Page 69 of Angel's Flight

“Was he well?”Shaya asked at last, and Meg cocked her head.

“Do you know him?Through the affair with Christine Daaé and the Phantom?”Meg asked back.Shaya didn’t need to say anything for the answer to show on his face.“He wasn’t in good spirits, to say the least.And he kept the watch.”

“What?”Shaya huffed.

“Probably wants to sell it,” Darius muttered.Shaya understood the impulse, but he had wanted to sell it back and get a refund of his money.“If he’s selling things from the house and watches that don’t belong to him—”

“And working to repair whatever financial mess his brother left,” Meg added.

“That means he doesn’t anticipate some great fortune being found,” Shaya finished.“That makes sense.If Raoul knew—” He stopped himself and met Darius’ eyes.If Raoul knew Erik lived, he would have gone mad with it and made far more violent and vociferous contact with Shaya than sending a spy.

“Sabine is doing this on her own,” Meg said, then furrowed her brow.“Trying to find her husband and his fortune?”

Shaya and Darius exchanged another look.“Who else could it be?He’s disappeared.”For a moment, Meg seemed to take the story as Shaya hoped until the line between her brows deepened, reminding Shaya that she was smarter than that.

“But then why watch you?”Meg asked aloud as Shaya swore silently in his head.“What would that avail her?What does any of this have to do with the haunting of the Opéra?Though our new ghost wants money too...”

“Firmin Richard,” Darius answered.“He’s involved.Visiting Pomeroy.Helping Sabine.We can’t forget him.”

“He had dealings with Antoine, he wants that debt repaid,” Shaya mused aloud.

“Could he be our ghost?”Meg asked, eyes brightening.

“I had not considered that, to be honest,” Shaya replied, looking between the other two.He had not considered any suspect too deeply when it came to ‘their’ ghost.The ghost and Erik were so deeply entwined in his mind it was hard to think of some other man behind that mask.

“He knows the Opéra and he – did he know of the truth about the ghost?”Meg demanded, her energy rising as she stood and paced in front of the fire.

“He did,” Shaya confirmed.“And he knows of me.”

“He has a reason to hate patrons too, if he feels they forced him out!”Meg went on.“We should pursue it!”

“How will we do that?”Shaya asked, unable to stop himself chuckling.“I could speak to Armand.”

“I could keep looking around the Opéra,” Meg mused.

Shaya frowned.“I hope it doesn’t involve blindly looking through the cellars.”

“Well, you could come with me.”

“There’s nothing to be found there,” Shaya replied, and that was entirely honest.Darius gave him a look that was also a question, and Meg seemed skeptical.“All the doors I knew of down there are sealed and locked.I’ve checked.”

“Even the one in the third cellar?”Darius asked.

“Where we met?”Meg added.

Shaya nodded, though the thought brought him little comfort.Erik had assured him that the torture chamber was sealed and dismantled as well as it could be and that there was no getting into his secret home now.Shaya was loath to check.It was too close to the secret place where Antoine de Martiniac’s body lay, wearing a match to Erik’s gold ring.

“Well then, I’ll keep asking around and listening like a little mouse.Or rat, I guess,” Meg said with a guileless shrug, before frowning.“There’s a patron who has been asking me to dinner.I could talk to him and see if he knows if the other victims had a grudge against Richard.Though he’s a bit odious.”

“Be careful, young Meg,” Darius said before Shaya could.“People have been hurt gravely in this drama, and the patrons are their own sort of danger.”

A dark expression overtook Meg’s young face.“People are hurt every day.Most of us don’t get any justice.Anyway, there may be one other complication that might nudge things along.”

“What have you done?”Shaya asked.The look Meg gave him reminded him profoundly of the sheepish expression he would find on Ramin’s face when he caught him sneaking back home some nights: guilt mixed with hope that the one who had been caught was too innocent and liked by Shaya to be put into trouble.

“I needed help with the Comte, someone that knew him, like I told you.Well, she knows now.About Sabine de whatever-she’s-calling-herself-now.”Meg confessed.

“And your friend is a gossip,” Shaya sighed.

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