Chapter 27
I startled awake, feeling disoriented as I tried to recall where I was.
It was too black to make out any of my surroundings, but I was certain I wasn’t in my apartment. I pushed myself up and reached for the gas lamp I knew was on my nightstand in my chambers in Deauville. It wasn’t there.
I stood up, reaching out for anything to help place me in this impenetrable void. My footsteps across the hard floor were whispered clicks. I must have fallen asleep wearing shoes, but which ones? What I had been doing in them before going to bed?
Then it all came back to me.
I was in Burgundy, at the Chateau de Chagny. Raoul had brought me here to meet his mother.
His mother…
I blanched, remembering everything which had happened after dinner—every hurtful, awful word she’d said—before grinning wickedly in the dark as the rest of the night came back to me too.
Raoul’s kisses and rumbled groans.
My breathy gasps.
Not everything about last night had been bad…
I took a step forward, waving my hands around Raoul’s room, unable to find a light source. I could have sworn there was a switch or a cord or a—
As I went farther into the vast space, I saw a sudden light shining boldly in the darkness. It was a single bulb, affixed to a wheeled stand, and the implausibility of its presence, here of all places, was enough to stop me in my tracks.
It was a ghost light, something every company left burning onstage each night once the theatre was cleared out.
It offered a soft glow, just enough to highlight the edge of the stage so that no one would lose themselves in the dark, tripping over any scenic pieces—or worse, falling into the orchestra pit.
Every theatre had a story or two about an unfortunate mistake and an actor winding up with a broken neck.
I’d always found the ghost light to be a soothing presence, a cheerful beacon, friendly and warm.
But what on earth was one doing here?
“Raoul?” I called out uncertainly.
I knew he was here, close to me somewhere. I was only steps away from his bed, so why did the room feel abandoned, as if I were the only person within it?
I squinted around the glow, trying to make out the furniture that had to be close by, but the ghost light showed nothing.
I turned around, searching for something, anything.
Far away—truly too far, if I was being honest; Raoul’s chambers were big, but not like this—were a series of curved edges and limned velvet backs.
They were chairs, dozens of them, a hundred strong, lined in a soft horseshoe, just like—
My heart clunked heavily in my chest.
Just like at the theatre.
I looked down at the base of the ghost light, where its bare bulb cast an illuminated circle upon wooden planks.
The stage floor.
Somehow, horribly, I’d returned to the Opéra Populaire.
“This is a dream,” I said in a rush, and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to wake myself from it.
Somewhere, out in the darkness, came the click of a shoe. Then another. And another.
My mouth dried.
I knew with absolute certainty that such footfalls could not have come from Raoul.
“You’re in a dream.” I rubbed harder, even slapping my cheeks, desperate to startle awake and put an end to whatever fit of fancy I’d fallen into.
“A dream.” Erik’s voice hung in the air, surrounding me and making it impossible to tell where it had come from. I whipped around, expecting him to be behind me, as menacing as he’d been on the night I’d last seen him, perched on the railing of Box Five like a dragon ready to descend upon its prey.
“Where are you?” I called out, turning left, then right.
“Here,” his voice said, whispering in the curve of my ear. “There.” It flung to the far end of the house, as if he were responding from within one of the curtained boxes. “I’m everywhere. Everywhere and nowhere.” He chuckled with dark effacement. “Perhaps I truly have become a ghost.”
“Are you?” I asked. “Dead?” I clarified. “They say you are.”
“What do you think, Christine?”
The space around me began to lighten, allowing me to see more of the front of house. I glanced at the ghost light, certain its little bulb was not responsible for the shift, then caught sight of what was.
High above me, in the auditorium, the chandelier had begun to glow.
It was horrific.
The structure was mangled and warped, as if the construction crew had simply rehung it after the crash. Blood still flecked the faceted crystals, and as the lights grew brighter, I saw that remains from its victims hung among the gold spiked lyres surrounding the ruined fixture.
A length of arm, now bruised and mottled and missing the rest of its body, dangled from one of the illuminated globes.
Strings of innards were draped alongside sparkling beads, festooning the chandelier like macabre streamers.
