Page 120 of Our Strange Duet

A terrible silence passed, everyone too frightened to speak.

Was it over?

Had Erik been shot?

“You fool!” Raoul roared, his voice coming from the exact spot Erik’s had last sounded. “I said to fire only when the time comes!”

Realization thunked painfully in my chest. He knew the gendarmes had come armed. He’d instructed them to shoot.

He didn’t want Erik captured and cast into prison.

He wanted him dead.

Icy terror spread through my veins like hoarfrost.

Down in the pit, the gendarme stammered out an apology. “But, Monsieur le Vicomte—”

“No ‘buts’!” boomed Erik’s voice.

It was directionless now, filling up the whole of the auditorium. The stage. The wings. It felt as if everyone in the opera could hear him.

“For once, Monsieur le Vicomte is right. Do your duties well and seal my fate. While I hate to cut the fun short, this joke has worn thin. Open the doors, let the audience take their seats. It’s time for my opera to begin.”

All around us, lights flickered with a worrying pulse, but after a moment of darkness, they returned, shining as bright as usual.

A stage manager rushed by, flexing his hands nervously.

Madame Giry cleared her throat, attempting to regain our attention, but it was clear that any focus we’d had was lost.

With a deep sigh, she clapped her hands. “Class is over.”

Chapter 41

Somehow, impossibly, we had made it through the first three acts of the opera and had arrived at Don Juan Triumphant’s penultimate scene without incident, without alarm. The audience, though at first confused by the new avant-garde style of the music, seemed to be enjoying it.

My heart was torn, one half daring to hope that Erik had been content to sit back and watch with pleasure as his masterpiece played. The other half despaired, resigned to the terrible realization that he would never be caught, that this would never be over.

For the rest of my life, I would be haunted by the Phantom of the Opera.

I stood at the back of an enormous painted arch, waiting for my entrance.

Onstage, Carlotta and the chorus caroused with Marc, the bass cast as Passarino, Don Juan’s faithful right-hand man, as they readied their master’s chambers. The men set out platters of fine food and elaborate serving ware. The women fluffed and dressed the sumptuous bed before drawing its curtains upstage right.

I stretched while waiting, bending into deep pliés and flexing my shoulders to keep my muscles warm and limber.

I was in my favorite of Aminta’s costumes, a Baroque-style gown with a tight bodice, very full skirts, and extravagant layers of lace edging its elbow-length sleeves. It was a deceptively sweet shade of pink, with black embroidered vines creeping along every layer of the overskirt. Red ribbons and roses lashed up the bodice, and the skirt came only to mid-calf, allowing for Ubaldo to quickly toss the layers aside, exposing a long length of my leg as we fell into bed before the lights dimmed, ending the scene.

I caught Ubaldo’s eye now. He was at the other end of the arch, getting a final costume adjustment as the chorus’s music came to an end.

“Don Juan triumphs once again!”

We shared a quick smile before he hurried onstage, snapping his fingers at Meg, who pirouetted after him. Her gown was theatrically unlaced, showing she’d just come from being ravished somewhere else in the manor. She left an enormous, wet kiss on Ubaldo’s cheek, and he tossed her a purse of coins. With a wink toward the audience, she danced offstage, heading in my direction.

She zipped by me without acknowledgment, scurrying into the wings for her final quick change. The rest of the dancers were already milling around, dressed as leering demons and the ghosts of women Don Juan had seduced, so ruining their reputations that they’d taken their own lives to torment him from beyond the grave.

I wanted to go after her. Things between us hadn’t fallen back into our usual ease, and it rubbed at me like a poking burr. But there wasn’t time.

Onstage now, Passarino was dressing Don Juan, throwing a liveried cloak over his shoulders before drawing up the hood to obscure Ubaldo’s face, as he began to recite the order of their scheme.