RoseBlood

by Howard, A. G.

  I don’t answer. Etalon is my secret. One I’m not willing to expose. I have to keep him safe, just as he’s doing for me.

  Aunt Charlotte makes a frustrated grunt before turning her back. She shoves aside e-cigs and disposable contacts to clear a space at the bottom of her armoire. There, she exposes a hidden compartment from which she drags a shoe box.

  “I apologize for allowing Françoise such liberties the past few weeks.” Taking a seat next to me, she places the box between us. “When you began to show signs the music no longer controlled you, I had to let her test you to be sure. She took too much glee, tormenting you. But as you’re about to see, it was all in hopes of helping.”

  I frown. “Right. Just like Grandma’s homicidal boat ride and the Valentine’s fire parade?”

  Aunt Charlotte’s mouth tightens. “We each have different ideas of how to help, clairement.”

  “Clearly,” I repeat, scoffing. “I need to see her. I want answers for what she did . . . and I want to know about Dad’s Strad.”

  Aunt Charlotte opens the box between us, revealing old newspaper clippings, a folded stack of aging letters with the name “Christine” scrawled underneath a string holding them together, a playbill spotlighting the famous Swedish soprano, and a black journal with the words Livre Ancestrale de Sang embossed across the front in shimmery red text.

  Ancestral Book of Blood. In spite of the morbid curiosity spurred by that title, I reach for the letters first, drawn by Etalon’s brief insight into the affair between the prima donna and her opera ghost. My aunt stops my hand.

  “Patience, Rune. An opera is best viewed in the sequence the composer intended. And know this: your grand-mère has been paying for what she did while locked in prison. Now she will die there, alone. She is too weak to answer questions. So I will answer for her.”

  Before I can respond, my aunt flips through the journal pages then brings it closer, brushing Diable’s tail with her wrist. He leaps down and settles on the other side of my feet to lick himself clean.

  Aunt Charlotte moves her hand so I can see the diagram spanning both sides . . . a family tree, with names partitioned off on countless branches. Her fingertip trails to the line at the top, a script I can barely read for the faded ink.

  “Comte Saint-Germain,” she reads the name aloud. “You were researching him yesterday at the library?”

  I let my silence answer.

  “I’m not sure how much information there is online . . .”

  “The last thing I read was that he died, but there were rumors of sightings years after.”

  Her finger taps the page. “It was his death that was the rumor. He faked dying, then took his leave of society to travel with a caravan of gypsies with whom he shared all things alchemy, herbs, magic, and holistic. He grew powerful feeding off their superstitions and lively music. He even bargained an instrument of his own from an artisan witch—a Stradivarius violin made of enchanted black heartwood. Saint-Germain became the Romani Roi of the group—their gypsy king. He took a wife, and had children. Some fifty-three years later, a masked boy stumbled upon that very gypsy camp after escaping his abusive mother. Saint pitied him, and took him in. He recognized that he was one of his kind. A young incubus, although disfigured and emaciated.”

  The photograph Etalon showed me of the childhood Phantom surfaces in my mind’s eye. “So, Saint-Germain gave him the violin?”

  Aunt Charlotte shuts the Book of Blood. “Not in the beginning. Our predecessor was growing old by then. He no longer wished to accrue any extra life. There is such a thing as outliving your soul. And he was wise enough to know he had. He wanted Erik—the mysterious incubus child—to take his place as Romani Roi, for he could see the genius in him, even at such a young age. Not only because he could play any instrument put before him, not only because he could sing and enrapture even the most cynical audience. But because he had the ability to absorb knowledge and talent at an unprecedented rate. Saint schooled him as his apprentice. Taught him all his tricks and wisdom. Told him all his secrets. Things he hadn’t told his own children, like where he’d hidden his jewels—here, in the bowels of the Liminaire, in a secret labyrinth of tunnels. When Saint died a few months later, he bequeathed his grown children and young grandchildren his beloved Stradivarius violin. But that wasn’t enough for them. They turned on Erik, locked him in a cage, stripped him of his clothes and dignity, and forced him to perform like an animal with that very instrument, because he refused to confess where Saint-Germain’s treasure was hidden. Erik at last escaped, and took Saint’s violin with him. He knew nothing of its rumored magic, but it was all that was left of the only father he’d ever known, and he deemed our ancestors unworthy of it.”

