Page 91 of Angel's Kiss
“I heard she was already mad and they’re hauling her off to an asylum any day now,” someone countered. Shaya shivered at that idea and moved on. What would Erik think of sending a woman to the madhouse, if indeed it was true?
“I heard Robert Rameau is going to propose to Daaé any day now!” went another conversation among thepetit ratsas they passed in the hall.
“I heard the Vicomte de Chagny already asked – and she refused him!” another said.
Shaya had been unsuccessful in tracking down the young Vicomte. It was not as if he could simply go to the manor in theFaubourg Saint Germainand present his card. What sort of conversation would they have in a polite parlor as he told the young man that the woman he loved had possibly fallen into the clutches of the most depraved and hideous man in Paris?
No, Shaya needed to know if he could trust the boy and his love for Daaé before acting and proceed carefully. A man like Raoul de Chagny would never resign to be led or advised. He had to think any rescue or strike was his own plan. Or that there was no choice in the matter.
Shaya found himself in the wings, hiding among ropes and curtains, his eyes upon the woman his reflections continued to return to. Christine Daaé was, as she had been for weeks, free and unharmed. Yes, there was something about her that was distracted, even melancholy perhaps, but it went away when she sang. Even Shaya could tell that Daaé’s talent was remarkable, and perhaps only he could hear the influence of the master that had taught her.
As if summoned by the thought, Shaya saw the shadow out of the corner of his eye. Like a bird flitting through the thicket, it was hard to see but if Shaya looked carefully... Yes. There it was. A shadow above the stage, watching Daaé’s rehearsal with the orchestra as eagerly as Shaya.
Shaya’s heart surged with fear and hope as he watched Erik watch Christine. The Phantom’s shadow moved slowly through the flies, but he grew ever closer to Daaé, the proverbial moth to the flame. By the time Daaé’s portion was done, Erik was close enough that Shaya could make out the white of his mask. And he saw when the fiend descended behind a scenery flat and into a trap door down on the stage. A trap door that remained open.
Maybe he was distracted. Maybe listening to his pupil’s incredible display had left him in some sort of haze. Why Erik had made the error mattered not, only that Shaya was there to exploit it. He followed like a shadow himself, keeping back and staying quiet as he tracked Erik through the warren of discarded sets, past a castle wall and a prop bed wreathed in silken flowers. And then to a wall made to look like an Indian marketplace, a set fromLe Roi de Lahore, if Shaya was not mistaken. It was there Erik paused, and Shaya hid himself again, peering around a flat to watch as Erik knelt by the market scene...and pushed a panel so that it opened. Shaya held back his gasp of shock as Erik went through the wall and the panel closed behind him.
“Now I have you,” Shaya whispered, unable to control his grin. Not only would Daaé be the key to destroying Erik somehow, but now Shaya knew exactly where to find him when it was time.
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Erik leaned back againstthe smooth surface of the wall, thankful for the darkness. He could almost hear Shaya’s thoughts as he scurried off to scribble notes in his little black book. If he wasn’t prohibited from liquor by his faith, Erik was sure the man would be on his way to have a drink. Or maybe he’d do something else to celebrate. He’d never known the Daroga to take a lover or even enjoy sweets, but he had to have some pleasure in life. Life’s pleasures were there to be enjoyed, were they not?
Erik smiled at the edge of his mask as he stood straight. It was odd to have it on again after so many days with the woman who insisted he didn’t need it. And he believed her. At least, in their part of the house he believed her. He needed it here, in his secret forest, even in the pitch-black dark, he could feel the mirrors waiting with his reflection to remind him of what he was. He did feel a vague sense of guilt as he triggered the mechanism to leave the one room in his house he had never shown Christine. And never would.
As far as Christine knew, the door he had just stepped through was nothing more than a wall to the left of the organ. The same way the Daroga believed what he had discovered was a secret way into Erik’s home, the path he would take when the time finally came to rescue the princess from the evil monster. They had no idea of the horrors Erik and the communards had built. And that he had kept and added to when he was driven back into the dark.
