Page 1 of Angel's Fall

1. Ashes

“Are you sure that’sall?” Antoine de Martiniac’s voice was raw from a night of revelations and carousing, and Raoul de Chagny was sick of hearing it.

“Yes. That’s everything.” Raoul rubbed his hand over his face. He needed sleep and a shave, and probably looked as awful as he felt. The alcohol from the masquerade had worn off hours ago, and he had not been in the mood for more. Planning how to avenge one’s father’s death had a way of dampening the mood. Even Philippe had switched to coffee while he listened to Raoul’s fragmented story.

“Then start again from the beginning,” Antoine barked. His icy blue eyes were as wild as they had been hours ago, when he had revealed that the villain who had sent so many – including Antoine’s own father – to a fiery death was the same Erik who had enchanted the woman Raoul loved, Christine Daaé.

“Must I?” Raoul groaned.

“Yes. Even the parts that make you look like a lovesick fool.” It was Philippe who replied. Raoul’s older brother was usually so jovial; the warm, laughing center of every crowd, who never took anything too seriously except money. It was sobering and unsettling for Raoul to see his brother with a grim expression as they sat in the parlor next to a dying fire. Even his thin mustache looked solemn. “Start with when you first heard him. When you were listening at Christine’s door.”

“I thought it was just a man in her dressing room,” Raoul told the two older men for the third (or was it fourth?) time. The sky outside was brightening now. How long had they been at this? “After I saw Christine sing at the New Year’s gala.”

“When she laughed at you after you accosted her at the reception,” Antoine scoffed. “You always forget to mention that part.”

“She only laughed at me becausehewas watching her and influencing her!” Raoul wished with all his heart he had stayed home that fateful night. Maybe then he wouldn’t have seen the girl he loved as a young man thrust onto the stage of the Palais Garnier when La Carlotta had become indisposed. Raoul blinked as a new thought occurred to him. “He did it.”

“What?” Philippe asked.

“Erik,” Raoul spat the name. “The villain must have arranged for Christine to sing. He made Carlotta sick.”

“Adèle did say something about the bitch claiming to have been poisoned,” Antoine mused. “I never took it seriously.”

“He wanted his student on the stage!” Raoul exclaimed. “Erik put Christine there and in return, she gave him—”

“Her soul,” Philippe finished with utter derision in his voice. “You listened at the door like a common thief and heard her say she gave him her soul.”

Raoul shuddered at the memory of the pure devotion in Christine’s voice that night. “She did.”

“But then, when you snuck in after she left to confront the man, the dressing room was empty,” Antoine finished.

“He was using the mirror. Somehow, he hides behind it.” Raoul wondered if the fiend had been there, laughing at the fool on the other side of the mirror.

“And after that, you wrote to her. She didn’t reply, yet you still thought it was a good idea to carry her to her room after she fainted on the stage afterFaust,” Philippe recited. “After she once again took Carlotta’s place, when the Signora was tricked out of performing.”

“Our Phantom’s work again,” Antoine remarked, twining his long fingers together. Philippe raised an eyebrow. “It had to have been.”

“Sorelli said the whole company blamed the ghost for driving the old managers away too,” Philippe added. “Maybe he cleared them out to help Christine. Carlotta had her claws deep in Debienne and Poligny.”

“She has her claws deep in Firmin Richard now,” Antoine said. “But back to our dear Raoul. You saw her that night. Then she disappeared from her room. Now we know how she was taken.”

“You didn’t believe me at the time.” Raoul scowled.

“Because you have the tendency to be an idiot when it comes to that girl,” Philippe drawled. “Then you saw her the next day. She was upset.”

“Very.” Raoul remembered the pale, stricken face of his old friend that cold morning afterFaust. When she had been accosted by a man whose part in this mystery Raoul still did not understand. “I thought she was upset because of that Persian fellow harassing her, but then she started talking about—”

“What have you neglected to mention now?” Antoine’s thin lips curling into a sneer.

“That she was talking about angels,” Philippe finished for his brother and Raoul balked at him. “I remember things too, you know.”

“She said she had thought her teacher was an angel. I thought she was being metaphorical or superstitious! She was always a fanciful girl. Now I think she might have really meant it. ThisErikconvinced her he was her angel of music. That’s not so far from an opera ghost.”

“You should have hauled her off to a madhouse right then,” Antoine scoffed.

“She wasn’t mad, that’s the whole point!” Raoul snarled back. “She is a victim here.” He bit his tongue and did not say how he had encouraged Christine to give her ‘angel’ a chance because signs from heaven did not need to be literal angels. Fate had presented this teacher to Christine, Raoul had told her. Only now did Raoul know it was the work of the devil.

“The next time you saw her was after Carlotta had her fired. She was trying to talk to the woman,” Philippe pushed on. Raoul blushed at that memory too. He had held Christine and taken her to supper. Everything had been so normal. “I surmise the discussion with her rival didn’t go well.”

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