Beneath the Porcelain Mask

7. Raging Fire

"What raging fire
Shall flood the soul?
What rich desire
Unlocks the door?"

~ The Phantom.

Andrew Llyod Webber, The Phantom of the Opera.

~•~•~•~■~•~•~•~

"What's the infamous Opera Ghost doing now, eh?" I leaned as far as I could over the organ to peer at his music sheets. Erik smiled his usual smile: soft, almost nonexistent, and hardly recognisable compared to a frown.

"What he always does," he answered in a quiet voice. "Erik is composing."

"Of course. And speaking of music, where's Christine?"

His pen stopped scratching the parchment.

I raised an eyebrow as Erik scowled, screwed up the sheet and tossed it over his shoulder. It bounced against the stairs once and plummeted into the lake. My chair shrieked as I pushed it back and stood, mirroring his scowl.

"Don't you waste your parchment!"

"Don't you tell Erik what to do!" he snapped back, standing up as well and towering over me even across the organ. His amber eyes glared against their dark backdrops, one shadowed by his mask, the other narrowed like a prowling cat's.

"Use that tone of voice with me one more time," I growled, scowling, crossing my arms and tapping my foot with clunky echoes against the stone, "and I'll drag you upstairs to explain yourself to the managers!"

Erik held my glare for a long moment. His eyes flicked between my scowling eyes and the neutral mask, as if wondering which Nikki to believe, then back at the stave and, rolling his eyes, set to playing a petulant tune. I stuck my tongue out at his stab of revenge.

The music intensified, reaching, growing to a crescendo like no other. I picked up my pen and began to doodle violently, racing against the melody as it grew darker and darker, louder and louder, faster and faster. Erik slammed his fingers onto the lower scale, creating a dramatic death sequence and glaring at me. I held up the parchment, biting back triumph as his frown set deeper into his forehead.

"Why is there a ballerina hitting Erik with a shoe?" he asked as the walls shook with the vibrations of the death march he'd just composed for me. I frowned and looked back at the drawing.

"That's me, you halfwit! Those are evening clothes, not a tutu! I'm dressed as a box-attendant in this."

"Oh, for Heaven's sakes, Kitty!"

"Don't you think I've earned it?" I interrupted, inserting the doodle amid a pile of other random papers. Erik pressed his head into his hands. "All I've done all my life is scrub floors and polish golden armrests! It's time you repaid me for all the times I got you out of trouble."

"If you turn into a miniature Daroga," Erik snapped, pushing himself back in his chair, "you'll have no job whatsoever. And then we'll see just how much you like cleaning."

"Then I'll be down here in a flash and take up permanent residence in the Louis-Phillippe room; I'm thinking a nice pastel pink might suit the walls, with some sort of beige along the panels."

He sighed, looking about the parlour in thought.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"Box-attendant," he said at last, pulling off his mask and abandoning it on top of the organ. I raised my chin, coaxing him on. "If I order your reinstatement, you'll stop pestering?"