Master of the Opera

by Jeffe Kennedy

  And she? Well, her whole life was pretty much a lie.

  * * *

  She mulled her options all morning. Now that she was over the shock, she thought about what else she’d learned from the files at the museum. The Sanclaros, even after all this time, were the invaders. The Master—half man/half bear?—was tied into the tribe that was destroyed, perhaps. The gods of the land before the conquistadors brought Catholicism with them. Princes and dragons.

  It all seemed absurd. A fairy story of battles and murders. And yet the pieces fit.

  Except for why he seemed trapped under the opera house. Why there?

  Christy took her sack lunch out on the back deck, where the opera house looked to the west over the valley. She sat on the edge, dangling her feet over the drop, eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  Was Roman the prince and the Master the dragon? Or vice versa?

  Roman had lied to her. About the lawyers protecting her, for sure. Maybe more, if he knew about their shared blood.

  She stared out over the breathtaking landscape, remembering when she’d arrived, full of hope, determination, and, okay, quite a bit of naïveté, it turned out. The ingénue enters, stage left.

  Well, this was her story. She hadn’t wanted to be locked up in her father’s castle and she wouldn’t be anyone’s trophy.

  She dusted the bread crumbs off her hands. No more waiting around—for rescue or abduction.

  Time to take matters into her own hands.

  * * *

  She performed her trick of pretending to leave but circling back to park behind the Dumpster. This time, fear rode high on the edge of her excitement. Trust your gut. Repeating her mother’s mantra helped, but she still felt that tension her mother must feel, stepping into a war zone. Something no damsel in distress ever did.

  Amazing how much courage it gave you—the determination not to be a pawn.

  With her keys, she let herself in, descending the spiral stairs, the heavy flashlight Charlie had given her in hand, down to the lowest level and the door to his world.

  He came without song, without warning. Just a presence in the shadows. Saying nothing.

  Silence throbbed between them and, despite her new determination, Christy found she had no idea what she wanted to say. Instead she only wanted to fling herself against him, to feel him wrap his strong arms around her, to hold her tight and close. Why was it that standing here with him in the near total darkness, him a man in a mask and cloak, forever hidden from the light, felt more solid and more real than the last few days had? That she felt no fear of the monster, while terror had filled her at the look in Roman’s eyes?

  “Christine.”

  The whisper of his voice, full of longing, regret, joy, and grief echoed off the walls, eagerly repeated in a susurrus of sound, like a religious chant. It wrapped around her, melodious, hypnotic, a song without words.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come back.”

  “I knew why you didn’t come.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “You wouldn’t be here now if you thought I had. You know the truth in your heart.”

  “Do I?”

  “It’s in you to know it, Christine. You have to listen.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’ve been trying to show you. But I need your trust for that, and I’ve lost it.”

  “Who hurt Carla? Who killed Tara? You see everything in this opera house, you say—who dumped Carla’s body on my desk with a rose and a note in your handwriting?”

  He stilled, the sudden coiling of a predator hearing the heedless footstep of his prey.

  “What note?”

  “Like the others you left me. ‘For my love’ this time.”

  “I’ve never left you notes.”

  “Yes—and two others.”

  “No. I can’t write, Christine. Not in your language, anyway. I never learned.”

  The fine hairs on her arms stood up, her skin goose pimpling. “Then who did?”

  He laughed, dry and unamused. “Someone who escapes my sight.”

  “But you said nothing here escaped your notice.”

  “Clearly I was mistaken.” He paused and she waited, feeling him consider what to say. “I am not what I once was. I am . . . crippled.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “Beyond the scars. I have been weakened and it has taken me so long, perhaps forever, to find my way again. When you arrived, I thought, I hoped that—”

  “That what? Why me? I’m an ordinary girl.”

  “No.” He laughed, then rolled into another, deeper laugh. “You are an extraordinary woman, on the cusp of becoming who you will be. You are my muse, my priestess and avatar.”

  “This is a very strange conversation.”

  “I cannot help that. You are a child of the modern world. These things aren’t part of what you understand.”

  “No. They’re definitely not.”

  “I need to touch you.”

  She took a half step back, the open hallway behind her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ve missed you, Christine. I thought you might never come to me again.” His voice came out hollow, devoid of its usual richness. “My life can be a lonely one. I was only half alive before you arrived. Now I feel every moment we’re apart like the keen edge of a knife in my heart. I crave the sight of you, the scent and taste of your skin.”

  The earnest passion reached inside her and found its mirror, touching her in a way that none of Roman’s avowals ever had. She responded to him from the core of her being, the desire for him spreading through and suffusing her. Her sex pulsed in answer when he spoke of tasting her.

  And yet . . .

  Wasn’t that only physical? The cravings of the carnal flesh the priest on Sunday had spoken of with such derision. Not to be trusted. To be rejected as the work of the devil.

  She felt so alone. Like him. Crippled. As if a piece that should make her whole had been stripped away early in life.

  “Would you . . . hold me?” she tendered. “Only that?”

  “Yes.” Like a vow of love, the affirmation breathed out of him. In the shadows, he opened his arms.

