Page 2 of Our Strange Duet

But whose rage had brought this on?

That of the encroaching mob?

Or…

“Erik,” I whispered, picking up the nearest sheet and tracing a finger along its stanzas.

The notes had been hastily jotted in his signature burgundy ink. I recognized the melody immediately. His fervored urgency rippled through every line.

A duet, written for soprano and baritone.

How I’d smiled when he’d first told me. Tenors were always meant to win the heroine’s heart.

But not this time.

Not exactly.

I closed my eyes, remembering our last moments in this space, remembering how his lips had moved over mine, remembering the abject sorrow which had choked his voice as he screamed for me to leave him.

With a shaky breath, I glanced around the room, looking for the rest of the song. I wanted to take it with me. I couldn’t bear the thought of such beauty stranded in this darkness, forever entombed like a pharaoh forgotten to time and history.

The sheer quantity of it all was overwhelming. I wandered through the mess, spotting tunes both familiar and strange. His spirit, his talent, remained in this place, even if my Angel was no more.

I picked up every page I could find, taking the scattered song and piecing it back together the way it was meant to be. At the far side of the room, just at the edge of my vision, came unexpected movement, and I startled.

An undignified cry caught in my throat, and I squinted, picturing him as he’d step from the darkness, his suit only a shade lighter than the void itself.

I willed for other bits of him to appear—first his hands, long and pale and lovely, then the crisp press of his shirt, the fastidious knot of his cravat. And his mask.

I stood frozen, breathless, my chest heavy with anticipation.

My instinct had been wrong.

The Opera Ghost was not gone. He was here. He had outwitted his would-be captors and come back. He’d returned.

For me.

All thoughts of Raoul—dear, wonderful Raoul, slumbering in his bed, wholly unaware of the treachery lodged within my heart—vanished.

Erik had come for me, and I could not forsake my Angel a second time.

But when he did not step out of the shadows, I crossed the room and pushed aside a gauzy bit of tattered tulle—the remnant of a bridal veil from Lohengrin—and I saw that the movement I’d caught had been nothing but my own self, reflected in the jagged shards of a mirror.

It was an enormous behemoth, taking up an entire section of the room and towering over me like a giant. The reflective surface had been smashed, shattered into hundreds of pieces. Some still hung in the frame like silvery teeth, and I had the irrational thought that it was a great beast on the verge of devouring me whole.

A cold draft caused the lantern’s flame to dance, setting the gilded nymphs carved along the frame into false motion. Highlights slid over exposed limbs and bared breasts. Metallic faces watched me with seething interest, and I looked away, feeling their judgment.

Resting on the steps just before the mirror was the last page of the duet. I knelt to retrieve it and discovered that hidden beneath was a colored illustration ripped from the pages of a book.

It was a rose.

A very red rose.

“The Rosa Joséphine,” I whispered, instantly recognizing its unique shade.

I scooped it up, noticing all the notes he’d scrawled in its margins—dates and locations, facts and anecdotes—and smiled. He’d been so uniquely curious, driven by a compulsion to know more. No detail was too small; no object was beneath his notice. Once his attention was caught, he would not rest until he knew and understood everything. His intensity could not be stopped.

How well I knew.