Page 6 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

Pauline surely meant it well, but the question cut deep.

Christine had chosen to leave the stage.

The applause had been empty, and the backstage politics were too cutthroat for her.

Even so, she missed it lately. Not just the music, but the community of the Opéra; the camaraderie that grew when you spent days and nights together in rehearsals and hidden in the dark backstage.

“I... No. I’m just travelling.”

“Alone?” Pauline asked, her expression more impressed than scandalized at the possibility.

“No. I’ve come here with my husband.” It was still such a strange thing to say. Even though she wore Erik’s ring and had taken his name, it still felt like such a secret, intimate thing to confess. It didn’t help that her husband preferred to disappear so often.

“Oh, how lucky,” Pauline said.

They made their way slowly around the piazza, the great facade of Santa Croce rising before them in white accented with the Florentine colors of teal, brick red, and black.

The churches here were like nothing in France, with their gray, Gothic spires and vaults.

Here, the marble glowed and gleamed with color.

This church had a window in the shape of a six-pointed star as well, setting it apart from others in the city. Erik would love it.

“He is a musician too,” Christine sighed, answering a question she had not been asked. “A great one.”

“Then it’s his work that has brought you here?” Pauline asked innocently, and Christine stopped herself from scowling. His previous work was the reason they had run here, and the reason she had no idea how long they would be staying.

“Not really, he—”

Christine stopped in her tracks as they came closer to the church door.

She had meant to make up some lie about her husband seeking work as a teacher, but the muffled sound of the organ from inside the church stopped her.

It wasn’t just the beauty of the music that captured her attention: it was the melody.

She knew it but had never heard the old Irish folk tune transformed into a rhapsody on organ.

If the melody had not given him way, the perfection with which it was being played would.

“He what?” Pauline asked.

"He is meeting me soon. I apologize, I must go,” Christine said.

“I will be at the café again tomorrow at the same time. I go every day! I’m happy to meet again. I have been looking for more friends here,” Pauline said in a sad and sweet way that affected Christine. She wasn’t so different from her.

“I will try to be there. Good day for now.” Christine scurried away to the front door of the great church, where a priest was just unlocking it for the day. He looked as entranced and confused by the music emanating from inside as Christine was.

“ Buongiorno, Padre ,” Christine said with a polite nod. “ La musica... Molto bella .”

“ Et misteriosa ,” the priest muttered, and Christine certainly understood his meaning.

It was all the confirmation she needed. She didn’t wait for more conversation from the priest, simply strode inside and blessed herself from the font before taking a place in a pew close to – she hoped – the exit from the organist’s cubby.

She had spent many nights and days of late listening to her Angel of Music play for her, either on the violin or piano, or even the guitar when he had found one.

Not since Paris had she heard him play the organ.

She knew it was him. The melody Erik had sung her so many times of wild mountain thyme and purple heather was perfection in such a setting, but it was the feeling behind the old song rendered in this way that resonated the most deeply in Christine’s soul.

There was joy in the music, and gratitude, but also fear and regret.

She understood it and didn’t at the same time.

When had this adventure of theirs become something that scared them?

When had it become more about running than about really starting a new life?

She had felt so alone lately, and this music told her that so had Erik.

But how? Why? They had each other now, and they had fought so hard for that. Was it not enough?

She wasn’t surprised to feel a tear escape down her cheek as she listened, her soul soaring and smarting at the same time.

When it ended, she rushed to wipe her cheeks and compose herself.

She was still annoyed at being abandoned in the dark, and that was an easier feeling to live with than the mysterious sorrow lurking somewhere in the corners of their life.

She waited patiently until a plain door opened and Erik emerged, masked as she had suspected... And in conversation with a young Italian man.

“I see you found a predictable diversion to avoid your wife,” Christine drawled in French, and her husband froze in his steps. The man next to Erik looked between them, bemused.

“I came to look at the art, and this kind young man offered me a chance to play,” Erik replied sheepishly. The ‘kind young man’ narrowed his eyes.

