Chapter 21 #3
“I am,” I decided. Erik might have arranged the situation that put me here, but it was I who had the power to pull it off.
My voice and I. And I wasn’t going to let him steal another bit of happiness from me.
“I’m going to sing, and then…and then…” I laughed, overwhelmed by every possibility which lay before us.
We could do anything. We could go anywhere.
Together. “Order your fine horses. Have the carriage waiting. We’ll leave the minute I’m done!
I want to spend the rest of the night—the rest of forever—kissing you. ”
Raoul cupped my cheeks and brought his lips to mine again. “I’ll do it all. All you ask. I’ll wait for you,” he promised.
I pressed a final kiss to his lips, then, taking his hand, led him back to the opera.
I was in such a happy fever dream I didn’t notice the rest of the company’s mood. I couldn’t quite take in their tearstained, pinched faces. I couldn’t taste the fear in the air.
Instead, I put on my wig and strode into the limelight without a backward glance.
My voice was as bright as every fantasy playing in my mind. My notes soared to the very highest peak of the auditorium and caused the crystal champagnes coupes in the managers’ box to shatter.
We pulled off the show perfectly, and as the lights winked out, signaling the end of the opera while giving the crew a chance to clear the stage for company bows, I had to cover my mouth to keep from giggling out loud.
Everything I’d ever wanted had come true. It was happening, here and now, and—
A confused murmur rose, loud enough to yank me from my blissful haze.
“The lights. They’ve not come back on,” Ubaldo said at my side, nudging my arm.
He was right. Too much time had passed. The scenic pieces had been hastily carted away, and the lights should have then come up, but the stage remained dark and filled with an uneasy hush.
Someone in the front of house coughed nervously.
We could hear the stage manager at his podium offstage right, hissing out instructions. “Lights! Lights, please! Lights now!”
But when they came on once more, it wasn’t the ones expected. No footlights flared. The spotlights remained off.
Instead, out in the auditorium, high above the audience, glass orbs flickered to life.
The grand chandelier.
It glowed in the darkened house like a vengeful specter. Its ropes of crystal beads glinted madly as the enormous structure began to sway.
The house was so quiet you could hear the groan of the metal chain, stretching in ways it had never been designed to do. Then there was a horrible pop, as if one of the links had split, giving way to the heavy momentum.
Everyone in the company stepped out to watch the strange sight. We should have been running, should have been fleeing for our lives, but we all stood at the lip of the apron, watching transfixed as the golden edifice swooped back and forth like a hypnotist’s pocket watch.
There was another crack, and the chandelier lurched, finally stirring the audience to action.
People on the main floor, directly below the precarious structure, began to stand, began to run. Some broke into a sprint up the aisles, seeking shelter. Others weren’t able to move at such a swift clip, hampered by long, formal gowns or bejeweled walking sticks.
Dark laughter rose, filling the house with its madness and spurring more of the patrons to retreat.
“You will curse the day you did not do,” came Erik’s voice, booming so loudly I could feel the vibrations of it deep in the marrow of my bones, “all that the Phantom asked of you!”
I’ll do it all. All you ask.
It was too familiar. Too close to what Raoul had said to me up on the roof. Up where I’d thought us safe and unwatched.
What a fool I’d been.
Of course Erik had been there. Of course he would have found us. There was not a single spot in the whole of the opera that wasn’t under his control.
People began to shout, crying out in alarm as they thought they caught sight of him.
He was everywhere all at once: in the shivers creeping up every patron’s spine, in the chilled dread seizing hearts throughout the opera house. He was in every dancing shadow cast by the wildly swinging chandelier. There, in the corner of an eye. There, in the flutter of the drapes.
And then he truly was there, standing on the railing of Box Five, a mottled shape even darker than the shadows surrounding him. His long black cloak billowed, obscuring nearly everything about him except the gleam of his white mask.
And he was looking directly at me.
He was an angel no more.
He looked like a demon rising from Hell.
Erik pointed an accusing finger toward me, and his eyes burned with fiery hatred.
“Go!” he commanded, screaming with feral rage before he disappeared in an explosion of sparks and smoke.
Even through the noise and confusion, the panicked cries for help, the frustrated shouts for people to move, move faster, move out of the way—for God’s sake, just move!—everyone’s gaze shot upward as a single metallic crack sounded, seizing our attention.
Another link had broken.
All of the chandelier’s lights went out, plunging us into sudden absolute darkness.
And then, it simply plunged.