by A. G. Howard
Upon hearing the close to Erik’s story, Thorn’s heart ached with sadness. “Father, I can’t. I can’t take this from you.”
He held out the instrument, but Erik shook his head.
“Remember what I taught you about pity, child. That violin was crafted by an artisan witch. It holds its own special magic. A magic I want to share with you, my son. If you wish to honor me, you will play it often, and with your whole heart.”
Thorn’s entire body lit up, not with pulsing energy this time, but with the splendor of a father’s love, for Erik had called him his son. From that day on, Thorn did just as his father asked. He honored him by playing the violin every chance he had. Ironically, the first time he played it, he experienced his first dream-vision with his own flamme jumelle, Rune—and saved her from drowning. Thereafter he decided that must be the magic the instrument held: the ability to bring two souls together when they needed each other the most.
Diable mewled quietly, shaking Thorn out of his thoughts. Audrey and Jackson were climbing the stairs, headed back to the atrium. Thorn waited until they were out of sight, then opened the mirrored doorway, stepping across the marble floor. He and Diable took the route beneath the stairs, avoiding strands of sunlight and staying close to the walls. The cat was here to offer distraction, in case Thorn needed to make a quick escape into one of the many secret passages. It would be safer were there trapdoors in each of the dorm rooms so he wouldn’t have to risk a trek in the open. But since the school’s investors had overseen the domestic renovations for safety standards—both the living quarters and bathrooms—Father Erik left anything suspicious out of the designs. No two-way mirrored walls, no hidden entrances. But he did arrange for vents in each dorm room, which allowed for eavesdropping. A fact they took advantage of last night.
Thorn had turned away when they’d stepped into the hidden passage to spy on Rune through the slats in the wall above her bed. He couldn’t cite nobility for the act. It wasn’t as if he’d never infiltrated a lady’s room in the past—claimed his drowsing prey.
The point was he and his father didn’t follow that practice anymore. Most of their kind didn’t. Both males and females had found other means to appease their appetites. Which meant Rune wasn’t their prey. How could she be, since she was one of them herself ?
Which was why Erik needed so much more from her than to feed. As did Thorn, although he could never admit what he needed.
Arriving on the girls’ side, Thorn slipped the keys from his pocket and paused at Rune’s closed door. Diable looked up at him with lime-green eyes and slitted pupils, glaring with annoyance at the detour.
“Just give me one second,” Thorn whispered, amused by the cat’s assuming air. “You go on . . . get the other girl’s door open for me.”
With a haughty sneeze, Diable sauntered ahead, rubbing along the line of doors as he went. Thorn had seen the cat unlock countless rooms in the opera house while hanging from the knob with one foreleg like a monkey and using the other paw—claws extended—to dig into the keyhole and release the mechanism. The trick would keep him occupied for the next few minutes.
Thorn turned to Rune’s room, his gloved palm cradling the door’s handle. The imprint of her energy lingered there, electrifying him through the leather. She had seen him in the mirror twice now. By her reaction, there was no question . . . yesterday when she first arrived, and this morning as she met her peers for breakfast. He suspected she could hear him, too.
He’d haunted this school since it first opened; haunted it for ten years before that, when it was abandoned and nothing but the occasional transient or tourist dared to venture inside. All that time he’d slipped silently through the mirror passages, no one detecting him. Yet she was tuned into him without even trying. A sense of fulfillment warmed him on that thought. Twin flames could find one another from across the universe. He and Rune had already proven that, sharing duets and escaping into their own world ever since they were children. So it was no surprise she could sense him on the other side of a thin pane of glass.
He leaned the bared side of his face against the door’s cool wooden surface. What good did it do to celebrate their singularity? To take pleasure in the knowledge that he’d found her at last? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t act on it—or break out of this solitude.
Unlike the two students standing here moments earlier, fighting their feelings while having all the time in the world to find their way, he and Rune would never have that luxury. Clenching his jaw, Thorn wrestled the urge to open her door, just to step inside for a moment. But he had to stay away so he could follow through with all he’d promised to do.
