Page 1 of Angel's Flight

1.Sunrise

Florence

Late August, 1881

Florence felt emptyin the summer, and more so at this early hour.The August heat had not abated in the night and sat heavy on the quiet streets, humid from the moisture of the Arno running through the ancient city’s heart.Christine liked the quiet of the dawn, as shadows receded from the winding streets, and the Florentines began their work for the day.

There, sweeping the front steps, was Signora Genco.The fierce old woman unquestionably ruled her son: a great, burly man named Vito.Signore Genco and “Mama” (as he called her affectionately) had rented Erik and Christine the flat above his for the month and asked no questions about their strange new tenants.Christine liked the elderly woman who insisted on feeding her every time she came within five feet of the kitchen.Said kitchen was near the inner courtyard of the building, and the walls were lined with beautiful Italian pottery that Mama Genco took more pride in than her actual son.

It had made Erik nervous to live in such close quarters with another family after months of discrete inns, hotels, one rented house, and years alone below ground before then.Christine had argued it was not so different than sharing a home with a thousand artists and musicians.At least here, the walls and floors would be thicker than previous lodgings.They had only received scornful looks from a dowager in a neighboring room once after a particularly enjoyable night.

The streets of Florence were narrow and crooked, paved in worn cobblestones that had known the footsteps of Botticelli and the Medicis.It was a stark contrast to the order and modernity of Paris, the calm precision of Geneva, or even the sprawl of Milan, where they had so recently stayed.The centuries-old buildings seemed to hang onto the heat like it was a treasure as Christine wended her way through them.Barely dawn, and she was already sweating under her linen dress, her skin prickling with irritation.Of course, it wasn’t just the stifling air that caused her discomfort.There was also the fact that she had awoken alone.Again.

Erik’s note had said he couldn’t sleep because of the heat.There was truth to it, for sure.It was quite a thing to go from living in a perpetually cool cellar to enduring the warmth and hurry of the living world.Still, she knew it was more than that.He’d been anxious for weeks, his agitation growing day by day as the temperature increased and his mood darkened.She wished she knew how to lighten it.

Christine slowed as she passed two nuns in quiet conversation and gave them a nod.She tried to make out their exchange, but only a few words made it through, something about food, perhaps, and a father.Maybe a priest.Christine had been disappointed in her progress in Italian so far.It turned out singing it for years wasn’t a substitute for formal instruction, and though it had some similarities to French, Christine had still spent many a day in Florence, barely able to communicate, especially with her translator and tutor not always available.

That meant she couldn’t ask anyone now if they had seen said translator.Not that Erik would have let himself be seen.He reminded her of a cat sometimes, always disappearing on some adventure whenever the fancy took him or retreating into some secret world where mere mortals could not follow.She knew the things he would seek out to ease his restless soul – solitude and beauty in the form of art, music, or architecture.

Unfortunately, they were in a city filled to the brim with such things, more so than any they had visited in the past months, and Christine wondered if that had been their mistake.Or hers.Maybe Erik didn’t like being in a city full of immortal art when his creations were unknown to the world – some of them locked up in a safe in Geneva, others under the care of a patient friend in Paris who had not answered her letters of late.Christine missed both cities now, but she missed friends like Julianne even more.

They had drifted east for months.From Paris, they had gone to Rouen, then paid their respects at the home of the Baroness de Martiniac.It had been right to visit the only living relative Erik knew to inform her of his half-brother’s death.Less so to come away from that encounter with the promise of an inheritance awaiting Erik in Geneva if they contacted the right man at the right bank.

It had been unbelievable to discover that, not only did they have the not-insubstantial fund Erik had hoarded from fleecing the Opera to support them, but half of a fortune he had never thought to lay claim upon.They had made their way to Geneva and stayed there for a few weeks seeing to their financial and legal affairs – the least of which was finding a means to make Erik even exist under the law, a condition he had resisted for days until Christine had – in his words – fucked the resistance out of him.It had been blissful, in its way: ensconced in a private, well-appointed room in the city’s best hotel.Nothing to do but read and talk and make love and play music.