A head, separated and squashed and barely recognizable as human, was impaled upon filigreed ironwork, its mouth forever open in a silent scream.
Standing atop the monstrous structure was a dark figure, cloaked and masked and unmistakably Erik. He began to shift his weight from side to side, making the chandelier rock and sway.
A terrible sense of déjà vu overtook me.
The chandelier was going to fall.
The chandelier was going to crash.
And I had no doubt that, this time, it would strike me.
“What do you think, Christine?” Erik called out again, and the chandelier lowered closer and closer to where I was rooted onstage, unable to run, unable to flee.
I could make out the curve of his mask as he swung past me, near enough to touch.
“Do I look like a ghost to you?” he shouted, swooping by again. His laughter rang throughout the auditorium with electrified mania.
I heard the telltale crack as one of the links split and the chandelier lurched to the side. It careened back my way, wholly out of control.
“Do I?”
I could feel the heat of the lights as it approached. Hear the trembling crystal beads. I could smell the blood and offal, but I could not move, could not do anything but—
“Could a ghost do this?” he screamed, and leapt from the structure, plunging toward me like a diving bird of prey. He fell on me, arms wrapping around my body as I twisted and fought, screaming for release.
“Christine! Christine!”
“Get away from me! Let me go!” I lashed out, striking him wherever I could. I wanted to cheer as I felt my hand smack soft flesh and heard his grunt of surprised pain.
“Christine! For God’s sake, stop! You need to wake up. You need to—”
Even in my mindless terror, I registered the change in voice. This was not the Opera Ghost. This was not Erik. It was—
“Raoul!” I exclaimed, nearly falling over myself as a light flared, revealing the tall canopy of his bed and the sodden sheets I’d tangled myself with. “I’m so sorry! Did I…did I hurt you?”
He rubbed his cheek, and I recalled the crack of my hand. “You’re much stronger than you look,” he said with a rueful smile.
“Oh, darling,” I said, and fell over myself trying to inspect the damage. “I feel horrible. I was caught in the worst nightmare.”
“I guessed.” He sat back, squinting at me, and I was stunned to see how his cheekbone had already begun to swell and redden.
I reached out to cup his face, then thought better of it, unsure of what to do, and my fingers fluttered uselessly to my lap. “I knew it was a dream, even as it was happening, but I couldn’t break myself away from it.”
“It sounded awful,” he said, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to his bare chest. I tried to snuggle against him, tried to release the last of my terror, but my limbs felt restless as the muscles clung to their adrenaline, wanting to fight or flee.
“You were whimpering and then started to shout, but I couldn’t understand anything you were saying. You sounded so scared.”
“I was.” My eyes grew wet, and I rubbed them, wishing I could clear my mind as easily as I could the tears.
“Do you remember any of it?” he asked, tracing gentle circles across my back. “Sometimes it helps to talk it over.”
I scrunched my eyes shut, trying to picture how everything had played out.
“I was…I was onstage, at the Populaire,” I began, my words soft and halting.
“It was just like the night the chandelier fell, only…” I glanced up and saw him nod encouragingly.
“Only, I was all alone. There was no one with me. Only…only him.”
Raoul made a sound of sympathy. “I can see why it upset you so.”
I nuzzled closer to him, deepening our embrace. Here, with Raoul holding me, the terrors I’d experienced seemed worlds away. Here, it didn’t matter if Erik was alive or dead. He was a moment of my past that could not touch me in this present. Not while I was with Raoul. Not while he kept me safe.
I remembered stepping out onto the stage, hearing my footsteps on the boards, feeling the vast emptiness of the house before me.
Would I ever be able to do that again without first thinking of him? Without worrying that he was still there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to exact his revenge?
Raoul could keep me safe here, in this grand chateau, miles from Paris, but the opera had always, always belonged to Erik.
Meg had said that the managers believed him dead, but what did they know? They’d never seen him—not as I had. They didn’t understand how resourceful he was, how resilient he could be. They didn’t comprehend his capacity to go after what he wanted.
But I did.
I knew that once Erik’s attention had been captivated, nothing would stop him, maybe not even death.
