Master of the Opera

by Jeffe Kennedy

“Who are you?”

  He shifted ever so slightly closer to the circle of light spilling through the doorway, barely enough to show he wore a half mask, a slash of darker material in the shadow of his face.

  “You, my apprentice, shall call me Master.”

  * * *

  She should quit.

  That was the clear and obvious solution. Not that she could tell anyone why.

  Oh yeah, Daddy—see there’s some stalker dude who’s probably a ghost living below the opera house and, get this, he thinks he really owns it! And he gave me a rose and said some really weird shit. Say, can you find me another job?

  He’d send her right back to the mental ward.

  Christy groaned, wanting to bang her head on the bar, and took a deep swallow of her margarita instead. The salt on the rim pricked through the icy, tart concoction, finishing with the dark smoke of Hornitos tequila, seeping into her blood and soothing her as much as the crackling fire and chattering people.

  She’d come straight to Del Charro from the opera house. After she’d stood there, clutching that stupid flashlight for forever after the ghost disappeared. Except he’d looked real. What did ghosts look like? And what was up with the you-shall-call-me-Master bit?

  She should really just quit.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have to. Charlie might fire her for leaving all those lights on. Because, when she’d finally screwed up her courage, she’d grabbed the iPad and run all the way up the spiral staircase, certain he might grab her from behind. Or worse, through the gaps between the stairs. No fucking way was she stopping to turn off the lights and climb in the pitch black.

  She couldn’t face her silent hotel room either, so she’d come to this place, because she’d seen happy people through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the street, open to the balmy evening. So much better than being alone, cliché as it might be.

  “Ready for another one?” The bartender pointed at the empty glass she clutched in both hands.

  “Yeah.” Christy pushed the glass to her. “Something seems to have happened to this one.”

  The bartender grinned and set the glass in the sink. “I’ll make you a fresh one. Where you from?”

  Everyone here asked her that. She wasn’t sure if it was because she so obviously wasn’t local or because they assumed everyone was a tourist.

  “I live here. Well—at the El Rey until I get a place. I’m working at the opera.” Unless I quit.

  “Oh, cool. I’ve never been—can’t afford it—but I hear it’s really neat.” The bartender shook her unnaturally red ponytail. “One day, when I’m rich and famous. And learn to like opera.”

  “What do you do—I mean, do you have a job besides bartending?”

  The redhead laughed. “You figure I’m not planning to get rich and famous tending bar? No, I’m a starving artist. I paint.” She set down a brimming margarita and wiggled her fingers. “Faces, bodies, that kind of thing. This job pays the bills okay.”

  Christy sipped the margarita—twice as strong this time. She’d have to watch it or she’d be taking a cab home. To the hotel. Whatever. “Do you guys serve food? Dinner food?”

  “Sure. Restaurant’s attached, or you can eat here at the bar.”

  “That would be great. To eat here.”

  The bartender handed her the menu. “Special today is the chicken enchiladas. And we were voted best hamburger in Santa Fe.” She wandered off to serve other customers while Christy looked over her choices. Definitely not another burger after the one at lunch. She should have a salad.

  “You decided?”

  “I’ll have the potato chips with the warm blue cheese dressing for now,” Christy told her, abandoning any thought of picking something healthy.

  “Nothing like comfort food.” The bartender tapped in the order.

  “No kidding.”

  “I’m Hally.” The redhead held out her hand, shook Christy’s.

  “Like Halle Berry?”

  Hally wrinkled her nose and leaned on the bar. “I wish! No—short for Halcyon. My folks were all into Burning Man and Rainbow Family, that kind of thing. I had a weird childhood. But I can dig a latrine, build a campfire, and cook stew for a hundred people. Plus I’m all kinds of creative.”

  “Ah.” She’d heard of Burning Man, but not the other.

  Hally waved a hand at her. “I won’t bug you. You waiting for someone?”

  “No. I, um, actually don’t mind if you want to chat. I didn’t want to be alone tonight, pathetic as that sounds.”

