Fate stands near me
Fate, state clearly
Whether there will be another card
Receive us
Time deceives us
The only moment in our lives that ever really mattered, Fate, is now!
~ Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Beethoven's Last Night"
Christine Daaé knew she must not look back.
She could still feel the weight of the ring where she had held it out to him and closed his reluctant fingers over it. The sensation of their hands touching for the last time still tingled on her skin.
It was over now. She had let go of the last thing that might bind her to him.
Christine knew she ought to feel relief, hope, joy. After all these long months of fear, she was free.
Down on the nearby edge of the lake, she could see Raoul waiting by the boat – her brave, loving Raoul, who had been ready to give up his life tonight if it would mean her freedom. Like Orpheus in the ancient myth, Christine had saved her beloved from death – all they had to do now was make their way out of the underworld together, and their lives could truly begin.
… And, just like Orpheus, Christine could not stop herself from looking back.
The ruler of this underworld, her false angel of music, the Phantom of the Opera, had fallen to his knees on the floor of the candlelit chamber. She saw him cradling the discarded bridal veil, burying his skull-like face in it. His back was turned to her, but from the way his shoulders trembled beneath his tailcoat, she knew he was weeping.
Christine knew she ought to feel relief, hope, and joy, and part of her did feel those things. But as she watched the man before her now – not an angel, not a ghost, only a man – the feeling that overwhelmed them all was grief. She wished she could help him, but there was nothing more she could do for his dark, broken soul.
She lingered for a long moment, watching him in the silence, a fresh well of tears stinging in her eyes.
Then, from somewhere across the lake, a new sound reached her ears.
Dozens of heavy, pursuing footsteps, thundering on stone and crashing in the water. Angry voices, urging each other to track down the murderer, find him, hunt him out …
She'd already heard them some minutes before, when the Phantom had warned her and Raoul to leave before the mob could find the two of them. But the voices and footsteps were closer now – they had found the right path, and it wouldn't be long before they found him.
Why wasn't he escaping too? He had to know the deadly fate that would await him if he were captured.
Did he want them to find him?
Did he want to die?
Christine couldn't bear to dwell on that thought. Before she even realized what she was doing, she hurried back into the chamber.
The Phantom looked up, confusion written on his haunted face. "Christine … ?"
She caught his wrist.
"Come with us."
He stared at her, stunned, unbelieving … and in no state of mind to refuse.
Slowly, the Phantom got to his feet. The tear-soaked veil fell from his grasp, forgotten. Before he moved to follow her, though, there was one thing he still had enough presence of mind to consider.
He gestured for her to wait. When she gave him a look of impatient desperation, he waved one hand over his uncovered death's head of a face, and quickly retreated deeper into the chamber.
There was a heavy wooden door along one wall that she knew led to the rest of his underground home (he had forced her through it briefly earlier, before he'd thrown her into an oubliette-like room with the wedding dress and refused to let her out until she put the dress on). Beside the door, where ordinary men might have mounted a rack for hats and coats, he kept a rack of masks.
She saw him consider two: another white porcelain one, nearly identical to the one she'd torn from his face earlier that night, and an older one of brown leather, battered and scratched from years of hard use. He picked up the porcelain one at first … then seemed to change his mind. He left it abandoned on the nearby throne, chose the leather one instead, fixed it over his face, and returned to her side.
She hurried them both down to the lakeshore, his hand in hers, an inverse of all the times he'd led her through the depths of the opera house. Raoul saw them approaching together, and his blue eyes shot wide in shock. His throat still burned from the cord that had been wrapped around it mere minutes ago, but he managed to ask, "Christine … ?"
"We have to hurry!" was all she could think of to say. "They're almost here!"
The two men did as she said. Right now, after everything they had just been through, it was easier to do than to think.
The little gondola had not been built to hold three people, and navigating it across the sepulchral lake was a challenge. More than once, water swamped over the too-low sides – by the time they reached the far shore, they were standing in several inches of it, and skirts, trouser legs, and the few remaining decorative cushions were thoroughly soaked.
Raoul, despite his near-death experience, had insisted on poling the boat, but it had been up to the Phantom to guide their path across the dark water. When they finally docked at a small jetty and climbed out (all three shaking water from their shoes as they did), the masked man pointed to an archway where a flight of stone and concrete stairs stretched up into the darkness. "This way. It leads out to the Rue Scribe, we can evade them there."
Christine and Raoul let him lead the way up the stairs. It wasn't only because he was the only one who knew the way – even if the three of them were cooperating for the moment, neither of them were going to turn their backs on him.
The musty smells of damp stone and lake water slowly gave way to fresh air (as fresh as the streets of Paris ever got, at least). When the stairs finally ended, they found themselves in a dark passageway, which stopped at a narrow alcove barred by an iron gate. Beyond the gate, the two young people could see that the exit did, as promised, open onto the Rue Scribe.
As the Phantom moved to unlock the gate, Raoul knew he could not go any farther without asking one thing. Even with the thrill of action and escape from death still running high in his blood, pushing out almost all sensible thought, he could not forget that he was working alongside a man who had tried to kill him a very short time ago. If they were going to succeed in this escape, something in his thinking had to shift.
"Monsieur," he whispered, his throat still sore, "what shall we call you?"
I will not call you 'the Phantom' anymore, was his unspoken meaning.
The other man understood. He drew in a deep breath, air whispering through the nose of the leather mask, and finally answered.
"... Erik. My name is Erik."
