The Phantom Returns

Chapter 1

'He's an angel my dear Adeline. If you visit the opera you will find him. He will sing to you, and teach you to sing. He will take you on adventures and slip into your dreams...'

Adeline sat up in her warm bed, her eyes watering from involuntary tears that had slipped down her face in the night. Her mothers voice still echoing in her mind. She rubbed her eyes and her feet found the cold floor as she slipped out of bed, walking to the full sized mirror in her room.

In the moonlight she could barely make out her pale outline. Her deep brown hair cascading down her back, and her skin deathly white in the light seeping through a small window. Slightly damp lines traced her cheeks where the tears fell.

Adeline grabbed a small blanket and draped it over her shoulders, sighing at the softness on her cool skin. She pattered downstairs as quietly as she could, trying not to wake Mr. Jefferson as she sneaked past his room.

Addy (the nickname her father gave her before he was murdered mysteriously) ran quickly to the huge front door of the house and slipped on her small boots. She unlocked the door and yanked it open, letting the cold air bite her nose, freezing her still damp cheeks. Snow cracked under her feet as she stepped onto the sidewalk, closing the door behind her quietly. She started running down the empty street, not caring that snow was getting in her boots and falling on her hair and eyelashes.

She ran nearly four blocks before stopping suddenly, her hands reaching for a black iron gate. Adeline's petite hands pushed it open and she walked through rows of stone, saying each name in her head as she passed, like she had done so many times before.

When she got near the grave she was looking for, her feet stopped moving. The most haunting voice reached her ears and she darted behind a small tree. The voice, was just like she imagined. She knew, even as she peeked around the tree, who would be there.

His cape covered the ground around him in a circle, his face bent over a single rose, and his voice, singing the same song her mother sang over and over to her when she was little, before she...

Adeline covered her mouth with her hand and bit back tears. She found him, her mothers ghost.

His head looked up, and she froze.