  “Not pathetic at all. I can’t imagine moving to a new town by myself.” Hally waved back at someone coming in the door and pulled out a couple of longneck Buds. “You must be all kinds of brave.”

  Remembering the sheer, bowel-draining terror of meeting the theater ghost, how she’d run like a frightened rabbit once he’d left, that black cloak swirling in the dark, Christy shook her head. “Not by half. You wouldn’t believe what I saw—” She cut herself off with a shiver.

  Hally widened her hazel eyes, dramatically lined with thick eyeliner. “What? Don’t stop there.”

  She had to tell someone and she sure as hell wasn’t going to bring up the ghost to Charlie again. She leaned farther over the bar, scooting the margarita ahead of her. “Have you ever heard that the opera house is haunted?”

  “No!” Hally glanced at the group down the bar and hushed her voice. “Well, I mean, everything around here is haunted, according to some people. Spirits everywhere. Old city, battles, negative vortexes. Did you see a ghost?”

  “I don’t know.” Christy chewed on her lip. He hadn’t seemed like a ghost, but what did ghosts seem like?

  “What did you see?”

  “This will sound crazy.”

  “I don’t care.” Hally propped her elbows on the bar and her chin on her hands, cupping her gamine face. “Tell me everything.”

  “Well, first I heard singing.”

  “Not unusual for an opera house.”

  “When no one was there.”

  “Oh . . . oh! Yes, creepy. Go on.”

  “And then tonight, he—”

  “Dammit! Hold that thought.” Hally snagged an order ticket from a waitress and pulled out several bottles of wine. She also slid the potato chips and dip in front of Christy with a cheerful wink. It all seemed so very normal, the jangle of a sports game on the television over the mirror, the rise and fall of conversation. The everydayness of it all grounded her. That man had been no ghost. Nothing creepy or otherworldly there. She’d been rattled. Who knows? Maybe it had been some stage tech, pulling the running gag of scaring the new girl.

  “Okay! Sorry about that.” Hally cracked a beer for herself, noting it on a tab. “So—‘tonight he . . .’”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking, and something tells me I shouldn’t talk about it.”

  Hally nodded, solemn. “You have to honor that. A spirit visits you, that’s a special thing.”

  Christy snorted, then realized Hally was completely serious. “Have you seen a spirit—for real?”

  She sipped her beer, her hazel eyes bright as she nodded. “Yes. Of course, I was on a little peyote at the time, but this woman came to me. All pink and purple—that aura is supposed to mean she’s a loving spirit—and she told me I should paint naked.”

  She couldn’t help it; Christy giggled. Hally tried to look offended but lost it. “Well, it seemed profound at the time.”

  “And did you follow that advice?”

  Hally waggled her eyebrows. “Never in public.”

  5

  It helped to feel she’d made a friend. Hally promised to meet up with Christy on Sunday—sadly, still four days away—to go shopping and show her all the best places to get clothes at “nontourist prices.”

  After that, her hotel room didn’t feel quite so lonely. Though on Saturday she needed to go look for apartments, so she could unpack some of her stuff. Because she was staying. No way she’d run home with her tail between
her legs, crying for Daddy, because the mean guys at the opera played a joke on her.

  She went to bed, firmly resolved.

  But she didn’t sleep well. Maybe it was the margaritas, or the chicken enchiladas Hally had finally talked her into. Christy tossed and turned, wakeful, certain someone was in the room with her. She even clicked on the bedside lamp, not once but twice, to make sure. The second time she took her carved stone with the bear and put it in the bedside table drawer.

  When she fell into a deeper sleep, the dreams came.

  She was running down the spiral staircase, something chasing her. Run up! she begged her dreaming self, but she kept going deeper, her feet skidding off the steps, until she fell. The stairs melted away and she plummeted through the dark, searching for a name to call. If she could only think of who to yell for, she’d be saved.

  The ground rushed up and her voice choked in her throat as she braced for impact....