  She slipped inside his embrace, relaxing as his arms folded around her, holding her close, like something to be cherished. As if she was as precious to him as he claimed. She wanted to stay right there forever. She wanted him to sweep her up and carry her off, to take her away from the jangling world and all the petty annoyances and looming horrors.

  But that would be fleeing to the tower. Just another one, where she’d be kept safe. A pretty trophy for the mantel.

  So she pulled away from his reassuring heat, the solid comfort of his body. She missed him immediately, as if she’d left a layer of skin behind, leaving her exposed to the cold world.

  He seemed to feel it, too, his arms still outstretched, embracing the space she’d left behind. “Christine . . .” he said on a long, musical breath. “I love you.”

  The confession emptied him, and his arms dropped. The deep, primal part of her wanted to fling herself at him again. To make him wild promises. She held herself back with the bare fingernails of reason.

  “Why me?”

  “It’s always been you. Only you can make me whole again.”

  His words uncannily echoed her thoughts.

  “I don’t understand.” Her frustration welled up. “Why are you trapped in the opera house? What can I possibly do to help you?”

  “It’s not something I can explain in words. You must experience it to understand.”

  “What kind of experience?” She had to ask the question, but she knew. Her sex flared to life, responding instantly to the thought of being with him again.

  “Like we did before, yes.”

  “I can’t trust you that way again.” Besides, she wanted it too much. It couldn’t be right, wanting that, his dark world and cruel-edged sexuality. Was it the Sanclaro blood that made her want this? Her
fingers drifted to the opal ring in her coin pocket.

  “What do you have in your pocket?”

  She started, guiltily. “Are you a cat, to see in the dark?”

  “The night is my domain. I may be weakened in many ways, but the dark serves me. I can see you clearly, yes, and the conflict on your face when you touch what’s in your pocket. What is it?”

  “A ring.”

  “Show me.”

  Honesty wasn’t the easiest path to take, but she’d resolved to it. She dragged out the ring, the prongs holding the circle of diamonds catching on the seam. Laying it in the center of her palm, she held it out for him to see.

  His breath hissed out, followed by a grunt of pain, as if she’d plunged a sword into his heart.

  “Angelia’s ring.”

  “You know it?”

  “Why do you carry it if you don’t know?”

  “It . . . was a gift.”

  “Ah. I should have known. You will learn the ways of your blood and you will serve those who keep me trapped for their gain.”

  “I won’t do that. I don’t even know what you mean.”

  “Christine.” He sounded weary now, the vitality bleeding away, all music gone from the dry husk of his voice. “You cannot halfway vow. It makes no difference that you carry the ring in your pocket instead of on your hand—you are fooling only yourself. You cannot serve two masters. It will tear you apart.”

  “I don’t serve any master,” she shot back, stung.

  “We all serve someone or something. The trick is in knowing who or what it is. Some spend their whole lives discovering that.”

  “What do you serve?”

  “When you learn my true nature, you will know the answer.”

  “But I can’t be with you that way.”

  “Not while you’re engaged to another man, no. I may not have much, but I have my integrity.” A whisper of a footstep as he turned away.

  “That’s it? This is good-bye? I’m doing the best I can here.”

  “No, your best lies in your true nature and you don’t know it yet. Until you do, you’re as crippled as I am.”

  “How am I supposed to find that out, though—it’s not like I can Google it.” The joke, a desperate attempt to alleviate the tension, fell flat.

  “Go in peace, Christine. Know that I love you and I wait for you, should you be free to love me in return.”

  “Wait!” She could no longer see or hear him. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

  Only silence answered her plea.

  5

  The week dragged on, each day feeling like a river of mud to slog through. Carla came out of the coma but remembered nothing of what had occurred, or so said the scuttlebutt around the theater. Rehearsals continued and Charlie came back to work for short periods. He didn’t speak to Christy. She tried not to mind.

  She’d been relocated to Tara’s office, since hers was now sealed and the police finally agreed that nothing more could be gleaned about the former intern. Though it was a bigger, more pleasant space, she felt eerily as if she’d shuffled into Tara’s shoes in a final way. As if she’d come some sort of circle and the story was beginning again.

  A foolish idea, but her head was in a strange place.

  She still hadn’t talked to her father, deliberately ducking his calls and leaving return messages that went directly to his voice mail. She couldn’t bear to hear what he might have to say.

  She went out to dinner with Roman in the evenings, wearing the ring and the clothes he bought her, pretending to be the cheerful companion he liked best, while she felt around the edges of what he knew. She wanted to know what his stake was in marrying her, why Sanchez suspected him so. It felt like more theater. Wear the costume, be the character. Don’t make him angry. Don’t tip your hand. All the while she heard the Master’s mocking voice, so accurately noting that she didn’t know who she was.

  She was a hypocrite—which should be her father’s role. Not hers.

  When he took her home after their dates, Roman kissed her at the door and she faked enjoying it, sliding away as fast as she could without insulting him. He despised her apartment—calling it dingy and beneath her—and refused to step inside. She knew he said it mainly to convince her to move to the Sanclaro compound. But she liked her cozy place, so she was just as happy not to have him calling attention to its faults. It also meant she didn’t have to hide Star, and it steadied her to come home and see the bedraggled stuffed cat waiting on her pillow.

