The Phantom's Apprentice

by Heather Webb

  My legs felt weak. The room began to spin. People were hurt—dead!—and it was at Erik’s hand. I knew it. I knew he would do something terrible again, because of me. I gasped for breath, cursing the stays I had pulled so tightly to hide my breasts beneath the male costume.

  “Get the gendarme!” The stage director shoved me aside. “Dieu, someone has been killed!”

  In the next instant, the floor gave way beneath my feet.

  An inky darkness swallowed me. The sounds of mayhem and fear disappeared—but for my screams. My stomach dropped as I flailed in empty space.

  I was falling.

  18

  After what felt like minutes of hurtling through space, I landed on something soft, grunting at the impact. I must have triggered a trapdoor on the stage, though I couldn’t think how. I remembered the stage director pushing past me. The screams, the body trapped beneath the chandelier . . . and Charles’s words:

  Someone has been killed.

  I bit my knuckle to hold back the sobs clawing at my throat. This was my fault. If I had had courage enough to tell Erik I didn’t want to sing, didn’t need his help, those lives would have been spared.

  I had caused the death of my father, of Joseph Buquet, and now I was responsible for this.

  Anguish poured down my cheeks in a river of tears. I didn’t belong here. I would never be better than Carlotta, and I didn’t care. Every moment I spent at the opera house endangered others. And oh, Raoul. I hated being here. I wanted to go. I didn’t want to sing anymore.

  My sobs ceased abruptly, and bewilderment stole over me. I didn’t want to sing?

  I don’t want to sing.

  To sing for enjoyment, yes, but not for money, fame, and fortune—or to be the center of the Paris music world. That wasn’t me. It had never been my dream. I blinked rapidly to clear the tears and wiped my nose on my sleeve. I had done it all for Papa; I thought it had helped him somehow, and eased his grief over Mother. The music Papa and I created had soothed us both. But the cost of it now—

  Something stirred behind me. I peered into the darkness but was unable to make out a single shape.

  “Who’s there?” My voice came out shaky, heavy with emotion.

  A scratching sound followed a squeak.

  A rat. I cringed, remembering the fat city rats I’d seen too often in our temporary homes. Their fur slick with filth, rustling through piles of rotted hay, or their pointed nails scraping inside the walls. I ran a finger over the scar on my left hand. A rat’s bite had left its mark; the wound had bled and stained my dress. Papa had made me soak my hand in steaming-hot water for three days to ward off infection.

  I dusted dirt from my culottes and looked up at the ceiling, trying to make out the grooves of the trapdoor. The panel had closed and sealed perfectly. Too perfectly. I couldn’t make out a single crack where light seeped through to guide my way. Panic squeezed my chest.

  “Help!” I shouted. “Help! I’m trapped!”

  Suddenly a hand covered my mouth, an arm snaked around my middle. Someone dragged me backward. I struggled, but couldn’t break free of my captor’s steely grip. He whipped me around and pulled my arms together, binding them roughly in front of my body with something that felt like rope.

  I screamed again as a blindfold slipped over my eyes.

  “Do not fear,” a silky tenor whispered in my ear. “It is only me. I have something to show you.”

  Relief crashed over me, followed by dread. If I had nothing to fear, why did he bind my hands and blindfold me?

  As if reading my mind he continued, “You know I would never hurt you, dear one. You are my apprentice. My responsibility.”

  A hand sheathed with a leather glove ran down the side of my face and traced my lips.

  I recoiled from his touch. “Madame Valerius will worry, especially when she hears about the chandelier. Please, Erik, let me go.”

  The chandelier that killed at least one and wounded others, for which he was responsible—for which I was responsible.

  “Not to worry. I’ve sent her a note and informed her you will be visiting friends for a while.”

  A while? My knees buckled.

  His grip tightened around my waist. “It’s all right. Come, I will look after you. Now duck your head. The tunnel ceiling is low.” He steered me forward with a gentle hand.

  We walked for some time in silence.

  Finally, I couldn’t bear to hold the burning question inside me another moment. “Did you sever the cable supporting the chandelier?”

