RoseBlood(31)

He’d haunted this school since it first opened; haunted it for ten years before that, when it was abandoned and nothing but the occasional transient or tourist dared to venture inside. All that time he’d slipped silently through the mirror passages, no one detecting him. Yet she was tuned into him without even trying. A sense of fulfillment warmed him on that thought. Twin flames could find one another from across the universe. He and Rune had already proven that, sharing duets and escaping into their own world ever since they were children. So it was no surprise she could sense him on the other side of a thin pane of glass.

He leaned the bared side of his face against the door’s cool wooden surface. What good did it do to celebrate their singularity? To take pleasure in the knowledge that he’d found her at last? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t act on it—or break out of this solitude.

Unlike the two students standing here moments earlier, fighting their feelings while having all the time in the world to find their way, he and Rune would never have that luxury. Clenching his jaw, Thorn wrestled the urge to open her door, just to step inside for a moment. But he had to stay away so he could follow through with all he’d promised to do.

He cursed Erik for being blind to what was already in front of him . . . for always regressing to the past. Thorn was alive and devoted, yet his father clung to sad and empty hopes that were only half-living, subsisting on borrowed time and unsung songs.

Five doors down, Diable had managed to unlock and open Katerina’s room. The tip of his wiry gray tail disappeared inside. Thorn followed, resolved to complete today’s mission. It was time the diva earned her place here. Time she contributed to the plan.



My first three days at RoseBlood fly by.

I don’t have time to chase a phantom’s ghost, imagined or otherwise. Daylight hours are devoted to classes and attending rehearsals, afternoons to my chosen daily task, and my evenings to homework. Although I haven’t had a chance to get out to the garden once yet, due to afternoon storms. The downside to this is I won’t be eligible for the outing on Saturday. That was the penalty of writing in my own job; I chose something dependent on the weather but am still held to the same standards of completing them daily, as is everyone else.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t going stir-crazy. Behind every wall and every mirror and every vent, I hear sounds: breathing, rustling, footsteps, and murmurs. I try to tell myself it’s just mice making their nests behind the barriers, but since when do rodents whisper?

Still, there is one bright side to the dark and eerie setting: Sunny and my new group of friends. They save my spot at our cafeteria table in the atrium’s far corner at every meal except for dinners—which I eat with Mom and Aunt Charlotte—and I’m lucky enough to have at least one of them in each class, sometimes three. Each day, they’re more funny, open, and friendly than the day before, even when I screw up and burst into song.

I have, however, learned how to outsmart the arias piped in via the TV screens during meals. I’ve found, if I concentrate hard enough on my friends’ comical banter, I’m able to suppress the itch until I get back to my room, where I can sing within the safety of my walls.

Any windows of spare time during the afternoon are spent helping Madame Fabre take measurements for costumes and cinching in the seams of my borrowed uniforms, since my new ones still haven’t turned up. Wednesday, when we finally get some quiet moments to sew without students coming in for measurements, she tells me she and her husband are taphophiles—aficionados of all things graveyard. Their favorite pastime is reading epitaphs, gravestone rubbing, taking pictures of tombs, and learning the history of people’s deaths. I haven’t been a fan of cemeteries ever since my dad’s funeral. Seeing his full name, Leopold Saint Germain, engraved upon a stone left an indelible and morbid impression. But since Madame Fabre and her husband have been here for almost two years with their own personal boneyard to explore, I feign interest in the hobby, hoping maybe the guy I’ve been seeing might have ties to an unmarked grave. The phantom didn’t have loved ones, so it makes sense; if he had a headstone at all it might be isolated and devoid of sentiments.

My teacher assures me that the cemetery was reserved for the royal family who owned the opera house, and the only unmarked grave belonged to a baby. However tragic that is, it doesn’t explain sightings of a guy who wears outdated fashions and hides half his face.

Later that night, while I’m on the chaise lounge watching Mom sleep with the bed curtains open, I wonder if she’s heard any rustling inside the vent this week. I try to stifle my phantom superstitions by looking at things from her cynical perspective. Maybe it was the elderly caretaker in the garden that first day, after all. I haven’t met him yet, so I don’t know what he looks like. Maybe the mist, along with my nerves, made me imagine him as someone younger. And maybe that supposed sighting fueled my imagination to feverish heights, until I thought I was seeing him in the mirrors. It’s possible this whole time I’d been catching people’s reflections behind me and blew it out of proportion.

Of course my superstitions conjured him. I want with all my heart for my fantasy maestro to be real—even if by some impossible twist he’s the phantom—because if anyone could help me defeat my song sickness, it’s him. On that thought, I close my eyes and find my dreams. He’s already there with the violin, waiting to take away my pain.