RoseBlood(97)

My stomach turns. I never thought I’d empathize with a stranger over my family. But after the way they treated him, they were unworthy. “We got the violin back. When?”

Aunt Charlotte lays the newspaper clippings in my lap. “You know of Leroux, the author of the fictionalized account.”

I tilt my head.

“As it happened, in 1909, while researching a piece on the Palais Garnier, Leroux stumbled upon Christine’s letters wrapped up with a delicate necklace threaded through a ruby wedding ring. They were tucked beneath architectural blueprints in a box marked O.G. and hidden inside one of the opera house’s crawlspaces. The letters were actually loose-leaf journal entries, dated forty-five years prior, and were Christine’s account of her time with the opera ghost. Leroux tracked down the only soprano by the name ‘Christine’ who would’ve been performing around that date under the stage name: Christina Nilsson. She was sixty-six by then, an old widowed woman who became distraught when confronted with the letters and ring. She claimed they weren’t hers . . . how could they be, she insisted, when she’d never performed at the Palais Garnier? Perhaps it was partly for show, since her maid was in the room, but she demanded Leroux take the letters and the ring out of her sight and never return. Since there was no last name, Leroux published the letters, embellishing versions of the story, in bits and pieces as a serialization, keeping the only two names that were in the original papers: Erik and Christine. The rest of the cast he made up. He hoped by doing this publicly, he might draw out their true author.”

I sort through the newspaper clippings from Le Gaulois, my gaze passing over the text and eerie illustrations of a ghastly phantom creeping through the underground labyrinth of the opera house. The scent of ink stings my nose and black smudges my fingers.

“No one ever came forward for them,” my aunt continues. “However, the letters and necklace were stolen out of his office shortly after the final serialization in 1910. It didn’t matter to Leroux. He went on to write the tale as a book, building upon the scant details gleaned from his articles.”

“So . . . the Phantom stole the letters,” I mumble, wiping my hands on my jeans.

“Actually, our own Octavius Germain did that. He was one of Saint’s ungrateful grandchildren, close to Erik’s age. He’d lived in the gypsy camp when Erik escaped. Octavius read the paper, saw the similarities between the story’s villain and the masked boy who had absconded with our family’s violin and fortune over sixty years earlier. Having something of Erik’s to bargain with at last, he posted an announcement in another newspaper.”

She slips out an article and holds it up.

O.G. to O.G.

Found: 1 necklace attached to ruby ring. 1 stack of lovelorn letters. Willing to trade for 1 family fortune.

Contact me via post.

The address is blurred, as if the clipping suffered water damage.

“Every week, for ten years, Octavius posted an identical ad. Then at last, in 1921, shortly after Christina Nilsson’s obituary ran”—Aunt Charlotte gathers up the clippings and drops them in the shoe box—“he received a response from ‘Opera Ghost.’ Octavius and Erik arranged to meet here in this very opera house for the trade. By that time, the Liminaire had fallen into disrepair, and Erik had charmed the deed away from the royal family it once belonged to. Octavius came armed, with no intention of making a trade until the money was in his hands. But he underestimated the Phantom’s cunning. Using ventriloquism, Erik lured Octavius to a room on the fifth floor. Seeing the violin within, Octavius stepped inside. The door slammed shut, imprisoning him. Within minutes, Erik triggered fire traps across the top three flights. He provided an escape route for Octavius that could be accessed only by inserting the ring into a groove carved in the door . . . a keyhole that would fit only one unique ruby stone. Once inserted, the door opened, but the ring was stuck, and could not be relinquished. Octavius stumbled through the passage to escape with his life, none the richer. However, he carried the violin and Christine’s letters. Erik cared nothing for the letters. No doubt to read them would have broken his heart. But the violin . . . he’d not only played it to give birth to a musical virtuoso, but he played it for her on her deathbed, coaxing one last duet between them before she closed her eyes forever. Still, he let it go. In his mind, he was honoring Saint-Germain by returning what the man had intended his family to have. All debts were paid, and Erik kept the fortune for himself free of guilt.” She sighs. “I almost feel sorry for him. Knowing that he didn’t recognize at the time the precious cargo contained within that instrument.”

My mind twists in knots, struggling to reconcile that shattered, lovesick man with the dangerous and compelling Phantom I saw at the rave club. “Precious cargo in the violin? What does that mean?”

“Well, that has to do with Christine.” Aunt Charlotte offers me the stack of Christine’s letters. My fingers practically itch to open them. “Before you read them, there’s something you need to understand about yourself. All of us, of otherworldly leanings, are incarnations.”

Her claim is reminiscent of Etalon’s: We’re twin flames. Incarnations of the same soul, parted while reentering the world . . . predestined to find each other again . . . The ribbon imprinted around my wrist and forearm tingles under my sweater.

“But the vampiric gene in the Germain bloodline is so far removed”—Aunt Charlotte’s voice pulls me back—“it’s recessive for many of us. Fran?oise, for instance. For me, it was dominant. For your father and grand-mère, recessive. I have an uncle and a great aunt who are like me. There’s no rhyme or reason, really. But then, for a rare few like you, you’re incarnated from another vampire, of another era, of another bloodline. In those instances, the gene is neither recessive nor dominant. It is, rather, dormant. Waiting for something miraculous to bring it to surface. In your case, it was the musical essence of your preincarnate self, held at bay for years inside a very special violin rumored to have the power to capture a person’s most quintessential life-spark within, if played at the moment of their death.”