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Chapter Text

The knock on the door startled Christine awake, and it took her a second to orient herself.

Unmade, rumpled bed.  Gentle sunlight streaming through the windows.  Prisms of color on the floor and walls from the suncatchers she’d made over the summer, Meg’s attempt to cheer her from thousands of miles away.

Her nap had lasted a bit longer than she’d intended.

There was a second knock on the door, and, groaning slightly, she pulled herself to standing and picked her way to the front door.  She narrowly avoided the pile of dirty clothes she still needed to wash, and managed to topple over the pile of clean-but-not-folded clothes that she’d tossed on her loveseat the night before.

She made a disgusted sound and reminded herself that she was supposed to be trying to get back into a regular routine.  Or at least something resembling one.  She grabbed the hoodie slung over the back of the chair and shrugged it on, and then pulled the disposable mask off the hook by the door and put that on, too.

She peeked through the peephole and saw a man dressed in a brown uniform, holding a black box.  Frowning, she slid the bolt chain in place and pulled the door open a couple of inches.

“Yes?”

The man stood a respectful distance from the door.  “Miss Christine Daaé?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Delivery,” he said.  “I was instructed not to leave it on the doorstep, but to ensure you were home to receive it personally.”

“Do you need to see ID?” she asked, and eyed the box.  She couldn’t recall having ordered anything recently, but who could say what she might’ve done in a late night, wine-soaked haze.

“No, miss,” he said.  He placed the box on the ground and stepped away.  “Only to ensure you were home.  Have a nice day.”

“Thank you.”  She waited till he’d walked away, then closed the door.  She went into the kitchen and opened up the big disinfecting lightbox that Meg’s mother had sent her weeks ago, thinking that the delivery box might be a tight fit, but it should work.  Then she grabbed a pair of disposable gloves and retrieved the box from her doorstep, noting it was about the size of a big shoebox and heavier than it looked.

She kicked the door closed behind her and put the box in the disinfecting box, then turned it on and set the timer for an hour.

While she waited, she did the yoga routine she’d been supposed to do when she laid down earlier, and scrounged through the fridge.  There wasn’t a lot there, but she had some leftover takeout from a local Lebanese place.  She made a wrap out of her leftover falafel with tzatziki, tomatoes, and goat cheese, remembering how last week Meg had scolded her for thinking six gummy worms was an appropriate dinner.  When she’d snarked it was really more like lunch for her, Meg had responded that it wasn’t an appropriate lunch, either.  She grabbed her phone and checked it for this session’s cocktail recipe.

“Aviation martini,” she muttered, and rolled her eyes.  It had been Jules’s turn to pick, and he liked to go old school on them.  She gathered the ingredients and shook the mixture in her martini shaker, then poured it into the fancy martini glass that Jules had also insisted they needed for these sessions.  She garnished it with a couple of dirty cherries, then carted both plate of food and cocktail over to the table.

The disinfecting box chimed, indicating it was done, so she grabbed that and put it on the table too, certain that it had something to do with either Meg’s or Jules’s shenanigans, and then opened Zoom.

Meg was already waiting, her own dinner and cocktail in front of her.  “Did you get one?” she asked without preamble.

“A box?  Yep.”  She hefted the box and showed it to her.  “Just finished disinfecting.”

“Awesome, I thought we’d open them together,” Meg said excitedly.  She sipped her cocktail and made a face.  “What the fuck is this?”

There was a chime, and Christine punched the button to let Jules in.  “It’s called an aviation cocktail, you heathen,” he said.  “Some of us are looking for a bit more culture than you get with Long Island Iced Tea.”

“Okay, that was one time,” Meg said.  Jules shuddered.

“One time too many,” he said.  “Back me up, Chris.”

“It was college,” she said.  “Anything goes in college.”  She and Meg had ended up roommates their first year, and they’d met Jules just a week after that, and the trio had been inseparable ever since.

"Whatever,” Meg said.  “You got one too, right?”

“Yes,” he said.  “Delivered by the yummiest guy I’ve ever seen.  Tried to get him to come in for drinks, but he said no.”

“We’re still in lockdown, Jules,” Christine said.

Jules sniffed and took a sip of his own drink.  “He was welcome to join my pod,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Christine.  “Weren’t they calling it a bubble?”

“Sex den?” Meg offered, and she and Christine snorted with laughter.

“Anyway,” said Meg when their mirth had died.  She had what looked like a colorful garden salad in front of her, while Jules had opted for some kind of panini sandwich.  “So, recap: this whole week sucked and all I did was rattle around my apartment.  I’m pretty sure I danced the Nutcracker by myself about five times.  How about you guys?”

“Well, I’m trying to seduce the UPS guy, so that should tell you how things are going for me,” Jules said.

“And Christine?  How’s everything with you?” Meg asked.

“Well, I did yoga today,” she said.  “So I figure that’s a win.”

“What about the voice lessons?” Jules asked.

She shrugged.  “I have a few students,” she said.  “Some of them are…well.”  She winced, thinking of her most recent student, a teenager who was convinced she was the Next Big Thing in the opera world when in reality she sounded like a screechy cat in heat.

“I mean, if they pay,” Jules said.

“Yeah,” she agreed.  Rent wasn’t cheap, after all.  “Oh!  And I finally heard back from the people at the Manhattan.  They said that once lockdown is over, they want to offer me that secondary spot.”

“Way to bury the lede!  Congratulations!” Jules said.

“Yay!  And then we’ll all be working together,” Meg said happily.  She was the prima ballerina at the Manhattan, so she had been the one who’d told Christine about the secondary soprano opening and gotten her the audition.

Of course, her audition had been the week before the lockdown had been implemented, so very little had happened over the last year.

“True,” said Jules.  “Whenever that happens, I guess.”

“I think they’re starting to say maybe in a few months,” Meg said.  “At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Well, if it’s up to the WHO, we’ll never reopen for business,” Jules said with a scowl.  “At this point they’ve got the vaccine, and cases have gone down a lot.  There’s really no reason to keep dragging this out.”

Christine shifted uncomfortably.  “Nearly ten percent of the world’s population has died,” she said.  “I can understand them being cautious.”

“Hmm.  Well, it’s just as well.  Once we’re back to work, I’ll probably have to stop posting so much.”  He worked in costuming at the Manhattan, but when they’d all been furloughed he’d started a TikTok where he made clothes and told gossipy stories about performers he’d worked with in the past, giving them all bitchy little nicknames.  He’d had a million subscribers by the end of his first month.

“Oh, but I love Stitchertea!” Meg complained.

“You won’t even notice,” Jules said.  “You’ll be too occupied with being able to have your sugar daddy in the same room with you to even care.”

“Jealous?” Meg teased.  For the last few years, she’d been sponsored by the Comte de Chagny, an obscenely wealthy French aristocrat who’d decided Meg was his soulmate when he’d visited New York and seen her dance as both Odette and Odile in Swan Lake.

“Obviously,” Jules said.  “For all your bitching, you’re living in a Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking Central Park, and I’m in a rundown loft in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah, we’ve all seen that particular rundown loft,” Christine said.  Jules had inherited a fortune from his grandfather, and had invested in a brownstone in Brooklyn.  “I’m the one living in a studio.”

“And all the way across the country,” Meg said.  They’d all three attended Juilliard, and while Meg and Jules had found work in the city, Christine had pitted the Met and the San Francisco Opera against each other, and San Francisco had offered her more, so that’s where she had gone.  It had only taken her a couple of years to determine she missed her friends and the city too much, and just when she’d thought she’d be able to come home, the lockdowns had hit.

“Ooh!”  Meg suddenly perked up, and picked up her tablet.  “Want to see your bedroom?”  Christine watched as Meg’s apartment flashed by, and she caught the barest glimpse out one of the windows until they stopped in an empty room.  The walls were a silvery gray color, the floor the same dark hardwood that ran through the rest of Meg’s apartment.  “I’ve got all the furniture picked out, I’ll email it to you so you can see it.  If you like it I’ll get it ordered.”

“Meg,” Christine said.  “You don’t have to do that.”

“Thank Philippe, not me,” she said.  “He’s bankrolling all of this, after all.”

“Shameless,” Jules said.

“It’s really sweet of you,” Christine added.

“It’ll be like school, except better, because we’ll have more room,” Meg said.  “And you’ll have this view.”  She walked over to one of the big windows and Christine looked down the dizzying height toward the park.

“Very nice,” she said.

“You could always live with me instead,” Jules said.  “Those Park Avenue Princesses are gonna get tiresome real quick, and they won’t be as nice to you as they have to be to Meg.”

“He just wants to lure you into one of his orgies,” Meg said.

“Obviously,” Jules said.  “Attendance would go way up.”

They all laughed, and Christine finished her drink.

“So,” she said.  “What exactly is this box for?”

“It’s from Philippe,” Meg said with a grin.  “You’ll have to open it up to see what it is.”

"Ten bucks says it’s a wedding invitation of some kind,” Jules said.  “He’s going to lure you to France and then tie you to his bed so you can’t escape.”  The Comte had not been subtle about his desire to make Meg his wife, having proposed to her several times already with a succession of larger and flashier diamond rings.  Meg had joked that she was holding out for a pink multi-carat radiant-cut ring like the one Ben Affleck had given to Jennifer Lopez on their first go round, but Christine knew it was really because she and Philippe had a conflict about whether she would continue to dance once she was his Comtesse.

“On three,” Meg said.  “One, two, three!”

Christine cut through the brown paper it had been wrapped in to discover a black box.  She shook it slightly and loosened the lid, then pulled it off.

“Oh,” she said.  The box was lined with deep, black velvet, with fancy red glittery party confetti dusted over it.  Inside were a medium-sized black velvet hinged box, a large black velvet drawstring pouch, and a square black parchment envelope sealed with a red wax seal with a fancy, curly C pressed into the wax.

“What should we open first?”  The inside of Meg’s and Jules’s boxes looked identical to hers.

“The invitation,” Meg said.  She held hers up and showed it to the camera.  ‘Miss Megan Giry’ was written on it in fancy calligraphy.

“Not Ms.?” Christine asked as she picked hers up.  “How not-modern of him.”

“He’s a French aristocrat who longs for the days of Napoleon, what do you expect?” Meg asked.

“Well, go on and open it,” Jules said, and rubbed his hands together in anticipation.  “Twenty bucks is about to be mine.”

Christine rolled her eyes and broke the wax seal.  She pulled out a stiff piece of red cardstock with deep black lettering.

“‘The Garden of Earthly Delights,’” she read.  “‘You are cordially invited to step Below and witness the magnificent and the macabre.’  There’s nothing on here about a surprise wedding.  I think you owe us both ten bucks each.”

“Twenty,” Meg said.  Jules waved his hand impatiently.

“We’ll see,” he said.  “A wedding could be macabre.”  He picked up his levered box and opened it.  He whistled, then turned the box to show off a pair of gold cufflinks, a gold pocketwatch, and a small gold ring that Christine assumed was a pinky ring, all inlaid with red stones.  “Fancy.”

Christine picked up her box and opened it and gasped.

Black fire opals.  A long necklace of hundreds of tiny glimmering stones, strands woven together like a rope that would likely loop over her neck several times, a set of drop-style earrings, and a set of gorgeous opal bangle bracelets.

“Do you think they’re real?”  There was a little card beneath the necklace, and when she picked it up she realized it was an authentication card, proclaiming the stones to be genuine Lightning Ridge opals.  She couldn’t comprehend the thousands and thousands of dollars that a man she’d never met had just casually spent on her.

“Of course they’re real,” Meg said.  “He’d consider it gauche to send anything fake.”

“So they’re like, to borrow or something?” Christine asked.  Meg laughed.

“I guess if it makes you feel better, you can think of them as loaners,” she said.  Christine gingerly put down her box.

