It was a white-hot emotion she refused to dwell on longer than it took to use.

Leveling her hard gaze and the woman, Christine's voice turned cold, "Perhaps my request was not clear. If Mr. Y will not see me, then I demand to see the Phantom of the Opera. Immediately."