  My stomach turns. I never thought I’d empathize with a stranger over my family. But after the way they treated him, they were unworthy. “We got the violin back. When?”

  Aunt Charlotte lays the newspaper clippings in my lap. “You know of Leroux, the author of the fictionalized account.”

  I tilt my head.

  “As it happened, in 1909, while researching a piece on the Palais Garnier, Leroux stumbled upon Christine’s letters wrapped up with a delicate necklace threaded through a ruby wedding ring. They were tucked beneath architectural blueprints in a box marked O.G. and hidden inside one of the opera house’s crawlspaces. The letters were actually loose-leaf journal entries, dated forty-five years prior, and were Christine’s account of her time with the opera ghost. Leroux tracked down the only soprano by the name ‘Christine’ who would’ve been performing around that date under the stage name: Christina Nilsson. She was sixty-six by then, an old widowed woman who became distraught when confronted with the letters and ring. She claimed they weren’t hers . . . how could they be, she insisted, when she’d never performed at the Palais Garnier? Perhaps it was partly for show, since her maid was in the room, but she demanded Leroux take the letters and the ring out of her sight and never return. Since there was no last name, Leroux published the letters, embellishing versions of the story, in bits and pieces as a serialization, keeping the only two names that were in the original papers: Erik and Christine. The rest of the cast he made up. He hoped by doing this publicly, he might draw out their true author.”

  I sort through the newspaper clippings from Le Gaulois, my gaze passing over the text and eerie illustrations of a ghastly phantom creeping through the underground labyrinth of the opera house. The scent of ink stings my nose and black smudges my fingers.

  “No one ever came forward for them,” my aunt continues. “However, the letters and necklace were stolen out of his office shortly after the final serialization in 1910. It didn’t matter to Leroux. He went on to write the tale as a book, building upon the scant details gleaned from his articles.”

  “So . . . the Phantom stole the letters,” I mumble, wiping my hands on my jeans.

  “Actually, our own Octavius Germain did that. He was one of Saint’s ungrateful grandchildren, close to Erik’s age. He’d lived in the gypsy camp when Erik escaped. Octavius read the paper, saw the similarities between the story’s villain and the masked boy who had absconded with our family’s violin and fortune over sixty years earlier. Having something of Erik’s to bargain with at last, he posted an announcement in another newspaper.”

  She slips out an article and holds it up.

  O.G. to O.G.

  Found: 1 necklace attached to ruby ring. 1 stack of lovelorn letters. Willing to trade for 1 family fortune.

  Contact me via post.

  The address is blurred, as if the clipping suffered water damage.

  “Every week, for ten years, Octavius posted an identical ad. Then at last, in 1921, shortly after Christina Nilsson’s obituary ran”—Aunt Charlotte gathers up the clippings and drops them in the shoe box—“he received a response from ‘Opera Ghost.’ Octavius and Erik arranged to meet here in this very opera house for the trade. By that time, the Liminaire had fallen into disrepair, and Erik had charmed the
deed away from the royal family it once belonged to. Octavius came armed, with no intention of making a trade until the money was in his hands. But he underestimated the Phantom’s cunning. Using ventriloquism, Erik lured Octavius to a room on the fifth floor. Seeing the violin within, Octavius stepped inside. The door slammed shut, imprisoning him. Within minutes, Erik triggered fire traps across the top three flights. He provided an escape route for Octavius that could be accessed only by inserting the ring into a groove carved in the door . . . a keyhole that would fit only one unique ruby stone. Once inserted, the door opened, but the ring was stuck, and could not be relinquished. Octavius stumbled through the passage to escape with his life, none the richer. However, he carried the violin and Christine’s letters. Erik cared nothing for the letters. No doubt to read them would have broken his heart. But the violin . . . he’d not only played it to give birth to a musical virtuoso, but he played it for her on her deathbed, coaxing one last duet between them before she closed her eyes forever. Still, he let it go. In his mind, he was honoring Saint-Germain by returning what the man had intended his family to have. All debts were paid, and Erik kept the fortune for himself free of guilt.” She sighs. “I almost feel sorry for him. Knowing that he didn’t recognize at the time the precious cargo contained within that instrument.”