“And?” Jules asked expectantly, as Meg hadn’t opened her own box yet.  He started to hum the wedding march, and she flipped it open and showed them.  Her jewels were diamonds, earrings with dangling clusters, an Art Deco collar-style necklace, a bracelet with gems so large they looked like rock candy, and of course, an Art Deco style diamond ring.

“Very pretty,” Christine said.  “But I still don’t understand what all this is for.”

“It’s a Halloween party,” Meg said.  “All of this is just…Philippe.  He likes to get generous, you know.”

“I don’t,” said Christine, suddenly feeling a little awkward.  They’d all been so busy – and mostly so broke – that they hadn’t had the chance to see each other in person much since Christine’s move to California.

"Did he say much to you the last time you guys talked?” Jules asked Meg, clearly unaware of Christine’s sudden internal conflict.

“No,” Meg said.  “But we didn’t do a whole lot of talking, if you catch my drift.”

“Dirty,” Jules said.  “Well, this has certainly improved my week.”

“Yeah,” Christine said softly.  “Is this…like, will it be safe?”

“Oh, totally,” said Meg.  “We’ve all had the vaccine, right?  And he’s going to send a private car and his private jet.  In two weeks, so we’ll have all been properly quarantined, too.”

Christine chewed on her lower lip.  “And where is it?”

“In northern France, near a little commune called Perros-Guirec,” Meg said.  “He’s got this massive chateau – I haven’t even seen it yet, but he’s sent pictures.”

“I’m sure he’ll be really careful about all of this,” Jules added.  “When he did that get together over the summer, it was super private and really safe.”

Christine remembered.  She hadn’t gone, obviously, but she’d seen the social media posts – and all the articles and comments, deriding the Comte and his friends as out of touch, privileged rich people who were selfishly endangering everyone else.

But at least nobody had gotten sick.  That she’d heard of, at least.  And she thought it probably would’ve been reported, since at the time it was such a big story.  So it seemed that even if the Comte thought he was above lockdown requirements, he at least was really careful about it.

“Who all do you think will be there?” she asked.

“Oh, his usual crowd,” Meg said, as if Christine knew who that was.  “His brother, I’m sure, some friends from Paris and elsewhere.”  She glanced at her tablet and met Christine’s eyes.  “It’ll be totally fun, we can people watch.”

“I wouldn’t have even met some of them,” Jules added.

“I don’t have anything to wear with all this,” Christine said.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, he’ll make sure you have a dress,” Meg said.  At Christine’s surprised look, she continued, “It’s what he does.  Just text me your measurements and he’ll get it done.”

“Oh, do you remember when he did the after party for The Sleeping Beauty?” Jules asked eagerly.  “He had them design an entire ballroom in the Plaza to look like a real forest!  Brought in trees and everything.”

“I remember seeing the pictures,” Christine said.

“It’s going to be so much fun,” Meg said.  “Don’t worry about anything.  And I’ll be so glad that you’ll finally get to meet him!  You’ll love it, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” Christine said.  “What about this other thing?”  She picked up the black velvet drawstring pouch and opened it and withdrew a Colombina mask made of dark silk, dotted with tiny opals in a scroll pattern.

“Ooh, a masquerade,” Jules said.  His own mask was more a Bauta style, but only a half mask like Christine’s, and Meg’s was a Colombina as well, but made of white silk and shaped like a butterfly with real feathers and tiny diamond accents.  Jules held up his mask over his face and smiled wickedly.  “One can be whomever they please, at a masque.”

“Yes,” Christine murmured, and looked at her own thoughtfully.  Anything could be hiding behind a mask.

Chapter Text

Two weeks later, Christine had packed her bag and stood on the corner outside of her apartment, waiting for a private car service who would then drive her to the airfield where the Comte’s private jet awaited.  She’d just gotten a text, informing her that the car was due in about five minutes.

Other than her, the street was deserted, so much so that she halfway expected to see a piece of newsprint blow by on the breeze, or hear a crow’s caw.  Wasn’t that what you usually saw in dystopian movies, where whole cities were left empty because of some terrible plague?  But no; the city wasn’t empty, it was only the streets that were deserted.  The buildings around her were full of people.  Probably watching her from their windows, judging her for being outside.

Christine could hardly blame them.  It started like the flu, and you’d be tired and achy for a couple of days, maybe have some congestion.  But then you developed a fever that soared so high people claimed ice melted and sizzled on your skin.  Then, the hallucinations came, of parched deserts, red fire, and some even said they saw the Grim Reaper himself.  And once you started sweating blood, you’d be dead within twenty-four hours.

That was why people called it the Red Devil.  Because you died covered in your own blood and begging for the devil to take you.

It infected close to one hundred percent of the people who were exposed to it, and of those infected, close to thirty percent of them died.  If it was detected early, if you could keep the fever down, people tended not to develop the blood sweats and eventually recovered.  But the problem was that because it started so innocuously, a person could potentially infect several others before they even knew they were sick.

There was a treatment, but it had to be administered quickly.  There was the vaccine, of course, but after it had been administered to health care workers and the elderly and other immunocompromised people, they’d operated a lottery system.  Christine had been one of the lucky ones; she’d been in the first wave who’d gotten it.

While she waited, she sort of vacantly stared across the street.  There was a fountain in front of that apartment building, and it was the only sign of life around her, sputtering and spitting water up in a circular formation.

As she stared, she noticed a man walking on the sidewalk in front of it, a man dressed in dark clothes.  He was too far away to see clearly, but she had the impression of light-colored hair and a strong profile.  His walk seemed purposeful, as though he were on his way somewhere rather than taking a leisurely stroll.

Christine watched him somewhat idly, a little surprised he hadn’t noticed her, considering they were the only ones out on the street.  There was something oddly familiar about him, but she wasn’t sure what.

Time seemed to slow down as he turned to look in her direction.

Something hit her hard, and unbalanced, she nearly toppled over.

“No,” she whispered as her vision went black.

A bright, sterile-smelling room.  Her eyes adjusted slowly to see a man sprawled out on a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors in hazmat suits, jerking uncontrollably and covered in his own blood.  As his movements weakened and slowed, total darkness surrounded her, and she heard, finally, that crow’s caw that she’d expected.  The street was gone, everything was gone.  Only the feel of being held by something, cradled gently.  It was warm.  She was safe.

A voice whispered in her ear.

"Didn’t I promise I’d come back for you?”

“Miss?”

Christine blinked.  The man who’d run into her was long gone, and she was glad she was wearing a mask and gloves.

But he touched your skin.  He must’ve, for you to see.

Maybe she should go back upstairs.  Call the trip off, quarantine again.  She shuddered at the idea of dying, alone in her apartment, bleeding out from the Red Devil.

No.  You are safe.  It will not touch you.

“Miss?”

Christine shook her head and took a deep breath.  What had she been thinking about?

The car had pulled up, the driver standing beside it, a look of concern on his face.

“Sorry, yes,” she said.  “I suppose it’s a bit early for me.”

The driver smiled.  “Of course,” he said.  “If you will.”  He gestured, and she saw the trunk was open.  She assumed ordinarily that he’d take the bag for her, but considering everything else she could understand the extra precautions, so she picked up her bag and put it in the trunk.  He opened one of the back doors, and then they performed a somewhat awkward little dance whereby she tried to get into the car and he did his best to avoid standing too close to her while also trying to get back in the car.  Finally, he gestured and waited, and she got in and closed the door, noting that the car had a privacy panel that had been drawn up.  She relaxed a little bit.

“Just about twenty minutes to the airfield, miss,” the driver said through the intercom as the car started.  She nodded vaguely, though she knew he couldn’t see her.

It had been a long time since that had happened to her.  Since before the lockdowns, when she was still regularly interacting with people.  It wasn’t anything she’d ever told anyone about, either.

Well, she’d told Papa and Aunt Sylvie, but Papa thought it was a grief response and Aunt Sylvie had accused her of making up stories.  She’d been so upset about it that Christine had pretended it hadn’t happened.

She shivered and played with the air conditioning controls and flipped them off.

It wasn’t real.  It was just her mind wandering, daydreaming.  Everyone daydreamed.  Thinking it had been real was just proof of how vivid her imagination was.  She looked out the window, hoping something would distract her from her thoughts.

The man she’d seen on the other side of the street now stood where she’d been standing, watching after her, and when they passed him, she got a better look at him and gasped.

He didn’t have a face.

No, that couldn’t be right.  She looked back at him, but they were now too far away.  But everyone had a face.  What a strange thing to think!  It must’ve just been some kind of optical illusion.  Maybe she was more stressed about this trip than she’d anticipated.

As they turned the corner, she thought she saw a crow alight on the man’s shoulder.

*

Christine stretched out in the plush, buttery-soft leather seat of the private Gulfstream jet.  She was the guest coming from the furthest away, so the Comte had sent his jet to her first.  They would stop briefly in New York City to pick up Meg and Jules, but for now, she had the whole place to herself, and planned to make the most of it.

It was small but not cramped, decorated in shades of beige and gray with a few black leather captain’s chair style seats, and a long bench, or maybe she should call it something fancier like a chaise, that she was currently stretched out on.  In the back was a bedroom with a giant king sized bed.

Christine had taken one look at that and noped right the fuck out of there, not wanting to consider thoughts of her best friend and the Comte using it to log their time in the Mile High Club.

There was a single steward who had offered her a mimosa or an Irish coffee, and she’d accepted them both because maybe it was eight in the morning but she was on vacation, damn it.  She guzzled them down in the hopes that they would help her relax.

It only happened when death was near, and it had been so long that she’d forgotten how startling it was.  How vivid the visions were.

The first time Christine had ever seen death, she’d been seven years old.

Ironic, as the doctors had all said she was the one who was going to die.

She’d come down with a bad case of the flu, and had been admitted to the hospital for a fever and dehydration.  She could remember how hot and thirsty she’d been, how Mama and Papa had looked devastated in her few lucid moments, how she’d wanted to cry with them except she’d had no tears.

And then one night, a tall figure in black had approached her bed, and she’d felt his touch on her forehead, cool and soothing, and then he’d whispered in her ear.

"Not yet.”

When she’d woken up, her fever had broken, and they’d called it a miracle.  She’d tried to tell her parents about the man, but they’d told her it must’ve been a bad dream.

That was when it had started, though of course, she hadn’t understood what it was at the time.  All she’d known was that Mama had hugged her in relief, and she’d been transported to a different hospital room, and Papa had been there too, crying over her mother’s prone body.

It had scared her, and she’d cried and made Mama promise to be careful, but two weeks later it happened anyway.  A car accident, a slip on the ice.  Christine had been in the car with her, but had managed to escape entirely unscathed.

Over the years, she’d learned that the visions would only come when someone’s time was near.  She’d known Papa was going to die of the cancer even though all the doctors insisted he was doing better.  She’d known about Aunt Sylvie’s heart attack before it happened.

It was frustrating and frightening, to receive the visions, because by the time they happened, there was usually nothing that could be done about it.

So Christine just did her best not to touch people.

She drifted off after finishing her mimosa, and found herself wandering a dark hallway lined with doors.  Each doorway lead somewhere, and there was a correct choice, but she didn’t know what it was.  Somewhere ahead, a clock ticked at a tempo that seemed slower than usual.  And behind her, she could hear screams and cries, moans of pain.

She broke into a run as the scent of death caught up with her.  She tripped, and would’ve fallen if she hadn’t been caught by something.

No.  Someone.  Someone impossibly tall, draped in the shadows themselves, with glowing amber eyes.

“My dear,” a voice purred in her ear.  “I have been waiting for you.”            

“Chris!”

She woke up to find Jules and Meg staring down at her.

Christine sat up and looked around in confusion.  “How long was I asleep?”

“We’re already back in the air,” Meg said with a laugh, and surged forward.  Christine held her breath when Meg engulfed her in a hug, but she saw nothing.

