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I woke to the sound of rain, a fierce pattering against the wooden shingles of the roof. My room was cold and dark, dimmed by the ominous weather that fell over the lake house. The bookshelf against the wall was nearly in shadow. So was the painting that leaned beside the locked door. I pushed back the covers and padded slowly into the frigid bathroom.
When I returned, I pulled one of Mara's loaned items from a wooden chair: a thin dressing gown that slipped easily over my shoulders and tied at my waist. She had good taste in clothing; the dressing gown was warm and yet not heavy, and the pale yellow was somber enough for my tired eyes. I went to the window and looked out, intending to examine the terrace, but the rain obscured the whole view. All I could see was gray water, and the ever-shifting lake.
The door to Erik's room stood open, so I went downstairs.
He was sitting at the table, a cup of lukewarm coffee by his hand. The sketch of the Crocettis lay flattened on the smooth wood before him. His eyes were lowered: he was intent on their little inky faces, faces I'd already memorized. (The swirling widow's peak over Pietro's thin brow; Stella's grave, ambivalent eyes; her almost-frown.) It was the girl whose image was strongest: the artist had drawn her first and added the in boy later, for he stood slightly to her left and behind her. His face was partly in shadow; hers shone with embellished light. At her feet was a single bird. Above his head was the sun.
"Symbolism," Erik said, to me. I sat down across from him, and he turned the sketch towards me. Yes, it was symbolism, no doubt, but of what?
"Pietro drew this?"
Erik indicated the right corner of the sketch with his thumbnail. I leaned forward to squint at the place he indicated.
A small, circular P.M.C. adorned a ribbon held by a hastily penciled-in bird, its single eye turned to the viewer. The massive empty wings were outstretched; it seemed to float half-there, half-not, above the two siblings' heads. I recognized it: it was an albatross. The bird at Stella's feet was its newborn chick.
"How long ago was this drawn?"
"The Carabinieri don't know for certain. They estimate a few months. It appears recent: the paper is not worn, and the ink isn't smudged or damaged in any way. It could have been kept in a dry place, but then it would have yellowed. I would say, not less than a few months, as the Carabinieri thought."
"But the pencil – odd, that he would add his signature in something other than ink. Can we be certain he drew it?"
Erik looked at me, and I saw that there were thick blue smudges under his eyes, emphasized by his lightened hair. "Does it matter?"
"It might."
He shook his head. "I don't know. They don't know. They brought the sketch so they'd have a fairly recent portrait of the Crocettis. Favero said it was a good likeness of them, and he gave it to them when they asked for a description. Pietro had showed it to him a few months ago. Of course, I heard this secondhand, as both Mara and Dante did, so the information may have changed."
"Luckily, it is not your job to ascertain whether our leads are correct or not," said a deeper voice, and the outside door slammed.
Dante stood on the rug before the front door, his dark coat and low-brimmed hat dripping water around his feet. His mouth was turned up in gentle amusement: as if we were misbehaving children, and he, the disapproving, conspiratorial uncle.
"It will become our job if we find ourselves trapped with the Inspector because of them," Erik said, his voice too calm. "I don't suppose you thought of that before you agreed to drag Irene and I all the way down here."
"Originally," Dante said, ridding himself of his coat and hat and leaning down to unlace his boots, "it was only supposed to be Irene."
"Oh, that's right," I said, cuttingly, "it was only supposed to be I who was kidnapped and forced into a dangerous investigation against my will. I'd forgotten that. Thank you for reminding me."
Dante's smile changed into something a little more angry than amused; his fingers paused on the laces, and Erik glanced sideways at me, one pale eyebrow flickering upwards in commiseration. He relaxed back into his chair, looked across at Dante, let his breath out in a long hiss. I picked up the sketch, smiling.
"And so what do we get, but you," Erik murmured, "you and another Carabinieri who don't know much of anything, and who don't care about the two of us. If Irene and I are going to be thrust into the midst of another one of the Inspector's crazed plans, we need good information. Very good information." He paused. "Wouldn't you agree, Mara?"
His last question was directed to somewhere past my head: I looked away and saw Mara coming down the staircase, her hand on the banister.
"Dante," she said, "what have you been saying to our guests?"
Her husband rose to his feet, discarding his shoes under the coat rack, and went into the kitchen. He spoke over his shoulder as he began to rummage through the cabinets. "Really, Mara. I know you heard the entire conversation."
"Don't be a child, Dante." She lingered at the base of the staircase, her hand still on the curve of the banister. "Did you have a nice night, Irene?"