  The air thickened, stretching out her fall, cradling her. No, those were arms—strongly muscled, holding her close against a masculine chest. A man, eyes icy blue behind a black half mask, gazed down at her, speaking to her in a liquid language she didn’t understand. His cloak swirled around them, and she realized she wore a wedding gown, the bodice tight against her breasts, white lace spilling to the floor.

  He laid her on a bed, something out of a medieval castle, and chained her wrists above her head. Her body pulsed with longing. She writhed, drowning in lace, begging without words, while he reached down with black-gloved hands and raised the hem of her skirt.

  “Yes, Master!” she shouted.

  Christy woke herself with shattering abruptness. She sat straight up in bed, blinking at the dim room, sunshine leaking in around the curtains. Her heart pounded double-time, her skin slick with sweat—and arousal.

  She didn’t even want to think what that dream meant. Except no more chicken enchiladas, delicious as they’d been.

  At least she was up bright and early. She made it up to the opera house before Charlie did. More cars were parked in the backstage lot now, and a crew of people in overalls were carrying stacks of lumber inside. That confirmed it—more techs around, more people thinking it would be funny to give her a bit of a scare. And okay, okay, they got her good. No wonder she’d had nightmares.

  Ha-ha. The best revenge would be to act as if nothing had happened.

  She settled into her office, taking the time to transfer her data from the previous day’s inventory into more permanent files, crosschecking them against entries in the BNoD. Three items didn’t seem to be listed anywhere in the notebook. She’d done a good chunk so far—surprisingly so, considering her distraction—but it was a drop in the bucket. It would go faster if she simply entered what she found, marking locations. Then she could compare it to the paper inventory in the evenings.

  Except for tonight, when she’d be going out with Roman Sanclaro again.

  She might or might not have been doing a happy chair dance when Charlie rapped on the door frame.

  “Busy?” He rubbed the corners of his mouth, like he might be trying to wipe away a smile.

  “Nope. Just about to head down to the dungeons for more inventory.”

  “Well, I’ve got a mission for you.”

  “Okay.” She opened a reminder app on the iPad, ready to take notes. Charlie eyed it dubiously and she gave him her sweetest smile. “Hit me.”

  “The props manager, Carla—you’ll meet her—needs the flute for The Magic Flute and insists she needs it yesterday. Something about needing time to refurbish it. Can you prioritize finding it for her so she’ll get off my back?”

  “I’m on it!” Christy assured him, sounding her perky best. “What exactly does it look like?”

  “It’s about yea long,” Charlie held up his hands a yardstick length apart, “with gold curlicues. Might have silk flowers and ribbons tied on, depending on how it was put away.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks, kid.” He turned to go. “Everything go okay yesterday?”

  “Yep—just fine.”

  “No more . . . incidents?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. “Not a thing. Why do you ask?”

  “Just checking.” He gave her a long look, then left, his jaunty whistle fading down the hall.

  Ha. Showed him. If Charlie was in on the joke, he’d tell the others they hadn’t rattled her.

  Christy paged through the index of the BNoD, looking for flutes, then at broader categories. She found a number of items listed simply as musical instruments, which was totally unhelpful. Nowhere did any of the listings say magic flute, though there were several plain flutes. They were all, naturally, scattered in different storerooms and levels. Resigning herself to searching them all, she made a list and set off on her quest.

  She started with the uppermost levels first. Not out of cowardice, but because if she could find the special magic flute with less effort, she’d save herself time and make Carla—and Charlie—happy all that much sooner.

  The wig room door stood open when she went past, blazing with mirrors and warm light, row after row of bodiless heads staring into space, each sporting an elaborate confection of gleaming hair. A carpenter passed her in the hall, giving her a jaunty wave while he spoke to someone on his cell about glue. She waved back, feeling full of purpose and enjoying the burst of cheerful activity. It reminded her of an advent calendar that had been all closed up and now was opening, door by door, revealing a whirl of color and promise.

  She searched the first storeroom for an hour. Miraculously, she eventually pulled down the box—incorrectly labeled—containing the flutes listed in the inventory. Which turned out to be some lovely champagne flutes.

  Not at all what Carla wanted.