“You look fantastic,” Jules said.  She’d decided to put forth some effort in her wardrobe, with it being her first real outing in over a year, and had worn a slinky red bodycon tank dress that outlined her curves to perfection.  It was just a cheap thing she’d gotten off Amazon, but it looked much more expensive, and the color was great against her pale skin and dark hair.  She’d paired it with comfy Converse sneakers that she’d owned since high school, and a roomy black and white flannel that had belonged to her last boyfriend that she’d brought only because she’d been concerned the jet would be cold.  “Sexy as fuck, girl.”  He took her hand and twirled her around.  Again, she saw nothing, and she nearly cried in relief.

Jules was still talking.  “Boobs look great, and you still have that yoga booty after almost a whole year in lockdown.  Are you on the lookout for your own patron?”

She burst into laughter.  “Don’t be silly,” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Meg.  “You look hot, Christine.  If I were into girls I’d be all over you.”

“Well, I am into girls, and let me tell you,” Jules said.  He winked.  “I would.”  Then he laughed, and she wasn’t entirely sure he was joking or not.

“Well,” she said, feeling oddly self-conscious.  “It’s not like I’ve had much to do besides work out.”

“None of us have had much to do,” Jules said as he sat down in one of the chairs opposite her.  Meg flopped down beside her on the chaise, which was plenty big enough for them both.  “Personally, I’ve gained seven pounds.  Ooh, is that champagne?”

The steward smiled at them.  “Would any of you like a drink?” she asked.

“She makes them strong,” Christine warned her friends.  “I had two drinks and I slept for hours.”

“You’re just a lightweight,” Meg teased.

“If I may suggest,” the steward said.  “I have everything I need to make a Corpse Reviver.”

“What’s that?” Christine asked, a bit intrigued.

“You have absinthe?” Jules asked.  Of course, he would know what that was.

“Yes, sir,” she said with a grin.  “It goes along with Monsieur le Comte’s theme for the party.”

“Death?” Christine asked uneasily.  She was ignored.

“Oh, we’re definitely drinking those,” Jules said.  “Three, please.”

“What the fuck is that?” Meg asked when she’d walked back to her cart to start mixing.

“Only the most incredible thing you’ll ever drink,” he said.  “I was going to pick it as one of my choices, but it’s hard to find real absinthe.”

“So what’s in it?” Christine asked as the steward came back with their drinks.  “Other than absinthe?”

“Don’t tell them,” Jules said when the steward opened her mouth.  “It’s a surprise.”

“Well then,” Meg said, and picked up her glass and sniffed it somewhat dubiously.  “Cheers to an exciting vacation.”  They clinked their glasses, and Christine tried it.

Later, she would remember the drink as a little bit sour and bitter, and Jules cackling about the “green fairy.”  She and Meg had two each, and ended up huddled together in the giant bed, watching a play of lights on the ceiling that she knew really weren’t there.

“It’s not supposed to do this,” Meg said.  “Absinthe doesn’t really make you hallucinate.  That’s just a marketing thing.”

Christine had retreated to a windowseat and was stuck to the window, staring down at the vast ocean below.  “It’s like we’re nowhere,” she said.  “There’s so much space, and it’s all so big.  But I can’t see any of it.”

“Careful so you don’t fall,” Meg said.  Christine pressed a hand against the window and another against the wall.

“Do you think it could break?” she asked.  “And I’d go…where?  Into the void?”

“You’re drunk and high,” Jules said from the doorway.  Christine turned in slow motion and watched Meg hold her empty glass up to Jules.

“Can I have another?”

“No,” he said, and looked amused.  He took both of their glasses away from them and vanished, then came back a few minutes later and hopped onto the bed beside Meg.

“Do you think it’s really safe?” Christine asked.  She stood up and unsteadily walked toward the bed.  Jules scooped her up and settled her beside him, so that he was sandwiched between the two girls.

“We’re all vaccinated,” said Jules, and hugged her close like she was his favorite stuffie.  “Don’t worry about it.  Everything’s going to be fine.”

“I guess,” she said as Meg grumbled and rolled over and put one of her arms around his waist.  Jules grunted.

“I hate being the little spoon, you know that.”

“I’m not a spoon, I’m a jetpack,” Meg said.  “Gonna fly us to our dreams.”

Christine snuggled back against Jules and felt him relax.  The whole thing was so reminiscent of their early days at Juilliard that she almost expected to open her eyes and see the cheap, shitty studio they’d all shared in Queens their second year.  But when she looked, they were still in the Comte’s jet, the darkened, star-lit sky reflected in the windows.  It was the last thing she saw before she drifted off to sleep.

*

Her dream from earlier continued; she wandered the seemingly endless hall.  This time, though, the doors were open, and she could peek into the rooms, though she couldn’t see much.  Mostly colorful patterns, people laughing and talking, music playing.  Underneath it all, though, was an ominously ticking clock, and the sound made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

As she drifted through the hall, the noises she heard went from pleasant party noises to screams and cries.  She started to run, thinking to help, and ended up in a ballroom.

It was empty and quiet, but the room itself was completely trashed.  The windows were broken, the buffet table had been heaved over, all the food and drink smashed to the floor.  Her shoes crunched over broken crystal fragments from glasses that had shattered.  The instruments in the small orchestra pit had been similarly destroyed, the piano smoking slightly.  A cello appeared to be on fire.

And the room was smeared all over with blood.

She heard a noise behind her, a scream of anger rather than fear, and she started to run again, and ended in a black, empty space, hearing nothing but that ticking clock.

Arms encircled her, and a faint light lit enough for her to see the tall figure who embraced her.  She relaxed.  Because she knew him; hadn’t she been seeing him her entire life, in one form or another?  Wasn’t he more familiar to her than anyone else?

She felt a long-fingered hand run through her hair, and she tilted her head up to look at him, but all she saw was a black void and those glowing golden eyes.

“Not yet,” the voice murmured.

She woke, and it was the middle of the night, wherever they were.  She could hear Meg’s tiny snores and the soft sound of Jules breathing.  Her eyes wandered around the little cabin, and in the corner, she thought she saw that looming dark figure, but when she looked again, it had vanished.

*

Thankfully for them all, the trans-Atlantic flight was an overnight one, and they all had time to recover from their absinthe-heavy drinks before landing the next day.  The steward, as well, was ready on hand with copious water bottles, ibuprofen, and glasses of champagne that eased the way.  Still, Christine was grateful for her extremely dark sunglasses as they got off the plane, and also grateful for how cloudy the French morning was.

An unfamiliar man stood beside a dark limousine, tall and dark-haired, wearing a dark suit and aviator sunglasses.  Christine’s suspicions were confirmed when Meg ran down the steps, and nearly tripped in her haste to get to him.  He hurried forward and caught her, wrapped her in his arms and whirled her around, and then kissed her in a way that made Christine feel as though she were intruding on something private.

They pulled apart when Jules cleared his throat pointedly, and Meg beamed at her friends.

“Bonjour, Jules,” the Comte said, and offered his hand.  Christine looked him up and down, a little surprised at how young he was.  For some reason she’d been expecting a much older man, but the Comte de Chagny looked like he was maybe ten years older than them, at most.

“Bonjour, Philippe,” Jules said.  Then the Comte turned to her.

“And this is the lovely Mademoiselle Daaé,” he said, and removed his sunglasses so she could see his handsome face and startlingly ice blue eyes.  Instead of shaking her hand, he clasped it between both of his and brought it to his lips, gave her a quick peck.

“Thank you so much for inviting me, Monsieur,” Christine said.  He smiled.

“But no, you must call me Philippe,” he said.  “You are my Megan’s dearest friend, and so we will become friends as well.”

She smiled.  “Thank you, Philippe,” she said.  He let go of her hand and wrapped an arm around Meg’s waist, and then ushered them all into the car.

“We are about a half-hour from the chateau,” he said.  “The drive is along the coast, I thought you would all enjoy that.”

“We don’t need to go through Customs?” Christine asked.

“Non,” he said.  He began to describe the chateau, and Christine once again felt a little left out as Meg and Jules peppered him with questions about the apparent renovations he’d done.  So, still tired and suffering the effects of drinking too much on an airplane, she drifted a little bit until she felt the car begin to slow.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty,” Jules murmured.  “We’re nearly there.”

She blinked and looked around to see everyone looking at her.  “Sorry,” she mumbled, and sat up a bit straighter.

“It’s all right,” Meg said.  “I slept most of the way, too.  But Philippe said it’s quite something, to see it as we approach.”

She turned and looked out the window as they came around a bend, and the estate came into view.

“Holy shit,” she exclaimed, then clapped a hand over her mouth.  “Sorry!”  But even Philippe was smiling at that, so she didn’t think she’d offended him.  She turned back to watch as it loomed closer.

Not an estate, an actual castle – a chateau, she told herself, that looked like some kind of mix of medieval and gothic architecture, with battlements and turrets but also buttresses and high points.  It was also massive, looming over the edge of the Seine as it wound its way to the ocean.

She wondered if it would be rude to ask if it was modernized with electricity and bathrooms when she noticed the people.

At least two dozen of them, all wearing medical masks, lined the road, holding signs.  Some had photos of the Comte and Louis XVI with a red equal sign between them, as if implying they were the same, others said Roi du Diable Rouge in rather violent, blood red script, and a few more depicted the Comte presiding over the Last Supper, but everyone appeared to be bleeding and dead.

She shuddered.  “What is all that?” she asked.

The Comte said something in French, and Meg translated, “Protests.”

“Of what?”

“Of us,” she said.  “Him.  The chateau, the party, you name it, they’re unhappy.”

Christine eyed the people uneasily as they drove by.  “Are we safe here?” she asked.

“They’re upset because they think we’re breaking quarantine,” Jules said.  “But when you think about it, we really aren’t.”

“What are they doing over there?” she asked, and pointed toward the shoreline, where she could see yet more people clustered around a small fire.

“It is a summoning,” the Comte said.  “To punish us, apparently.”  He laughed.  “They claim they will send the devil to us and he will make us all pay.  I made it the theme of the party.  If they want a devil, we shall give them one.”

Christine frowned but decided to say nothing as the car turned down the private drive.  She glanced back to see the people staring at them.  It looked as if the crowd had grown some even in the short amount of time they’d been driving down the road.  The new people looked angrier, and she thought she saw iron pokers and other makeshift weapons being brandished toward them.

Christine grimaced, but no one else seemed to think this was a problem, so she kept her mouth shut.  The car stopped briefly in front of a massive, iron gate.  It opened vertically, and they went through, and it closed rather fast, with a solid, reassuring click.  Christine was a bit surprised at the speed with which it slammed down, and wondered if it had a sensor on it to ensure it didn’t take out a car, or anyone unlucky enough to stand beneath it.  Some of the protesters had followed them, but they stood pretty far back, as if familiar with the gate’s mechanism.

The car went up the long drive and pulled to a stop in front of a massive structure, and a couple of men wearing honest-to-God uniforms in shades of blue and gold stepped forward and opened the doors.  After they’d gotten out and Christine was staring up at the façade, the men got out their luggage and then followed them up the steps into the chateau.

“Nearly everyone is already here,” Philippe said as they walked into the front, and Christine stopped and gaped up at the high ceilings and stained glass.  “I have put you in rooms along the old family apartment wing – that wing has been modernized, so there is electricity and running water, everything you will need.”  Christine breathed a sigh of relief to hear it.  “The festivities won’t begin until tonight at seven, so in the meantime, please feel free to explore a bit if you like.  Every staff member here has been vaccinated against the plague, and we have all quarantined for the past two weeks, so it is very safe.  There are gardens in the back – they are starting to close up, for the autumn season, but you will see some of those beautiful fall colors.  Or you may find you would prefer to rest.”  He sent Christine a friendly grin, and she ducked her head and blushed.