"It was passable," I said, and set down the sketch. "I don't suppose you have some sort of plan for our transport into Venice. Also, I need new luggage, if you wish me to stay in Venice for any amount of time. Mine were lost, you could say." Of course I hadn't brought much of anything with me - I'd left Paris forcibly, trapped in Christophe's drugged hellhole of a carriage.
Erik swallowed the rest of his coffee and set it down in its saucer with a crash. "As were mine. All I have is Christophe's suitcase, which is sadly lacking in necessities. And while we're on the subject of Venice, who are you planning to communicate with there? Can you convince them that I am supposed to be traveling with Irene?"
Mara hesitated.
"Perhaps I should rephrase," Erik said. "How will you convince them that I am supposed to be traveling with her?"
"You could simply stay here," was Dante's cool reply. He came back into the sitting room, carrying a tray of toast, nuts, and coffee. He sat down across from Erik, his face impassive, and reached into the bowl of nuts for a cashew. "It would be much easier if we only brought Irene. Especially since our police friends are not expecting another man."
I reached for the coffee pot and a cup before Dante could stop me. "Then you tell them Christophe insisted upon coming. We can continue under our charade – or, to make things simpler, you tell them the truth. That the Parisians were unable to stop me from bringing Erik, and so we intend to stay together in Venice. Yes, it will sound as though you bungled the assignment –" – Mara's lips had parted in dismay – "– but you did, after all, when you attacked the two of us. I am quite sick of lies."
"We will have to leave out the part where I impersonated an officer of the law," Erik conceded, "but I'm sure the two of you can handle that easily enough. I mean, I do hope you can."
"But – you – we're not answering to you," Dante snapped, breaking an almond in half and brushing the debris from his shirt. "I do not think this is a good idea. Mara, you can't possibly agree with it?"
His tone was too anxious; I felt a surge of relief. Mara leaned against the back of his chair, her lean body relaxed against the wood, one deft hand on his shoulder. She tilted her head slightly, tugged at the magenta sleeve of her dress. Her eyes closed briefly in thought.
Then she sighed, smiled, opened her eyes. "We can handle it."
"Good," I said, as firmly as I could. Inside I was rejoicing; perhaps this would work, perhaps we would finally have something to stand on. "Good. Now I need to buy new luggage. Is there somewhere in town you can take me? And is there a good doctor? I would really like someone to look at Erik's wound."
"Irene, I –"
"Not yet," Dante interrupted, breaking into Erik's immediate objections. "If we're going to include Erik I want to know if he can work with us. From what we've heard, Phantom, you're a dangerous eccentric with a flair for criminal activity. You live in the catacombs of Paris and spy on people. How can we trust you? And why should we let you join the investigation?"
Erik blinked lazily, incredulously at him. "You want to know if you can trust me?"
The Carabinieri man said nothing, only looked at him without any expression, chilling me. I had been right the first time I'd met him: his eyes were as dead and cold as a corpse's, and I did not envy the man who sat behind the stare. He wasn't quite all right, I thought, in the head – or perhaps he was, and the world he'd seen was not. And it had changed him.
"You can't," Erik said. He rose to his feet in a single lithe movement, as if he'd never taken Christophe's bullet in his shoulder. "You aren't going to be able to. Irene and I, we trust each other. But we will not trust you."
Mara stirred as if to protest.
"Either of you," I said to her, and got to my own feet, taking a piece of toast from Dante's tray. I sauntered after Erik, my feet tapping on the wooden floor. "But you can trust that we will help you find the Crocettis. Otherwise –"
"– if you try to cross us, we promise you won't be happy with what you get," Erik finished.
I turned and looked at the two of them. They were quite still; both obviously fuming, but something laughed in Mara's eyes. Dante's arms were ridged with taut muscle; he did not smile.
"Shopping," I reminded them. "Do you have a horse?"
They didn't have a horse. But they did have a nice wet path through the forest.
Erik and I slogged through the mud, carrying flimsy umbrellas and wearing too-thin clothing. Erik's borrowed coat clung damply to his shoulders and chest and back; Mara's cape flicked water into my eyes with every step. But it was nice to be out of the lake house, nice to be away from Mara and Dante for a while. Even when we'd been on the terrace last night, we'd known that the Carabinieri were listening to our conversation.
