Page 3 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

“ Buongiorno , Patricia,” Christine tried. The woman smiled and began fussing with a tray of croissants dusted with almonds. They smelled heavenly, as did the whole shop, though Christine wondered how Patricia could stand the heat of her ovens in this oppressive weather.

“You are early this morning! I am barely ready for you.”

“I have lost my husband, and I’m trying to find him,” Christine replied. She tried to make the words sound like a joke, but the truth of it smarted.

“Ah, si , your husband that very surely does exist,” Patricia replied with a wink.

Erik never went with Christine to Patricia’s shop, though he did eat what Christine brought back from her excursions when she made him.

Patricia was convinced that Christine had invented a husband as an excuse to wander the city freely as a liberated woman. Or to order extra bread and pastries.

“He couldn’t sleep in this heat and went off somewhere.”

“You should find a man who escorts you places,” Patricia said. “Or who has a name at least.”

Christine scowled. She had been afraid, since they left Paris, of speaking Erik’s name at all.

It felt dangerous, even though there were many Eriks (and Eriques and Erics and Enricos in the world) and the infamous Erik who had haunted the Opéra was dead, according to most who knew that name.

She was still paranoid about saying it and revealing him.

Maybe it was habit, or maybe it was a sense that they were still not safe.

Running for months would do that to the mind.

“I’m content with the one I have,” Christine sighed. “But I will only be getting breakfast for myself today, as his punishment for leaving so early.”

Patricia handed Christine the croissant wrapped in wax paper and happily took the few lire that Christine provided in exchange. “There is a cafe, down near Santa Croce , that many of your people go to. You will find yourself a good Frenchman there. It is called Les Halles .”

Christine’s heart didn’t jump because she wanted a new husband, but because the idea gave her a glimmer of hope that there was a place in Florence where she could perhaps find another person she could at least talk to.

She had never been to Santa Croce , though she had heard it was even more beautiful than il Duomo .

She had also heard that the church had an excellent organ, and it was as good a place as any to search for her spouse.

It made something ache in her. For a few weeks, they had been human and normal, they had lived in the sun and forgotten the past. Now, here she was again, searching for a ghost.

Paris

M eg had not been below the stage in months.

Most of the Opéra had recovered, though slowly, from the devastation wreaked by the Phantom.

First had been the public areas. The Grand Foyer had opened for a small dinner and then a party in the name of raising the funds to reopen the Opéra fully and replace the shattered chandelier.

The artists had not been invited. At least, not the ballerinas.

Next to reopen had been the rehearsal rooms, then the offices and studios, their doors unlocked after weeks of hibernation.

The wood had creaked and stretched like an old dancer struggling out of bed in the winter, but slowly, the rooms warmed again and people began to pretend everything was normal.

Meg couldn’t though. She still remembered.

She avoided the Salon du Danse , even when it reopened.

The room was adorned with gold butterflies and portraits of great dancers looking down on their young successors.

Meg didn’t like it. She didn’t like the hidden balcony above those portraits, where men would watch and pick out nubile girls to support.

Finally, months after the horrible accident with the chandelier and the death of the Comte de Chagny, the Palais Garnier had reopened.

And with a new chandelier too! (Or at least the old, ruined one had been rebuilt and rehung above the auditorium.) The burned and crushed seats had been replaced, and you had to look very carefully from the stage to see the difference between the old and new red velvet.

It was there though: a subtle scar on the beauty of the auditorium.

Meg’s mother clucked her tongue at the sight as she escorted Meg to rehearsals and classes.

She was here to learn to be a great ballet dancer, one in a long legacy of French art, but it all felt like she was merely preparing for doom.

One that started in the Salon du Danse .

Meg remembered how Rochelle had tittered and giggled before her debut among the patrons, then the way she had blushed and flirted with the man who had taken an interest in her.

She had seemed so happy, but when she returned to rehearsal the next day, the light had gone from her eyes.

Meg didn’t want to be like her. Ever since then, Rochelle had been careless and fearless in that tragic way that girls are when they decide they have nothing left to lose.

Rochelle was the one who had told Meg about the secret meeting in the cellars.

Meg had balked at the very idea of it. No one went into the cellars.