He cursed Erik for being blind to what was already in front of him . . . for always regressing to the past. Thorn was alive and devoted, yet his father clung to sad and empty hopes that were only half-living, subsisting on borrowed time and unsung songs.
Five doors down, Diable had managed to unlock and open Katerina’s room. The tip of his wiry gray tail disappeared inside. Thorn followed, resolved to complete today’s mission. It was time the diva earned her place here. Time she contributed to the plan.
My first three days at RoseBlood fly by.
I don’t have time to chase a phantom’s ghost, imagined or otherwise. Daylight hours are devoted to classes and attending rehearsals, afternoons to my chosen daily task, and my evenings to homework. Although I haven’t had a chance to get out to the garden once yet, due to afternoon storms. The downside to this is I won’t be eligible for the outing on Saturday. That was the penalty of writing in my own job; I chose something dependent on the weather but am still held to the same standards of completing them daily, as is everyone else.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t going stir-crazy. Behind every wall and every mirror and every vent, I hear sounds: breathing, rustling, footsteps, and murmurs. I try to tell myself it’s just mice making their nests behind the barriers, but since when do rodents whisper?
Still, there is one bright side to the dark and eerie setting: Sunny and my new group of friends. They save my spot at our cafeteria table in the atrium’s far corner at every meal except for dinners—which I eat with Mom and Aunt Charlotte—and I’m lucky enough to have at least one of them in each class, sometimes three. Each day, they’re more funny, open, and friendly than the day before, even when I screw up and burst into song.
I have, however, learned how to outsmart the arias piped in via the TV screens during meals. I’ve found, if I concentrate hard enough on my friends’ comical banter, I’m able to suppress the itch until I get back to my room, where I can sing within the safety of my walls.
Any windows of spare time during the afternoon are spent helping Madame Fabre take measurements for costumes and cinching in the seams of my borrowed uniforms, since my new ones still haven’t turned up. Wednesday, when we finally get some quiet moments to sew without students coming in for measurements, she tells me she and her husband are taphophiles—aficionados of all things graveyard. Their favorite pastime is reading epitaphs, gravestone rubbing, taking pictures of tombs, and learning the history of people’s deaths. I haven’t been a fan of cemeteries ever since my dad’s funeral. Seeing his full name, Leopold Saint Germain, engraved upon a stone left an indelible and morbid impression. But since Madame Fabre and her husband have been here for almost two years with their own personal boneyard to explore, I feign interest in the hobby, hoping maybe the guy I’ve been seeing might have ties to an unmarked grave. The phantom didn’t have loved ones, so it makes sense; if he had a headstone at all it might be isolated and devoid of sentiments.
My teacher assures me that the cemetery was reserved for the royal family who owned the opera house, and the only unmarked grave belonged to a baby. However tragic that is, it doesn’t explain sightings of a guy who wears outdated fashions and hides half his face.
Later that night, while I’m on the chaise lounge watching Mom sleep with the bed curtains open, I wonder if she’s heard any rustling
inside the vent this week. I try to stifle my phantom superstitions by looking at things from her cynical perspective. Maybe it was the elderly caretaker in the garden that first day, after all. I haven’t met him yet, so I don’t know what he looks like. Maybe the mist, along with my nerves, made me imagine him as someone younger. And maybe that supposed sighting fueled my imagination to feverish heights, until I thought I was seeing him in the mirrors. It’s possible this whole time I’d been catching people’s reflections behind me and blew it out of proportion.
Of course my superstitions conjured him. I want with all my heart for my fantasy maestro to be real—even if by some impossible twist he’s the phantom—because if anyone could help me defeat my song sickness, it’s him. On that thought, I close my eyes and find my dreams. He’s already there with the violin, waiting to take away my pain.
8
OMENS
“She failed to see a shadow which followed her like her own shadow, which stopped when she stopped, which started again when she did and which made no more noise than a well-conducted shadow should.”
