The silence that hung over the Opera Populaire in the days following the incident with the chandelier was thick enough that you could cut it with a knife. As I watched people scurry about from the shadows it was hard not to laugh, and the moment that the first 'ha' escaped my throat, whoever was in the area nearby would freeze, glancing about as though they could discover where I hid.
It was particularly fun to scare M. Andre this way. I had the man afraid to walk even from his office to the main entrance. If I couldn't have Christine for myself, I preferred it this way. At least watching them tiptoe about gave me a minute amount of happiness. It was maddening however, that Christine had hidden herself away.
Since I'd loosed the chandelier on the crowd, since she'd gazed up at me with such fright in her eyes, I had not seen her. I had heard her, however. Even in the moments when my soul was at its blackest, her voice called to me. The viscomte had not been around to see her since that night, either. In fact, the two things I was most certain of were that she was somewhere in my opera house, and he was not.
The very thought that I had frightened her would-be lover away by merely showing what I was capable of brought a twisted caricature of a smile to my bloated lips. I remained out among the fools who rushed to clean up the mess I'd created for them until I learned what they were planning next. M. Firmin and M. Andre still planned to go forth with the New Year's Masque, something I was so certain they would forgo, what with so many injured and one still missing following my attack, but the news was music to my ears.
I would reveal myself to them next at the Masque, and that is when I would make my next- and possibly final- demands of these fools who found it so amusing to disobey me. Soon they would know the true consequences of their disobedience.