  “You think me capable of murder?”

  “I don’t know.” Perhaps the chandelier had been an accident, the cable weak. Yet I knew the truth already.

  His low laugh echoed off the walls of the tunnel.

  Afraid to say the wrong thing, I remained silent. If I incurred his wrath, Lord knew what he would do. As we walked on, I was thankful for the boy’s costume I was wearing.

  We turned again and the atmosphere shifted from musty to damp. When the stench of sewage and sulfur permeated the air, I knew we were no longer beneath the opera house. The sound of trickling water reverberated in the underground cavern.

  “We’re in the sewer?” I choked on the pungent odor of human waste. Much longer in the bowels of the city, and I would vomit. I strained against the ties binding my hands; panted as the thick air expanded in my throat and chest. I had to remain calm. It wouldn’t help if I panicked.

  “Have patience. All will be revealed to you very soon. For now, I have a story for you.” He paused to maneuver me around a bend. “There once was a young girl. She was beautiful—so beautiful everyone’s eyes followed her wherever she went. She sang like a songbird at her father’s insistence. In fact, he claimed the Angel of Music guided her.”

  I splashed through a puddle and cringed as my stockings were soaked through. In that moment, I was grateful for the dark.

  After several minutes of silence, he continued. “Across town there was a man who possessed a gift of his own, one that would not only put him in the public eye, but make him infamous. It would cause him more pain than he could ever imagine.”

  When Erik didn’t continue, I asked, “What was his gift?”

  “Illusions.”

  My footsteps faltered. “Illusions,” I echoed, my voice hoarse.

  “Tricks and trifles. Making others believe what they wished to see; reflecting their dreams back to them with tantalizing imagery and pretty tales. Constructing trapdoors, false cabinets, movable mirrors. Yes, illusions. This man could read his audience—he knew what triggered their imagination. How to transport them to a place of magic.”

  Magic. My heart pounded harder at the word.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Many loved his show, but others feared him and wanted to expose him as a fraud. He was harassed and accosted.”

  Suddenly, the blindfold fell away. A ladder led upward to the ceiling. I pivoted to take in my surroundings, but my eyes detected only the faintest light. Walls ran on either side of us and a recessed shaft below brimmed with sewer water. Beside me, my dark angel loomed. His black suit, hat, and flowing cape blended with the walls, yet the silhouette of his face gleamed white.

  I gasped.

  A porcelain mask covered half of his face, just as Raoul had said—just like my dream. A memory resurfaced, an afternoon with Claudette.

  Did you see that man? she had asked.

  Which? I didn’t see anyone.

  Claudette had frowned. He’s disappeared now. Wears a mask o’er half his face . . .

  I covered my mouth with my hand. Had Erik followed me all this time, tracked me like an animal? But why? I grew light-headed as one thought followed another. Perhaps he had planned to bring me to the opera house. But . . . it was Monsieur Delacroix who helped me gain an audition.

  “Angel—Erik—” I clutched the bottom rung of the metal ladder to steady myself. “Do you wear a mask to cover a scar?”

  “That is one reason
, yes. And also not to be recognized.” He motioned toward the ladder. “Enough talk. Go.”

  I mounted the ladder, mumbling another prayer of thanks I wore boy’s clothing. Soon, I felt him climbing below me. My stomach churned at his proximity and I forced myself to focus on the metal rungs. After another two meters, we would reach the top.

  Another step, and another—and the sole of my right shoe slipped on the slick metal. I cried out in surprise.

  A hand steadied me.

  “Careful,” Erik said. “Here, you’ll need me to open the sewer cap anyway.”

  He climbed until his body was directly over me, around me.

  I breathed heavily at the nearness of him, head swimming. Confusion roiled inside me. With a hand at my waist, he guided me the reminder of the way. Once he removed the sewer cap, he carefully maneuvered around me and pulled himself through the hole. I reached for his outstretched hand, eager to escape the stink of the sewer. His hand’s cold boniness surprised me and I nearly let go. I screeched as my other foot slipped.

  “Steady,” he said, hauling me up through the hole.