It was no surprise when Meg Giry was the first one to reach the lair. After spending much of her girlhood in the Palais Garnier, she knew its secret paths almost as well as her mother. Antoinette had never told her the location of the Phantom's home (for all her mistakes over the years, she'd always tried to keep her daughter safe), but the inquisitive young dancer had long suspected it. Tonight, heart pounding with fear for her dearest friend, she hadn't bothered to wait for anyone else as she raced through passageways, splashed through shallows, and finally reached the abandoned chamber.
Before long, the rest of the mob caught up with her.
Gendarmes, opera workers, and even a few brave patrons tore through the lair. They broke down the wooden door – knocking over furniture, ripping down drapes and decor, even smashing pieces from the organ as they hunted the prey they'd come for. Two of the huge candelabras crashed over, setting a Persian rug on fire, and it was only luck that the crush of feet and bodies quickly snuffed out the flames.
Bloodlust turned to bewilderment as the mob realized they were too late. There was no sign of the man they had come for, nor of the woman he had carried off. Only a few clues had been left behind – ones that raised far more questions than they answered.
In one corner of the large chamber, a mannequin with a disturbingly detailed face lay stripped bare in a jumble of limbs. On the other side, a weighted catgut rope seemed to have been dropped, one end curiously burned. In a tiny, cell-like room, they found the ruffled peach-and-black dress Christine Daaé had worn as Aminta, crumpled on the floor as if she'd been in a hurry to remove it.
And on the huge, dark throne, Meg found the mysteriously discarded porcelain mask.
It hadn't taken long for news of what was going on to spread beyond the opera house to the streets of Paris. By the time Meg managed to make her way back to the surface, she was surrounded by more police, curious civilians, and packs of reporters arriving on the scene. They attacked her with questions like shots from a firing squad, asking what she'd seen, what she knew, what had happened, what she thought might have happened …
Thanks to her years on the stage, Meg weathered being the center of attention with calm and grace. She answered the questions she wanted to, deftly avoided the ones she did not, and smiled sweetly enough that none of the male reporters minded either way. When one enterprising journalist, who'd arrived on the scene prepared with a field camera, asked her to pose for photographs with the mask she'd found ("It'll make for a better shot if a pretty girl holds it," he'd told her with a smarmy smile), she indulged him long enough for a few pictures.
At last, as the chaos finally began to die down, Meg quietly managed to slip away from the crowd.
She went in search of her mother.
After she'd shown the Vicomte de Chagny to the edge of the lake, Antoinette Giry had made herself scarce from the pandemonium of the night.
She still felt guilty for not having accompanied the young man the rest of the way. She'd warned him how to guard against the Punjab lasso, but she knew there were other tricks Erik could use against those who trespassed in his domain.
But what good would my presence have done him? the ballet mistress tried to tell herself.
Antoinette could defend herself in a pinch, but she knew she would be no match for Erik in a fight. And with the way her former friend's madness had escalated over the past months, she had no hope that she would have been able to talk him into a peaceful outcome either – especially not now, after she'd betrayed him to his enemy.
So she'd stayed in the shadows and hidden places, watching and avoiding the gendarmes as they tried to restore order in the aftermath of their disastrously failed plan to capture the Phantom of the Opera. She'd overheard them discussing how things could have gone so badly wrong – most of it regarding Christine Daaé's peculiar behavior onstage.
"She must've known who it really was," Antoinette overheard Commissaire Mifroid say to one of his junior officers. "That costume covered a lot, but surely she would've recognized his voice was different. She knew we were ready to shoot, she could've made a break for it."
"Unless she was expecting him," the younger man replied, with an icy, knowing smirk and a narrowing of his flint-gray eyes. "And she was, perhaps, cooperating …"
Antoinette had gritted her teeth when she heard that. No one who had paid any attention to how terrified Christine was in the weeks leading up to the premiere of Don Juan Triumphant would have believed she was in any way the Phantom's willing accomplice. Antoinette had very nearly shown herself at that moment, ready to scold the young officer for suggesting such a thing … but she'd thought better of it when she saw the stage clear, making way for the workers who had come to take Piangi's body to the morgue.
The thought of that still made her sick.
Antoinette Giry had not particularly liked Ubaldo Piangi. She'd thought the tenor was vain and stupid, much as she'd thought Joseph Buquet was a morbid blabbermouth who took too much delight in scaring the ballet girls under her charge. But she knew that neither of them had been bad men at heart, and they certainly hadn't deserved to die simply for having the bad luck to be in Erik's way.
When she'd seen Carlotta on the stage earlier, sobbing over her lover's corpse, it had reminded Antoinette all too achingly of the night her husband Jules had been killed.
She remembered the words Erik had spoken to her almost nine years ago, on the night she'd agreed to be his envoy in the Opera Populaire once the Garnier opened: "I'm not an assassin anymore. I'm a patron of the arts."
She'd been a fool to believe him. And because of her foolishness, two innocent men were dead.
Possibly three …
As minutes began to turn into hours, the searchers failed to turn up any sign of phantom, soprano, or vicomte. And Antoinette's fear began to turn into puzzlement.
If Raoul had, by some miracle, managed to rescue Christine, she would have expected them to return to the upper levels of the opera house, to let their friends and colleagues know they were safe. If nothing else, she would have expected the vicomte to come back for his carriage, but a quick glimpse at the street outside the Rotunda entrance told Antoinette that the berline was still there. And if the two of them hadn't escaped alive … well, she would have expected the searchers to find something.
Antoinette knew she couldn't keep waiting anymore – she had to go search for herself. If she didn't, it would drive her mad.
She made her way out into the night, a silent figure in black, heading down the Rue Scribe. From what she could gather from listening, no one had yet found the gated entrance there, and if Erik really had made a final escape from the opera house, it was the route she would expect him to take.
