The wide eyes, fringed with sooty lashes glistened with crystalline tears. She choked back a sob, a delicate, trembling "Ah!" from a voice that had been trained to grace the stages of the finest opera houses in the world. She twisted a lock of long, flowing hair between her fingers and turned her lovely face away. "I can't do it. I can't bear to face the Persian," she said, her voice trembling.
Both desk and floor were littered with papers, annual reports that had been printed incorrectly the day before and had to be printed and collated all over again before the morning's hospital board meeting. In the excitement, the coffee and continental breakfast normally served to the board members had not been ordered. A desperate call to the franchised coffee bar downstairs and another to the cafeteria, both of which required the calling of several favors had remedied the situation to an extent. All that considered, things would have been less stressful had the conference room been booked, which it had not, and since it had not been booked, it had not been cleaned which meant a call to janitorial and more favors cashed in.
Most of the board would not notice that anything was amiss, but the Persian was not like the rest of the board. Mr. Khan noticed everything. Even worse, Mr. Khan represented Mercy Hospital's most generous donors- a group of foundations, all of which were known to have a new endless supply of money and extremely high standards. If the Persian was displeased, the hospital had a great deal to lose, as did the individual who offended him. Getting fired would be the least of one's problems with an enemy like that.
Christine Daaé sighed, "I will take care of this, Carly," she said, taking the stack of reports out of the girl's shaking hands. "Take a minute to calm down and you can go back to the phones."
"Omigod, you're the best Christine!" Carly's tears evaporated as quickly as they'd appeared, "I will totally get you comps for all my performances at the opera!" She chirped, as she just about skipped back to her desk.
Tickets to the Santa Cecelia Opera were the last thing Christine wanted, although she was somewhat grateful to its managers. When they hired Carly to be their new rising star, they saved Christine the trouble of having her fired. There were many words that could describe Carly, but "competent" was nowhere on that list. She might be able to sing beautifully, according to her own estimation, but she could not write a letter, proofread a document answer a phone or schedule an appointment to save her own life. It would have been less work to simply do her job rather than clearing up the misunderstandings and mistakes that were the hallmark of her performance. All the same, Christine didn't quite have the heart to fire her when she had already given notice that she was leaving in less than a month. Soon, she would be the Santa Cecelia Opera's problem and they were welcome to her.
"You're going to tell Whittaker to fire her, right?" Lisette Jammes hissed as she passed Christine in the hallway.
Christine shook her head, "If this was a movie, she'd be having an epiphany in her office right now and tomorrow she'd turn up with a new haircut which would automatically make her the perfect employee."
"Oh yeah, it's all about the hair," Lisette smiled, "that's why I got new bangs before the board exam."
"If only you'd known about the haircut thing before you did all that studying," Christine patted Lisette's shoulder with her free hand.
"Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking," Lisette rolled her eyes, "everyone knows that learning stuff is for losers. You're meeting us for lunch, right? Morgaine says she'll tell us all the dish from the meeting." Morgaine was Lisette's older sister. She had inherited her place on the board from their late grandfather.
"I'll be there even if Carly sets fire to the place," Christine promised.
Lisette wrinkled her nose, "Don't even go there or she probably will. She'll start lighting aromatherapy candles in the oxygen tents or something."
To say that Lisette and Carly did not get along was putting things mildly. If Lisette had her way, Carly would have been fired on her very first day. Granted, Carly had never been the ideal employee, but the girl had never had much of a chance. Lisette certainly hadn't made any effort towards training her and Christine didn't have a spare week to sit with Carly, walking her through her tasks. Christine had been clever enough to work around her early mistakes. Lisette was motivated enough to do three times more work than she needed to, in order to set things right when she made an oversight. Carly was neither clever nor driven but she could have done her job perfectly well, if someone had been willing to help her a little. Of course, there was no point in trying to fix it now, since the praise and promises from the directors of the opera had turned Carly into an insufferable monster.
Christine shifted the pile of reports from one arm to the other. Things had been so much easier when Lisette was Dr. Whittaker's administrative assistant. She and Christine had been close friends almost from the day they met, when Lisette had auditioned for the choir, back when Christine was the one answering the phone.
Lisette hadn't been raised as one of the Good Folk, but not everyone was. She had moved to Santa Cecelia with Morgaine when their grandfather passed away. Unlike Christine and Carly, she hadn't been classically trained, but she had a degree in theater and had been singing since she was little. Outside of the opera house, the opportunities in Santa Cecelia were limited, but Lisette was determined to find whatever was out there. She called up churches, checked every community center bulletin board, sent a letter of introduction to the library arts program and followed up with any human being she could find who knew something, anything, about finding places to sing in Santa Cecelia. Her persistence had paid off when she happened to be picking up a copy of the free local arts newsletter in the same building where Christine's group happened to be rehearsing. Lisette had waited in the hall until a break, then boldly asked if she could audition for a place in the group. Fate was on her side, but then again, fate tended to be kind to the good folk. Sharon Sorelli had just been promoted out of the choir to be a soloist on the harp, and within four bars, Lisette had her old place.
There were Good Folk who didn't fit in. For example, Mr. Khan who so frightened Carly was probably one the folk, but he didn't exactly fit in with any group. He was far too gentle to be part of the Court of Leaves, much too reserved for the Court of Blossoms, and a little too, well, sane for lack of a better word for the Court of the Harvest. That left the Court of Thorns but they hadn't been seen or heard from on the west coast for years, so that was out. Mr. Khan didn't fit in, and being one of the folk and not fitting in was far worse than being an outsider entirely. Lisette fit in. She was Court of Blossoms through and through, as was Christine and every other member of their group.
