RoseBlood(111)
Sensing the Phantom’s gaze on us, I shudder. I can’t let him come to me. I can’t risk them getting in the middle.
I shake my head at Sunny, a signal just for her. I mime “the plan,” then turn, leaving my friends gaping as I head for the door.
I pass the Phantom. Even with the distance between us, I feel the energy pulsing around him. His voice bewitches the teachers—the perfect imitation of Tomlin with an underlying musical command so subtle they’re helpless to stop it, so heart-wrenchingly lovely it nudges that song he planted inside me at the rave, and wakes it up.
Pushing through a cluster of students, I step into the abandoned corridor where the glossy floor reflects the shimmering candlelight from the ballroom. The marble is cold to my feet, but it’s my breath that freezes, my lungs that feel heavy and glacial. I force the air in and out. Then I head for the stairs.
Bouchard’s workroom. All I have to do is make it there. Jippetto’s waiting with the animals, and I won’t have to sing that haunted ballad.
I sense Erik’s ominous presence following. Not rushed. Cat-footed and quiet. That celestial song he planted in the back of my mind is guiding him, twisting and twining . . . restless.
My legs shake as I take the steps, winding as fast as I can go without sliding on my bare soles. At last, I’m on the second flight and the door is just at the end of the hallway, ajar and slanting light onto the floor like a beacon.
He’s close enough now to hear his breath inside the gas mask, a grinding, mechanical sound that worms its way into my brain, causing me to stumble over my dress and bang my scarred knee on the marble. Wincing, I glance over my shoulder. He’s just coming down the last step, yet his grisly breath rattles in my ears, a ventriloquist’s trick.
Gritting my teeth, I limp the rest of the way, then push Bouchard’s door open.
Jippetto lifts his white eyebrows with a question and I nod, backing up to the far wall underneath the stuffed crow that greeted me with a cat’s meow the first day I arrived . . . what seems a lifetime ago.
The Phantom steps in. His eyes graze me but fix on Jippetto as the caretaker releases his trilling whistles. Erik’s head darts left to right, taking it all in, and I see it . . . the clarity, the guilt, the change. A melting of ice and frost. His vulnerability gives me the strength I lack. He needs one more push, so I unleash the ballad. My voice lifts, soars above him, angelic and accusatory. He drops to his knees and joins in—a sobbing duet—pure, beautiful, remorseful. His body trembles, his eyes wet with tears inside their shadowy depths.
It’s working. I raise the volume of my voice, channeling the ghost of his dead love with new confidence.
He slumps forward, the jackal’s muzzle almost touching the floor. His gloved hands grip the ears of his mask. “Forgive me, Christine”—his voice a potent, symphonic wail as he looks up at me—“I had to keep her alive. Please, please, let me do what’s left. I’ve waited so long.” Heaving sobs roll out of him, shaking his entire body.
Still humming the ballad’s notes, I inch closer, trying to make sense of his confession, when I catch movement in the corridor and lose the melody.
Bouchard stalls at the threshold in her wolf costume, a few inches behind the Phantom’s prostrate form, waving a length of rope in her furry paws. “Hurry, let’s tie his hands!”
He’s on his feet before I can blink, shaking off whatever trance Jippetto and I managed to evoke. In a controlled blur of black leather and rage, he shoves Bouchard into the hall after snatching the rope. “Don’t move.” He casts the command like a silken net. She obeys, flat on her rump and not budging. “You, too. Sit.” He motions with his jackal head, directing the caretaker to Bouchard’s worktable. Like a robot, Jippetto takes a seat in the chair and becomes still as stone.
Witnessing the hypnotic mastery of his voice is awful and awe-inspiring—a fictional legend brought to life.
The Phantom’s eyes flare inside the mask. I tremble, backing up to my spot against the wall. “Come, pigeon.” He holds out a gloved palm, the other fisted around Bouchard’s rope. “You won’t want to be here for this.”
I fight the urge to obey, but his seductive voice shakes the caged song in my head as if it were a wild animal, stirring it to primal heights. The only way I can soothe the beast is to reach for him.
He pulls me close and ties my wrists together before working off my metal headband, wig, and cap. My black hair springs free, wild and tangled. He lifts my chin to study me, as if assuring himself I’m not Christine.
Then wrapping one arm around me, he lifts his free hand in a wave directed at the stuffed trophies on the wall. A loud buzz grumbles from the animals’ throats. I swallow a scream as swarms of bees burst from the muzzles and snouts—clouds of stingers and wings polluting the air.
Sunny and her allergy springs into my mind, followed by everyone else I’m supposed to be protecting.
I struggle, but the Phantom loops my tied arms around his neck so I’m facing his chest. With his heel, he nudges a ridge in the baseboard, opens a secret panel, and yanks me in with him, before shoving it closed and leaving the confused insects on the other side.
Darkness surrounds us. He drags me up some stairs. I clutch at the edges of each step with my bare feet, boring with my toenails until they bleed. He overpowers me and we reach the upper level. The instant we step into the narrow passage, he picks me up. His scents of formaldehyde and leather sting my nose, making me woozy. That embedded song claws deeper into my cranium, incapacitating me.