"Mama!"
Meg had caught up with her almost before Antoinette realized it. She hurried to her mother's side, still dressed in a vest and breeches, her blonde hair catching the light of the gas streetlamps.
"Mama, where are you going?"
For a moment, Antoinette considered telling her daughter to turn back. There was still potential danger in what she was doing now. But Meg, she knew, must be going mad with uncertainty as well – and besides, if Antoinette told her no, she'd most likely go off searching on her own anyway.
She beckoned for Meg to follow her. "To find answers."
Meg could hardly keep quiet as they made their way down the Rue Scribe. Her voice rose with dread and frustration as she told her mother all that she'd seen beneath the opera house. "It doesn't make any sense! If she did get away, why hasn't she come back? Did he drag her off somewhere else?" Her face went pale as she remembered. "Her dress! Mama, could he have—?"
Antoinette bit her lip. Until very recently, she would never have believed her childhood friend had it in him to violate a woman.
But then, there'd also been a time when she never would have believed Erik would murder anyone.
"... I don't know, dear one. We won't know anything until we make another search."
She led Meg to the shadowed alcove on the Rue Scribe. As she had many times in the past, Antoinette couldn't help feeling that the light from the streetlamps almost seemed to deliberately avoid it.
The gate was unlocked. That in itself said much – Erik, perfectionistic and distrustful of the outside world as he was, had never once left it unlocked in Antoinette's memory.
Mother and daughter started to make their way into the darkened passage. Meg, tormented by thoughts of all the awful things that might be happening to her friend, had to stop herself from charging ahead once again. This wasn't a straightforward rescue mission anymore, the young ballerina told herself – they had to be detectives now, like in the novels and magazine stories of crime and mystery that she enjoyed, going slowly and looking for clues …
Like a scene from one of those stories, Meg started to hear footsteps behind her.
She tried to keep walking, tried to tell herself that the sound wasn't real. Meg would be the first one to admit that her imagination could run away from her sometimes (there was a reason she'd always been the first one to declare that the Phantom was wreaking some new havoc).
Until she saw her mother freeze in the darkness. She'd heard the footsteps too.
"... Meg, stay close."
The two of them halted, standing with their backs up against the stone wall. Whoever had followed them into the passageway was still coming – and drawing closer.
Meg saw her mother raise her ivory-handled walking stick, her grip tight. Antoinette might not think much of her chances in a fight, but she would fight to the death (hers or anyone else's) if it meant protecting her child …
The ballet mistress stepped forward, cane at the ready to strike. In the same instant, Meg caught a glimpse as light from the streetlamp outlined the silhouette of a man: broad-shouldered, wearing a tall cap, a pistol in one hand raised at the level of his eyes.
When he saw the two women, he visibly relaxed, lowered the gun, and spoke in a deep, accented voice. "Madame Giry. Mademoiselle Giry."
Antoinette relaxed at the same moment, and lowered her stick. Meg was surprised to see her mother actually smile.
"Monsieur le Daroga. I was wondering when you'd finally make an appearance."
If any of the trio had been thinking clearly, they probably would have gone back for the carriage. It would have made their flight through the city faster and easier, there was no doubt of that.
But it would also have meant the risk of being seen. Of having to deal with questions – not just from others, but from themselves. And in their heightened, near-panicked state of mind, following action instead of thought, none of them were ready to face that. The only thing on their minds now was the bone-deep instinct of any living creature escaping from capture: the need to run.
And so they ran.
The strange threesome made their way northwest across Paris. They kept to the darkness of the side streets and back alleys, knowing that their appearance – a young man in his shirtsleeves, his clothes half-torn and his hair still soaking wet, a young woman in a damp, disheveled wedding gown, and an older man in a full dress suit and a scarred leather mask – would draw all sorts of attention on the larger, better-lit boulevards. The night breeze was cold, the sky black and heavy with the threat of rain, but in their excitement and exertion, they barely noticed.
Christine didn't have to ask where they were running to. She knew that, if the plan tonight had succeeded, Raoul had intended to whisk her away to the grand townhouse his family owned in the eighth arrondissement. He had been living there for a year now, ever since his return from the Navy, and she knew he had meant for it to be their home together after they were married.
And now they were bringing the man who had tried to …
But she still wasn't ready to think about that.
The Chagny hôtel particulier was on the Rue de Monceau, between the Boulevard Malesherbes and the Avenue de Messine. It was more than a mile's walk from the Palais Garnier, and by the time they arrived, Christine's feet were in agony – underneath the wedding gown, she still wore the boots from her costume, and Aminta had been dressed for a night of seduction, not a hike across the city.
Raoul hadn't looked at a clock since much earlier that evening, but he guessed the hour must be close to midnight now. He'd left his pocket watch in his dress coat, which he'd discarded on the lakeshore before diving in, and he spared a moment to be grateful he hadn't left his keys in the coat as well. Waking up the servants to let him in, and then having to explain his bedraggled appearance and why he'd fled across the city on foot (not to mention having to explain the presence of his two companions) … he didn't have it in him to do that right now.
The lanterns had been extinguished for the night, and the barred windows of the logis-porche were dark and silent. As quietly as he could, Raoul unlocked the front gate, and the three of them made their way across the entrance court to the house.
Part of the vicomte's mind was still cognizant enough to wonder why the Pha– … why Erik was still following them. If all he'd wanted was to escape the mob, Raoul would have expected the other man to part ways with him and Christine the moment they stepped out onto the Rue Scribe. When he'd released them, hadn't he been the one who screamed at the couple to go, go now, and leave him?