  As I reached the surface, cool night air bathed my face. I scanned the street around me, trying to get my bearings. We stood on a side street about a kilometer from the opera house. My heart stalled. It was a street I recognized from my nightmares.

  Erik spun me around gently. In my ear he whispered, “My former place of employment. And the place where”—his voice cracked—“my love perished.”

  A theatre in the throes of reconstruction loomed before me.

  I gasped, mind reeling as the pieces came together. The throwing of voices behind the walls, the Platonized glass, the trapdoors. Erik’s long black cape.

  “It was you.”

  He nodded, mask pearlescent in the moonlight. “I am the Masked Conjurer.”

  19

  "Did you know my father?”

  “In a sense,” he said

  “I almost died,” I whispered, my eyes fastened on the theatre’s new roof. The last time I had seen it, it had been a charred, gaping hole. The image of a hand with broken fingers flashed into my mind, of being lifted from the ground and carried from the theatre. It was the last thing I had seen before going completely unconscious that night. “Someone rescued me.”

  He leaned closer, amber eyes glittering. “I rescued you. You lay against your father’s body. I wasn’t sure you were alive, but I had to try.”

  My throat flooded with emotion. The Masked Conjurer—my dark angel—had rescued me, even then. I swallowed hard, and stared ahead to regain control of my emotions. A stray cat meandered in the alley next to the theatre, its burnt-orange fur visible each time it stepped into a pool of light.

  When I could speak without my voice wavering I said, “There were men who rushed the stage, set everything on fire.”

  “Yes.” His voice took on an edge.

  “I’m sorry you lost someone you loved in the fire. Your assistant.” How could I not feel sympathy for someone who had lost so much. Erik had given up his magic and the woman he loved, lived as a ghost of his former self. He had lost everything, just as I had that night.

  “I have found a way to console myself.” A smile resembling a grimace stretched his thin lips over an overly large set of teeth.

  His skeletal smile startled me from my temporary lapse into sympathizing for such a man. He wasn’t the same person he once was. Kidnapping and murder had become his consolation.

  Pulse skipping, I glanced at the alley several meters ahead. It was a dead end. A series of dark storefronts spanned the rest of the block, and a large field flanked the other side of the theatre. There was no clear escape. Should I run, I had no place to hide at this hour. Perhaps he would release me when we returned. Perhaps he needed to explain himself, and then he would let me go as he did every evening. For now, the most sensible thing to do was remain calm, act as if all was normal.

  “Have you lived in the opera house since then?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice even.

  “These last four years. I’ve built a home there, one that is complex, but a home nonetheless.”

  I nodded. So complex, in fact, that neither Delacroix nor any of the others trying to hunt him down had managed to find him.

  A damp breeze stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I shivered. “Please, Erik. I’m ready to go home.”

  “As you wish.”

  In a swift movement, he covered my mouth with a handkerchief.

  Chemicals burned my nose and throat. Before I had time to react, my head grew foggy and the world dissolved.

  I awoke in a four-poster bed beneath a deep blue velvet coverlet. I shot up, staring at the strange surroundings. Given the dank air, I knew I must be somewhere below the opera house. I groaned. I had asked Erik to bring me home, not to his home. As I imagined what he had in store for me, fear followed revulsion. Some part of Erik was evil—at the very least, broken and unstable—and I was at his mercy.

  I slipped from the bedcovers and my skirts swished around my legs.

  Skirts?

  I rushed toward a mirror, turmoil roiling inside me. I was wearing a boy’s costume when he took me hostage. Now I wore a scarlet ball gown with full skirts, trimmed with ribbons along the hem. The neckline dipped low and curved over the contours of my breasts in a daring fashion, and demi-sleeves draped my bared shoulders. With my palm, I covered the vast expanse of milky-white skin laid bare. The gown was lush, sensual. I had never worn anything so overt. What’s more, I had no recollection of how I came to be wearing it.