The rain had started as a light drizzle, softening since the morning, but as soon as we reached the midpoint of our walk, the world vanished under a deluge of furious downpour. For a while we managed to continue without mishap, but then -
"Good God," Erik finally gasped. A particularly vicious surge of wind had just turned his umbrella inside out. He wrestled with it while I tried to cover him with mine, both of us rapidly growing exasperated. For a moment it seemed the bothersome umbrella would bend to his will, but then it ripped itself from his hand and sailed off among the trees.
He stared after it, his eyes wide. I watched him struggle to hold in a curse; I was keeping back one of my own. Those wretched Carabinieri.
At last he burst out, "What is with this weather? It is never so – d– so terribly rainy in Paris!"
"You're always inside; how would you know?" I shouted over the howling wind, blinking against the water. My umbrella pulled at my hands, fighting to get away, but I dug my feet into the mud and held on. "It does become uncomfortable sometimes, but at least we have buildings there! These trees are completely unhelpful!"
"I see the town," Erik shouted back, one hand up to block the rain. He started forward again; I scurried beside him, trying to corral my skirts into behaving. Erik's hair straggled over his face in pale knots, thrust awry by the wind; trails of water ran down his chin and into the neck of his coat. Luckily, his water-repellent makeup stayed in place. "We'll be there in a matter of minutes. Here, take my hand – these puddles are rather –"
Splash. Too late; I'd already misjudged the width of a puddle and stepped directly into it. Water flew up around me in a geyser of brown liquid; my skirts filled instantly with gritty mud. I brushed a soaked hand across my face and looked down at my waterlogged, squishy shoes. My umbrella sagged downwards.
Erik removed the umbrella, took hold of my waist with both hands, and lifted me out, setting me precariously on the shore of yet another monstrous puddle. This one stretched all the way across the road. He snapped open my umbrella and held it over our heads. There was really no point in doing so. I would never be able to repair the damage done to this dress.
Well, at least it was Mara's, not mine.
We looked at the remainder of the swamped path, I wringing water apathetically from the fine material of the gown, and then looked back towards from where we'd come.
"I knew this was a bad idea," I said, trying to clean my mud-stained hands in the stinging rain.
Erik looked down at me, bemused. The rain shrieked and hissed around us like a crowd of flying banshees. "What?"
I took hold of his shoulder and tugged, pulling until his ear was next to my mouth. "Mara and Dante – they're probably back at the house with a fire burning. What do you say we take a hotel room in town? There's no need to crawl back to their house in shame."
"Do we have enough money to do that?" Erik said doubtfully. There was a smear of black mud under his ear; I swiped at it with a finger, lingering under the curve of his earlobe – the mud was thickest there. He shivered, then reached up and brushed my cheek fleetingly with his thumb. His skin was hot.
A sudden warm prickle ran down my spine. I moved a step away, patting at my skirts. "Of course I do. I don't think the water reached it yet. Ah, yes, it's fine."
"Then let's go on," Erik said. He shifted the umbrella to his other hand, took a firmer footing in the mud, and offered me his arm.
I took it. We set off towards town, slipping and sliding and completely ungraceful, the rain screaming at our back, the wind scouring us, the forest a furious mess of mud and water. After a few more steps Erik lost the second umbrella. After twenty I lost my shoe.
But I didn't lose the money, and that was well, for by the time we reached the town, we looked like homeless vagabonds.
The hotel was, to our surprise (but not really our regret), not quite as comfortable as the Lake House.
Erik had taken to referring to it in capitals, for by doing so, he said, "it gives it an air of superiority, which is how Dante and Mara view the world. Through lenses of their own pigheaded arrogance."
I hastened to press my hand to my mouth before I could laugh at him. Dear Erik, who always accused everyone else of magnified self-importance.
"Yes, dear. Quite true." I lifted my wine glass to my lips and took a deep, refreshing swallow.
We were sitting in the lobby restaurant, clean and dry once more. After a rather long round of negotiations, among which had included a gradual increase of the original rooms' price, the manager had sent some poor busboy to procure proper clothing for us across the street. He'd also graciously allowed us to dry off in the hall with an armful of hotel towels (sadly, they were rather threadbare).
"You should watch for moths," I had told one of the hotel maids, who had, along with six other employees, been pressed into sudden service. She was holding my single remaining shoe; it dripped muddy water and flattened leaves onto the waxy floor. She looked at me with total incomprehension, her gray eyes as dull as a rabbit's.
"Moths," I said, wondering if there was mud stuck in my ears, and if that was why I hadn't heard her response. "The towels – they have holes, you see."
After another short silence, she curtsied and departed, still holding my shoe.