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
On Thursday morning, it finally looks like I might have a chance to get out in the garden later in the day. But the rain has already started again as Quan and I walk from breakfast to our shared first-period class.
Professor Tomlin’s science room is everything you’d expect from an ecologically minded rock-star Einsteinian who dabbles in theatrics. There’s a genuine skeleton in one corner dressed in a Shakespeare costume, spindly legs spray-painted blue in lieu of tights to match its velvet tunic and hat. A sign hangs under its fake beard that says: RESPECT THE BARD. Test tubes line several shelves, each filled with water and seeds, some already blossoming into plants. A picture of a wrecked motorcycle in a standup frame occupies one corner of the professor’s desk, seated beside a deeply dented helmet. Tomlin hit a brick wall a few years back at high speed and was thrown off his bike, yet he survived. Rumor has it he uses that story to demonstrate Newton’s law of inertia. Macabre, but memorable.
The students’ table surfaces are slick whiteboard, and each of us has our own set of dry-erase markers to work out formulas and theories, then erase them once we’ve jotted down our answers, to prevent the need for scrap paper.
Tomlin always schedules labs on Thursday, and this morning’s is on how “external force can alter the energy of a given system.” He’s separated everyone into groups of four and sent us to our tables where a steel-hooked weight sits beside a two-foot plank of wood balanced atop some books in the center. The idea is to make a ramp and alter the number of books beneath for different heights. Then we’ll drag the hooked weight up and down to measure force.
It has to be some kind of sick joke that he paired Quan and me with Kat and Roxie. There’s no love lost between Quan and the diva duo, considering how they treated both Sunny and Audrey last year. And they certainly haven’t welcomed me with open arms. A genius professor can’t be that clueless, can he?
Things are even worse ever since first-tier auditions for Renata’s role yesterday afternoon. Of course I couldn’t stop myself from leaping up and singing her aria, and despite that I fell back into my chair fatigued the instant I delivered the last note, my rendition was pristine enough it won me one of the three spots for final Renata tryouts, alongside Audrey and Kat, should I so choose. I’m already planning to develop infectious laryngitis that week and be quarantined to my room. But Kat and Roxie don’t know that tidbit.
“In your lab journals, copy down and record your data for these questions,” Tomlin says with his back turned, scribbling on the chalkboard. A few of the students have their gazes trained to his tight buns. I’ll admit he’s the hottest teacher at the school, even in a nerdy, two-piece wool suit. “And be sure to include the incline variations of your ramp from each run-through.”
As we wait to transfer Tomlin’s questions to our journals, Quan and I play tic-tac-toe on our half of the dry-erase table. It’s the only way I can keep myself from staring at the mirrored wall on the north side of the room.
The scent of chalk dust and chemicals irritates my nose, though it’s pleasant compared to Kat’s overpowering perfume and the stench of dry-erase markers saturating the air. Roxie, the resident artist, draws sketches of me on their half of the white surface. She puts an impressive likeness on a cross made of musical scores, my hands and feet nailed in place by quarter notes and whole notes, my eyes blocked out with treble clefs. It’s an obvious reference to the idiot I’ve made of myself during rehearsals and auditions over the past three days, and my cheeks grow hot when both girls start snickering.
Quan fakes a body-jolting sneeze. Eraser in hand, he swipes it through Roxie’s masterpiece as he drags his arm back across the table. I mime thank-you and he tips an imaginary hat, snubbing Roxie’s dagger glare.
By the time Tomlin reaches us to drop off our remaining lab materials, we’ve wiped our entire table clean.
“Each group needs to check the screw top on their spring scale,” our teacher stresses. “Make sure it’s calibrated to line up with the capital N. It takes a specific amount of force to stretch that spring. You want to be sure you’re measuring the stretch accurately when recording your newtons.”
Just as he hands off the final scale, there’s a knock at the door. He opens up enough to step out but ducks his head back in. “Everyone get started. Mister Jippetto’s here to discuss theater props. I’ll be out in the hall if anyone has questions.” Then the door shuts behind him.