  My mind twists in knots, struggling to reconcile that shattered, lovesick man with the dangerous and compelling Phantom I saw at the rave club. “Precious cargo in the violin? What does that mean?”

  “Well, that has to do with Christine.” Aunt Charlotte offers me the stack of Christine’s letters. My fingers practically itch to open them. “Before you read them, there’s something you need to understand about yourself. All of us, of otherworldly leanings, are incarnations.”

  Her claim is reminiscent of Etalon’s: We’re twin flames. Incarnations of the same soul, parted while reentering the world . . . predestined to find each other again . . . The ribbon imprinted around my wrist and forearm tingles under my sweater.

  “But the vampiric gene in the Germain bloodline is so far removed”—Aunt Charlotte’s voice pulls me back—“it’s recessive for many of us. Françoise, for instance. For me, it was dominant. For your father and grand-mère, recessive. I have an uncle and a great aunt who are like me. There’s no rhyme or reason, really. But then, for a rare few like you, you’re incarnated from another vampire, of another era, of another bloodline. In those instances, the gene is neither recessive nor dominant. It is, rather, dormant. Waiting for something miraculous to bring it to surface. In your case, it was the musical essence of your preincarnate self, held at bay for years inside a very special violin rumored to have the power to capture a person’s most quintessential life-spark within, if played at the moment of their death.”

  My heart pounds as the profoundness of what she’s saying hits me. My palm finds my throat. “I—I have Christine’s voice.”

  “Yes. And your father, bénissez-le, was the bridge. The voice was waiting to be reunited with Christine, the moment she was reborn as another person. You. All it took was your father choosing to play the right kind of music . . . opera. That was the key. Once those familiar notes wailed forth from the violin’s strings, her voice found its way back. But being that bridge drained him of his life-force. Had he been like you or me, it wouldn’t have harmed him. He could’ve recharged by feeding off any living thing. If only I’d known . . .” Her graceful figure curls to a slouch, like a candle melting. “So often I’ve mourned that. Not knowing in time to stop it. When I realized, it was too late, and I—”

  “You couldn’t face Mom or me.” I wipe tears from my cheeks. “That’s why you didn’t come when he got sick, or for his funeral.”

  “Forgive me, Rune.” She pats my hand, blotting moisture from her eyes with her robe’s sleeve.

  I nod, sniffling. Diable leaps up between us, scowling at her, as if blaming her for my change in mood. I place a hand on his back and he lies down, but doesn’t stop glaring. “That’s why Grandma hated me . . .”

  “No. You were a vessel. Maman knew that. But she also knew that if Erik ever learned of what he’d forfeited by giving up his violin, his wrath would come down on our family. So she tried to scare the voice out. Submerging you until your screams turned to bubbles that burst with Christine’s song . . . starting a fire that would singe Christine’s harmonious notes to smoke. She wasn’t trying to harm you. She was trying to kill the voice . . . hoping to free you. Maman was half-mad with grief and determination. Losing a beloved child can make even the sanest person crack, and she was never sane. She even mailed the violin to me, demanded I bring it here to this opera house and leave it in box five, with an anonymous note requesting the Phantom lift whatever curse had been brought upon you in exchange for the instrument, yet not specifying what that curse entailed. So much time went by, and you never improved. But then, out of the blue, he tracked Maman down. Showed up at the prison three years ago, offering his aid. Desperate, she confessed the truth about your voice. He took it in stride, almost as if he already knew somehow. He proposed we open a school of arts in his opera house. Proposed establishing its legitimacy by inviting the Nilsson girl . . . Katerina . . . so we’d have the support of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He said if we brought you here, he could train your voice himself in secret as you slept, using the violin as your father had. He instructed we not tell you anything. He said it was best if he cured you via your subconscious.” She inhales a deep breath, then all her somberness melts away to an expression of pure joy. “And he did it. You won the role of Renata earlier without any pain! And your voice, oh, Rune. I’ve never heard anything so pure and powerful.” Her smile is dreamy. “Your grand-mére was right. It was worth the risk after all.” She laughs, a liberated silvery sound that rivals the bells on Diable’s collar as he jumps at the outburst.

