Page 13 of Angel's Kiss
3. Ghost Stories
Erik dressed with extracare, listening to the morning silence. He selected a shirt of midnight-blue linen and listened. He fastened the buttons, avoiding the sight of his hideous skin in the dim light of his room, and kept listening. He had heard the sound of water running in Christine’s room twenty-seven minutes ago (unless he had been hallucinating it, which was always possible). It had startled him awake, thankfully. He didn’t need her seeing him asleep in a chair like a common foolagain. The first humiliation was worth it, for the gift of her gentle care guarding him from the cold.
Erik shook his head, forcing himself back to reality. He had to focus. He buttoned his vest and tied his cravat, adding an onyx pin at the base of the knot. His clothes were armor and he needed it today. He still had no idea what he was doing at all. For a few hours last night, they had managed something like peace. Now he had no goddamn idea how to get it back.
He combed his hair and listened again. One would expect a house like his to be silent as the grave, in a truly literal sense, but it never seemed that way to him. The candles whispered as they burned, the fire crackled and the logs shifted, the water dripped, and far above, omnibuses and carriages rumbled. If he was quiet enough, sometimes, he could hear the earth herself breathe. And other times, there were more unsettling sounds in the darkness.
Stepping into his parlor now, Erik listened to it all. Within that crowded silence was the almost imperceptible tap of Christine’s feet on the carpets of her room. If he closed his eyes, he could even imagine the soft sound of her breath. Then he could remember it against his skin, only nights ago, yet in another life. He shuddered at the thought, panic and passion roiling inside him. After a day in her company, under the pressure of her eyes and close to her warmth, his competing fear and desire were all the worse. What was it like for her? Surely, she didn’t feelonlyterror. Not after she had been so kind.
Erik’s eyes fell on the piano. Of course. He knew how to soothe his fears and perhaps beckon her from behind that closed door. He seated himself at the keyboard, considering his options. Mozart of course came to mind first, Christine’s favorite as well as his, but that was too intimate. Beethoven and Liszt were too passionate. He needed something restrained but comforting; precise and calm.
He set his fingers on the keys and began the first “aria” of Bach’s Goldberg variations. It was such a simple melody at the start, building slowly, gentle as snow. He closed his eyes, letting the music wash over him as the piano sang beneath his hands. The aria came to a close and he launched into the first variation, Bach’s perfect clockwork of counterpoint and rhythm sweeping him away.
Past the music, he heard the sound of Christine’s door. He pushed down his anxiety and kept playing, the music would protect him as it always had. He chanced opening his eyes and barely kept his concentration when he saw Christine watching in fascination. There was no fear in her beautiful face, and, to Erik’s relief, he was not afraid either. In fact, he was thrilled.
As the variations grew more complex, he continued to look up at her. She was impressed, he could tell. When he finished the eighth variation with a subtle flourish and paused, like a miracle, Christine smiled.
“You don’t even look at the keys,” she murmured.
“One gets accustomed to playing in the dark,” he said, hoping it was not too sad. Christine glanced away, nonetheless. Erik followed her gaze to the clock above the fire. “Eight o’clock. That’s so hard to believe. I’m used to waking up in the dark but down here—”
“It’s different. And easy to lose track of time. Hence the clocks.”
“You made this, didn’t you?” Christine asked, moving towards the complex timepiece. Erik nodded, amazed by the thrill it gave him for her to admire things he had created. Her attention turned to his amended plan of the Opera and she gave a faint smile. “I still can’t believe all your haunting is all just trapdoors.”
“Notjusttrap doors.” Christine jumped at the sound of Erik’s voice coming from the other side of the room and spun to look at him. He smirked, lips unmoving, as his voice continued to sound. “To be a first-rate ghost still requiressomeskill, I’d like to think.”
“How are you doing that?”
“Ventriloquism is a very useful skill for a magician,” Erik replied, throwing his voice to a different corner and earning a grudging smile. “Or a ghost,” he finished, his voice in her ear.
“It’s no wonder you took up such a career.” There was something challenging in Christine’s eyes as she spoke.
“I told you: that was an accident. The Opera was already haunted when I came, I merely joined the ranks. This place has room for a thousand ghosts,” he sighed, looking up to the painted stars on the ceiling and considering the dark passages and shadows above them. When he looked back at Christine, she was staring at him suspiciously.
“You don’t mean to imply that you believe that.” Erik gave a dark smile and Christine’s green eyes widened. “You think the Opera is haunted?Actuallyhaunted?”
Erik shrugged. “Living down here, I’ve seen and heard things I can’t explain. Things I can’t simply dismiss as delusions of an over-hearted brain. And, as I told you, all the stories come from a grain of truth.”
“I would not have guessed a scholar like you to indulge in such fancies,” Christine remarked softly, tilting her head as she watched him.
“I am enough of a scholar to know that what I have learned in all my studies is but a grain of sand compared to the desert of what I do not and never will know. I am not so arrogant to think I know every mystery of the world.”
His instinct was to turn away from her as she watched him, but he fought it, instead he tried to gauge the light in her eyes and what her crooked smile might mean. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” she said.
“I have found the world to be a hard and cruel place, but to know or at least believe that there is some magic to it makes it a bit more bearable.”
“A false ghost who believes in real ones,” Christine murmured in turn.
“A carnival magician who has faith in magic. Like yours.”
“Mine?”
“You always knew when I was near, always. That wasn’t some trick of mine,” Erik explained. “What else do we call that but magic?”
Christine looked down pensively. “You said you were born in France.”
“I was. Why do you ask?”