Erik looked across at me with his usual sanguine expression. "Moths?"
"Moths," I repeated, and wrung out my towel into a proffered basin. There was rather a lot of mud in my hair. "Lots of them. Perhaps they don't wash their towels?"
"Dear," he said, "perhaps it is not moths."
"Bedbugs?" I wondered.
The manager instantly reappeared. "What? What did you say?"
"Oh, nothing," Erik said, and smiled the Phantom's smile, not Christophe's gleaming feral grin. His own smile was all allure and menace; people faltered at its appearance, but drew nearer to it, too. He finished drying the back of his neck and dropped his blackened towel into another basin. "We'd like some lunch, I think."
"Your clothing, Monsieur?" the manager inquired, his eyes widening. "The busboy will be back shortly, I believe."
Erik looked questioningly at me.
"We'll wait for the new clothing before we eat," I agreed, wringing out the ends of my hair. "Perhaps you could show us our rooms."
And so after bathing and drying and changing into new clothing, we dined.
"I wonder," I said, after we'd gone upstairs from lunch, "what Antoinette and the others are doing now."
Erik untied his cravat and laid it carefully on the edge of his dresser. "She's probably rehearsing for the new show. The Count is wandering around wringing his hands, and Nadir is bothering the police."
"They're worried about us, I'm sure. I wish we had some way of communicating with them. If only the mail service wasn't controlled by the Parisian police – but we could ask Mara to send a letter for us."
"I wouldn't chance it, if I were you," Erik said. He yawned, cracking his jaw, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. "You know they don't trust us at all. Are you going to get some sleep tonight? Perhaps you should try for a nap now."
I turned from the mirror, still braiding my hair. "Why do you ask?"
"You seem tense, though," he said, and crossed the room to me. "You don't sleep well when you're like this."
"Like what?" I said, knowing what he meant, but wanting to know how he knew. My head was light with fatigue and my feet were burning with soreness, but I didn't want to rest. I felt as though I still had work to do – that there was still something waiting for me to unravel, to figure out. The Crocettis hovered at the back of my mind; Mara and Dante loomed in the forefront, wary and wanting me to hurry back to the lake house.
Erik only smiled at me, his eyes gentle; I looked back, almost unaware of his presence. Something was bothering me, something I'd forgotten –
Hurry. I had to hurry. Yes, that was it.
"We don't have much time, Erik, remember?" I spun back to the mirror, my hands darting upward again to my hair. "Two days – well, one now – we have to be in Venice for the exchange. We'll have to leave immediately in the morning with the Carabinieri."
"It's still only the afternoon," Erik said. I saw him grow closer in the mirror, saw him reach out towards me. He took hold of my shoulders with his strong thin hands, and said, his voice soft in my left ear, "Relax, Irene. We'll be there in time to save her. You should get some rest."
"And what will you be doing?" I asked, through a widening yawn.
His fingers found a particularly annoying ache in my left shoulder: he curled his fingers into the knot, pulling gently at the tightened muscle, and the ache began to seep away. I felt myself begin to relax into his touch, and my eyes fluttered shut.
In fact, I didn't remember I'd even asked him a question until I woke several hours later.
Mara and Dante had arrived at the hotel by the time I went downstairs for supper, still drowsy with sleep. I didn't recognize them until I realized that Erik was not seated with an unfamiliar couple, but with the undercover Carabinieri. Dante had changed into a fashionable black suit, and Mara wore pearls and diamonds around her delicate throat.
My feet sank luxuriously into the carpet as I went towards them. I was thankful I'd stopped to put on some jewelry: an emerald choker, with matching square-cut earrings (courtesy of the manager, who was very pleased with our bargaining price).
The Italian police were seated with their backs to me, but Erik's eyes rose to mine as I approached. He wore a look that said, quite clearly,
"Save me."
I hastened to take the chair by him.
Our company was rather unpleasant. Dante glowered vaguely in my direction, his eyes shuttered. Mara spent an inordinately long time looking over her menu. None of us spoke until the waiter had arrived and departed with our orders.
"Something wrong?" I asked, deliberately lacing my tone with cheer, and directed the question to Dante.
His pale eyes moved from me to Erik, then back again. "We expected you to return to the lake house -" – the Lake House, my mind supplied instantaneously – "instead of taking rooms at the hotel."
"The storm changed our plans," Erik said coolly.
"You could have returned," Mara countered, not raising her eyes from her closed menu. "You could have hired one of the carriages."