“I’m going to rest,” Meg said quickly, and Christine and Jules exchanged a look.  “Jet lag, you know.”

“Mais oui, ma cherie,” Philippe murmured, and twined their fingers together, brought her hand to his lips for a kiss that was decidedly more suggestive than the friendly peck he’d bestowed on Christine.  “Yvonne, Sinclair,” he called, and a woman and a man suddenly appeared before him.  Christine blinked.

Obviously they hadn’t appeared out of thin air.  They had clearly been hovering, waiting, because the Comte de Chagny was the type of man who could pay to have people hover.

“Please show Monsieur Bernard and Mademoiselle Daaé to their accommodations,” he said.

“See you tonight,” Meg said, and waved as Philippe tugged her in the opposite direction.

It seemed that Sinclair had been assigned to Jules, and Yvonne to Christine, and they were led on a winding trip up several flights of stairs until they came to a floor with tall ceilings and big windows on one side.

“I’m taking a nap,” Jules said as Sinclair led him into one door.  “See you tonight, Chris.”

Christine walked a bit further down the hall with Yvonne.  The windows overlooked the gardens Philippe had mentioned, and they were so large they reminded her of the ones at the Biltmore.

“Mademoiselle?”

Christine shook her head and hurried after the other woman, who was waiting by a door.

When she walked in, she did her best not to freak out.

The room was bigger than her entire apartment, decorated in blue and white, with high ceilings and massive windows.  An old fashioned four-poster bed sat between two beautiful stained glass windows, and there was a sitting area with delicate, comfortable looking chairs and a chaise, all upholstered in deep blue velvet.  The big hearth had a fire already going, and her little suitcase was sitting on the bed, looking a little battered and forlorn surrounded by all that finery.

“Does it suit?”  The woman, Yvonne, stood beside an old-fashioned wardrobe.

“It’s beautiful,” Christine said.  “Way nicer than my apartment back home.”  She hesitated.  “Meg said something about a costume for tonight?”

“Oh, yes,” Yvonne said.  “We should double check the fit.”  She fumbled a bit with the wardrobe, but managed to wrench open the doors to reveal a spectacular black gown.  The bodice was fitted and strapless, with a sweetheart neckline, and the skirt was yards and yards of tulle that poofed out ever so slightly and formed a small train.

There was a changing screen, so Christine ducked behind it and got the dress on as best she could, and allowed Yvonne to assist her in lacing up the corset top in the back.  Then she stepped in front of the mirror and gasped.

“It fits perfectly,” Yvonne said with some satisfaction.  Christine turned this way and that to admire how the fabric clung to her body and pooled on the ground around her.  The skirt was ombre, and changed from black to burgundy to a train of deep red.

Almost as if she were trailing blood in her wake.

She shook the morbid thought from her head and smiled.  “It’s incredible,” she said.  The black and red made her pale skin glow, and the waistline emphasized her small waist and hourglass figure.

Lockdown yoga routine for the win.

As she changed back into her regular clothes, she asked Yvonne about the protestors.

“They always come, when he does these things,” Yvonne said a little dismissively.  “But the Comte always takes the proper precautions.  The village nearby was hit with an infestation of the plague recently, so they worry about visitors.”

“I see,” Christine murmured.

“But we will not be leaving the grounds, and it is perfectly safe here, I assure you,” Yvonne said.  “Well.  I shall leave you to get a bit of rest.  I will have a lunch tray sent up in a bit.  The party starts this evening at seven, so I will be back in a few hours to assist you in getting ready.”

Christine thanked her and the girl left the room.  She opened her bag and unpacked, leaving the jewel case on the vanity, and she put the rest of her clothing in the dresser.  Then she collapsed onto the bed and promptly fell asleep.

*

The sun above was hot, almost mercilessly so, beating down on her head and shoulders as she wandered the vast gardens.

She’d been looking for someone, but she wasn’t sure who.  And she’d been walking for awhile now, and felt a little lost.  When she turned around, she couldn’t even see the chateau.

But there were dark clouds rising on the horizon.

“Oh,” she muttered, and turned and hurried in the opposite direction.  The gardens couldn’t be that big; she’d just go up this little hill and she’d be able to see the chateau, know which way to go so she didn’t get absolutely soaked.

When she reached the top of the hill, though, all she saw around her was death.

Dead grass.  Dead plants.  Shriveled, barren trees with curled up, dead leaves finally giving up the ghost and fluttering to the ground.  Hedges that looked practically skeletal, with only the vaguest suggestion they had ever been blooming with any sort of life.  Even the far-off chateau looked boarded up and abandoned, crumbling at the edges as if no one had cared for it in years.

The wind started to blow, bringing with it the scent of plant rot and earthy decay, and with it, the scenery around her changed.

Where there once was a chateau, now there was a graveyard, and she was suddenly standing right at the center of it, looking up at a fearsome statute of the Grim Reaper, complete with black robes and wickedly sharp-looking scythe.

Thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and the statute’s neck moved, turned to look down at her.

Again, a void for a face, and glowing amber eyes.

Christine was terrified, but also intrigued, and tried to lean closer, see him better.  Surely he had a real face.  No one could live without one.

“Soon,” the voice said, a deep rumble of thunder, and everything went dark.

*

Christine woke up when they brought in the lunch tray, which was a fancy little charcuterie with cheese cubes, hummus, a little dish of nuts and berries, thinly sliced beef and some little toasted pieces of bread.  She snacked on it while she explored the room a bit more.

The bathroom was a ridiculous TikTok kind of dream – bright, full of light, extremely modern with a massive tub and stand in, glass-walled shower.  Even though she’d showered the night before, she couldn’t resist, and filled the bath and added a ridiculous amount of the coconut-vanilla scented bubble bath on the counter.

She deserved it, she told herself as she stripped her clothing off and sank into the deep bath.  Especially after that unsettling dream.

Well.  Dreams.

Who was that dark figure who’d come to her in both of them?  Was she just nervous because of the plague?  Seeing death everywhere?  Or was it something else?

His voice had been so familiar.

She luxuriated for awhile, letting her mind go blank and staring out the window at the magnificent view of the gardens.

There were people out there, wandering about the fountain and the gardens.  She watched them, but none of them was dressed head-to-toe in black.

Not that it would’ve meant anything.  Except that she was maybe losing her mind.

After awhile, she got bored watching them, and leaned back against the luxe bath pillow and closed her eyes.

From outside, she heard a crow’s caw.

After her bath, Yvonne returned and helped her into the dress, and even did her hair and makeup, bringing her own kit rather than using Christine’s things.  Christine had never considered her makeup collection to be sparse and paltry, but Yvonne turned up with Pat McGrath and Armani, so she decided to just go with it.

As she worked, Yvonne had chattered a bit about the party that evening.  Apparently, it was a ball, but there were also other games, and some kind of announcement that would happen at midnight, along with some special, surprise entertainments.

When she was done, Christine had a dramatic smoky eye and a red lip, and her hair was pulled back into a half-up, with her hair twisted into a little bun that looked almost like a blooming rose.

Christine thanked her when she was done, and Yvonne directed her down to the first floor.

There were a lot more people than she’d been expecting, most of whom she had never met.  Several she recognized, famous actresses and pop stars, or social media influencers taking selfies or recording themselves on their phones or other, fancier cameras.

Christine hesitated on the staircase and looked down at the crowd, milling about.  She was used to mixing with the famous and influential; her position at the San Francisco Opera hadn’t been a principal one, but she’d done a lot of secondary roles and even served as the prima donna’s understudy on one memorable occasion.  She had met people like this before, and there was no reason for her to feel at all nervous or shy.

Except that she hadn’t really talked to anyone except Meg and Jules over the last year.  And occasionally Meg’s mother.

Well.  Fake it till you make it, right?  She plastered a smile on her face and carefully descended the stairs, and then had to quickly duck around a few potted plants to avoid getting in someone’s shot.

Almost none of them were wearing their masquerade masks, leaving them to dangle off their wrists or pile up on little side tables while they laughed and took photos of each other.  Among them, Christine recognized Luciana Tassi, TikTok famous yoga influencer.  Christine had followed her for awhile, until she’d gotten embroiled in some sort of scandal.  Using a sweatshop to make her supposedly fair trade yoga outfits and accessories, if Christine remembered right.

She’d also spent quite a bit of time over the last year partying in various luxury locations around the world, all entirely maskless, much to the chagrin of her large following.

Christine grimaced and watched Luciana and her friends laugh and pose for their cameras, and wondered if perhaps it had been a bad idea to come.  Meg had promised that everyone was properly quarantined, but nobody had asked them for any sort of proof.  And if people like Luciana Tassi were here, how could she trust that any of them had adhered to the rules?

But just as she was reassuring herself that everyone would obviously at least be vaccinated, she caught sight of Joseph Buquet, notorious former right wing pundit turned podcaster.  He’d spent the better part of the last six months telling people that the vaccine contained nanobots that would infect their brains and transmit messages to the United Nations.

Wonderful.  She would need to ask Meg what sort of friends her boyfriend had.

She skirted about the sides of the room; it seemed the large crowd had all been outside, enjoying the last of the sunset on the terrace.  She looked at the sea of face around her as she made her way to the ballroom, hoping to see Meg or Jules.  She was stopped several times by people wanting pictures, but when they asked, she just pretended she didn’t speak their language and continued on her way.

She moved away from the crowds who were gathered around the prettiest areas in the room and made her way into the ballroom.  When she entered the space, she was a bit surprised at how large it was; the ceiling seemed to be three stories above her, with an arched ceiling and a circular shape.  The floors were white marble flecked with black and gold, and the walls were white as well.  The ceiling had a mural painted on it, a reproduction of some kind she assumed, and suspended in the center was a massive, glittering chandelier.

There was a string quartet, playing something dreamy and beautiful, and several couples were already dancing.  Others were helping themselves to the buffet that was spread along one of the back walls, or grouped around a few of the café tables that ringed that area.

Christine stopped short; it was all beautiful and glittering and exactly what she would’ve pictured, based on the things Meg and Jules had said about the Comte’s previous parties.

But it also looked identical to the ballroom she’d seen in that awful dream.

She shook her head and told herself to stop thinking about it.  She’d heard all about the chateau from Meg’s stories, and she might’ve even seen pictures of it before.  She was nervous about her first outing without a proper mask, and her brain was making things up for her.  That was all it was.

She got herself a glass of champagne and decided to explore a bit while she looked for Meg and Jules.  The first thing she noticed was the staircase that went up to a second floor that ringed the room with small, curtained balconies.  It was closed off with a velvet rope, though it looked like several people had already tried to circumvent it and go upstairs, as there were a couple of harassed-looking guards standing by.  There was another set of double doors that she assumed led out to the gardens; they were closed, though, and there were two other guards standing there, deterring people who tried to go through.

Curious, Christine approached.  “We aren’t allowed to go through there?” she asked one of them.

“Non, mademoiselle,” he said.  “It is for later.”

She nodded, and his expression briefly flashed with relief when she moved on and didn’t further question him.  A couple had trailed behind her and heard her, though, and began arguing with the guard that they should at least be allowed to peek.

Thankfully, she caught sight of Meg entering the ballroom.  Her friend was dressed all in white, complete with long, opera-style gloves.  Christine hurried over, meaning to tease her about impromptu weddings, but then she saw the expression in her eyes.

"Is everything all right?” she asked.

Meg startled, as if she hadn’t even seen her.  “Oh, Christine, you look beautiful,” she said.  She glanced around and tucked her arm through hers.  “Come with me.”  Meg steered her away from the buffet and they claimed one of the empty café tables.  It was situated some distance from any of the others, so they had a bit of privacy.

“So, some drama,” Meg said, voice very soft.  “And you absolutely do not know this, but – ”

“Champagne, ladies?”  Jules appeared out of nowhere, somehow holding three glasses of bubbly.