Now it seemed like a dream, as she wandered the hot streets of the latest city that was supposed to give them sanctuary.After weeks in Geneva, the kind solicitor working on behalf of the Baroness – poor Monsieur Tissot – had made Erik Gilbride a person with papers and accounts who might receive correspondence through Tissot wherever they traveled.And they did need to travel.

Through Tissot, they had received correspondence that someone wanted to declare Antoine legally dead and claim the funds that they had just acquired.That revelation had led them from Geneva into several villages tucked among the Alps, taking in the mountains and lakes as summer set in.It had been another honeymoon of sorts among the hills and woods.

The village of Lungern, where they had found a quiet house near the woods, had felt like somewhere they could stay.More of a home than the hotels and inns, it had been humble, but Christine had loved the little garden, and there had been a piano there for Erik to play.They had thought they were far enough from anyone else that no one would hear them singing.

Christine had expected that time to be easy, once they were finally free to be together and alone.But what they had experienced in the cellars of the opera wasn’t easy to leave behind, despite the joy they found in one another.It wasn’t easy to forget the injuries done to friends or the hearts broken along the way.Or the bodies they had left behind.

The nightmares had begun in that little cottage.Erik had grown restless, and Christine had started to face why they were there.She still dreamed sometimes of Antoine de Martiniac, only this time, he killed more than Philippe de Chagny.Some nights, she still saw the great chandelier of the Palais Garnier fall at her feet, engulfing her in flames.

Christine could feel them still.The heat of them, rising around her.Turning her skin to crackling meat...

“Signorina, ha bisogno di aiuto?”

Christine jumped at the words and the hand on her elbow.When had she started leaning on this wall?Why was her head spinning?She was breathing fast and felt hot and cold at the same time.A Florentine woman with a kind face was asking her something again.

“I’m fine,” Christine muttered in French, and the woman frowned.“Son...Sono bene,” she tried again.She was sure she didn’t look fine, and she felt like a fool for having such an attack on a public street, but the woman was either satisfied or frightened enough to let Christine go.

She quickened her pace, though she wasn’t even sure where she was going.She wanted Erik – her damn husband – not some stranger she couldn’t understand to console her.She had slept poorly too.She was more alone than him in a city she didn’t know, full of people she could barely communicate with.This flat was the fifth place they had stayed since Lungern, after Erik had come home one night to their cottage and declared it was time to leave.Christine had not argued because she had hoped that leaving would end the nightmares and attacks of memory.

It hadn’t.At least in Italy, the music and the heat were good distractions.

The street spat her out into a piazza, one of a hundred such squares in Florence, where merchants were opening their shops as the pale blue sky brightened above.This place she knew.Here she could breathe and find her bearings.On cue, bells pealed from a church nearby, scattering pigeons from the rooftops like a beacon.

“Signorina Christina!”a warm voice called from a shop, and Christine turned with a smile to see a bright, round face peeking from behind a display of fresh breads and sweets.

Patricia was in her sixties at least, but she moved behind the counter of her bakery on the square with the speed and energy of a woman half her age.Her skin was tanned and warm, and it reminded Christine of the bread and pastries she offered hot from the ovens to grateful customers.She had worked for a time in France, learning from bakers there, and sold confections with names and flavors Christine recognized.That had been why she’d come to the shop in the first place, and she’d been happy to find someone who spoke a language she knew.

“Buongiorno, Patricia,” Christine tried.The woman smiled and began fussing with a tray of croissants dusted with almonds.They smelled heavenly, as did the whole shop, though Christine wondered how Patricia could stand the heat of her ovens in this oppressive weather.

“You are early this morning!I am barely ready for you.”

“I have lost my husband, and I’m trying to find him,” Christine replied.She tried to make the words sound like a joke, but the truth of it smarted.

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