Page 41 of Angel's Flight

“I thought we could be friends once,” Christine countered.“You were kind.You made me feel so much less alone.”

“Because you were a fool then and you’re a fool now if you think I’m going to tell you who I work for out of the goodness of my heart.”

“I don’t care who you work for.I care that you live and leave us alone.And you’ll do that if I let you go,” Christine stated, and for once, Pauline looked shocked.“I don’t want another death on my hands or his.”

“So you admit what you’ve done?”Pauline asked carefully.

“We did not kill Antoine, if that’s what you’re asking.”Christine braced herself at the way the memory of his body hitting the floor still made her sick.How his corpse became a falling chandelier in her mind.“But we...He has done things and is capable of horror.So, I’m saving your life and we are leaving this damn continent.”

“You think an ocean will be enough to keep you from the past?”Pauline spat as Christine approached.

“I’m going to let you out, and you’re going to run out of here.Erik and the others are busy with our things.You have to go quickly,” Christine ordered as she stepped behind Pauline and began untying Erik’s tight knots around her wrists.“Please.”

“You think I’ll care that you saved me,” Pauline asked, fascinated and cold.

“I want to think you have a soul capable of compassion,” Christine replied and meant it.Even so, she was not surprised when Pauline sprang up the moment the bindings were loose and struck Christine hard in the face with the chair as she pushed it back.She added a vicious kick straight to her stomach that took the wind out of Christine’s lungs.

“You’re more of an idiot than I thought,” Pauline chuckled.

Christine shut her eyes tight and braced herself for another blow, but it didn’t come.Instead, she heard the sound of Pauline’s steps retreating up the stairs.Christine held her breath, scant as it was, and listened to the distant sound of a door slamming.Then nothing.

She waited in silence, her jaw smarting where the chair had struck her and her guts aching.She was glad her corset protected her somewhat, but it was still a chore to move.Luckily, a shadow appeared and helped her.

Erik was there, right where he said he would be, helping her to stand.

“Are you alright?”Erik asked, touching her face gingerly.She could see the concern in his shining eyes, and it warmed her heart.It made her feel cared for and seen as only he could.

“Do you think it worked?”

“She ran out into the street, like we hoped,” Erik replied.“And she saw the tickets on the table in the kitchen, in case she didn’t hear our destination.”

“She heard it,” Christine sighed.“She wouldn’t have left me in one piece if she didn’t know where to find me again.”

“You hardly seem in one piece.”

“I’ve had worse,” Christine replied with a shrug.“Or maybe it’s you who’s supposed to say that.”

“I’d encourage you to get some rest, but I don’t think either of us will be able to sleep tonight.”Erik still pulled her into his arms, and Christine melted into them.Part of her wanted to recoil; it recalled the violence he had unleashed on Pauline with fear and disgust, even knowing it had been a ruse.What he’d done to Bidaut hadn’t been, but that was the price they paid, wasn’t it?

“We’ll sleep on the train,” Christine murmured against his chest.“It will be a long journey.”

“I love you,” Erik whispered in her ear, somehow knowing she needed to hear it.“I love you, and I’m sorry for all of this.I truly am.I’m sorry we can’t go to America now.”

“It was too far, anyway,” Christine replied, and let another dream wither in her heart.

Paris

Shaya meandered throughthe Tuileries as dawn broke, mired in indecision.He had promised Armand he would look about at the Opéra, but he had a nagging instinct that his suspicions about the de Chagny manor were more important.How this new phantom and the secrets that the family kept were related, Shaya had no idea, but he knew there was a connection.

For the hundredth time, he wished he could speak to Erik about it.

Shaya slumped onto a bench between two manicured trees and tossed the last of his breakfast roll to a horde of waiting pigeons.They were all over the gardens, outnumbered only by the crows who roosted there at night, close to the cool air of the river.

Shaya cast his eyes to the trees just in time to see a murder of birds explode from the branches in a great cawing cloud.Something must have disturbed them.Yes – there.A figure was standing by a tree trunk in the shade...looking at Shaya.

Another man would have thought nothing of it.Another man would have assumed this other was merely out for a walk, the same as Shaya, enjoying the last gasps of summer before the trees shed their golden leaves and left the gardens like a museum of skeletons.

But Shaya wasn’t another man.He had been raised among spies and treachery; he had spent years in the secret police, observing the Persian court and years after that tracking a ghost.He knew when he was being watched.

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