Chapter 38
I spun around on the piano stool to address the mirror directly. “Before we begin, I have a few requirements.”
Erik’s laughter was incredulous, though he stopped short as he took in the severity of my stare. “Requirements?”
I nodded. “First, no more of this.” I gestured to the glass between us. “I’m not going to spend whole lessons shouting to be heard through a mirror. If you’re going to be my instructor, I need you here, with me.”
The silence went on for so long I began to think he’d left, abandoning me to my folly without a second of remorse.
But then the mirror changed, dissolving in a sparkle of trickery and light that I was powerless to explain but that I had no doubt Erik had spent exhaustive effort in engineering, and he was there, before me.
He stood in the center of the gilt frame, a shadow come to life, with eyes darting about the room, alert and wary, as if readying for an attack.
My body danced with restless and warring impulses. Part of me was on the verge of bolting, fleeing from the room and the madman I’d so recklessly invited into it.
But the other half of me…
It, too, wanted to run—to run to him, to race to Erik and beg for forgiveness.
It wanted to throw its arms around him, to feel his arms close around it.
It wanted to lose itself in his embrace, to fall into the security of his devotion, to close its eyes against the past and accept only this present, here, with him.
Not “it,” my mind corrected pedantically. “I.”
I wanted.
And I did.
I took a deep, shuddering breath to hold back the tide of heady desires pressing against my limbs, urging them to action, spurring them to ruin. “Come in.”
He took a step into the dressing room.
“Well?” Erik said with expectation, and the pause between us expanded, filling the space like an inflating hot-air balloon, until it felt ready to burst. “Here I am,” he finally went on. “What other requirements do you have of me?”
“I want—”
I stopped short as he took an abrupt step in, closing in the space between us.
“Yes?” He tilted his head, and in spite of the mask, I saw both of his eyes watching me with glittering reproach. “What is it you want?”
My lungs felt tight, as if the air had become too potent to breathe, too weighted in possibilities, and swirling with unchecked hunger.
I was tempted to answer honestly, to tell him that despite everything which had happened the night of Il Muto, despite the scene in the graveyard and the chaos of New Year’s Eve, despite it all, I wanted him.
I wanted his music. I wanted to be surrounded by it, by his passions, his genius.
I wanted to draw it in, to let myself be inundated by it, saturated in it, to feel it fill every bit of me until we were one.
I wanted to be inseparable from it, from him.
I wanted his melodies to be an extension of my very self.
I wanted them imprinted upon me, like a kiss, like a sizzling brand.
Oh God, how I wanted.
“Christine,” he prompted, and my mouth parted, ready to let the litany of my desires spill free.
But something held me back, made me pause.
Going down such a path was dangerous and could lead to depths I’d never dreamed of. To heights I’d never aspired to.
Not till Erik.
“I want to sing Aminta,” I said, and cringed against the inadequacy of my words. “I want to sing it well, as well as you imagined the role.” I balled my fingers into fists, ambition and lust twining together into a monster of insatiable need. “Better, even.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Better?”
“I want everyone in the audience—everyone in the world—to stop and take notice. I want your music and my voice to captivate them, to make them wake up and feel things they never dared.”
“Yes.” It came out in a hushed breath, a murmured desire softer than a whisper, more fervent than a prayer.
“I want to be a great singer, but…that’s not everything. I want to have the music, your music, flow out of me like from the Muses. I want to be one with it.”
Erik sank to his knees before me. We were equals now, staring eye to eye, caught in the fantasy, surrendering to its irresistible pull.
“All of that is possible,” he promised in a rush, and swept my hands into his.
I nodded, accepting the truth. It was. It would happen. We would show them all. “Good.”
“Oh, Christine,” he breathed, hushed and helpless. “I thought you…I feared that…”
I squeezed his hands, silencing his doubts. “I know. I’m sorry.”
His eyes darkened, pupils dilated wide. “And the boy?”
Raoul.
How had I forgotten Raoul?
The music had done it. It was like the call of a siren, hypnotic and beguiling, making me forget everything but it and its composer.
I frowned. “You can’t hurt him. I…I care for him. Immensely. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend otherwise.”