Was he still plotting something? Biding his time, waiting for another chance to kill Raoul and take Christine back?
But if that was his intent, wouldn't it have been easier to make his move during one of the many moments when the three of them had been fleeing down some dark alley, instead of now, when they were inside Raoul's high-walled, well-guarded home?
Inside, their footsteps echoed in the shadowy, limestone-walled foyer. Not knowing what else to do, Raoul fell back into the role he had been trained from childhood to play in this sort of situation: that of a gracious host making his guests welcome.
He lit a nearby candle, and escorted Christine and the Ph– … Erik up the majestic stone staircase. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that none of the multitude of Chagny relatives or family friends were visiting right now. All the guest rooms were free for the choosing, and there'd be fewer people to worry about running into in the halls.
In his earlier state of mind – weakened from terror and lack of air, wracked with guilt over how his plan tonight had ended with his beloved and so many others in danger, and then riding the thrill of escape that had filled his blood – Raoul would probably have walked straight into the mouth of Hell if Christine had asked him to. But now that he was in his own house again, a place of calm and familiarity, the full realization of just what they had done was beginning to sink in. It rose up inside him, chilling him like an upwelling of deep, cold ocean flowing into sunlit shallows.
Even the pain in his throat, all but forgotten during their flight across the city, was beginning to come back …
Raoul shot a look at Christine as she walked close beside him. He stayed silent, but his meaning was clear: we need to talk.
It took a moment for her to meet his eyes. But when she did, she gave a small nod.
Raoul kept himself under control just long enough to show Erik into the nicest of the guest rooms (if he was going to host this man in his home, then Heaven help him, he was going to do it properly), inform him that "The water closet's at the end of the hall, second door next to the attic stairs", give him a quick, polite nod of goodnight, and shut the door.
A moment later, he was all but dragging Christine down the hall to the master suite. His heart was pounding again, and he barely managed to get the two of them into the room, out of range of being overheard, before his voice rose.
"Christine, what in God's name are we doing?!"
Christine took a deep breath, trying to steady her own nerves. "... I couldn't leave him there. I just … I couldn't." She looked up at him, her deep blue eyes wide in the darkness. "They would have killed him!"
"Christine, he killed people! He almost killed me!" His hand came up, unconsciously rubbing his bruised throat as he spoke. "Why are you helping him? Why would you ever want to help him?! Just days ago, you were terrified of him!"
"I know, I know …"
"Then why?" He swallowed, wincing for a moment at the pain as he did. "... You kissed him –"
Fire snapped in Christine's eyes. "I kissed him to save you! Raoul … if you'd heard the things he said before you got there, you'd understand. It was the only thing that could have saved you."
You didn't have to kiss him twice.
The words rose in Raoul's mouth, but he bit them back before they could escape. They would have been too hurtful to throw at the woman who (regardless of her methods) had saved his life, especially after he'd failed so miserably in his own attempt to save her.
And, in a jealous corner of his mind, part of him also feared what else she might say – what dark, hidden feelings might be brought into the light – if he did.
"... If you say so. But I still don't understand why you asked him to come with us."
"I was afraid he might not try to escape on his own. He looked so … broken. And they sounded so close! I couldn't let him die."
Christine bit her lip, feeling tears threaten as memories from long before tonight came back to her. She remembered the winter and spring of her eleventh year – those terrible months when Paris had starved under the onslaught of the Prussian army, and then later, when it had burned and bled in the struggle between the National Guard and the Commune.
She'd witnessed what mob justice looked like then. The memory of dead hostages lying in the Rue Haxo came back to her. Those pale, terrified faces, some of them so utterly destroyed by Communard bullets that they hardly looked like faces anymore …
"I've already lost too many people. My mother, the Professor, Mamma Valerius, my father … and tonight you nearly died." Tears began to blur her sight. "I don't want anyone else to die, Raoul. Not even him."
Raoul felt his jaw tighten. He was torn between wanting to hold and comfort her, the way he had that night on the rooftop all those months ago, and still not understanding how she could care so deeply for someone who had done so much evil.
"Piangi died too, Christine. And Joseph Buquet. Don't they deserve justice?"
"Damn it, Raoul, do you think I don't know that?!" The fire was back in her eyes, burning through the tears. "I know he deserves to be punished for what he's done. I know we're breaking the law by helping him escape. But … Raoul, sending him to the executioner won't bring Buquet and Piangi back. All it will do is add one more soul's suffering and death to the world. Hasn't there already been enough of that?"
Raoul sighed. "You have such a kind heart, Christine. But I fear you're letting that heart keep you from seeing the danger in what you're doing." He hesitated, memories of childhood coming back to him as well. "Christine, that summer in Perros … do you remember the cat?"
She did, of course. The cat had been the one dark moment in that bright, idyllic summer.
She and Raoul had spotted it one afternoon, while they were playing their game of going from cottage to cottage begging for stories. It had staggered out weakly from behind a shed, and huddled against the nearby woodpile. Its soft black-and-white fur was dirty and matted, and they could see that its muzzle was damp with drool.
Christine, like most rural children of Europe, had been warned about hydrophobia from an early age. She knew it was dangerous to approach any strange, sick animal.
But it had been so long since she'd even seen a cat. Most of the ones in Paris had disappeared during the siege, either ending up on dinner tables or running away to escape that fate. And it had looked so miserable, and its eyes had been such a pretty shade of gold … maybe she could still help it, make it well again …
She'd almost been close enough to touch the cat before one of the men from the village yanked her away so sharply that her teeth clicked. "You stay away from him, little miss. If he bites you, it'll kill you just as sure as any poison. He won't mean to do it, but you'll be dead all the same."