  By noon she’d searched three more locations to no avail. Stomach growling, she headed back upstairs. Maybe she could run down to the Village Market and get a sandwich to go. Once she got her own place, she could pack her lunch.

  “Hey! Hey, you—girlie.” A woman’s angry voice stopped Christy in her tracks. She turned, reflexively hugging the iPad to her breast.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” A tall blond woman strode up to her, looking her up and down. “You’re the new Tara, right?”

  “Christy, yes.”

  “Did you find the flute yet?”

  “Not yet.” She thumbed on the iPad, turning it to show Carla—for surely this was Carla—her list-and-search method. “See, I’ve checked—”

  Carla waved a dismissive hand at it. “I’m really not interested in your excuses. You may be sucking on Daddy’s teat, but the rest of us have jobs to do around here. Jobs that are important to us. I take goddamned pride in my job—do you get me, Chrissy?”

  “I’ll find it this afternoon, I promise.”

  Carla held up her hands, making a face of astonishment. “Why the hell aren’t you looking right now?”

  “I was. I am. It’s just, I’m hungry and—”

  Making a disgusted noise, Carla rolled her eyes. “And what? Off to have lunch with your little, rich girlfriends?”

  “No.” Stung, Christy scrambled for a reply to that dramatically unfair assumption.

  “But you did go out with Roman Sanclaro, didn’t you?” Carla pulled off her glasses, peering at Christy as if trying to see her better. “I can’t imagine why—you don’t look like much. I heard he took you to Geronimo. Pity date to curry favor for the family’s sake?”

  “Carla!” Charlie called down the hallway. “You’re not badgering Christy about that flute, are you?”

  “Well, dammit, Charlie—I told you this morning I need the fucking thing. You might not mind facing opening night with a rusty, decrepit, nasty flute, but I do. And she hasn’t even started looking for it yet.”

  Christy’s mouth opened and closed, making her feel like a mindless goldfish gasping for air. Carla glowered at her, daring Christy to say otherwise.

  “I’m heading downstairs
to search Level 3,” Christy raised her voice for Charlie to hear while she returned Carla’s glare.

  “Good luck with that.” Carla shoved her glasses back on and marched down to Charlie’s office, thick blond braid bouncing.

  What a freaking bitch. She’d show her. Screw lunch. Besides, Roman would likely feed her well tonight, and screw Carla and her opinions. She could date who she liked. Besides, Roman might have offered a pity date for old times’ sake, but a second date meant he really liked her. Didn’t it? Of course it did. Taking her righteous indignation with her, Christy headed back down the spiral staircase, checking her tablet for the next place to look. Surely she’d strike gold this time.

  By six o’clock she was nearly in tears with frustration. She’d found numerous flutes—and a surprising number of various other musical instruments—but none of them were perfect matches. One of the “flutes” had turned out to be a slide whistle.

  “Really?” she asked the long-gone anonymous person who’d penciled in that description. “You’re truly that much of a freaking idiot that you don’t know a slide whistle from a flute?”

  To make herself feel better, she entered the item into the inventory correctly. At least someone else would be able to find the slide whistle someday; her legacy. The orderly inventory she’d begun had morphed into a patchwork quilt of observations. This sort of thing in one room, that stuff in another. But, by God, she knew where to find champagne flutes and a slide whistle!

  A cold draft washed across the back of her neck, the door creaking open behind her. She stilled, frozen, a rabbit in the open. Was it him?

  “Working hard, I see.” Carla’s barbed sarcasm came as a relief. An irony the woman would be unlikely to appreciate. “Must be nice to get a job playing computer games.”

  Christy stood, her knees protesting from being cramped so long while she sorted through the 37th box that day. She knew, because she’d been keeping track. “I’ve located everything listed as a flute or a musical instrument in the inventory.” She nudged the BNoD on the floor with the toe of her now very dusty shoe. “And I haven’t found it. I’ll have to go through every room systematically.”

  Carla frowned. Or rather, her usual frown didn’t lift. “Did you look under Mozart?”