Page 64 of Our Strange Duet

“I don’t…I don’t think I can do this,” I admitted as she whirled me round to start lacing up the back. Hot bile climbed my esophagus, bitter and biting, and I could see the beat of my heart pulsing around the edges of my vision.

“Of course you can, dearie,” she soothed, somewhat distractedly, around a mouth full of pins.

A wave of dancers rushed past us, hurrying onstage with hastily grabbed bowers of greenery.

“I can’t. I’m not ready. We never rehearsed this. This was never meant to be my part.”

“You stepped in before, and it went swimmingly. No one will blame you if it’s not perfect,” she said, then accidentally jabbed me with one of the pins as she tried adjusting the gown’s shoulders. “You know as well as I do, the show must go on.”

“But Carlotta…” I twisted around to the hallway leading back to her dressing room. “Shouldn’t we check on her? Shouldn’t we—”

“It’s all being taken care of,” said one of the assistants as she removed the ribbon holding back my hair in a low queue.

“But what if…but what if what happened to her—”

A backdrop whizzed by us, coming in too fast on the rail. The metal pipe slammed to the stage and bounced, nearly knocking over the back row of dancers. It was a miracle none of them were struck.

What if the same thing happens to me?

I wanted to scream it out loud, letting my fears wash over the audience with as much force as the horrid noises bursting from Carlotta. I imagined my cries of peril carrying across the horseshoe auditorium, my voice filling every nook and cranny, seeping into the wood grain and causing the gilt paint to curl.

Even as I visualized the devastation such a sound would create, I recognized my alarm was unfounded.

Erik had had something to do with Carlotta.

Erik had caused the chandelier to dance.

Erik had been behind it all.

But I didn’t believe he’d do anything like that to me. My Angel would never hurt me. My Angel would never…

I shook my head, forcing such unhelpful thoughts away.

Erik.

He was Erik.

I had to stop thinking of him as an otherworldly being, a beatific deity who had come to bestow God’s blessings upon me, and to start calling him what he was.

A man.

A monster, a tiny voice in my mind whispered, its words rife with treachery. No one but a monster could do such a wicked thing to Carlotta.

As much as I disliked the soprano, I found myself pitying her. I couldn’t imagine how she’d recover from such public embarrassment. And what had her humiliation been for? So that I could be moved into her place, a new chess piece taking over for a fallen pawn?

I wouldn’t.

It was madness.

“I’m not going on,” I said, squirming to free myself from Madame Barbier’s hold.

“Not like this,” she agreed. “You still need your wig.”

“No. I need to—” Another pin stabbed me, deep enough for a rosebud of blood to well up into the pretty pink fabric.

“Now look what you’ve done,” the wardrobe mistress growled. “Stop wiggling and let us work!”

“Christine!” called out a voice, nearly lost in the shifting scenic pieces and the flurried activity in the wings.