So Christine had stayed back with Raoul, weeping, as more villagers grabbed clubs and shovels. They'd surrounded the sick cat, cornering it on the far side of the woodpile. She hadn't seen the moment when they killed it, but she remembered the sound of blows crushing flesh and bone, and the moment when the weak growls and cries had finally gone silent.
"It had to be done," one of the village women had tried to tell the two horrified children afterwards. "It was a mercy. He's not suffering anymore, and he can't harm anyone else …"
"I remember," Christine said at last. "But Raoul, he isn't a rabid animal. He's just a man who's never known kindness. He's done terrible things, but he's not beyond hope." She met his gaze insistently, a few tears still escaping. "If he was, would he have let us go?"
Raoul tried to think of an answer for that. Some final thing she'd overlooked, that would prove she was wrong.
But he could find none.
"... All right." He started to smile. "You must be really serious about this."
Christine narrowed her eyes. "And why do you say that?"
In spite of everything, he couldn't keep back a soft chuckle as he replied, "Because I've never heard you curse before."
That finally broke the tension. She thought back on her earlier words, and softly started to laugh too. "I … I suppose you're right!"
They threw their arms around each other, holding each other close and laughing together. Finally, after the terror of the past months, the young couple were beginning to realize they could allow themselves to feel real happiness.
"Thank you for doing this," Christine whispered, smiling once again. "For helping him. I know it's a lot to ask."
Raoul hugged her closer. "I'd do anything for your sake."
They stayed in each other's embrace for a while longer, each affirming with their touch that the other was alive, and safe, and they would never be parted again.
"I hope you'll stay the night," Raoul finally spoke again. "I think the room across the hall is made up."
Christine hesitated, a faint blush rising in her cheeks. "Actually … would you think less of me if I asked to sleep in here? With you?"
His eyes widened.
"I mean only sleeping!" she added quickly, her face still pink in the candlelight. "It's just that … I almost lost you tonight. I don't want to be away from you again. If I were to wake up in the night, and I couldn't find you …" She shivered, drawing in a deep breath. "I don't want to be alone anymore."
"... I wouldn't think less of you at all." He smiled, and reached out to brush an errant curl back from her face. "After tonight, I don't want to be alone either."
It wouldn't be so wrong, he told himself. They had already helped a murderer escape justice tonight – what was a little premarital impropriety on top of that?
Christine relaxed, then suddenly looked unsure again. "Oh! But, I don't have any nightclothes."
"You can wear some of mine, if you don't mind the fit," he said gently. "And if you need something for tomorrow, I think my sister Beatrice left a couple of frocks behind the last time she was here."
She glanced down, and realized she was still wearing the disheveled wedding dress, the lacy white skirts now stained with lake water and filth from the streets. "Yes, I'll certainly be needing that."
The young couple knew they really shouldn't be going to bed just yet. It would be impossibly foolish to let their guard down with a murderer in the house and so much still at risk. For God's sake, they didn't even yet have a story prepared to tell the servants in the morning!
But the hour was growing late. The last heightened emotions of the night were finally ebbing away, and overwhelming exhaustion was taking their place. If they didn't make it to bed now, they felt as if they might collapse where they stood, like the victims of a sleeping spell in a fairytale.
In the dim candlelight, Raoul fetched a pair of nightshirts from the wardrobe. After a moment's consideration, he also fetched a revolver from a small cabinet, and laid it close at hand beside the bed – he'd left one gun on the lake shore with his coat before his ill-fated swim, but this one would serve well enough if their new houseguest tried anything in the night.
Taking turns behind a dressing screen, the young couple made use of the wash basin, doing their best to wipe away the pungent odors of sweat and underground damp that clung to them both (a bath was most certainly in order tomorrow). They changed quickly and discreetly, and finally settled together under the covers of the large, soft bed.
Raoul blew out the candle, and felt a warm thrill as Christine snuggled against him in the darkness, unwilling to let go of him even now. Another time, the feel of her soft curves pressed against his body, only the thin nightshirts keeping them from touching more intimately, might have made the young man's thoughts take a more heated turn. Right now, though, all he wanted was simply to be close to her.
"It's all still so hard to believe," he whispered, gently putting an arm around her. "We don't have to keep our engagement secret anymore. We can place the announcement in the papers, and start making preparations for the wedding." He smiled against her hair. "And we'll make sure you have a much finer dress than that one."
Christine tensed against him. She knew Raoul was trying to be comforting, and she delighted in the thought of finally being able to be with him, but the trauma of the night was still too raw for her to get much joy from thinking about a wedding. "What about your family? What are they going to think of you marrying someone like me?"
He shifted in her embrace, still smiling. "You mean someone brave, and talented, with the most loving heart I've ever known?"
That got a smile out of her, but she didn't let it go. "You know what I mean. There's going to be some scandal when the Vicomte de Chagny announces he intends to marry an opera singer. Won't they object?"
He shrugged. "If there's a scandal, we'll weather it. I've never known Philippe to refuse me anything. Once he meets you, I know he'll love you as well." He gazed into her eyes. "My family can only be made better by having you in it. Philippe and my sisters will see that. And if they do object … perhaps we can elope."
"Are you serious?"
"Completely," he beamed, hugging her closer. "We can invite them for a visit soon, and introduce you." After a moment, his smile faded, and he added, "After we figure out what to do about him, of course."