“I have some, thanks,” Christine said as he handed one of the glasses to Meg.  He shrugged.

“More for me,” he said, and downed one of the glasses quickly, then coughed.  “Those are some aggressive bubbles.”

She giggled, but Meg still appeared tense.

“So what’s the story with tonight, anyway?” Jules asked, apparently oblivious to Meg’s expression.  “I heard someone say that there’s some kind of special guest, doing a midnight performance?”

“Yeah, that’s what we were talking about,” Meg said.  “And keep your voice down.”

Jules instantly sobered.  “What happened?” he asked.

“So,” Meg said, and dropped her voice so low that Christine had to lean closer to hear her.  “Philippe invited Erik Corbeau to be part of the midnight show.  And – ”

“Wait, really?” Jules asked, and his voice raised in excitement as a jolt of shock ran through Christine.  “Do you mean – ”

“Keep your voice down,” Meg hissed.

“But that’s so exciting,” Jules said, now in a whisper.  “He – ”

“It’s not happening,” Meg said, cutting him off again.  She looked around, as if to make sure no one was paying attention to them, and then continued, “We just found out he has the Red Devil.”

“What?”  Christine clapped a hand over her mouth and a few people looked in their direction.  “Sorry,” she whispered as Meg looked at her reproachfully.

“Oh, wow.”  Jules looked shocked.  “That’s awful.”

“Yeah,” Meg said.

“Is he here?” Christine asked.  Meg’s eyes flicked toward her.

“For the moment,” she said.  Christine had the irrational urge to demand which room was his, so she could run up there and –

What, exactly, she wasn’t sure.  It seemed rude to rail against someone who might be actively dying, after all.  Not to mention that she could catch it too.

“Meg,” Jules said urgently.  “If someone here is sick, the rest of us could be in danger.  Is Philippe planning to evacuate?”

“He doesn’t want to cause a panic,” she said.  “He says, Monsieur Corbeau was mostly isolated from the rest of the guests, because they weren’t supposed to know he was here.  And he had different staff.  So he thinks we’re all safe enough.”

Christine swallowed hard, her mind racing.  “Is he – ”

“Are they going to take him to a hospital?” Jules asked doubtfully.

“They can’t,” Meg said.  “The protestors – there are more of them now, and they’ve blocked most of the roads to the chateau.  But don’t worry.”  She flashed a quick, nervous smile.  “Philippe has a nurse on staff, and they seem to think they probably caught it early enough that he’ll recover.  I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“Of course,” Jules said.  He eyed his champagne glass uneasily, then looked up at Christine as if he’d realized something.  “You know him, don’t you?”

“I – yes,” said Christine, and she smoothed her suddenly sweaty palms down the skirt of her dress, hoping she wouldn’t muss or ruin the fabric.  “A little.”  A bit more than a little, but that wasn’t something she’d ever shared, not even with Meg and Jules.

Erik Corbeau was an opera singer, probably one the most famous tenors in the world.  He was based in Paris, but his contract allowed him to travel a great deal, and the year before the pandemic, he’d been hosted in San Francisco for the first American production of Don Juan Triumphant.

Christine, of course, being a lowly chorus member, hadn’t been expecting to socialize much with his august presence.  But then a series of odd events occurred, and she was suddenly the leading lady’s understudy.  She’d even had the chance to perform the role, one night when La Carlotta had needed to rest her voice.

And then, after…

She closed her eyes.  It hardly mattered.  They’d been acquainted for a few weeks, and then he’d moved on to the next opera house, the next gullible girl who’d believe everything he whispered in the throes of passion.  She doubted he’d even remember her now.

“I worked with him, but only once,” she said.

“That’s a shame,” Jules muttered, and stared down at his half-empty glass somewhat morosely.  “He was supposed to come to the Manhattan, but that was right when they announced the lockdown.  Have you heard, some of the people who recover end up with hearing problems?  I wonder if – ”

The lights dimmed, and the music slowly died off as the couples on the dance floor stopped moving.

“Oh, it’s starting,” Meg said.  She grabbed Christine’s hand.  “Come on, let’s get a little closer.”

They pushed their way through the crowd, and Jules snagged another glass of champagne.  Christine noticed that someone had moved aside the velvet rope barriers in front of the staircase.

“Welcome!”  The Comte’s voice boomed down from the staircase, and Christine wondered if it was artificially amplified.  Or perhaps the acoustics in the room were just very good.  “I have gathered you all here, my nearests and dearests, for a celebration unlike any other.”

Christine glanced around the room.  There had to be at least a hundred people here.  The Comte was clearly far more of a social butterfly than she.  She wasn’t sure she could even name one hundred people she knew, much less considered close personal friends.

“I promised an evening of the fantastical and the macabre,” he continued, and took a step down on the staircase.  “And I will admit that our friends outside have given me quite the idea!”

There were people filming him, and nearby, she heard a low, murmured voice; someone had gone live on TikTok, or possibly Instagram.  Or maybe Facebook, depending on how old they might be.  Christine was glad she was wearing her mask, so no one would be able to recognize her if she ended up in the background of anyone’s shot.

“They do not want us to forget that the Red Devil stalks abroad, and he does not discriminate – the old, the young, the wealthy and the poor.  He’s taken them all.  And thus, I have invited a very special guest this evening,” the Comte said.  “It is Devil’s Night, is it not?  And tonight the veil is very thin.”  He paused again, for apparent dramatic effect, but no one made a sound.

“He has many names,” he continued, and stepped down another stair.  “Azrael.   Hades.  Beelzebub.  Old Scratch.  Mephistopheles.  The Angel of Death.  Leviathan.  The Prince of Darkness.”  He took a step down the stairs, and then another.  “But I prefer the name most of us know him by, which is the Devil.”

He paused, and a few people let out theatrical little cries.  The Comte’s smile widened.

“He’s been very busy these last few months, as we all know.  But tonight, he comes to us in the guise of a friend to collect on the debts we owe him.”  He spread his arms wide, clearly enjoying the theatrics of it all, and Christine couldn’t help but grin, despite how macabre it all was.

“What debts?” someone called, his voice barely containing his mirth.

“We have all wronged him in some manner,” the Comte said.  “We have all been running from him.  We have all stolen from him by refusing to surrender to the Red Devil’s embrace.  But I say tonight, let us invite him in, and let him mingle with us as a friend!”  A soft gasp went up from the group, then a titter of laughter.  “Perhaps if he had a single evening of merriment, it might prompt him to stop this senseless plague.  So I say join us tonight, Devil, and be most welcome!”

Christine grimaced and glanced around.  No one else seemed to find his words discomfiting.  Perhaps this was just how his games typically went.  But it all seemed rather morbid, considering.

The Comte turned toward the ballroom doors expectantly.  “Come in!” he cried.  A gust of wind suddenly blew through the room, and the doors swung open.  They hit the wall hard, and the sound reverberated throughout the room.

There were a few cries of fright, but then when no one appeared in the doorway, a burst of laughter.  The Comte smiled down on them all.

“Please enjoy the festivities, and explore the Garden of Earthly Delights that I have prepared for you.  I sincerely hope you enjoy the party, for it may just be the last one you ever attend,” he said.

And then the lights went out.

Chapter Text

There were screams and general disorder.  Christine was jostled from behind and nearly went down, but someone – Jules, likely – grasped her around the waist and kept her upright.

“Meg?” she called, and reached out.

“I’m here.”  The girls grasped hands, and Christine pulled her out of the fray, and the three of them huddled together, Jules’s larger frame protecting them from being buffered by the frantically rushing bodies around them.

“What’s going on?” she cried, her voice barely audible over the din.

“I’m not sure,” Meg said.

"Come here.”  Jules pulled them both closer to the wall, mostly out of harm’s way.  Several people had turned on the flashlights on their phones, and a lot of them were still talking, clearly having not disconnected their streams for the scare.

There was a soft buzzing noise, and then the lights came back up.

Everyone froze in their tracks.  Someone laughed, and that seemed to break the tension.

“Damn you, Philippe,” a man called.  A few others joined in, one particularly loud woman who sounded an awful lot like La Carlotta saying that if her dress had been damaged, he’d be paying for it.  Several others seemed to think it was a marvelous joke, one even calling to him well done.

"Yes,” the Comte said.  He laughed, but there was something about his expression that told Christine he was uneasy.  “Well.  What’s a good party without a scare or two?”  He clapped his hands together.  “My friends!  Enjoy exploring the delights that await you.  Just be certain to return to the ballroom by midnight.  You won’t want to miss the show!”

“Delights?” Christine asked Jules.  Meg had drifted over to the staircase, an indulgent smile on her lips.

“Oh, yes – I always forget you haven’t ever been to one of Philippe’s parties,” Jules said.  Christine watched the Comte tuck Meg’s arm through his.  She said something to him, and he smiled and led her onto the dance floor.

"There’s dancing in the ballroom, and then through those other doors, a bunch of different games,” Jules said.  Christine turned in that direction and noticed that the double doors she’d seen earlier were now open, and people were streaming through them.

Jules twirled her on the dance floor for a little while, and then he excused himself because he was convinced that Nadir Khan, his favorite actor, was lurking over by the buffet.

“You know he’s not into guys, right?” she asked.

“Whatever,” said Jules.  “I heard he’s getting divorced, which means I have more of a shot today than I would’ve before that news broke.”

“Isn’t that his wife with him?” she asked.  Jules looked back over toward the buffet and seemed to consider.

“Well,” he said, and straightened his bowtie.  “Maybe they’ll be up for a threesome.  When it comes to pleasure, I don’t discriminate.”

“Shameless,” Christine teased him, and he grinned.

“I’m simply going to follow our host’s edict, and live like there’s no tomorrow,” he said.  “All they can say is no, right?”

Christine watched him go, amused.  He approached the couple and whatever he said had them laughing, and Christine was both surprised and not at all surprised to see how receptive the Khans were to her friend.  Jules had always been the ultimate charmer.  It wasn’t long before the threesome had slipped away, hopefully to somewhere more discreet, with a locking door.

She smiled and toasted to her friend’s success.  She people watched for a little while, and then felt the strangest sensation, a tingle of coolness on the back of her neck.

She turned, and on the other side of the room a tall man dressed all in black stood alone.  He wore a hat with the brim pulled down, and a black mask that covered his eyes and nose, so she couldn’t tell, but it felt as if their eyes locked.

Slowly, the sounds around her faded away.  It was rude to stare, but she couldn’t help herself.

A little half-smile ticked up on the man’s face, and he raised his champagne glass to her.

Compelled, intrigued, Christine started toward him, eyes locked on him until something jostled her shoulder.

“Pardon, mademoiselle.”

She looked up and for a second all she saw was a blinding white smile.  Then she noticed the silver mask, and the pale blue eyes behind it.

"My apologies,” she said, and made to turn away, but the man grasped her upper arm.

“The rules of the evening are that you owe me a dance,” he said.

“I – ”  She looked back over toward the man in black, only to discover he’d vanished.  “Of course,” she said, and accepted his hand.

“You are Mademoiselle Daaé, yes?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, a bit surprised and wary.  “And you are?”

He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss there.  “I am Raoul de Chagny,” he said.  The expression in his eyes was expectant, as if he thought she knew who he was.

“Oh,” she said.  “You are Philippe’s…brother?”  Meg had mentioned a brother, hadn’t she?

“Yes,” he said.  He led her to the dance floor.  She wasn’t sure of the steps, but it was a rather slow dance, so she only had to concentrate on not stepping on his toes.

“I had assumed you would approach me, but of course, you may not have recognized me with the mask,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Meg showed me your picture, and said that you would be here this weekend,” he continued as they twirled around the dance floor.  “I believe she wanted us to…hook up, I think is the expression?”