The class erupts in whispers and the sounds of books being shuffled, wooden planks being adjusted, and journal pages being flipped.
“Well, shoot.” Kat pouts her lips. “Our scale is broken.” She holds up the tool that I could’ve sworn wasn’t missing the top piece earlier when Tomlin placed it next to her. “This would be a good opportunity for Rune to see the walk-in closet where the Prof keeps all the extra supplies, don’t you think, Roxie?”
The girls exchange twin smirks, devious enough to light up a warning inside me like a fiery red flare.
Roxie offers to show me the way, but Quan stands up instead. “I’ll take her,” he says.
We walk side by side toward the back of the room where a door waits. I don’t have to try to ignore our classmates watching us. My mind is preoccupied with the movement I’m catching in the mirrors via my peripheral vision, as if something or someone’s following alongside me. A reflection . . . a shift in the atmosphere . . . an omen, maybe.
I won’t let myself go there, remembering my logic from the night before. It was the caretaker that I saw the day I arrived. The one who’s standing in the hall right now talking to Tomlin. As soon as I meet him in person, it will be confirmed.
We arrive at the closet and Quan tugs the door open. The light switch doesn’t work, so neither of us can see inside. He shrugs. “Let me get a flashlight.”
I nod and opt to wait at the threshold while he heads to Tomlin’s desk. My eyes adjust to the shelves along the left wall. There’s a box labeled: TUBULAR SPRING SCALES. I step inside to dig through it.
A shiver races through me when something rakes the top of my head. Lifting my hand, I feel the outline of a shoe tugging my hair. I look up in the same instant Quan arrives and flips on the flashlight, revealing a body swaying above me on a noose tied to the light fixture.
Icy terror freezes me in place. I scream, my vocal cords strained to near breaking and my bones shaking as if they’ll shatter.
Quan drags me out and props me against the wall. The world seems to move in slow motion. “Rune, you okay? It was a dummy. Someone played a sick joke.” His eyes narrow to angry slits as he looks over his shoulder to our table, where Kat and Roxie are doubled over, snorting with laughter.
My heart pounds in my chest, trying to speed things up again. Trying to hammer me back together.
Puzzled classmates join with the laughter—a timid chain reaction—first confusion, then relief that th
ey weren’t on the receiving end of the prank. Tomlin rushes in with the caretaker at his side. The man is tiny, comparable to Audrey’s petite height, but portly. Still trying to catch my breath, I concentrate on him. His white beard and flannel shirt paired with a handkerchief cinched around his neck are a cross between a pint-size lumberjack and Santa Claus. He lifts a silver charm hanging under his handkerchief and blows it. The class silences as the sound of birdsong fills the room.
I’d been told he was a mute and communicated via written notes and gestures, but I knew nothing about a whistle. After pointing an accusatory finger at Kat and Roxie, the caretaker shuffles over to the closet where Quan helps him drag down what I can now see is a mannequin. Before becoming the resident caretaker, Jippetto used to make them for shops in Paris, and he still has a collection. Those woodworking skills are the reason he’s the go-to for sets and props at the academy.
I slide down the wall and curl my arms around my knees, barring the shell shock from all sides. Not only did Kat manage to shake my foundations, but there’s no way Mister Jippetto could possibly be the guy I saw half hiding in the garden on my arrival.
I can’t do this anymore. Someone very real is shadowing my every move, and I need to know who.
I shift my gaze to the mirrors and for an instant I see it, clear as day: a gloved hand pressed to the opposite side of the glass, as if to tell me I’m right, or maybe to offer support. Then it’s gone.
Once I’m on my feet again, Tomlin gets the class back on schedule without skipping a beat and everyone manages to finish their labs. Two minutes before the dismissal bell rings, the professor tells our table to stay put. After everyone’s left, he closes the door and gives the four of us a speech about how we’re all in the opera together, which means being supportive and being a team. That the reason he paired us for the lab in the first place was in hopes we might learn to work together.