  Unlike my aunt, I don’t feel any contentment, because it hasn’t been the Phantom training my voice. How does Etalon fit into this?

  “I’m just so relieved you can go home now and live a normal life at last. Well, as normal as any of us do.” Aunt Charlotte winks at me, then stands and puts the remaining items in the shoe box. “You wouldn’t believe the crazy theory going through Françoise’s head. That somehow the Phantom was planning to take back his true love’s voice—surgically. It’s because of her paranoia I tried to frighten you and you mother away in the beginning. She had me convinced that the students’ rumors were true. That the forest creatures were modified for practice or some such folly, although I’ve never seen any evidence myself.” Strolling to the armoire, she tucks away the family treasures and slides the wood into place, hiding them. “But then, when you started to improve, I realized the flaw in her rationale. Erik is renowned for his affinity with animals. He could never bring himself to imprison them for experiments, much less take a knife to them for his own selfish motives. Even the all-powerful Opera Ghost would need aid for something so adverse to his nature. And I can’t imagine anyone brave enough, or deviant enough, to be the Phantom’s apprentice. Risible.” She chuckles again, moving the boxes back into place over the secret panel.

  Ridiculous indeed, to imagine anyone brave or deviant enough . . .

  Anyone other than family.

  The air gushes out of me, as the realization punches holes in my lungs.

  That night, when Etalon and I spoke through the vent and I asked what his hobby was. And his gentle, broken voice answering: “I tend the animals of the forest. I suppose you could say I’m their . . . doctor.”

  The blood rushes to my head, and the bottom drops out of my world.

  22

  THE IMITATION OF LIFE

  “Art is always and everywhere the secret confession . . . The immortal movement of its time.”

  Karl Marx

  I stumble into the moonlit foyer in search of my tote bag. It’s ten after twelve, and I’m so wired I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight. Maybe never again.

  I didn’t read Ch
ristine’s notes. And I haven’t told Aunt Charlotte anything about Etalon. Every time I try to say his name, the tattoo around my wrist and arm stings as if electrified, a sensation that spears like a high-voltage burst into my throat and across my tongue so I can’t speak. Maybe the cord that would never break is snapping after all, and unraveling everything inside of me along with it. Or worse, maybe Etalon tricked me and our so-called bond was some vampiric ploy to make it impossible for me to turn against him.

  He’s been lying to me about everything else. Why not that, too?

  Since I can’t confess anything to my aunt, I asked her if I could spend the night in her room. I want to feel safe, and I finally know she only wants what’s best for me.

  What hurts is I thought that was true of Etalon, too. Did I misread his auras on the rooftop? Wasn’t he worried for me?

  Then again, he led me to the rave club where I almost killed Jax.

  The hospital wristband and IV tube used to lure me there take on a whole new twisted meaning now. How can cutting out my voice be done without killing me? My welfare’s probably not even a consideration. It’s hard to believe that the guy who was so careful not to pull my hair when he was tying my blindfold could be so detached about helping the Phantom carve Christine’s songs from my body.

  A lead weight rests in the pit of my stomach. The thought that Etalon doesn’t care, after all the nights he inspired me to love music again, gave me fantasy dances, and shared intimate secrets, gores deeper than anything he could do with a scalpel.

  I can’t imagine what they’re planning for my voice once they have it. Put it in a jar like a trapped bug? House it inside a field mouse for my second cousin to capture, mount, and slap on the wall, like one of those stupid singing fish plaques?

  I sniffle. It’s crazy, horrific, and demented.

  Diable scampers around in the shadows as I search for my bag. Even thinking of how affectionate he was earlier doesn’t comfort me. Maybe he’s never been my guardian at all; maybe he’s actually my jailer.