“Oh,” said Christine, surprised at how forward he was.  Meg hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort, and they’d had ample opportunity on the plane.  “Well – ”

“I was not able to find you on TikTok or Instagram, and she told me that you don’t have a social media presence.”  He laughed, as if this was absurd.  “Honestly, I do not usually – the women I date, they tend to be more active, and interested in advancing their careers and getting exposure.  But I thought, you are quite beautiful, and perhaps I would make an exception.”

She blinked and stumbled slightly, shocked at his audacity.  “How kind of you,” she said.

He seemed to think she was serious, and then launched into a description of his modeling career, how he’d been discovered on a beach in Nice and was in cologne ads the next week.  Thankfully, he didn’t seem to expect her to add much to the conversation beyond “oh” or “wow.”

“Well, thank you for the dance, and it was very nice to meet you, Monsieur de Chagny,” she said when it was finally over.  She’d caught sight of the man again, near the doorway to the Delights, and made to move toward him.

Unfortunately, Raoul didn’t take a hint.  “I believe the next is a waltz,” he said.

“Oh, but – I had wanted to go see all of the games,” she said.  The man had just walked through the doorway.

“Of course,” he said.  He tucked her arm through his and they made their way toward the doors.  She hadn’t noticed it before, but “The Garden of Earthly Delights” had been scrawled above the lintel, in glinting golden script.

Through the doorway was a long, dark hall, with several doors on either side and one door at the very end.  She was uncomfortably reminded of her dream again, and forced herself to shake it off and pretend it hadn’t happened.

“What all’s in the rooms?” she asked.  She glanced over at Raoul, to see he’d taken off the mask.  He really was very handsome, and resembled his brother a great deal: his face was refined and aristocratic, with sharp cheekbones and full lips, the same pale blue eyes as his brother, and a rather defined jawline.  She could see why he was a model.

“Have a look and see,” he said, and gestured broadly.

The first room she peeked into was decorated primarily in blue, and was divided into several different little sets with different fancy backdrops: one was designed as if you were standing on a balcony overlooking the Parisian skyline, another looked like a ritzy beachside resort, and there were others she couldn’t see, along with a big table piled with different props.  A couple of photographers were on hand, their cameras heavy and professional-looking, and the room was artificially lit with several ring lights and softboxes.

“What’s all that for?” she asked.

“Content creation,” Raoul said.  When she looked at him in confusion, he sighed as if she were slow.  “For their social media accounts.”

“Oh,” she said.  “Earlier, it just looked like everyone was getting pictures and things in the gardens and around the chateau.”

“That, too,” he said as they moved on.  “But with everything being so…we cannot go outside, toward the village, because of the protests.  It’s very unfortunate, as the views by the dunes are the best in the area.  So we decided to offer this as a way to make up for that.”

“I see,” she said.

The second room was decorated in purple, and when she looked in, it had been set up like a karaoke bar.  The woman on stage was singing an extremely off-key version of “You Light Up My Life,” so Christine quickly moved on.

The third room was decorated in a green so dark it looked almost black, and the background noise was a thunderstorm.  Every so often a clap of “lightning” would light up the sky, and Christine saw that looked like the front of a Victorian mansion.

“A haunted house,” Raoul said.  As she watched, a couple of people darted by them, shrieked in delight at the thunder and lightning effect, and then reached the false porch.  They grasped the front door’s knob and turned it, and disappeared inside.

“Oh my,” Christine said, more than a little intrigued.  “Could we go in?”

"Of course,” he said.  They stepped inside, and when the door behind them closed, it seemed very like they were on a road outside the mansion.  Christine thought she even felt the faint mist of the rain.

“Come,” Raoul said, and they hurried up the steps to the door when the thunder sounded again.  He opened the door and ushered her inside.

“Wow,” she said, and shook off the little rain droplets from her arms, brushed back her hair.  “That was super realistic.”

She turned toward Raoul, only to discover she was alone.

“Hello?” she called.  “Raoul?”

Her voice echoed a bit, and she thought it was a well-done, rather chilling effect.  She took a few steps forward, reached out to feel if anything was around her.  It was pitch-black, and she couldn’t even see the occasional lightning through the windows that had been on the door.

All in all, it was unsettling, and very well done.  She wondered how they’d managed to separate her and Raoul, and also keep it so they couldn’t hear each other.  She felt rather certain that he would’ve come running to “rescue” her in the hopes that it might make her more sexually inclined toward him.

She scoffed, and then tripped and fell.

“Oof!”  She’d stepped out into thin air, but the drop had been less than a foot, and though she’d thought she’d might’ve twisted her ankle it was strong when she got back up.  She grumbled a bit and felt around the ground, finding it was dry and gritty, and felt more like earth than any sort of flooring.

Clearly they’d brought in dirt or something, and she was going to give the Comte a piece of her mind about this unsafe little game, Meg’s devoted boyfriend or no.

She took one hesitant step in front of the other, again feeling out for anything she could hold on to.  It got a bit colder, and a wind blew through her hair that smelled like dirt and something a bit musty and stale.

Annoyed, she was about to turn back around and look for the platform she’d fallen from, but then a faint light started to glow overhead.  Very slowly, it illuminated her surroundings.

She stood in the graveyard from her nightmare.  And on the hill before her, was that terrifying Grim Reaper, complete with dark robe and scythe.

Christine glared and marched up to the statute, right up to the plinth.  She was about to climb atop it and give the terrible statute a piece of her mind, when the Reaper shifted and grabbed her, pulled her against him.

She shrieked and tried to kick, bite anything she could, get away, but she was drawn closer and closer to that velvet blackness.

“Soon,” the voice said, like a rumble of thunder, and she fell, screaming, into a void.

“Christine?  Christine!”

She blinked a few times and looked up to find Raoul, hovering over her with a look of concern.

“What,” she whispered.

“Where did you go?” he demanded.

She was on her feet, suddenly, and she was dizzy enough from the movement that she leaned against him for purchase.  They stood in a small anteroom, and the thunder and lightning effect played above them.  A streak of light lit up the false door before them, showing that it was held together by nothing more than plywood.  Raoul carefully helped her back through onto the false porch.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I just walked through the door, and you were gone.”

He looked at her suspiciously for a moment, and she became aware that there were others around them, who looked at her curiously.  She flushed and ducked her head against him.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said.  “Can we leave?”

Thankfully, he was amenable to that, and despite how rattled she was, she was able to accept his arm and move on from the strange, dark green room.

The next room was orange.  Half the room had been made up to look like a tent, open on one side, brightly colored and garish, with swaths of tasseled, jewel toned velvet and silk in all shades of orange.

The woman who sat behind the table was also swathed in shades of eye-searing orange.  “Choose a card, seal your fate,” she called, and gestured to the deck on the table.  Christine watched as a couple sat down and started to speak with her, and then a line formed, blocking her view.

The fifth room was dark and concealed with a diaphanous violet-colored curtain.  Through the curtain, she could see a bit of uplighting.  The noises that drifted through the curtain, though, made her fidget and blush.

“A pleasure room, for anonymous delights,” Raoul murmured in her ear, and she jumped, having forgotten he was there.  “Or you can enter with a partner or two.  Or three, if you please.”  He smiled at her in a way she thought he probably thought was inviting.  She jerked her arm from his and hurried over to the final door, the one at the end of the hall.

Here, it was completely dark, like standing in a void, and she could hear the sound of clocks – many clocks, all ticking down the time together.  She frowned as all the hair on her body seemed to stand on end, and a chill ran through her.

She stepped inside the room.

When she stepped over the threshold a crimson light flared, allowing her to see her surroundings.

The room was rather small, with a matte black floor, ceiling, and walls.  Several different cuckoo clocks lined the walls, leaving almost no space between them.  There was no other decoration.

The room seemed to get larger, the longer she stood there.  And in the back, there, in front of the light, was that the shape of a person?  She frowned and took another step forward.  It was almost like she was being beckoned…

A hand on her arm.  “Christine?”

She stopped and looked back.  “Raoul,” she said.

The room was just a room, now.  Small, and mostly unremarkable other than the multitude of ticking clocks.

“I don’t even know what this is supposed to be,” he said.  “Why don’t we go back to the pleasure room?”  His smile was lascivious and inviting as he pulled her from the room.

Out of the corner of her eye, something in the back of the black room shifted.

“What do you think that was?” she asked.

“What was what?” he asked.

“That thing in the room – ”  She turned back to look again, but there was only a blank wall.  “There was a room here.”  She pulled out of Raoul’s arms and approached the wall, touched it as if that would make the wall fade away.  She couldn’t even see the gaps where a door would be, and turned back to find Raoul looking at her in puzzlement.

“No, there wasn’t,” he said.  “There are only five rooms.  Now,” he continued, and put an arm around her, pulled her close.  “The pleasure room?”

“Oh, but – I wanted to have my fortune told,” she said, and dragged him into the orange room.  His lips twisted into an impatient frown, but he followed her inside.

The floor here was carpeted in deep green and the ceiling painted a midnight blue flecked with white.  They clashed garishly with all of the orange, but Raoul told her was supposed to mimic grass and sky.  The room held fewer people, and even fewer of them seemed to be making content for their social media.  Most of them were waiting outside the tent, or getting drinks from the long bar on the other side of the room.

“Would you like a glass of punch?” Raoul asked.  She nodded, and he squeezed her hand.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.  “Don’t miss me too much.”

She barely knew him, she thought in bemusement as he walked over to the bar.  There were only a few people in front of her at the tent, but it seemed like a long wait, and her feet started to hurt.  She wasn’t used to heels, after a year of fuzzy socks and cozy slippers.  She could hear the people in the tent, though, which provided some amusement as they reacted to the fortune teller.

One was a man who’d flipped his mask up onto his forehead like it was a pair of sunglasses.  She thought she recognized him as an actor from one of those medical dramas.  He had two women with him, one who might’ve been a costar and the other she didn’t recognize, but her willowy, lithe figure made Christine think she was a model or a dancer.  He flopped himself down into the chair beside the reader’s table.

“Will I ever find true love?” he asked, faux-dramatically.  His companions giggled, and the reader shuffled her deck and asked him to choose a card.  He plucked a card from the middle of the deck and turned it over.  The reader smiled.

“Four of Wands,” she said.  “I think you will get your wish, young man.  Strong indications of stability and celebration.  A most favorable outcome.”

The man thanked her, and he and his girlfriends left the tent and made way for a small ground of woman, all dressed in varying shades of red.  The one who sat at the table was nudged into the chair good-naturedly by her friends.  Her mask was a fantastical creation of features and fur that covered almost her whole face.  She asked if it was time to say yes to her boyfriend, and the card she pulled was the Ten of Cups.

“The card of happy families and relationship bliss,” the reader said.  “If you decide to marry him, your relationship will be a long and happy one.”

There was hooting and cheering from her friends, and the group of women left the tent.  Christine smiled at their exuberance.

Someone stopped beside her, and she turned, expecting Raoul, but instead it was the man dressed in black.

“It’s you,” she said before she could stop herself.  He was still wearing the hat and mask, so all she could see was his mouth and chin.  And those eyes.  Amber gold, sharp and practically glowing.

Her mouth went dry.  Something about those eyes was so very familiar.

“It is me,” he agreed, and his voice, too, was familiar.  “Would you like?”  He held up a drink, something red and frothy, and she accepted even though she knew better than to take a drink from an unfamiliar man.  “You are here for your future, mademoiselle?”

“Aren’t we all?”  She sipped the concoction, finding it sweet and icy cold.  “What are you going to ask?”

He smiled, a flash of white teeth, and she was mesmerized.  Again, it felt as if all the sound in the room faded away, and it was only them.

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.  She nodded.  He leaned closer, close enough that she could smell the musky, slightly sweet scent coming off of him.

“You must promise not to tell,” he whispered, so close to her ear that his breath tickled her hair.

“I won’t,” she said.

“I want to know how everyone here will die,” he said.