Granted, Lisette was a musician and musicians tended to have an easier time being accepted than most. Some of the older folk said that all great musicians were Good Folk, whether or not they ever attended Goblin Market or learned one of the languages or associated themselves with any of the courts. Some things aren't chosen, they simply are. Lisette knew her parts almost as soon as they were handed to her and could harmonize with Christine and Sharon. Eventually, Christine suggested that, just as harp solo parts were added in for Sharon, vocal solos should be written in for Lisette. It was the fastest transition from newbie to principal soloist since the first principal soloist role had been dreamed up for Christine Daaé by O.G.
O.G., like Mr. Khan, didn't fit in, but it seemed to Christine that it was largely by choice. For one thing, O.G. would never reveal his name or any details about himself. He had found the Goblin Market somehow, but had no intention of introducing himself there or anywhere else. He didn't communicate by e-mail or phone, only via internet relay chat, where he was very much the "operaghost" his handle described. Christine's best guess was that he worked at the opera, since he'd found her online back when she had been the temporary receptionist for the managers' office with an IP that traced back to the opera house. O.G. was the opera ghost, after all, so why wouldn't he haunt someone who worked at the opera house?
"Four drummers is excessive," O.G. had typed, without any bother of introducing himself or asking how she was or saying hello. He had a point, to an extent. At the time, all four drummers played the same kind of handheld drums. Two of them were masters of their craft, and that was all to the good. The other two were students, and it showed. With all four playing together, the rhythms started to get a little muddied, as the students hit the beat before, after and around the right place while the eight person choir struggled to be heard at all.
"It's traditional music," Christine typed back, "that's how it's supposed to be."
"Messy," O.G. shot back, "is not what any music is 'supposed to be.'"
Under other circumstances, she would have freaked out and blocked O.G. or, if that didn't work, she'd have logged off permanently. However, he'd obvious heard her choir group at the Goblin Market which meant he was folk and hence she was willing to humor the madman. Secondly, she knew that, obnoxious as he was, he was also right. She knew that the drumming wasn't being used effectively, and the choir's balance wasn't quite right and their arrangements were pedestrian. She just didn't have the resources, the experience or the talent to do anything about it and O.G. did. Once you got around the atrocious lack of social skills, O.G. was probably the greatest musician she had ever not exactly met.
"You don't think he's some sort of crazy stalker, do you?" She asked Mrs. Valerius, who mothered both Christine and her father after Colleen Daaé was gone.
Mrs. Valerius shook her head, "With a talent like that? I'd sooner think he'd been sent by the angels than the devil." It was easy enough for her to say, since she believed in neither of the above, but Christine knew that she meant something else. Mrs. Valerius was thinking of the Fair Folk, who could do great good or great evil for no more than a whim. If you prayed to them, you were very careful of what you prayed for, just in case they decided to give it to you.
"Well, he isn't from our court, that's for damn sure," Christine had said, "and the Leaf Court would never go in for the anonymous thing. I could ask Meg if she knows anyone at the Harvest Court who fits the profile." Sensible, modern women protect themselves from potential serial killers on the internet. Sensible, modern women don't believe in Fair Folk either.
"Christine Daaé!" Mrs. Valerius bristled, "I cannot believe my own ears! To think I near raised you up by hand and here you are, talking like an outsider!" Mrs. Valerius wasn't speaking in English and the word for "outsider" was not a kind one. "You don't repay a gift with questions and spying."
Christine had considered saying that she could offer to mail O.G. some socks. Repaying a favor with socks was the worst insult you possibly give someone and there were times when O.G. richly deserved it. "Your voice doesn't blend into the choir. You are all wrong for it," he had said one day, which had so upset Christine that she'd logged off immediately, the tears already welling up. She knew that he was right, but her efforts to fix the problem had failed thus far and she lived in terror of being thrown out and left with nowhere at all to sing. It wasn't as if the Santa Cecelia Opera was calling, or even accepting her resume, for that matter.
The song, her song, had been a wordless peace offering from O.G. He transferred the file and disappeared, prompting her to ask for advice from Mrs. Valerius. O.G. knew her somewhat better than she thought he did. Mrs. Valerius advised her to accept the gift and make peace, as it were and so she did and for a time, O.G. became the most influential person in her life. Then he disappeared for good.
There had been no warning at all. One day, O.G. simply wasn't there and so it was all the days after that. There was no parting message, no way to know if he had died or lost interest or who knows what. At first, Christine was worried, and then she was hurt, and then she was angry and then she got on with her life. She filled up her time by volunteering to stuff envelopes to support local clean water legislation and had met Raoul de Chagny, a crusading Leaf Courtier if ever there was one, and moved forward. She left the opera for a better job at the hospital, studied law at the local state university thanks to a generous scholarship from the hospital board, was promoted and never really forgot O.G. "It's like there's a part of you that always far away," Raoul said, and perhaps he wasn't wrong. Christine paused, turning her thoughts back to matters at hand.
She walked into the boardroom, looking calm and cool, as if the last few hours had been spent relaxing by a pool rather than covering her hands with paper cuts as she rushed to get pages into plastic covers. The boardroom was clean, the coffee was already set out, the pastries looked entirely edible and the fruit salad was fresh. When Mr. Khan appeared, tall and gaunt like something from a fairy tale, Christine smiled and offered her hand. "It's so good to see you again, Mr. Khan."