To Outwit an Angel

11. The Creature of the Night

 Loretta's POV:

I didn't like Il Muto. All the obnoxiously long dances and swirly bright dresses clogged up the backstage. The vocal rehearsals were fine enough. My character, the pageboy, didn't speak, much less sing. I was exclusively there because the opera paid me to be. Still, not singing proved another problem. My mute pageboy had to be expressive, and according to the director, I could never sell it.

 Even on the final day of rehearsals, I was still a horrible actress.

 "Daaé, please! Sing with your body language! You're so stiff. You're a dancer, are you not? My God! People will leave at intermission."

 "I'm doing my best, monsieur." I said, much too quiet after being chastised by the director.

 "She is doing her best, Monsieur Reyer. It's quite a demanding part." Meg said in my defense, giving me a voice beyond my shyness.

 Meg didn't have to do that, but we had grown close. Close in the way of her thinking I was Christine. Still, I had a friend native to this world, and outside the opera, we did everything together. She even took me to the soda fountain nearly every Saturday and showed me her collection of stolen soda fountain cups she kept under her bed. That, I think, is the firmest display of trust possible in 1895, especially with a mother as strict as hers.

 "Then help her practice at home, Mademoiselle Giry," Reyer said, "there's no excuse for a pathetic performance, no matter the difficulty."

 "We have been practicing, monsieur." Meg said, which earned an exasperated sigh from Reyer before he moved on to criticizing someone else.

 After rehearsals, I changed back into my day clothes in the ballet dressing room. Meg chatted to me and a gaggle of other ballerinas about gossip regarding a dancer who'd been mysteriously absent for nine months, and how the dancer in question had just written in about returning for the next opera. While Meg would be the first to admit the dancer had been knocked up, she also spun more fanciful theories about why she'd been missing. Something about a coven of witches in the Ural mountains.

 I slipped out of the dressing room to find Sharlene. I shouldn't have walked so slowly, but the narrow hall was so dark, and with candleholders jutting off the walls every few paces, I had to be careful not to catch fire.

 Obviously, I didn't want to be stopped, but some dumb vicomte with a mustache had other ideas.

 "Christine, There you are! I'm not meant to be back here, you see, but I wanted to give you something before your performance tomorrow." He small a box out of his pocket. "For good luck."

 He grinned, and my stomach turned. This man was not about to propose. Then again, I had no idea when he actually gave Christine the ring, considering they're engaged in "All I Ask of You." When would that be again? Tomorrow, right. I set my jaw, panic rising in my chest. If Sharlene and I didn't figure out the formaldehyde situation, which we so willfully procrastinated, I'd be forced to go the rooftop with Raoul. There, I had to either accept him or turn him down. Time was ticking away.

 He put the box in my hand. Thank God, he wasn't proposing. I opened it. Sure enough, a golden bracelet with glimmering diamonds all around it sat neatly on a bed of blue silk.

 "Oh, Raoul," I said, in my best lovestruck Christine impression, "it's very pretty."

 "I know it's not much," he said, smiling his polished model-esque smile, "but I bought it from Germany during my navy days. I thought of you the moment I saw it, the pretty girl I spent a summer by the sea with. I knew we'd meet again, fate you may call it. It was only ever you, Christine Daaé."