Page 12 of Our Strange Duet

“Is—is someone there?” I asked, peering into the shadowed corners.

“Try again,” the voice repeated. It sounded warm and encouraging, but my blood ran cold.

I stood and stalked over to a stack of crates, searching for the intruder. No one.

I whipped back the Onegin drapes, certain the stranger was hiding behind them. But no.

I whirled round to the door, wondering if he was out in the hall, if he had heard every note I’d tried. I pictured Joseph Buquet with his sneering face, ear pressed to the door. Or Lisette, Meg, and the entire cast, stifling back mean-spirited snickers as they judged. Or Carlotta, dark and thunderous and ready to throttle me.

But the hall was empty.

My room was empty.

There was no one here but me.

I shut the door, then pressed myself against it, slowly collapsing to the floor as I tried to parse through what this meant.

I’d been told tales of madwomen who heard things—who heard voices—that were not there. They were sent to institutions like Clermont, in Oise, declared insane and locked away for years.

I pictured myself wandering down such halls, dressed in a sad gray sack of a nightgown, hair loose and feral, as I snarled at instructions that only I could hear. I had no family who would visit me. I had no money to pay for treatments. How long would they keep me there, forgotten and unloved?

“You can’t possibly have enough stamina to support your voice from such a position. Try again, standing this time, if you please.”

“Where are you?” I asked, stubbornly remaining in my puddle of skirts. If I’d gone mad, then let me be mad.

“I’m here.”

“Where?” I demanded.

“With you,” the voice said. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it? I’m here. With you. To help.”

“Help me what?”

“To sing, of course. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t this what you’ve waited for?”

There was no possible way I was having this conversation. My mind had broken. Monsieur Lefèvre would have to send the men in white coveralls to come and collect me.

Only…I didn’t feel sick. I wasn’t hysterical. I wasn’t seeing things. I had the foresight to ponder my sanity, and surely that was a sign it was wholly intact.

So I wasn’t mad.

I brightened. Perhaps I’d fallen asleep at the piano and was dreaming. It was a reasonable explanation, a logical one, one that wouldn’t land me in an asylum, and it was simple enough to prove.

I pinched my wrist, twisting a bit of flesh, and the pain seemed real enough.

I glanced at the mirror—wasn’t there some adage about seeing your reflection in dreams?—but my face looked exactly as it always had.

I blew out a breath of frustration, only to suck it back in as a dark thought occurred to me.

What if I’d actually been struck by that falling arch in rehearsal or had been murdered by Carlotta shortly after, in her incandescent rage?

What if I was dead?

My stomach roiled with painful worry.

This couldn’t possibly be what heaven was like. Was it hell?

“Christine,” the voice said, my name a comforting caress I could almost feel against the shell of my ear. “You’re not mad. You’re not asleep.” He—and I was certain now it was a he—let out a soft chuckle. “And you’re not dead.”