Page 75 of Angel's Mask

Shattered

“You can’t stop there.”

Raoul tore his eyes away from the door he had watched intently for half an hour and glowered at the man who had spoken. He was uniformed, with a ring of keys at his hip. A fireman. “I’m waiting for someone,” Raoul said.

“Then wait somewhere else, you’re in the way,” the man replied. Raoul scowled and moved to let him pass. He had stationed himself where two halls met, one coming from the stage, the other going who-knows-where. A hundred people had to have passed him by now without complaint. But all he cared about was the still-shut door of Christine’s dressing room.

He approached and earned a glare from the mulatto who had stationed herself outside as a guard. The impertinence.

“There he is!” Raoul spun at the sound of Philippe’s voice. He was moving up the hall with his raven-haired dancer on his arm and another girl, thin and blonde, probably a dancer as well, in tow. Behind them was Antoine, leading a buxom woman that Raoul barely recognized out of Siébel’s breeches.

“I told you he’d be here, sulking like a puppy at her door,” Antoine chuckled, and Raoul’s face burned.

“And there you are,” the blonde said to Christine’s maid of all people. “I – we had to take our costumes down all by ourselves. Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry,” the maid stammered. “Christine needed me. She asked for privacy.”

“Well, she’s done with that now,” Antoine’s partner declared. What had he said her name was? Adèle? “Everyone is waiting to toast her triumph in the salon.”

“I don’t think she’s ready,” the maid protested as Adèle swept past her with infuriating ease. “Madame, please! She’s feeling ill!”

“I promise to take her right home after,” Adèle said and opened the door. “Christine, I hope you’re – what is this?”

Raoul rushed after her into the room over the maid’s cry of protest. The dressing room was dark. And completely empty.

“Where is she?” Raoul demanded as Adèle turned the light back up. He cast about, as if he could find Christine hiding in the closet or behind a screen.

“Dear Lord, have you lost her again?” Philippe asked from the hall.

Raoul turned to the maid. Her dark face was a tangle of guilt and worry. “Where did she go?” Raoul demanded. “I haven’t left since you drove me out. No one came or went. Where did she go!”

“I don’t know, sir!” the maid protested.

“This is a new kind of mysterious, even for her,” the blonde girl said, bemused.

“Jammes be quiet,” the maid snapped, further raising Raoul’s suspicion.

“She’s right though, Christine has a habit of...finding her own way home,” Adèle declared, though Raoul could see worry in her eyes as well. “We should all go. I doubt she’d want us here.”

“But—” Raoul was swept up as the women exited the dressing room into the hall.

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