“I thought Padre Navone invited you?” he said in French, clearly to Erik’s shock. Christine didn’t bother suppressing her smile. Served Erik right for giving in to his more larcenous tendencies.

“I... may have misstated,” Erik muttered.

His companion merely laughed. “Well, I’m glad then.

I was saying goodbye to my job entirely when you played.

No one would keep me on even as a guest organist when they could have you.

” The man gave a warm grin from beneath his moustache and held out his hand to Christine.

“Signora – or perhaps I should say Madame? – I’m Jack.

A new friend and admirer of your husband. ”

Christine took Jack’s hand carefully and shook it. He was obviously a musician, and he spoke French. He could perhaps be a friend to both of them. God knew they needed it. “He is a remarkable musician, my husband. Perhaps we all can speak of music or your fine city over supper soon?”

“I'm free tonight!” Jack replied excitedly, and Christine saw Erik’s eyes widen in subtle horror behind the spectacles attached to the mask. “I know a quiet place; they won’t bother us. It’s on the Via Spoleto . Sandro’s. It will be perfect!”

“We don’t need to take up more of your time,” Erik sputtered, but it was clear Jack had made up his mind.

“I will meet you there at nine o’clock,” Jack declared, then seemed to realize that time still existed in the moment and grabbed his pocket watch. “Damn. I’m going to be late for my maestro. I will see you tonight!”

With that, the young man bounded off, leaving Christine to stare down her errant beloved. Erik sighed contritely, shaking his head.

“I guess I’ll deserve this punishment,” Erik muttered.

“Dinner with a new friend is hardly a punishment.” Christine approached the person who had become her entire society in recent months and took his hand. “It will do us both good. Until then, your actual punishment for absconding again is to spend the day with me.”

“Oh, how will I bear it?” Erik smiled back. Or Christine was fairly certain he had smiled; it was hard to tell with the bearded mask.

“Come home so you can take that thing off and I can see you properly,” Christine ordered. She could hear Erik grumble in his mind and smirked. “I would say more, but we are in a church.”

“Quite a lovely one, isn’t it?” Erik replied as he fell into step next to her.

She nodded. It was a remarkable building, like so many they had seen in their weeks in this country that was both young and ancient. It had its own character, like Florence itself. Proud and gaudy yet indisputably refined. It felt like being in a mosaic.

“Maybe we can light a candle and pray for relief from this heat,” Christine suggested as she took Erik’s hand. It was warm, either from playing or from the weather. Either way, she didn’t entirely mind.

“Fire to dispel heat seems counterproductive.” Erik glanced at her, and she felt it like a breeze against her skin. How was it that just his gaze could still affect her that way? “Maybe I’ll light one to ask forgiveness for abandoning my wife.”

“Again,” Christine corrected, but his mere presence was already having its usual effect on her. Her anger was fading, like night to the dawn, with her love as the sun. “I do not think I could stay cross with you for very long. Who would I talk to?”

The warmth of the day hit them as they left the great church, at the same time as Erik’s smile spread, as visible as could be.

“I’m sure you would find someone.”

“Yes, but why would I want to?”

Paris

M eg had not felt this important in months, and that had been her fifteenth birthday.

Even that had not been greatly noted. In all truth, she had not been so popular since she had been promoted to the head of her row thanks to the charity of the ghost. Maybe it should have worried her to be the center of attention because of the ghost. What if he punished her? What if she was wrong?

No matter. She felt like a queen surrounded by all the young dancers asking her over and over again to retell her encounter until the ballet master had shooed them away.

Even then, everyone whispered to her at every spare moment.

She didn’t want rehearsal to end, but after several hours, her legs and toes were tired from hours of practice.

She also needed to tell her mother about what she had seen.

Or maybe she didn’t. Her mother didn’t really need to know.

She didn’t need to invite her scorn or her admonition that Meg had just been seeing things and was losing what little mind she had.

She’d already had her hands full with Meg’s sulking since the Opéra reopened, and the young flautist whom she had kissed at the masquerade had not returned to the orchestra.

Meg knew in her heart somehow that Pierre wouldn’t have been impressed by her encounter with the ghost.