Erik drifted to the shelf of his music, trailing his fingers over Cecilia’s keys and then up to the great red score that waited among his other compositions like an open wound. What would Shaya think of hisDon Juan Triumphant? There was no reason Christine ever had to know about what was in there either. She had never asked about it. Hiding it was not a lie. Just like showing Shaya the second, secret path to his home was not a death sentence.
Erik turned away from the unfinished work, looking instead at the pile of music that had been accumulating on the piano over the last few days. Music he had made for and with Christine. That music of love and passion had been pouring out of him since she had kissed him, so much sweeter than hisDon Juan’ssongs of vengeance and hate. There was no need for such darkness, not while she was his. The only reason anyone, be it Shaya or that terrible boy, would ever hear his masterpiece would be if they tried to take her away.
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Raoul was at the Operaunder protest. He had no desire to seeRigolettoagain. He did not want to be reminded in any way of Christine’s beauty, neither her face nor her voice. He did not want to think about how he had spent the week since her rejection, throwing himself into the whirlwind of pleasure offered by Paris. Or trying to. Philippe’s efforts on that front had been uninspiring, as Raoul resented brothels and cabarets. He didn’t want topayto forget Christine. And so he’d shirked his brother and Antoine to find Vincenzo and their sailor friends in Montmartre.
The first night had been a celebration, ostensibly, of Raoul’s official enrollment in the North Pole expedition. He’d drunk himself to delirium and let things be done to him that he had only ever allowed at sea. Or the ache in his ass the next morning told him he had; he couldn’t quite remember. It wasn’t real anyway. It didn’t matter. Neither those revels, nor the debauchery of the nights following, had driven Christine from his mind. The same went for his dutiful attendance at church and family dinners. And that had been fine until he’d told Sabine and Philippe yesterday about his journey north, and they had berated and yelled at him for hours after.
Since then they had not let him out of their sight and dragged him to the Opera. Philippe wanted to remind Raoul Christine was a common opera harlot and that there were dozens of ripe fruits to be plucked from theSalon du Dance, or even the chorus if Raoul was set on it. Antoine was along, of course, to laugh and to endear himself to Sabine.
Raoul retreated from their box halfway through Christine’s first rapturous aria. He could not bear to hear her sing a song of love, especially for a false, manipulative man who would ruin her. Did the woman not see the irony? How could she sing with such unbridled passion that it was almost obscene when she knew how she had broken Raoul’s heart. Perhaps Philippe and Antoine were right: she was a heartless whore.
He grabbed a glass of champagne from a tray as he passed through theGrand Foyerto the Grand Salon. He felt small and stupid here, a normal, honest man just a stain among the endless gilding, mosaics, and murals of angels or heathen gods. He could not be bothered to tell the difference. He scowled out the window onto the balcony at theAvenue de L’Opérabeyond and downed his drink. It was only a matter of time before Philippe or Sabine came for him. Hopefully, he could dull his senses somewhat before then so he could make it through the following acts.
“Are you not enjoying Mademoiselle Daaé’s performance, Monsieur le Vicomte?”
Raoul turned to the source of the voice, immediately offended and subsequently shocked, for he knew the man that dared to accost him. “You. You’re the fellow who was pestering Christine before!” Raoul squinted at the foreigner. “I’ve heard some very interesting tales about you since then.” Indeed, the man in the astrakhan hat had been a regular feature in the ghost stories Raoul had been inundated with on the night of Buquet’s death.
“And I have heard many stories about you as well,” the Persian replied. “Most of them regarding your relationship to the lovely Mademoiselle Daaé.”
“Then you should know I’m done with her,” Raoul spat. His mind jumped back to the humiliation of waiting in that church, his heart breaking over and over each time the doors opened and it was not Christine who entered.
“Because another man has staked his claim on her?” The Persian replied, undeterred, and Raoul looked over the man. There was something dignified about him, despite his swarthy looks.
“That’s one way to put it,” Raoul said slowly. “I asked her to choose me over him and she didn’t. So it’s over. Not that it ever really began.”
“What if I were to tell you that she could not choose him over you, because she has no choice in the matter?” There was no lie in the Persian’s eyes and Raoul’s heart went cold at the words.
“What do you mean? Do you know who the man is who holds sway over her? This angel or genius of hers?” Raoul demanded, holding himself back from taking the foreigner by the collar and shaking him for an answer.