Her eyes widened, and it was like the room went dark.  For a moment, she could see it, the ballroom painted red from blood, lights flickering over the piles of corpses gathered there.

Dead.  All lost to the Red Devil.  And in the center of the ballroom, he stood, tall and proud and laughing.

“Christine?”

She turned sharply and found Raoul standing there, holding two cups of punch.

“Raoul,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I – there was – ”  She whirled back to the man in black, but he was gone.  She looked frantically around the room, but he wasn’t there.  When she looked back at Raoul, he seemed concerned.  “There was a man,” she finished lamely.

He smiled.  “Obviously he fled, when he realized you already had company for the evening,” he said.  “Come, you look very stressed.  A drink to calm you?”  He held out the glass of punch.

“I have – ”  But she wasn’t holding the drink, and she hadn’t dropped it, either.

Had she hallucinated the whole thing?

Distantly, she heard the group in front of her talking to the fortune teller.  One of them was pregnant, and was asking about the baby.

Discomfited, she flashed a tense smile at Raoul and accepted the cup, drank deeply from it.  It was cold and heavy on the vodka, and didn’t taste anything like the drink the man had given her.

There was a bit of an argument in the tent; the fortune teller had pulled the Death card, and the pregnant woman was taking it poorly.  The fortune teller was trying to explain that it didn’t necessarily mean death, only a big change coming, but the woman huffily stood up and stormed out.

“After you,” Raoul said, but Christine was still watching the little group of women.

“You can go first,” she said, distracted.  Part of her wondered if she should do it, go and touch the girl, but if she did and revealed her death or the baby’s, or both, what would she say?

Christine had learned a long time ago that such things were better kept to herself.  No one ever really believed her, and when she tried, it never made a difference, either.

“The King of Pentacles, reversed,” came the fortune teller’s voice, and she looked back to the tent to see Raoul frowning at her.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

Now that no one was in front of her, she could see the fortune teller more clearly, an older woman with a strong voice and dark hair streaked with steel gray.  She had a powerful presence that reminded Christine a little of Meg’s mother.

“When reversed, it can indicate a failure to meet your goals,” she said.  “So I would perhaps review and revise what you hope to accomplish.  Make sure that it’s something you can realistically achieve.”

Raoul grumbled and left the tent.  “Bon chance,” he said to Christine as he walked by her.

She entered the tent with no small amount of trepidation.  The fortune teller smiled at her.  “And what would you like to know, mademoiselle?” she asked.

Christine sat down on the poofy orange chair and watched the woman shuffle the cards.  They were a set she’d never seen before, matte red with gold designs that glinted in the light.  They looked old, too, a bit frayed and dogeared on the edges.

“Mademoiselle?”

Christine felt herself flush when she met the woman’s dark eyes.  “Um, I suppose what everyone else wants to know,” she said, hoping for flippant.  She hadn’t actually wanted her fortune told, she just had wanted an excuse not to go into the pleasure room with Raoul.  “When will I meet my true love?”

The woman barked a laugh and held the deck out to her.  “Shuffle,” she said.  Christine took it from her gingerly, as if it were a bomb, and broke the deck in two and tried to shuffle them together.  She’d always been bad at that, though, and two cards fluttered to the table as she awkwardly mushed the deck together.

“Ah,” the fortune teller said, and snatched them up.  She turned them over for Christine to see.  One card had a depiction of a man and a woman, naked and twined in an embrace.  The other showed a dark, horned figure sitting on a throne, lording over several figures that looked twisted in agony.

“The Lovers and the Devil,” she said.  “A passionate and obsessive connection is in your future, mademoiselle.  But be cautious: such fires can burn fast and hot, and leave you nothing but cinders.”

A bit discomfited, she thanked the woman and got up and left the tent.  She saw Raoul by the bar, leaned in close to Luciana Tassi, who appeared far more receptive to his advances than Christine had been.  She was going to go ahead and leave the room, but then he looked up and caught her eye.

He said something to Luciana and approached her with an apologetic-looking smile.  He babbled at her for a moment about feeling a real connection with Luciana, and how they planned to collaborate together, which made her nearly burst into laughter.  She wondered what he considered a collaboration.  Was it just a social media thing, or did he consider sex a collaboration to film and share with his adoring fans?

“You understand, of course,” he said, and clasped her hands in his.

She was thrown headlong into a vision.

Raoul, running down an endless dark hallway, frantically looking over his shoulder.  He burst into the ballroom and tripped, fell and rolled over to look up at whatever was pursuing him, eyes wide with terror.

“No,” he cried.

There was yelling of some kind, someone or something gaining on him, and he frantically scrabbled back as if looking for some kind of escape.

It was a crowd of people chasing him, she realized as they grabbed him.  He fought, but there were too many of them, and they ripped him apart while he screamed.

When she came out of it, Raoul and Luciana were gone.

She stood there for a moment, gasping in horror at what she’d seen.  It seemed so odd that the rest of the room looked so normal, after experiencing that.  Vaguely, she thought she heard the fortune teller say something about the Five of Pentacles to the new person who’d sat in her chair.

Christine rushed out of the room, wondering where they’d gone.  He’d been wearing the same clothes, and her visions were always things that happened very quickly.  Whatever happened to him would be tonight.  As she hurried down the hallway to find him and tell him – what, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she had to try – she ran into someone.

“Oh, Christine!”

“Meg!”

Christine steadied her friend, who had removed her mask.  “What’s wrong?” she asked.  Meg glanced around, and tugged her further down the hallway, into the black room with the ticking clocks.

“Erik Corbeau is dead,” Meg said softly, and Christine’s fingers dug into her friend’s gloved hands.

“But – ”

“And a couple of staff are ill as well,” Meg continued, and Christine reeled.

“Is – so, is Philippe going to evacuate?” she asked.

Meg’s face was tight with worry.  “He can’t,” she said grimly.  “Those protestors?  There are more of them, and they…”  She trailed off.  “I don’t know if we’d be able to get out.  They have weapons.”

“But surely an ambulance?” she asked.  Meg shook her head.

“We sent someone out, to ask them to move,” she said.  “They said that it’s our own fault, and that it isn’t fair to ask the local hospital to take on that burden when we should’ve known better.  That we’ll have to deal with those consequences alone.”

“Oh my God,” Christine said.  “What should we do?”

“Philippe doesn’t want anyone to freak out,” Meg said.  “He’s still pretty sure it’s contained, despite everything.  So just…act as normal as possible.”

“Okay,” said Christine after a minute.  “Okay, yeah.”  Meg managed a little smile.

“And try and enjoy yourself,” she added.  “I’m sure that everything will be fine.”  She pulled away, and one of Christine’s hands brushed against her bare arm.

More flashes, the ballroom in chaos, blood everywhere, partygoers screaming and covered in blood.

When Christine’s eyes opened again, Meg was gone.

“Meg?” she called, and stepped back into the hallway.  “Meg!”

Several people poured out of one of the rooms, and Christine ducked inside the closest doorway to avoid potentially touching any of them.

It was a long hallway, curtained on either side with sheer, violet panels.  She walked a bit and didn’t see anyone, but could hear various whispers and other noises.

The pleasure room.   She turned and headed back to the door, but while she hadn’t made any turns and the hall hadn’t branched off, it seemed the door had managed to move.

She tried to laugh at herself, despite how uneasy she felt.  She’d clearly just walked by it; the curtain would’ve concealed it.  She turned again and went back the way she’d come, and was gratified to see the light a bit brighter on one side of the curtain.  That had to be the panel that opened to the main hallway, and she whipped it aside and stepped through.

The room she found herself in was small, slightly circular, and covered entirely in rich purple velvet.  The only furniture was an oversized chaise lounge that appeared to be part of the floor itself, covered in that same purple velvet, and a small table that held an ice bucket and two champagne flutes.

“A drink, my dear?”

She turned, shocked, to find a man lounging like a king on the chaise.  The man in black, though he’d removed his hat.  His hair glinted gold under the soft light.

“Where did you come from?” she demanded.

“I was always here,” he said.  She eyed him uneasily, then looked back at the champagne.

“I think I’ve had enough to drink,” she said.  Maybe she’d been drugged.  Why had she taken the drink from him earlier?  That was when everything had started to go strange.  Even the fortune teller’s predictions had started to go bad.

“Well then.”  He patted the chaise beside him invitingly.  “Why don’t you come sit with me?”

She narrowed her eyes.  “I need to go find my friend,” she said.  She walked back over to the door, only to discover the wall was only smooth purple velvet.

Behind her, she heard a chuckle, and she turned and glared.  “What did you do?” she asked.  “Is there a remote control or something?”  She turned back and began feeling along the wall for the gaps in the velvet where the door would be, but it was all fitted so smoothly that it seemed one uniform piece.

“Christine.”

She froze and finally recognized his voice.  Her fingers dug convulsively into the velvet-lined wall.

It couldn’t be him.  And besides, even if it was, she was still angry at him.  And hadn’t Meg said…?

A whisper of fabric, soft footsteps, and he was behind her, breath ghosting against her neck.  “Mon coeur.  Turn and face me.”

"I was never your heart,” she whispered, voice suddenly thick with tears.  She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes.  “You could not have lived so long without your heart.”  Would it be better or worse, if she turned and discovered it wasn’t him?

“My heart and my soul,” he murmured, and she felt a tear slip down her cheek.

Hands gripped her upper arms, and she braced herself, but there were no visions.  Gently, he coaxed her around to face him.

He’d removed the mask, and that beautiful, familiar face looked down at her with so much love that she had to look away.

“Erik,” she whispered.  He cupped her face in his hands and stroked his thumb against her cheek.

“Didn’t I say I would come back for you?” he asked.

*

The Opera was little more than a place where rumors and gossip ran rampant, but in the weeks before Erik Corbeau’s arrival it seemed that all the little ballerinas did was swap stories and rumors about him.

“I heard they’re paying him half a million for each show,” one said.

“Well, I heard he’s the real composer of Don Juan, and that’s why he’s finally coming to sing,” another said.

“I heard he was run out of the Met because he slept with the governor’s wife,” said a third.

“That’s silly.  Everyone knows he’s gay!”

“If he’s gay then I’m a rotisserie chicken.  He’s only ever photographed with women.”

“That’s just a cover.”

“None of that’s true.  He was with that Broadway star, what was her name?  She made all those TikToks about him, remember?”

It was a wonder they had time for dancing, with all the gossiping they got on with.

Christine did her best to ignore it all.  She would admit privately that she was excited, as well; everyone in opera knew who he was, and some said he was even better than Luciano Pavarotti or Andrea Bocelli.

The contract had apparently been years in the making, with Corbeau always backing out for a better offer somewhere else.  But the announcement that San Francisco was the first opera house that would perform Don Juan Triumphant was enough to pique his interest, and it was finally happening.

She didn’t even want to think about how much money they’d laid out for both the first time rights on the opera, or Erik Corbeau’s residency, but she’d scowled and joined in the rest of the chorus’s quiet complaints of no cost of living raise being available for that year.

As a lowly chorus member, she hadn’t even expected to ever meet him, and she wouldn’t have, if not for that fateful day one week after his arrival.

She’d been running late after rehearsals, and had stepped into the lobby to discover it was raining.  It was either dash two blocks to her bus station and hope the bus was already there, or walk all the way back to the communal chorus dressing room and hope no one had stolen hers.

Obviously, she’d made the trek back to the dressing rooms, and emerged with an umbrella – not hers, but someone’s – and immediately collided with a body as she stepped into the hall, so hard that she knocked into the wall and fell down.

“Désolé, mademoiselle,” a rich, velvety voice said, and she looked up, slightly dazed, to see Erik Corbeau looming over her.

Her mouth dropped open and she wondered if she’d knocked herself too hard in the head.  They stared at each other for a moment, and then he offered her his hand.

She shook herself slightly and accepted his help, and a crackle of static went through her arm as he pulled her to her feet.