"... Of course." She sighed. "That's hard to believe as well. After all of this … he really is nothing but a man. He even has a name."
Christine turned her head away from Raoul. Her eyes were on the moon, a pale, waning sliver of white, shining softly through the window.
"Erik." The word was tender on her lips. "Poor, unhappy Erik."
Raoul frowned, and his earlier thought about hidden feelings started to rise again when he heard the softness in her voice. He could understand why his sweet, compassionate fiancée might feel pity for such a wretched creature (even Raoul himself felt a little sorry for him, after everything he'd learned and witnessed), but he couldn't forget the image of her kissing that hideous face.
Kissing it twice …
"We'll find a way to help him get out of Paris tomorrow. Everything will work out in the end." Trying to lighten the mood (and further convince himself to keep going along with this mad plan), he half-jokingly added, "I suppose helping him escape isn't the worst thing we could have done. After all, he can hardly keep terrorizing the opera house if he's not there anymore, can he?"
Christine smiled, and nuzzled sleepily into his shoulder. "That is true …"
Raoul stroked her hair, enjoying the feel of the silky curls winding around his fingers. Now that she'd cleaned up, he could smell the faint almond-and-rose scent of her skin cream, and under it, the warm sweetness that was her.
All things considered, his night wasn't ending as badly as it could have. He'd faced death at the hands of a dangerous enemy, and come away (mostly) unscathed. The woman he loved was in his arms, warm and safe, never to be taken from him again. They were finally free to be together, with a lifetime ahead of them to be shared.
The only problem remaining was that the aforementioned dangerous enemy was currently occupying the guest room three doors away. But tomorrow they would help him escape once again – out of Paris, out of France, all the way to the other side of the world if they had to.
And maybe, Raoul thought, as sleep finally started to take him, if fortune is on our side, he'll simply disappear on his own during the night, and we'll never have to think of him again.
In the guest room down the hall, Erik had every intention of doing just that.
He strode back and forth through the darkened room, pacing like a trapped animal. Like Raoul, his mind and blood had finally cooled enough for coherent thought to return, and he was starting to realize what a catastrophic mistake he'd made.
Why in God's name did I follow them?!
It wasn't as if he couldn't have escaped on his own, Erik told himself. The loss of the boat wouldn't have stopped him – there was another escape tunnel, hidden under a trapdoor beneath the throne. He'd built it years ago, much as he'd sewn a hidden pocket into each of his waistcoats to hold a banknote or two, in case he ever found himself suddenly forced to flee his home once again.
God, his home …
He'd lived in that handful of chambers under the Garnier for almost ten years. It was the longest he'd ever lived in one place, ever since he'd run away from his childhood home just before his tenth birthday. He'd had every intention of dying there eventually – not at the hands of an angry mob, of course, but merely laying down peacefully someday and never waking up. He'd dreamed of being entombed like an ancient king, surrounded by his earthly treasures in the mausoleum of music he'd helped to build.
He'd even taken to sleeping in a coffin, to prepare himself for that final, dreamless sleep …
And now it was over. The home he'd worked so hard to prepare for his eternal rest was gone (no doubt utterly destroyed by the mob), and he was still terribly, painfully alive.
Erik's racing mind whispered, But for how much longer?
He was now standing in the house of a man who, mere hours ago, had had half the gendarmes in Paris ready to shoot him on sight. A man who, if anything, now had more reason than ever to want him dead. What madness had come over him, had made him walk right into the proverbial wolf's den, instead of vanishing at the Rue Scribe gate when he had the chance … ?
… But Erik already knew the answer to that.
He'd done it because she had asked him to.
Christine Daaé. The woman who haunted his thoughts and dreams the way no one in his long, lonely life ever had before. Christine, whose beautiful voice had made his music take flight, whose sweet companionship had made the idea of dying alone in his self-made tomb no longer seem so appealing.
Christine, who had kissed him! The first kiss he had ever known, so sweet that his cold, scarred lips could still feel the warmth of it …
… Christine, who had ripped his mask away and exposed his monstrous face on the stage for all of Paris to see. Christine, who had conspired with the vicomte and the police to lay a trap for him, who had called him pitiful creature, who had led him out of one Hell tonight and into another.
Christine Daaé. His salvation and his damnation.
Letting her go tonight had felt like ripping his own heart from his chest. But it had still hurt less than the thought of her hating him, whether for killing the vicomte or for forcing her to become the bride of a living corpse.
The thought of never seeing her again was still a raw, throbbing wound. Even now, imagining it made his eyes burn with tears. He felt a few escape, trickling down inside the leather mask, as hot on his skin as spilled blood …
But perhaps, in time, the wound would heal. As long as he could believe some part of Christine would still think of him fondly.
That didn't solve the problem of how he was going to get out of here, though.
He knew he couldn't wait until morning. The gendarmes would be combing the whole city soon, and when they didn't find him, they would start setting up checkpoints at roads and ports and train stations – anywhere they thought a dangerous fugitive might try to make an escape. More importantly, he couldn't trust the vicomte not to come to his senses at any moment and make another go at shooting him. Erik hadn't thought to grab another Punjab cord before he fled the lair, and while he could fight barehanded well enough, it would do him little good against a gun.
Yes, he needed to flee as soon as possible. But first he'd have to decide where, and how. He'd already gotten himself in enough trouble tonight by acting without a plan, he wasn't going to repeat that mistake.
Erik sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to concentrate. For someone who'd always prided himself on his cunning and creativity, he was having a frustratingly hard time thinking right now.
