Page 99 of Angel's Flight

“I’ll tell you the story later.We’re talking about you right now,” Madame Giry replied as if she had not increased how interesting she was to her daughter by tenfold.“Tell me what you mean by a new ghost.I’ve had my suspicions about what’s been going on, but I want to hear it from you.”

Meg took a deep breath.If there was anyone she could tell about all of this, it was the woman who had been in the ghost’s confidence as much as anyone else in the Opéra who hadn’t disappeared.

“The ghost wasn’t a ghost.He was a man,” Meg began, and the words began to flow out of her.All she knew and suspected, all the secrets she had learned, finally confessed to a sympathetic ear.

It took her until dawn to finish the story, with the milky light of morning filtering into their parlor.Meg felt like she’d run a mile when she finished, looking up to her mother for some sign of hope or understanding.

“There is one thing in all of this that doesn’t make sense to me entirely,” her mother said, looking wistful.

“One thing?”

The elder Giry scowled indulgently.“I’ve suspected his identity.I wondered why a ghost would need somewhere to sit, honestly.But how did he bring down the chandelier when he was also snatching Christine Daaé from the stage?”

Meg blinked.She hadn’t thought of that at all.

“He had help,” Meg stated aloud.“He had help dropping the chandelier and turning off the gas before it fell, so there would be no fire or chaos.He was in three places at once.”

“Interesting,” Meg’s mother murmured.“He shared secrets with someone before he disappeared.Maybe someone is still using them.”

“But why?”Meg asked again.

“Why did we think the first ghost did what he did?There are only so many reasons for a man to take on such madness: love or revenge.”

“It’s not love,” Meg said quickly, though she doubted it the moment she said it.Maybe it was that, in part.“That leaves revenge.”

Her mother shrugged.“What’s been done to those patrons sounds like it was something they deserved.”

Meg chewed her lip, wondering where this left her, if it left her anywhere at all.“Wait.You said disappeared.I told you Shaya insists that the old ghost is dead.”

“Yet he does not wish the Vicomte – pardon, Comte – who was so involved in all this to know that these attacks and hauntings have resumed,” Madame Giry replied, calm and insightful as ever.“Then runs off to another country for urgent business.”

Meg was thunderstruck, but it made sense.Shaya’s refusal to share secrets out of supposed respect for the dead and his lack of concern for Christine Daaé.He wasn’t concerned, because he knew where she was: with the man Shaya had hunted and now protected.With the ghost.Did that mean this new phantom was someone who wanted to protect them too by causing some diversion, or was it someone who wanted to draw the old phantom back?

Suddenly, Meg doubted everything.

Sligo

When did everythingbecome so cold?It seemed like yesterday that Erik had been going mad with the Florentine heat, but now the Irish damp was deep in his bones.He had never been one to miss the summer, but right now those days in Florence felt like a glimmer of vital life in his memory.Everything around him now bore the chill of death.

He touched his throat, letting the faint bruise there smart for a moment.It didn’t bring him comfort as other mementos of penance and pleasure had.It brought him shame that he had deserved and enjoyed such a thing.He was a killer, who had been wanted by a madwoman because he was monstrous.He remained monstrous, as confined and hunted as ever, dragging an angel down into the muck with him again.

“What did she say to you?”Christine asked from across the room.She was staring at the wall that separated them from the woman they now held captive again.Who they couldn’t release without risking further violence...

“What?”Erik asked back, trying to regain his bearings in the conversation they had been trying to start all morning as guilt and silence kept rearing up between them.

“Did she say anything about her plans or what she intended to do if you didn’t meet her terms?”Christine looked ill as she said it, but not furious the way she had last night.

“She said she was going to burn Coolaney to the ground, metaphorically,” Erik answered with a sigh.“It’s a complicated scheme of some sort.She acted like she would own the town.”

“How could someone own a town to destroy it?”Christine scoffed.

“The English own this entire country – well, stole it,” Erik replied with a sneer.“Every village is controlled by a manor that some English family owns.Sometimes it’s a rich Irish one who bowed at the right time if they’re lucky.”

“Does Coolaney have such a manor?”Christine asked as the same idea occurred to Erik.

“It does, though it’s small, and last time I was there, it was already falling into disrepair.It was granted to a man – a knight, not even a Lord, I think.Maybe it was a punishment.”Erik thought back to if he had even seen the old codger.His mother had talked about him too, so he couldn’t possibly still be alive.

“Is he still alive?Who will it pass to?”Christine asked.“If Pauline had some scheme to buy it or swindle him?”

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