I waited until she looked up before replying. "And sent the poor driver home in the storm? I think not."
"You will not be acting like this in Venice," she said, slapping her menu down. Her face was remote.
Erik chuckled. He reached out a long arm and lifted a piece of complimentary bread from its basket. "You expect us to follow orders while we're there, do you? What precisely will you be doing? Corralling officers around the Piazza, scaring off the Inspector's men?"
"It will depend on the situation," Dante said, but his voice was too flat to be truthful.
"Oh, really?" I said, fixing him with a stare. "I believe our best course of action will be to act alone, without your officers milling obviously about."
"We have plains-clothes men," Mara snapped. "And of course you did not realize we were undercover police, did you? The Inspector will not be able to do so –"
I shook my head emphatically, cutting her off. "The Inspector knows policemen. Didn't you read the report from Paris? His very own people masqueraded as Parisian police. You will only get your people and us killed, and Stella kidnapped all over again. If you want the girl safe, you will have to let Erik and I do this by ourselves."
Dante's laugh was almost a howl. "You? You? You want us to let you two run an undercover operation?" He broke off, sputtering in hysteria; then he muttered: "You are children. Idiotic children."
"You think you can do the exchange alone?" Mara asked, looking nearly as incredulous as Dante. "How precisely would you manage to do that?"
"It wasn't as if you would have been much help anyway," I said, swallowing a bite of bread. "Look, you were originally going to have policemen stationed strategically around the Piazza, correct? With perhaps one or two closer to the carriage in case something went wrong?"
"We don't even know if the Inspector plans to bring her in a carriage," Dante interrupted.
I brushed this aside. "Yes, well, he'll bring her into the Piazza somehow – you will still have someone quite close to Erik and I. Maybe it would have been you two. Whatever the case, you originally wanted only me to act as bait: Stella would be brought in, I would pretend to comply with the exchange, you or your men would stop the Inspector from taking me while you whisked the girl away. But I say this: what if I am alone? What if Erik distracts the kidnappers, and in the commotion, I save Stella?"
Erik leaned forward, his mouth tightening – I hadn't discussed this with him; I'd just come up with it on the fly. Dante and Mara shook their heads as one.
"This is a child we are talking about, Irene," Mara said, tapping her fingertips on the table. "A little girl. You cannot be trusted with her life. You are not police; you have no experience in this area."
A waiter stopped by our table with our plates, and we fell silent. I looked down at the steaming ravioli that had been placed in front of me, not really seeing it. The waiter left, frightened away by our thick silence, and then the rest of the dinner party all spoke at once.
"Irene, I think it may be better if –"
"You can't actually be considering this mad plan, can you, Mara –"
"But maybe, if there were policemen in the Piazza, perhaps you could –"
I tapped my spoon loudly against the side of my wine glass, and everyone finally dropped into silence, breathing quickly. None of them looked happy: Erik was glaring at Dante; Dante was staring, his chin lifted, at Mara, lips pulled back in a sneer. Mara's hazel eyes were fixed penetratingly on me.
"You realize," she said, "that we do not know anything about your skills in this matter."
"I do," I said. A rush of fierce pride unfurled in my chest. "But we have them. I am quite good with children, and Erik – well, dear, we'll have to show them what you can do."
Erik's eyes lit, but he masked his enthusiasm instantly. He turned his gaze on the two Carabinieri. "I'll need a few things, of course. And we'll need privacy. Not here."
"The lake house?" Mara poked at her noodles, obviously thinking about this. "What sort of things?"
"We'll discuss that later," Erik replied. "And yes, the lake house. After dinner, I'll show you what – well, what experience, shall I say – I have in creating distractions. Actually, illusions would be a better word, I think." He shrugged, his muscles sliding under his coat, and took a bite of pasta.
Mara pursed her lips, ignoring Dante's scowl. "Alright. We'll go there after dinner."
"I hope your abilities are as noteworthy as you seem to think," Dante warned. His eyes were narrowed.
Erik only smiled briefly, still chewing. He wasn't about to be dragged into another argument.
Perhaps we'll pull this off, I thought, as I dug into my hot food. Erik had a considerable amount of experience in illusions. He'd lived amongst secrets for years, hidden under his mask, invisible in his underground home, slipping noiselessly through the passages of the Opera unseen. Sleight-of-hand was child's play to him; mass distractions: thoughtful fun.
Come to think of it, some of his tricks had been absolutely brilliant.
I grinned. I'd just remembered the exploding cakes.