Page 124 of Our Strange Duet

“Have there been others?” I demanded fearlessly.

“I…Yes.” It was a ghost of an answer, a vapor puffed out on a cold winter’s day, there one second and gone the next.

“Are you going to kill me?”

Erik looked horrified. “What? I’d never! The others…they knew too much. They were in my way.”

“I know you,” I pressed. “I know all the secrets of the Opera Ghost. I know where you live. I know your name. Will you kill me because of it? How will you do it? A noose? A knife? Your bare hands?”

He raked his fingers over his scalp. “Christine, no! Never! I…I love you.”

The wedding dress encircling my frame seemed to shrink around me, squeezing as tight as the aforementioned noose.

“So now that you’ve gorged your lust for blood, I am to become prey for your lust for flesh? Is that it?”

It was the wrong play to make. I saw it the second my words fell.

Erik straightened, his posture as sharp as a blade. “You truly think so little of me, mademoiselle?” His clipped syllables were like shrapnel.

“I don’t know what to think of you,” I admitted. “Who are you, even? The Angel of Music? The Opera Ghost? Erik? The Phantom of the Opera? You cover your true self with all the efficiency of the mask you use to hide your face.”

“My face?” he echoed. “You had no difficulty knowing who I was—who you wanted me to be—until you saw this face.” He gestured to it with an angry jerk of his wrist.

I shook my head, sensing the turning tide. I was no longer on the offense, swinging my rapier with skilled aggression. I’d slipped and he’d pounced, putting me on a struggling defense. “That’s not true. That’s not—”

“This face,” he roared, and I could feel waves of fury radiating from him, “has altered every part of my life. It condemns me to wallow in blood. It denies me the joys of the flesh. This face! This face has ruined everything!”

He turned and slammed his fists upon the piano, causing a discordant noise as ugly as the tension between us. The silence which followed was broken only by the shaking rasps of our breath.

Abruptly, Erik smoothed his hands over his scalp, pulling himself back together. When he turned to me, the rage which had seized hold of him was gone, and, for a moment, I felt as if my old friend had returned.

“This face,” he murmured, “is an infection, poisoning every hope I’ve ever had for life, for love…From you…from my mother…Did I ever tell you what the first piece of clothing she made for me was? Not little knit booties or a darling bonnet. No.”

“A mask,” I guessed, cringing, despite myself, at his mother’s cruelty. What could have been if not for that one hateful choice?

“I do not desire your pity. We’re past all that. This.” He turned in a slow circle to gesture to the room around us. “This is your life now,” he said. “Our lives now,” he corrected, giving added emphasis to his change of phrasing. “A lifetime, an eternity of this face.”

“I would not have minded,” I began, unsure of how much truth my words held. “Your face is not nearly as haunting as you believe it to be. But your soul…your capacity for brutality…” I let out a laugh, even though there was nothing that amused me. “You kidnapped me. You’re holding me against my will, forcing me to wear a wedding dress, so that I can—what? Marry you? Erik. Do you think I’m going to marry you?”

Our eyes locked, and I could not believe the hope which burned within him. He did. He truly thought that all his schemes, all the things he’d done, could be overlooked. He really believed I would forgive him, that I would pledge my life to his.

He was a madman.

I’d overlooked things—so very many things—convinced of his genius, astounded by his talent. But how often did genius and madness go together? If not wholly hand in hand, then at least strolling alongside one another, assured and comfortable in the other’s presence. Caravaggio, Mozart, Goya, Handel, the list went on and on, men of skill and acclaim who sought perfection at every turn, heedless of their own destruction, ready to pay for greatness with everything, including their own sanity.

My eyes darted around the room, taking in the immensity of everything he’d created. Music, machines, art, and architecture. There was no limit to the heights his mind could soar. Nor a low to the depravity his impulses could sink.

“I won’t,” I finally said. “You can make me wear this dress and you can make me your prisoner here, but I won’t truly ever be married to you. I will never be your wife.”

He frowned. “Don’t you see? We are meant to…We’re supposed to…We are one, you and I, Christine. Our hearts beat for the same reason. Our desires are in accord. Can’t you see that? Together we will—”

He cut himself off, tilting his head to the back corner, where the walls ended and an enormous portcullis began. I couldn’t begin to guess what had seized Erik’s attention, and began to step toward the metal gate to see, but he darted forward with his catlike speed, clamping his fingers round my wrist.

“Wait,” he said, cocking his head, listening. A sardonic smile spread across his face. “I think, my dear, we have a guest!”

I strained my ears to make out what he’d heard, and thought that, maybe, there was splashing in the water. But it could have also been the slap of waves against the dock.

But then—