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An hour later, I'd found out that the train was going to Venice.

We were in the dining car, eating dinner. Erik sat next to me, and across the table sat Christophe's two contacts.

James had an annoying habit of clinking his silverware against his plate as he ate. My head was aching again, and every time he snapped the tines of his fork against the porcelain I fought the urge to kill him.

Henri, on the other hand, was eating hardly anything. He sat there watching me, his empty, immovable gaze sending ripples of tension up my back. I traced a finger down the handle of my knife, pretending to be unaware of his attention. The food on my plate lay untouched.

The three men had been talking about politics, but now they were finished, and I could tell Erik was waiting for one of them to speak. We were hoping for more information about the case – there had been no papers, nothing at all about the copyist or the Inspector in Christophe's suitcase.

Erik sank his fork into a chunk of roasted chicken, sliced a chunk off with his knife, and took a precise, careful bite. I picked up my glass and drank a little water, praying that it would calm my stomach enough for me to eat.

The chicken and garlic mashed potatoes smelled heavenly, but every time I looked down at the food my insides curdled, choking me with nausea. I could only swallow the water without my stomach rebelling. My fingers trembled with hunger.

James put down his fork, chomping on his meat, and glanced out the window. We were speeding by a meadow. Outside, the pale green grass faded into the gold of afternoon sky. The edges of James' face bloomed with light.

I stared absentmindedly at him, wondering why Fabre had chosen him for this job, wondering what he knew about the case.

He turned his head to look back at me, smiling a little. His teeth flashed like a hungry wolf's, a mirror expression of a man I'd known before. Luke. I set my glass down and looked away at the other tables.

The woman and man I'd seen earlier were sitting at a table nearby, neither of them speaking. The woman drank lightly from her wine glass, her long fingers delicately wrapped around the thin stem. Her eyes were on her husband. He pushed his chicken around his plate, slumping in his seat, his head bowed. He looked much too tired to be here, traveling. I wondered what he'd been doing before he boarded the train.

"Fine night," James said jovially, crossing his knife over the fork he'd laid down on his plate. He winked at me; I'd glanced at him when he'd spoken. Inwardly cursing him, I looked down at my plate in feigned boredom.

Erik grunted.

"Remind you of anything?" the contact went on, looking around at the other tables. "The train, the people? The time of day?"

I held my breath, watching the water shiver in my glass, waiting for Erik to say something. But what could he say? Yes, I remember? Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about?

Erik looked across the table at James. "Perhaps we can reminisce later. We are in public."

"No one can hear us," James said, beginning to sound petulant. "You've changed, Christophe. You used to be more accommodating, more interesting, more fun. What's happened to you?"

Henri looked up from his plate, his dark eyes cool, clearly interested in hearing Erik's answer.

My stomach flipped over in another wave of nausea, startling me. I brought my napkin to my mouth, pressing it hard against my lips, and closed my eyes. Maybe it would pass; the others had.

Erik sighed. "I did not come here to exchange memories, James. My sole purpose in being on this train is to get where I need to be. I do have an assignment to finish."

James drew his mouth down in a sulky manner and stared out the window.

Henri returned his attention to his food, his elbows propped on the table. He still hadn't eaten anything.

It seemed the near disaster had been averted.

I took the napkin away from my mouth and carefully laid it out on the table, smoothing out its creases with shaking fingers. There were distinct lines of pain developing in the shivering pulp of my brain: one ran like a railroad spike between my eyeballs, spearing their backs in points of agony. Another line squirmed at the top of my head, seething up and down like a faulty, red-hot wire. My insides churned and wiggled like lumpy pudding; I tried to breathe deeply.

My lungs suddenly seemed to collapse: the plate in front of me went fuzzy. The mashed potatoes resembled white jelly; the meat was a shapeless blob of yellow-brown.

I blinked, desperately trying to clear my vision, but nothing happened. I looked up, dropping my hands into my lap, clenching them together.

Henri was a faceless blur on the opposite end of the table, and the waiter that paused to refill my water was merely a tall white shadow, bending over with a shining object in his insubstantial arms.

"Well, if you don't want to talk," I heard James say, as the shadow of the waiter went away, "we should get down to business. What are you planning on doing with her when we get there?"

He was obviously talking about me. I blinked in his general direction, wishing I could see the expression on his face. I had a feeling it was rather smug.

My stomach curdled again.

I looked down at the table, hoping to be able to see my water glass, but my vision was deteriorating quickly. The table seemed only to be a long goldish white smudge, dotted here and there with unintelligible masses of gray and silver.