  Most importantly, since she managed to find excuses not to go to his house, it kept things from progressing between them sexually. She’d looked it up, and first cousins could marry in New Mexico—and in a surprising number of other states—and she and Roman were only half cousins, or however that worked. Still, she couldn’t bear for him to touch her. Her skin crawled and her thoughts went to the Master and how he’d turned away, certain of her eventual betrayal.

  By Friday night she knew nothing more. Roman dodged all her probing conversational sallies with a smoothness that made her question everything. Maybe he truly did care for her and want to marry her. He acted like he did. And, all week long, there had been no sign of the cold-eyed and demanding monster she believed could have killed Tara.

  Surely if Sanchez suspected Roman, he’d have been questioned. But nothing had happened. She felt as if she’d been holding her breath all week and was finally running out of oxygen.

  Maybe she had imagined all of it.

  So, unable to think of a reason not to, she let Roman take her back to his house—just for a nightcap, he said.

  She stood in the bay window again, overlooking the jeweled valley, while Roman poured drinks for them. They’d met with some of his friends—all handsome and full of business talk—along with their girlfriends, lovely and polished. The girls didn’t talk about their professions and nobody asked what she did. Instead they kept to social topics and local politics. They were friendly and articulate, but not particularly interesting. Christy wondered what they might have to say, away from the guys.

  But Roman was pleased with her for fitting in, for the way the guys had complimented him on his “catch.” She liked it when he was happy with her—something that bothered her on a deep, unspoken level. It sometimes reminded her of her growing-up dance, of keeping Carlton Davis in a place where he approved of her. Still, it made her feel a little more sane, more like the person she’d always been.

  She tried to ignore the taunting idea that she was somehow only as half alive as the Master, waiting to be redeemed. She missed him profoundly. Thought about him constantly, with a physical ache.

  Roman handed her a glass of champagne, his brown eyes warm and admiring, and she drank that in, letting it block the disappointed echoes of the Master’s golden voice in her head. “To my beautiful fiancée,” he said, clinking his glass against hers, and she started a little, having forgotten who she was with. Roman kissed her, and she tried to like it as she once had . . . but ended up turning her face away. A cold anger stilled his face. Just as it had the previous Sunday. “Sometimes I feel as if I don’t know who you are anymore, Christy.”

  Part of her froze. A rabbit facing down the wolf. She didn’t want to meet Tara’s fate. Keep it light and get out, she told herself.

  Run, whispered her internal voice.

  She stepped away. “How could you? We’ve only known each other for a few weeks.”

  He shook his head, a dog shedding water. “That shouldn’t matter. My parents barely knew each other. You and I have belonged together since we were children.”

  “Why do you think that?” She warned herself to tread lightly, but this could be her chance. “Nobody has arranged marriages anymore. Those were just jokes. No one expected us to end up together for real.”

  “My father did.” Roman’s reply came with a dark anger and he tossed back his wine. Went to pour more.

  “We don’t have to do what our fathers want.”

  “Easy for you
to say. I live in my father’s pocket.”

  “Then don’t! We’re adults. Free to choose.”

  “I choose you,” he insisted.

  “Why? It makes no sense.”

  “Are you saying you’ve changed your mind?” He shifted into the dangerous self again, brown eyes congealing to an alien darkness. Drawing closer, he backed her against the white leather couch while her heart hammered. He wrapped a lean hand around her throat. “You know I can’t allow that.”

  “I—” she stammered, out of breath. “No. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Why should I hurt you? As long as you behave, we’ll be fine. Have you forgotten already?”

  “No. I mean, I’m wearing the ring.”

  “But what is in your heart, Christy?” He leaned closer, flexing his hand. “God sees what’s in your heart. Maybe you need to talk to the priest.”

  “I’m not Catholic.”

  “You’ll need to be, before the wedding. That would be a good show of what’s truly in your heart, my sweet girl. Start your catechism classes so you can convert and have your confirmation. That will help you find your true self and put these doubts to rest.”

  “You think I need to find out who I am?” The words cut through the haze in her mind, the fog of self-pity and sorrow that had clouded her thoughts since the Master had walked away. Another message.

  You won’t listen.

  “If you’re going to be my wife, you need to cleave unto me. Do you understand?”

  “You’re right, Roman.” She employed the humble tone she used with her father, and Roman straightened, releasing her throat and patting her cheek. Relieved at her escape, she scrambled for the right thing to say, to appease the beast who prowled in his cold gaze. “I’ll take the weekend to meditate and purify my thoughts.”

  “I’m so proud of you.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I think it’s the right thing to do. I’ll have Gloria prepare the guest room.”

  “I think I should go home. I don’t feel right staying here. How would it look?”

  He didn’t like that. “You stayed here before. It would be fine.”

  “But that was before we were engaged—and before we agreed to purify ourselves for the wedding. Shouldn’t we be beyond reproach, especially in the eyes of God?”