  Erik’s hands must have been upon me, unfastening my chemisier, slipping down the culottes, tucking me into the expensive silk. A tingling stirred somewhere inside me, but was quickly squashed with disgust. I turned to view the back of the gown; it swept about my ankles, but I couldn’t feel it against my legs. I lifted my skirts to my knees and realized with relief that he had not removed my trousers. I peeked down the front of the dress and saw my corset, felt along my back and it was still tied overly tight so I might look more like a boy on stage. I leaned against the glass and breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t done anything too indecent.

  Reassured, I strode to the bedside table. Ignoring the tea tray of ham, bread, and a pot of jam, I reached for the square of stationery tucked just under the plate’s edge. Erik had left a note?

  I will return soon, my love. Eat, and rest well.

  —E

  My love. I shivered at the implication of his words. The way his burning amber eyes had drunk me in. He might protect me, respect my wishes, and release me as he had in the past, but I couldn’t be certain. Erik had no qualms about threatening me—and kidnapping me against my will. I crumpled the paper.

  I had to find a way out—now.

  Scanning the room, I took in an armoire, a few luxurious tables, and many chests fanning across the cavernous room, along with a writing desk and a set of nude statues serving as candelabra. Dozens of candles blazed everywhere, even from sconces on the walls. At last, I spied a lantern and started toward it. To my dismay, the gas well was dry. With an irritated huff, I stared into the black corridor leading away from the cavernous room. That had to be the way out, but if I got lost, who would find me? He would, and he would be outraged I had tried to escape.

  It was a risk I would have to take.

  More afraid of the man than the unknown of the dark, I trudged forward. As the light behind me faded, humidity coated my skin and the smell of water permeated the air. All of a sudden, I slammed my head against an overhang. I cried out in pain and surprise. My head spun with stars, and I blinked away instant tears. With a light hand, I touched my forehead and winced at the already-rising knot. Reaching out in front of me, I felt along the outcropping of wall. A hole large enough to move through opened along the passageway. I ducked through it and carefully stood, arms stretched overhead. I breathed a sigh of relief as I stood tall again.

  After several strides more, a pinpoint of light shone in
the distance. I hurried toward it until I could finally make out its source. A lantern hung from a peg affixed to the wall, emitting a red glow. I picked up my pace, excitement winding through my limbs. A way out!

  Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet grew softer, and my heels sank into the earth. After another few steps, I understood why. The lantern illuminated the placid surface of a small lake. A boat tethered to a dock floated on the water—on the opposite side of the lake.

  My heart sank. I cursed my weakness. Why did I have to be afraid of water? My knees trembled at the thought of sinking to the bottom, of cold water rushing down my throat and into my lungs. Of creatures lurking in the water’s depths.

  But it might be the only way out.

  With a steadying breath, I walked to the shoreline. The inky well seemed unearthly in its calm. Yet, in spite of the undisturbed surface, I couldn’t make out the bottom—it was just too dark. I stared glumly at the boat, and back at the shoreline again.

  Don’t be such a coward, Christine. You should at least try.

  With a surge of courage, I waded into the lake. I gasped at the cold, but continued forward, pushing away the terror of all that black, fathomless water. Water seeped into my shoes and stockings, crept higher along my ankles and calves, swept over the crest of my knee. I squeezed my eyes closed and began to hum Beethoven’s Concerto Number Five to block the terror mounting in my chest. I pushed forward another step.

  That instant, the bottom gave way. I screeched, and then careened downward, plunging into the depths. Water filled my mouth and darkness enveloped me as I sank. I thrashed in the icy water, reaching for something—anything—to latch on to, to pull myself out. But there was nothing—only me and an endless dark pool.

  This was it. This would be the end. But what choice did I have? I could suffer torture and death at the hands of a madman, or drown quietly, swiftly, never to be heard from again. My lungs burned as I struggled against the pull of the water, and the heavy gown.

  Just then, my feet hit rock. I scrabbled along it, frantic to reach the surface. When the tapered edge inclined sharply, I pushed off with my feet, shooting to the surface like an arrow. As my head broke the surface, I gasped, sucking in blessed air. I crawled along the bank through shallow water to the shore, water streaming down my shivering body. Sobs racked my lungs until I’d left the water completely.