Erik seldom slept more than a few hours most nights. In the last few weeks, between the work of supervising the Opera as they prepared for Don Juan Triumphant and the anticipation of making his move to join Christine onstage and make his final plea for her love, those few hours had turned into practically none. As the fear, excitement, and anguish that had spurred him through tonight finally started to ebb, all that replaced them was the fog of deep, utter exhaustion.
Maybe it would be all right to rest for a few minutes.
Erik lay down on his side, feeling the damask quilt rub against his mask. After a moment, he lifted his feet onto the quilt as well, not bothering to remove his still-damp shoes (Let the vicomte deal with that tomorrow, he thought).
The bed really was delightfully comfortable. Much softer and warmer than his coffin. Perhaps he could afford to lie here for a little while, and collect his thoughts.
It wouldn't do any harm to rest his eyes, just for a moment …
Back at the Palais Garnier, the other trio had finally given up their search.
They had found the abandoned gondola at the foot of the stairs that led down from the Rue Scribe, and the man Meg had heard her mother call Daroga had taken notice of how much water had swamped the little boat. "Either they were carrying too much weight," he'd said, "or there was a struggle. Perhaps both."
"At least we know they're not dead." Meg had held up a lantern as she spoke, casting the beam out over the dark water. "The lake's not deep, the bodies would still be floating where we could see them. Unless the Phantom weighted them down before he–"
"Meg!" Antoinette had given her a scolding look for saying such morbid things. She'd never approved of her daughter's fondness for those crime and mystery stories.
The Daroga, however, had looked impressed. "No, she's right. And it wouldn't be like the Erik I knew to do such a thing, regardless. He seldom cared enough to hide the evidence of his crimes." He'd glanced at Antoinette. "From what you've told me, that hasn't changed."
The three of them had searched the underground for a while longer, looking for anything at all that might be a clue. But as midnight drew close, they knew the search would turn up nothing else tonight.
Meg had followed the other two up through the cellars, watching them talk as the trio climbed the hidden stairs and bridges. For Meg, this was another strange new discovery: her mother and the Daroga knew each other.
Meg had seen the man before, of course. Most of the Opera staff simply called him 'the Persian'. For the last few years he'd been a regular attendee at performances, and she and the other ballet dancers had sometimes noticed him backstage as well – he'd never bothered any of them directly, but the way he'd crept around as if searching for something had been unsettling enough. Little Jammes had even gone as far as to claim he had the evil eye, and eventually she'd had some of the younger, more superstitious ballet rats joining her in signing wards against him.
Meg had never joined her. The Persian was strange, yes, but even her overactive imagination had never sensed any malice from him. Now that she thought back, she had seen him speaking to her mother a few times in the past – Antoinette was a stern taskmistress to her dancers, but she was also protective of them, and Meg was sure she wouldn't have tolerated the man's presence if she thought he meant harm.
(Then again, Meg thought, her mother had once believed the Phantom could be trusted too.)
So the Persian had become yet another of the odd background fixtures that came with life in the Opera Populaire. But then, early last autumn (not long after the chandelier disaster, Meg recalled), he had suddenly stopped visiting. She'd glimpsed him once or twice during the winter after that, but he'd never stayed as long as before. The last time had been in January, shortly before the fateful masked ball – after that, she hadn't seen him again until tonight.
The three of them stayed quiet during their final ascent, not wanting to draw the attention of anyone who might still be lurking. At last, they reached their destination: the dressing room that had so recently belonged to Christine Daaé.
"I knew about the singing lessons."
Antoinette's voice was low and tense with regret as she made her confession. When the police had searched the dressing room earlier, they hadn't found anything, and she'd chosen to bring her two companions here in the hope they wouldn't be disturbed.
They were now comparing notes on what each knew about the Phantom of the Opera and his obsession with Christine Daaé, trying to come up with some clue that would point to where they should go next (while at the same time, Antoinette and Meg filled the Daroga in on all that had transpired during the months he'd been gone). The mirror was back in place now over the hidden passageway, and out of the corner of her eye, Antoinette could see the others' faces reflected in it.
Her daughter's eyes were wide, shocked and accusatory, as she finally learned just how complicit her mother had been in letting the Phantom gain power over her friend. Antoinette couldn't blame her – it was a bitter thing to admit even to herself.
"I heard the two of them in this room a few times," the ballet mistress went on. "Her voice had improved so much, I knew something must be happening. But I swear before God," she turned to Meg as she said it, "I never thought it would go this far!"
Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but it was fierce all the same. "I didn't think she was in any danger. There have always been beautiful, talented girls in the Paris Opera, and Erik never took an untoward interest in any of them before. I thought he merely wished to help one of the chorus reach her full potential, for the betterment of the Opera. At worst, I thought he might offer her up as a replacement for La Carlotta."
Antoinette sighed, rubbing her brow. "I didn't think he would fall in love with her. And by the time I realized … I was afraid of what he might do if I tried to stop him."
Meg's dark eyes narrowed. The words Why didn't you tell me? were written clearly in her expression.
The Daroga, however, looked sympathetic.
"If we're going to lay blame for what's happened," he said gently, moving closer, "some of it lies with me too. If I hadn't helped him escape from Persia, he would never have found his way back to the Opera at all. And if I hadn't been absent all this time, perhaps we could have worked together to prevent this tragedy."
Antoinette gave a soft, thankful smile.
When the Persian had first started making his backstage explorations of the Palais Garnier, she had been one of the few opera staff brave enough to confront him about his snooping. After a few discreet conversations, she'd learned he had come following the rumors of the so-called Phantom of the Opera – apparently, the rumors matched the description of a man he had known in his homeland many years ago.