Do I look like a ghost to you?
I did not doubt that if it was possible for a spirit to linger beyond the grave, Erik was now truly haunting the Opéra Populaire.
But if, as I feared, he had survived…
I shuddered.
“It’s all right,” Raoul murmured, his lips brushing against my temple. “You’re safe now. The dream can’t hurt you.”
The dream might not be able to, but Erik, in whatever form he now took, could.
You will curse the day you did not do all that the Phantom asked of you!
Be he dead or alive, his voice lingered in my mind, slithering and insistent and impossible to escape from.
“What if…” I began, unsure I had the fortitude to finish the idea. I bit my lip, drumming up the courage to throw it out anyway, to test the waters and see what Raoul thought of it. “What if I didn’t go back to singing?”
Raoul shifted to better study me, a frown marring his face. “At the Populaire?”
“Anywhere,” I said, trying out the grandiose idea to see how it felt.
“Oh, Christine, surely the dream wasn’t as bad as all that.”
“It wasn’t just the dream.”
Was it?
“I’ve been thinking it over for a while.”
Had I?
I took a deep breath, steadying myself as all my thoughts came falling from me in a rush. “The truth is, I’ve loved our time together. These last few months have been a balm to my soul. Everything is better with you in my life.”
Raoul squeezed my shoulder. “I feel exactly the same.”
“But…as lovely as our time in Deauville was, it wasn’t entirely real.
We made this perfect bubble there, all light and merriment and fun.
We left Paris and the troubles at the opera behind.
But we never talked about them. We never thought about them,” I said.
“I didn’t, at least,” I hurried to clarify as I felt him begin to protest. “It was so easy to pretend we were simply on holiday and that when we returned, everything would be the way it had been before.”
“It can,” he insisted. “It will.”
I shook my head and looked down at the sheets between us. I couldn’t say what I needed to while meeting his gaze. “It won’t,” I said, keeping my voice as firm as I could. “I…I’m scared to return to the opera. I…I don’t want to sing there anymore. Not if there’s a chance that he—”
“He’s gone, Christine. Gilles and Richard haven’t received notes in months. Not since Il Muto. You’re safe now.”
“I feel safe with you,” I allowed. “But I don’t know how I could ever return to that stage.
Every time I start to picture it—stepping out onto the apron, readying for an aria—I see the chandelier fall again.
Over and over. This wasn’t the first nightmare I’ve had about it, Raoul.
I have them every night. Every night, for months, he’s tried to take me away, tried to part me from you.
I…I can’t go back there and sing again.”
“Then you’ll sing elsewhere,” he said easily, always quick to offer a solution. “There are any number of companies who would be overjoyed to have your talents. Nothing is holding us to Paris. We could travel everywhere. You could sing anywhere.”
“No.” I dared to glance up, checking in with him. He looked wholly confused.
“What are you saying, Christine?”
I couldn’t stand being so exposed under his gentle gaze, and I pulled up the bedsheet to cover my shivers.
“Your mother was right. I can’t be who you need if I’m off pursuing a career on the stage.
You need a wife who is always at your side.
Who understands all of the pressures and responsibilities you have as vicomte. ”
“Yes, but—”
“I want to be that for you,” I said, hurrying to cut him off. “I want to be here, with you. I want us to make our lives together, make our home. I don’t…I don’t need to sing,” I said, lying to him as much as to myself. “I just need you.”
He stared down at me, eyes bright with wonder and love. “You’d resign? For me?”
I nodded, unable to speak the words aloud again.
“Oh, Christine. Darling. I’d…I’d never ask this of you.”
“I know.”
He pressed his lips to mine, kissing me deeply. “I promise you’ll never regret this,” he swore fervently. “I promise our lives will be so full of happiness, so full of each other, you’ll never miss it.”
I nodded again.
He kissed me once more, drawing me closer, before he pulled away with a groan of theatrical dismay. “Richard and Gilles are going to have my head. How will I ever break the news to them?”
“The way we’ll do all things from now on,” I said, slipping my hand in his and pulling him back into the pillows. “Together.”