Erik hesitated only an instant before answering. "I'm taking her straight to the Piazza. Did Fabre give either of you further orders regarding the case?"

He was digging for more details, but we both knew he was edging into dangerous territory. Christophe had to have known a considerable amount about the case; he had to have known more about James and Henri, but we knew nothing.

I closed my eyes, hoping that a moment's rest would bring them back to normality. I'd lowered my head discreetly – I thought Henri and James would assume I was ignoring Christophe.

I opened my eyes again, and saw that the ring on my left hand had similarly changed, from a distinct object into a shining metallic blur. My hands were fleshy lumps against a greenish mass – my skirts.

There was something wrong with me; something very wrong. I needed a doctor. I needed to rest.

I needed to leave the dining car now.

Henri said, the sound of his unfamiliar, accented voice startling me, "He gave us a few papers about the rest of your job. I'll give them to you when we get off at Venice." He pronounced the ends of his words as if he was singing: his accent was unmistakably Italian.

Ah, I thought. So we were going to Venice.

"We?" Erik said. His tone was neutral, almost bored. He set down his silverware: I heard the clink of knife and fork on porcelain.

A long pause, during which my stomach threatened to erupt through my mouth and over the tablecloth. I held my breath, biting my tongue. My eyes watered, probably from a combination of nerves, nausea, and exhaustion. I knew I wasn't going to last much longer.

"Yes," James said. "Henri and I are coming with you."

"For what purpose?" Erik's voice was cold.

"I'll be acting as lookout in the Piazza. Henri will be translating for me – you know I have no Italian."

"Fabre's orders, I presume."

I assumed one or both of the contacts had nodded, because the space of time usually given for an answer came and then went without anyone speaking.

"Aren't you going to eat?"

It was Erik speaking, but I heard Christophe's voice. He was talking to me.

"I'm not hungry," I said, trying to indicate by my tone that I really wasn't – that it wasn't merely a ploy to bother him.

James chuckled. "Perhaps the train food doesn't appeal to her delicate sensibilities, Christophe."

"Have some water, at least."

I shook my head.

Then I heard Erik pick something up, and something cold and smooth dropped between my hands: my water glass. I lifted it with shaking hands, drank deeply, and pushed it in the direction of the table. I let go.

There was a gasp from the other side of the table, but nothing shattered. I assumed Erik had snatched the glass up before it fell.

"Please be more careful, Mademoiselle," he said. "It would be bothersome if you dropped things everywhere."

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat, pretending to ignore him. But I was really trying to catch his attention: it was only a matter of time before my stomach revolted entirely.

I never knew exactly what happened next. Perhaps James had called over the waiter and asked for wine, or maybe it had been Henri. In either case, within the space of fifteen minutes, Henri was drunk and vomiting over the tablecloth and inadvertently splattering James in the process. James, horrified beyond all belief, had punched him.

My headache had reached such an excruciating point of agony that I was incapable of understanding much of went on: everything was a horrible slanted blur, and people only seemed to be eerie, giant smudges against a dark background of incomprehensible shapes and sounds.

Erik had to physically pull me to my feet to get me out of the booth after Henri vomited. James was still trapped at the table, as far as I could tell: I didn't understand much of what happened after I'd heard him cry out in disgust (after that awful gagging, tearing noise of Henri emptying the contents of his stomach) and then the sound of James punching him – flesh on flesh, bone on bone.

Erik had taken me with him away from the table. I had the sense we were standing near a wall, and that there was a table on our right. He was speaking to a waiter.

"No, she's only ill. Nothing's wrong. I think you should attend to those two men other there, though."

"Aren't you – I mean, Monsieur, do you know them?"

The poor waiter was evidently trying to find someone else to clean up Henri's mess and remove a furious, smelly James from the dining car. I closed my useless eyes and leaned my head against Erik's shoulder.

"No, they just showed up at our table," Erik lied blandly. "I have to take my fiancée back to our room. Excuse me."

He stepped away from the waiter, causing my head to spin horribly as I opened my eyes again. He'd slipped his hand under my arm, and though the ground was supposed to be flat and unmoving under my feet, I kept stumbling, forcing him to support most of my weight.

"Are you alright?" he whispered, as I clutched at his arm, trying to find my footing. Maybe if I closed my eyes, I'd manage to get out of here faster.

"No," I whispered, only able to get that one word out. I thought we were almost out of the dining car: the noises of people talking were dying down, and the smell of hot potatoes and meat wasn't as strong, and the moving white blurs – waiters, I assumed – weren't as frequent.