They were haunted. She’d said as much, and Rochelle and Marie had laughed at her.

Blanche had called Meg a ninny. No one had seen the ghost in months, they said. He had died.

How could a ghost die, Meg wondered?

Meg, inquisitive as she was, wasn’t brave enough to defy her friends.

So after a respectable time waiting after rehearsal, she snuck away from her dozing mother and made her way down the cold, gray steps to the secret world under the stage.

She stood out in the gloom with her golden (perpetually unruly) hair and white ballet skirts catching every whisper of light that reached those hidden halls.

There were many places to hide here, whether you were a dancer, a stagehand, or something else.

Meg passed by a knot of workers smoking and sent them a scowl.

Their cigars were forbidden both backstage and here, where everything was wood and rope, and an errant piece of ash could bring the entire opera to ruin.

Just in time, a fireman on patrol caught the group and began berating them as Meg descended lower, smiling at their comeuppance.

She was less glad when she heard the voices of her friends further off in the dark, snickering. When she found Blanche, Rochelle, and Marie, they were huddled around a letter Blanche was holding, their faces full of shock and delight.

“What’s that?” Meg demanded.

“It’s a love letter,” Marie squealed. “To Victoire from an American.”

“Why do you have it?” Meg asked, trying to see if the paper was, indeed, some fabulous confession of adoration.

“She left it out,” Blanche replied with a shrug that made her pale blonde curls bounce. “After bragging that a rich railroad heir was in love with her.”

“So she wanted you to find it?” Meg pressed, a little confused.

“We wanted to see if it was true,” Rochelle shot back. She was the darkest of the trio, with sleek black hair and deep brown eyes that reflected the darkness. “And see if he’s bored with her yet.”

“It sounds like they haven’t even done anything other than eat,” Marie added with a sigh at the letter. “Though he does say he wants to taste her oysters.”

“I didn’t know Victoire was a fishmonger,” Meg said lightly, and the other girls burst out laughing. Obviously, she had missed some vital, secret meaning. “Don’t you have anything better to do than read people’s personal correspondence?”

“Not since the Opéra reopened,” Blanche sighed and leaned against a stone wall. “And he disappeared.”

The words made a chill go up Meg’s spine.

“Do you really think he’s gone?” Marie asked, voice small and sad. She had grown pale beneath her ginger hair and freckles.

“Mother says they’ve been selling his box.

Monsieur Moncharmin assured her it would be fine,” Meg answered, both proud and dismayed.

Her mother had taken immense pride in being the Ghost’s box keeper, and the Phantom himself had seen to it that they were protected.

Now that he was gone, Meg felt more helpless than she had before. And she had been quite helpless.

“No voices? No disturbances?” Blanche asked.

Meg shook her head. “Nothing. No notes either.”

“Damn, I was hoping he’d have me promoted too,” Blanche sighed.

“I saw something.”

They all turned to Rochelle, who had spoken in a blasé, matter-of-fact tone. She looked satisfied by their curiosity and attention, raising her chin defiantly.

“When?” Marie demanded.

“Two days ago. I was walking alone backstage, and I saw someone in a mask,” Rochelle replied. “And a cape.”

“This is a theater. There are always people in costume,” Blanche scoffed, but her voice was shaking. “It could have been anyone.”

“It felt like him,” Rochelle countered. “For the first time in months, it didn’t feel like the Opéra was empty.”

Something a little like hope surged inside Meg, but she tamped it down. It was too fantastical. “I heard Jammes telling someone that Christine Daaé carried the ghost away with her when she ran off and jilted the Vicomte de Chagny,” Meg stated. She’d been holding onto that one.

“How does one carry a ghost off?” Rochelle asked with a sneer.

“She was a witch, that one. Maybe she trapped him in a crystal ball or something,” Marie suggested.

The little dancer had always been vocal in her disdain of Christine, maybe because she had taken some of the spotlight from others.

Marie herself had enjoyed a brush with fame when she had posed for a scandalous sculpture by Monsieur Degas.

“So she put him in her pocket and ran away, so he could torture and enchant people for her?” Blanche said. “I doubt that.”

“It isn’t a coincidence that everything happened around her, and the chandelier fell while she was singing,” Meg offered. “My mother says—”