He released his hold of me, rocking back on his heels. The sudden space between us was as cold and slapping as a wave. “Then what is any of this?”
I looked at the piano, at the score resting against its stand. “It’s that. It’s the music. Don Juan Triumphant. Isn’t that…isn’t that enough?” I fell off the stool, joining him on the floor, invading his space as his melodies had invaded my mind. “Isn’t that everything? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“What I wanted,” he said, and it felt as if our conversation had echoed round upon itself, returning to the very start, a snake eating its own tail.
“What is it that you want, Erik?” I demanded, seizing my chance to wrest back control.
When his eyes flicked up to meet mine, I felt as if I were staring straight into his very soul. I could see every hope, every dream, every dark desire and impossible longing.
He took his time, clearing his throat before he answered. “I want the world to hear you sing my music.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“And…” He frowned and swallowed back the words which had been on the tip of his tongue. “And I want…I need…you to be at your very best when it does.”
I considered this. I considered him. And then I pushed myself to standing and reached out a hand, offering to pull him up. “Then we’d better get to work.”
“Again.” Erik clapped his hands, indicating the downbeat.
“No thoughts within her head but thoughts of joy,” I began, fixing a far-off, hopeful expression on my face, even as I felt him stir behind me, pacing about the dressing room like a restless predator.
“And?”
“No dreams within her heart but dreams of love…” I held the last note lightly, like the sweet chime of a silver bell. I didn’t need to look behind me to know I’d done well. I sensed his smile, felt the nod of his head.
“Yes. Good.”
My shoulders sagged with relief.
We’d been working for hours, only just now reaching the opera’s penultimate scene.
Aminta had arrived at Don Juan’s estate, believing she was to have supper with Passarino, the faithful valet.
But the pair intended to trick her, with Don Juan dressing as the servant in hopes of finally seducing the one woman who had refused his advances.
I turned toward Erik. “On to the duet?”
A curious, unreadable expression clouded his features, obscuring them more than a mask ever could. He looked away. “It’s late.”
“But it’s only—” I glanced at the clock. It was late, nearly midnight. “Let me run through the lyrics, just once, at least. I can work through the end of it with Ubaldo tomorrow, but we could do the first part—”
“No.”
The word fell flat between us, landing with an ungainly thud.
“But, Erik—”
“I said no.”
I could feel the earlier version of myself start to nod, deferring to him as I so often had in our first lessons together. I straightened my neck. I was not that girl any longer.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I began, changing tactics. “Why this legend? Why Don Juan? You’d said you want to write about Joséphine. About her roses.”
He winced. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything.”
He turned from me and crossed toward the mirror’s still-empty frame.
Earlier in the lesson, I’d noticed the glass had not returned, leaving behind the gaping maw of a familiar stone corridor.
Another prosaic reminder that Erik was more man than he’d ever been angel.
But how I’d wanted to believe otherwise.
“Don’t go,” I called to him, and he stopped short upon the lip of the threshold.
“I couldn’t see the way to end it,” he said, speaking to the passageway instead of me. “Joséphine’s story. With…with Don Juan…I knew the ending he’d get. I knew the ending he deserved.”
I briefly thought through the final scene of the opera, of the chorus of demons rising from hell to pull the tenor under.
I thought of Aminta, rising with angels and the triumph of trumpets.
I thought of the final chord, the sad, strange notes that lingered in the listeners’ ears long past the point of a standard button—a desperate final gasp from Don Juan, a tearing asunder of a soul, a cry for mercy that would be forever denied.
I thought through it all and didn’t know what to say.
Did Erik see himself as Don Juan, a villain in need of atonement, of retribution? Or was he the chorus, come to punish the man who dared to go through life grabbing whatever he wanted, including the pure and untouched heroine? I did not know, and I couldn’t find it in myself to ask.
He glanced over his right shoulder, only offering me a sliver of his mask. “We’ll meet tomorrow, after rehearsals.”
Even though it was more a command than a question, I nodded.
“If my music is going to change the world,” he said, “change…everything…we both must be prepared.”
Then, in a flash of light and glittering glass, he was gone, and I was left behind with only the mirror and my heavy thoughts.