“I was not watching where I was going,” he said softly.  His voice was even more gorgeous in person than when she’d played recordings from YouTube just to listen to him.  Tingles poured over her skin.  “My apologies, mademoiselle.”

“No,” she said breathlessly, even though it had been his fault.  “No, I didn’t look where I was going.”

He was still holding her hand, she realized, and she had no desire for him to let it go.  Standing up, he still towered over her, his body lean and dressed in an all black ensemble that screamed professionally tailored.  He was even better looking in person than he was in the recordings she’d watched, blond hair that looked deliberately mussed, full lips and strong features.  Yet there was something oddly unsettling about him too.

His eyes, she realized.  They didn’t quite look human, though she had no idea what made her think that.  The intensely focused look in them made her think of large predators, big cats or even birds of prey.

He lifted her hand to his lips and clasped both of his hands around it, kissed her knuckles.  “You must allow me to make this up to you,” he said.

Anything, she was about to say, utterly mesmerized.  She opened her mouth to agree.

“Erik!  There you are!”

The spell was broken, Christine ripped her hand from his and stepped back, collided with the wall again and dropped her bag as Carlotta sashayed up.  She spared Christine a derogatory look before clamping a possessive hand on his arm.

“Everyone is waiting,” she said.  “You must’ve gotten lost – these are the chorus dressing rooms.  For the riffraff.”

Another thing about Erik Corbeau was that he was a notorious playboy, or so said the rumors.  He’d supposedly had affairs with multiple of his leading ladies, and it was clear that Carlotta wasn’t interested in letting him break that streak.  Christine scooped up her purse and stepped back, hoping to fade into the shadows and hurry away.

But then he spoke again.  “Apologies,” he said, and wrenched his arm out of her grip.  “But I have a prior commitment with Mademoiselle Daaé.  Another time.”  To Christine’s shock, he walked away from Carlotta without a second glance and took her arm, led her away.

All he’d done that night was see her home, and she’d told him it wasn’t necessary, even though she did experience a bit of a thrill at the idea that he’d turned down La Carlotta, darling of the San Francisco stage, to spend twenty minutes with her.

The next day, strange things began happening.  A case of laryngitis ran through the chorus, forcing her further up the chain when no one else was available.  Then, Carlotta’s understudy had abruptly quit, saying her mother was ill and she was needed back home.  And because of the laryngitis issue, there weren’t very many chorus girls available who could hit the same high notes that Carlotta could, so Christine was appointed her temporary understudy.

She’d gone from complete nobody to a step away from the limelight in just a week.

At that point, Erik had said the two of them would need to rehearse together, in case she ever was called on to step in for Carlotta.  Carlotta had hated that, had screeched up a storm, but the managers had agreed with him, and part of her days and evenings were spent learning Aminta’s role and working with Erik.

It had been a dream come true; they’d not only practiced together, but he gave her a few lessons, and even in that short time she felt as if she’d made immense strides in her vocal development.

One evening, they’d practiced Point of No Return, and she’d nearly melted into a puddle on the stage at the heat that crackled between them.  Erik, too, had seemed similarly affected, his breathing heavy and his color high.

The next night, Carlotta had apparently decided was a “rest” night for her, which was nearly unheard of for her.  It was rather common for leading cast members to take a night off here or there, in order to both rest their voice and give their understudies the chance to perform, but Carlotta was so jealous of her roles that she almost never did it.

They’d brought the house down, and before she’d even known what was happening, he’d swept her away to his private suite at the Four Seasons, and had her naked and on her knees for him practically before he’d closed the door.

I’m sucking Erik Cobeau’s cock, she thought giddily, and hoped she was doing it well.  When she looked up at him, his hands were fisted in the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, a look of pure agony on his face.

She pulled off and he let out a pained sort of grunt.  “Was I doing a bad job?” she whispered.

He pulled her up into his arms.  “It’s the most exquisite form of torture,” he said, and as he kissed her she felt his thick length slide between her pussy lips.  “Any more and I would be finished, and I need to come inside of you.”

“Erik,” she breathed as he slowly pushed inside.  He was so much bigger than any of the other men she’d ever been with, and he stopped a couple of times, played with her clit, her nipples, until he finally slid all the way inside.  She squirmed beneath him, overly full, and he tilted her hips so that he slid even further inside.  The new angle pressed against her clit and she rubbed herself against him.

“Yes,” he groaned, “make yourself come.  Let me feel you squeeze me, gush all over me.”  She whined as he continued to whisper filth in her ear, how wet she was, how tight, how good she felt around his cock, how he hoped he’d never get the smell of her out of his sheets, until she moaned and shuddered around him.

“I’m going to live inside your cunt, feel you try and force me out – fuck.”  He rolled his hips as her pleasure crested again.  “Fuck, you’re so sweet, making such a mess of me – ”  He gripped her hips and jerked her close and let out a ragged shout as he pulsed hard inside of her.

She’d assumed that would be it.  It was his reputation, after all, and she’d known it walking in.  So the next morning, while he slept, seemingly dead to the world, she’d quietly gotten dressed and left, called an Uber to take her home.

All of a half-hour later, as she’d just stepped out of the shower, there had been an incessant banging on her door.  When she’d cautiously peeked through the peephole, she’d been startled to see him there.

When she let him in, he kicked the door shut and pressed her against the wall.

“Thought I was done, did you?” he demanded as he ripped off her towel.

“I – ”

He’d fucked her hard against the wall and then taken her to some exclusive little restaurant for brunch.  Then he’d taken her back to his hotel and tied her to the bed, telling her it was assurance that she couldn’t slip away next time.

For the length of his residency, they’d been together, and it had been the best time of Christine’s life.

They’d kept it secret; it had been her idea, she’d been worried about the gossip that would come from a relative unknown being in a relationship with someone so high profile.  She’d also been concerned that people would think he’d pulled strings to get her assigned as Carlotta’s understudy because they were sleeping together.  Carlotta was a vicious gossip, especially when she felt threatened, and Christine hadn’t wanted her career to essentially be finished before it could really start.

In hindsight, though, that had just made it hurt more, that she’d had to pretend she hadn’t really known him and that it hadn’t gutted her when he vanished without a word.

One day he’d been there, and the next, gone.

She’d known he would leave; he didn’t live in the States, and he had other contractual obligations.

He’d texted her, at least.

I will come back for you.

When she’d tried to respond, it had come over as number not found.

She’d been terrified for him for a moment, wondering if something had happened, only to discover that he’d simply moved on to his next city.

So she’d thrown herself into her work and pretended not to care when her coworkers would gossip about him being in Austria or Brazil or Tokyo.  She never looked him up, not wanting to possibly see him with another woman on his arm.

Eventually, the hurt had curdled into anger, and then just a dull, unrelenting kind of sadness.  So she’d done what she always did: she shoved it all away, locked in a box inside of her mind, and pretended it had never happened.

*

She jerked away from him and glared.  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“I was invited,” he said.

“But Meg said…she said you died,” Christine said.

He laughed.  “How can that be, when I am here beside you?” he asked.

“I…”  Meg wouldn’t lie to her, would she?  But what other explanation was there, for him to be here?  “So you weren’t sick?  She said you have the Red Devil.”

“Oh, mon coeur,” he murmured, and pulled her close.  “All is well, I swear to you.  Now come to me, let me kiss you.  It has been far too long since I have touched you.”

“Who’s fault is that?” she asked tartly.

“You may punish me however you wish,” he murmured, and drew her back toward the chaise.  She let him lead her, confusion making her docile, let him lean her back against the chaise.  He stretched out beside her and pulled her close.

“I missed you,” she confessed.  “But I’m still mad.”

“Hmm.  Show me how mad you are,” he said.  He kissed her, and she let him, let herself drown in his familiar scent and taste.  She climbed atop him and straddled him, grateful that her skirt was full and didn’t impede her movements.

“Oh, Christine,” he muttered when she rubbed herself against him, felt the hard length of him with nothing between them but her increasingly soaked panties and his pants.  He grabbed her hips and ground up against her, and she threw her head back and braced herself against his chest.

“Just a little more,” he whispered.  “I can feel it.  Come for me, mon coeur.”

She cried out as her body shuddered in pleasure, and he ground himself hard against her.  She collapsed against him as pleasure continued to pulse through her.

He gently helped set her to rights, and she snuggled against him and pressed a kiss to his throat, not caring that she’d left a stain of her red lipstick there.  Her hand trailed down his chest and belly.

He grasped her hand and pulled it down over his cock.  “You’ve utterly soaked me,” he growled.

She was suddenly horrified at the big wet patch where she’d rubbed herself to orgasm against him.  “I’m sorry – ”

He kissed her fiercely.  “Your scent is all over me,” he said.  She realized how hard he still was and reached for the fastenings of his pants.  She fumbled for a minute until he impatiently ripped them open.

His cock was huge, throbbing in her hands.  She wrapped a hand around him, fascinated by how her fingers didn’t touch, how when she stacked her hands together on him there was still so much of him.

“Stroke it,” he said harshly, and hissed in pleasure when she did.  “Tighter.”  She watched his head fall back, mouth dropped open in pleasure.  His breathing was harsh and fast.

“Christine,” he hissed.  She squirmed in his lap, newly aroused, and slid a hand between her legs.  She gathered some of her wetness and used it to slick up his weeping shaft.  “Look at me.”

She met his burning eyes.  “Tonight, I’m going to fuck you until you scream,” he said harshly.

“Yes,” she whimpered.  He swelled against her fingers and impulsively, she bent down and took him into her mouth.

He groaned and it only took a few hard sucks until he was coming, and she swallowed him down and gave one final suck when he was through.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and hauled her up into his arms.

“We’re a mess,” she said with a giggle.  “How will we leave?  Everyone will know.”

“Hmm.”  He stroked her hair.

“We do need to leave, though,” she said.

“Why is that?”  His voice was languid, almost sleepy with content.

“Because – well.”  She frowned, thinking.  Meg had said that he was dead, but he wasn’t, because he was here and healthy and whole.  So did that mean no one was sick?  Was it some kind of strange trick, to surprise her when Erik had emerged at midnight, hale and hearty?

But Meg wasn’t that cruel, and besides, Christine had never told her about their relationship.  If it was part of the night’s game, too, everyone would have been told some version of the story, and Meg wouldn’t have asked her and Jules to keep it quiet.

And she’d had those visions.

He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her seriously.  “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s not safe here,” she said.  “I think – I know something awful is going to happen tonight.”

He laughed.  “What makes you say that?”

She wetted her lips and wondered how to respond.  She’d sound absolutely crazy.  But his eyes on her were soft and very serious, and he continued to play with her hair soothingly.

“Just tell me, mon coeur,” he said.  “We will handle it together.”

She looked away.  “Sometimes…sometimes I see death,” she whispered.  “I know it sounds crazy, but – it happens.  When someone’s time is near.  And there’s never anything I can do about it.”

He was quiet.  She chanced a look back up at him.

“What have you seen?” he asked.

She swallowed hard.  “I saw Raoul’s death, and then when I talked to Meg and touched her hand, I saw – just, awful things.  And I think there are people here who are sick.  I think some of them are going to die.”  She pulled away from him and looked at him suspiciously.  “And you.  You were in the tarot room.  And it wasn’t till after you said something about seeing everyone die that I started seeing death tonight.”

“People die every day,” he said.  And then he smiled, and his face – flickered.  One second it was the handsome face she knew and loved, and the next, it was a grotesque, grinning skull.

It was gone in an instant, but was so disconcerting that she scrambled back and nearly fell off the chaise.

“What is this?” she demanded.  “Did you – is this you?”  It sounded absurd, but what hadn’t she seen that night that wasn’t strange?

“How could it be me, mon coeur?” he asked.  “I have been here with you, haven’t I?”

Then a scream shattered the night.