Then the noise stopped completely, and my feet met carpet. I felt Erik fumbling in his pocket.

"We're here," he said, after he'd withdrawn the key from the lock. "It's alright, dear. We'll be inside in a minute."

The door clicked open. I opened my eyes.

I could see practically nothing. The furniture, the wallpaper, the fireplace – all of it blended together in a chaotic, sickening miasma of colors and shadow. My stomach rose into my mouth; my head screamed with pain. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself, bending over as the nausea cut me in half. The sickening pain ripped through me like a fire.

"Irene!"

Erik's voice was faint and faraway. I let the pain carry me away on a stream of blackness.

I woke the first time to find a man bending over me, his cold hand on my forehead.

"How are you feeling?"

The words seemed oddly slurred when they left the man's lips. I stared up at his blond hair, greenish eyes – Christophe.

"Christophe," I mumbled, my fingers fisting around the damp sheets. "He's not here- you're not him-"

But I couldn't remember why. He was supposed to be here, wasn't he? We were in a hotel room– where were the handcuffs? Where was Erik? Was he still locked in the bathroom?

The man who looked somewhat like Christophe ran a hand over his face, and it changed. Parallel scars grew across his cheek, cutting into his lip, tracing around his eye. I closed my eyes, completely lost.

"Irene, it's me," said the Phantom's voice. "Me, Erik. I'm disguised as Christophe, remember?"

His voice was beautiful, so beautiful. I listened to it without understanding.

Everything was cold – his freezing fingers brushed my forehead again, and I shivered. My teeth chattered in my skull, clattering sickeningly in my head… The pain… Oh, God, make it stop. Please, please, make it stop…

I thought I could hear my words echoing in the darkness.

"Sleep, dear. Just sleep. It will pass, I promise. I'm here."

His voice was warm, cutting through the ice in my head – I stopped trying to fight the darkness, and slipped away.

When I woke the second time, I found I was lying in a tangle of sweat-stained sheets, my feet bare. I was only wearing my shift – my dress lay draped over the back of the chair in front of the fireplace. The logs were black and cold in the hearth.

I brushed strands of sticky hair from my cheek and dragged myself up onto an elbow. My head instantly broke into shards of pain: I closed my eyes and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, breathing through my nose.

When the pain had passed sufficiently for me to sit up, I did so, swinging my feet off the side of the bed and onto the cold floor. The room was empty; the bathroom door stood ajar. I looked at the dress on the armchair. Maybe I would be able to get to it without Erik coming in.

"Irene?"

I turned, jerking the sheets up around my bare shoulders. My head swam for a moment; I'd moved too quickly.

"Erik."

He was standing in the door of the bathroom, his face scarred once more, holding a towel in one hand and a pitcher in the other. He'd changed his clothing: he was wearing blue trousers and a ruffled white shirt I'd never seen before – they had to be Christophe's. His blondish hair was damp. "Are you feeling better?"

A memory flickered at the corner of my mind: Erik, bending over me, telling me he wasn't Christophe.

I flushed. "Oh. Yes, I think so. Who – my dress-"

It was Erik's turn to flush.

"I apologize," he said. "Your fever was very high – I thought it would be best."

He stepped into the room and put the pitcher and towel down on the table. "Do you feel – how do you feel?"

I touched a hand to my aching head, considering it and the nausea bubbling in the depths of my stomach. "Better than before. My eyes are working again."

"What?" Erik said, looking confused. "What do you mean?"

I explained. By the time I'd finished, his expression had changed from confusion to horror to anger. "And I didn't even do anything," he said, pacing up and down across the carpet. "I'm so sorry, Irene. I thought you were playacting; I thought you were trying to – oh, I don't know. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," I said, yawning. My eyes burned, and my head wouldn't stop spinning. "I'm going to lie back down."

"Here," Erik said, dropping to his knees beside the bed, supporting me with one strong arm, his fingers curling around my shoulder. "I'll help you."

I leaned against him. I was so tired, and everything was so dizzy. The buttons on his shirt were hard, stabilizing, against my ear and neck. I could hear his heart beating, feel his chest rise and fall. He was solid, a rock in a sea of seething, boiling water.

He kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes, reaching out with one hand to pull weakly at his shirt.

"Don't leave," I whispered.

He shifted me in his arms, turning and lowering me so he sat against the headboard and my head rested in his lap. "I won't." His fingers ran through my hair, smoothing its hot tendrils back from my face. "Get some sleep, sweetheart. I'll be here when you wake up."

Comforted by this knowledge, I slept.