Page 83 of Angel's Flight

Meg didn’t want to repeat that.She wanted to talk to Monsieur Moncharmin, or barring that, Jammes.She had to stumble her way through some Debussy first, then Gounod, and then assure her mother four separate times that she was fine and she could go home.Meg would be waiting in three hours at the door for Madame Giry to escort her home, she promised.

Meg hoped that was true, even though she didn’t know where her adventures would take her once her mother finally relented and left.She didn’t want to be home late, in all honesty.She wanted to sit with her mother by the fire and forget about Étienne d’Amboise’s clumsy hands and his broken body on the street and how those things made her feel.Surely it was as wicked to have been with him as it was wicked to be happy to see her fellow man hurt.

“Have you seen Jammes?”Meg asked Blanche as they stretched in a corner.

“She was in her usual spot, of course,” Blanche said idly, checking her reflection in a small mirror.She had rouge on.

“I meant since we broke,” Meg sighed.“Where’d she get off to?”

“Why would I know?”Blanche shrugged.“Do you think I made a good impression on the Comte de Chagny?”

“What?”Meg squinted at her friend only to be ignored.“Never mind.”

The halls were quieter than the dance studio, with the patter of toe shoes from the dark and the distant sound of the orchestra rehearsing.Meg took a moment to enjoy the calm and think how it was so rare to be alone in the Opéra.There was always someone hiding somewhere, living or dead.

Leave it to her to be so absent-minded that she turned a corner and found exactly what she was looking for.She slammed into Jammes’s sturdy frame, sending the older dancer skidding back while swearing.

“Goddamnit, Giry!”Jammes hissed.“Are you so broken by finding your patron on the street that you’ve gone blind?”

“He wasn’t my patron,” Meg shot back, suddenly righteous.“And I was looking for you!”

“Why?”Jammes asked with a scowl.She was not that much taller than Giry, but she had a way of looking down her nose like she was a meter above, even so.“I hope it’s not for advice on your love life.”

“This is why you have no friends, you know,” Meg shot back, all her patience gone now.“You’re so...mean!For no good reason!”

“I have my reasons,” Jammes scowled back.Meg thought back to catching Jammes at the Masquerade, to what she knew of the older girl and all the secrets she had to keep.

“I wondered if you knew where I might find Julianne Bonet these days,” Meg asked carefully.Jammes’s face went slack for a moment before hardening again.

“Why would I know about her?”she snapped.

“She was your friend, wasn’t she?”Meg asked, feigning innocence.“She always paid special attention to you.I’m trying to find where she’s working now.I have things I want to ask her.”

“About me?”Jammes demanded, and Meg shook her head in surprise.

“About Christine Daaé and the affair with the ghost,” Meg confessed.Maybe Jammes knew something too.

“You mean Christine Daaé’s affair with the ghost.”Now that was interesting, but not entirely unsuspected.“Julianne would never reveal anything about Christine to anyone again.She made that mistake before.”To Meg’s shock, it looked like Jammes was about to cry.

“I’d like to find that out for myself,” Meg countered.“Or if you want to talk.”

Jammes rolled her eyes.“Last I heard, she had taken off with Adèle Valerius after her fall from grace, but it didn’t last long.I saw her a month or two ago, before she was dismissed.”At that, Jammes’s face darkened.

“She was dismissed?”Meg asked, truly shocked now.“I didn’t know that.”

Jammes looked positively ill, more and more as Meg stared at her.“I may have had something to do with it,” she confessed at last.“It was so stupid.I was jealous that she and Adèle were—”

Meg raised her eyebrows wide and Jammes stopped herself.Had she been about to imply what Meg suspected?“She was working for her and you wanted her back...with the dancers?”Meg offered, hoping Jammes would take the proffered escape.

“Yes.That,” Jammes said, clearing her throat.“It was unacceptable, so I, well, I talked to a patron that was showing me attention.”

“Oh no, Cécile,” Meg groaned.

“All he had to do was speak to the costume mistress or someone and it was done,” Jammes whispered.“It was too late and she couldn’t contact Moncharmin.I don’t think she wanted to.She was so angry at everything.”

“You mean you,” Meg corrected, and Jammes gave her a glare.“Rightly so, I think.”

“We had words that weren’t very friendly, so I have no idea where she’s gone off to,” Jammes barked.“Don’t go looking for her or asking about the witch Christine.Meddling in the ghost’s business never serves anyone well.You’ll end up mixed up with that horrible Persian.”

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