That had led to a few more conversations, a few more secrets revealed, and some pertinent history disclosed. And a careful social arrangement – if not quite a friendship, then at least an alliance – had formed between the ballet mistress and the former police chief.
They'd kept each other at a distance at first, seldom speaking except to inform the other of some new movement by their mutual 'friend'. Antoinette had been reluctant to divulge too much (despite everything, she still hadn't wanted to betray Erik), but it had been nice – a relief, really – to finally have someone she could talk to about the opera ghost. Someone who also knew that he wasn't really a ghost, but a man with a name and a past, who'd even shared some of that past with him.
Eventually, she'd even started to enjoy the Daroga's presence for its own sake. And then he had disappeared.
Antoinette looked at him closely, dark brown eyes meeting jade green ones. "Where were you, all this time?"
The Daroga frowned – not at her, she realized, but at whatever he was thinking of. "I was not gone by choice, I promise that. Shortly after the night the chandelier fell, I found myself contacted by officials from the Persian embassy. I was informed that my time and presence were needed elsewhere in Paris, on a new mission for my country."
Antoinette raised an eyebrow. "And I suppose you can't tell us what that secret mission was?"
"You suppose correctly. All I can say is that it hasn't ended yet." He sighed, and looked apologetic. "I would have refused, if I could. My time would have been put to much better use here, dealing with Erik. But it was made very clear to me that if I wished to keep my pension, I ought to comply."
Antoinette nodded. If he wasn't going to hold it against her for not stopping the singing lessons when she had the chance, she wasn't going to blame him for deserting the Opera in a time of need. People had to make difficult choices when their livelihoods were at stake.
She knew that all too well.
Meg had told the other two of Christine's story about the Angel of Music, which had answered a number of the Daroga's questions (most of them about how someone like Erik could have possibly gotten the innocent young soprano to trust him so quickly). After that, she'd mostly stayed quiet, desperately going over the night's clues again and again in her head as she tried to piece together what could have happened to her friend.
"You said the boat looked like it was carrying too much weight," she spoke up. "Could all three of them have been using it? Maybe he took the vicomte as a hostage, to make sure Christine would obey him while he got her out of there?"
The former police chief, once again impressed by the young ballerina's amateur crime-solving skills, considered this. "Possibly. He'd likely have run into trouble once they reached the surface, though. Erik may be stronger than he looks, but he couldn't carry the vicomte forever if he was unconscious." He glanced at the two women. "And from what you said, the Vicomte de Chagny sounds like the sort of youth who would keep fighting his captor if he was conscious, even when it would be foolish to do so."
Antoinette gave a wry smile. "That does sound like him."
"So what do we do now?" Meg insisted. "You both seem to know so much about Erik," she said the name curtly, her tone making it clear that she resented how the two older adults had kept her out of their loop, "do you know if there's somewhere he might have taken them? Some other secret hideout?"
"I'm still not convinced he did take them," the Daroga replied. "I think it would be wise for someone to search Mademoiselle Daaé's home. Do you know where she lives?"
Meg nodded. "She has a flat in the Rue Notre Dame des Victoires. I can go there right now."
Antoinette was about to say that she would go with her. That she wasn't about to let her daughter go running off into the night alone.
But as she started toward the door, a twinge of pain shot through her hips and knees. The night had already been an unusually active one for her – after running through the streets and climbing up and down so many stairs, her joints, weakened from years of grueling ballet training when she was younger, were not going to let her go much farther.
The Daroga saw her wince and lean on her cane. Quickly, he was at her side, and offered a gentlemanly hand as he helped her over to a comfortable chaise longue in the corner.
"I'll go with her," he promised, with warm reassurance in his green eyes. "It will be no bad thing for someone to stay here a while longer, in case Mademoiselle Daaé or the vicomte do happen to return."
Antoinette smiled up at him. A lock of black hair had come loose from her crown braid, and she delicately brushed it back from her face. "Then that's what I'll do. If I hear anything at all, I'll inform you right away."
"Do you still have my card?"
"Yes, and I remember the address you gave me. Number two-oh-four, on the Rue de Rivoli." Her smile grew warmer, and brighter. "It really is good to see you again, Monsieur le Daroga."
"I only wish it was under more pleasant circumstances." He returned her smile. "And after all that's happened, please, call me Monsieur Khan."
By the next morning, the disaster at the Palais Garnier was the talk of all of Paris.
The photograph of Meg Giry holding up the white porcelain mask had made the front page of L'Epoque, and every street corner and breakfast table was the center of gossip about the murderous Phantom of the Opera and the beautiful young soprano he'd abducted. No one had managed to capture a photograph of the Phantom himself that night, but hundreds of people had seen his grotesque death's head of a face when Christine Daaé unmasked him after their darkly passionate duet.
What a bizarre curse it was, many said, for nature to bestow such contrast on a man: a voice like an angel, and a face like a corpse.
Such a fascinating story quickly began to spread beyond Paris. People wrote letters about it to friends and family abroad, some including news clippings about the fateful night. And for those who were too impatient to wait for the post (and didn't mind paying a little extra), there was the new telegraph system. Its ever-growing web of wires stretched from London to Singapore, crossing mountains, deserts, and seas, ready to send messages thousands of miles in the blink of an eye.
If Christine, Raoul, Erik, the Girys, or the Daroga had known the contents of one particular telegram, sent the moment Paris' central office opened that morning, many things to come might have been different:
PARIS OPERA HOUSE [STOP]
THE TRAPDOOR LOVER LIVES [STOP]
AWAITING YOUR INSTRUCTIONS [STOP]
To Be Continued …