Beneath the Porcelain Mask

12. The Time and Place.

"Everyone dies. I just choose the time and place for some of them."
     ~ Erik.     

Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera.

I'm feeling a bit under the weather this week, so forgive me for not editing this chapter very much at all. I've marked it as one that I need to revisit later.

~•~•~•~■~•~•~•~

Jeremy walked me back to my room that evening. We exchanged goodbyes, which quickly became awkward when neither of us found it appropriate to simply leave one another and stood there like a pair of idiots in the hallway. To make matters worse, my door wouldn't open, and we spent the next five minutes trying to pick the lock, before Jeremy decided he'd just have to break it down for me.

The door had remained intact, thank heavens; I'd have bet money that he'd have broken at least three of his brittle bones trying to win my approval and stopped him from doing such a thing. After using several methods Erik had once shown me in Rouen, the door swung open, ending the string of useless advice we'd thrown back and forth. Another round of goodnights, and I was inside.

Now, as I lit a torch on the wall of a passageway and blew out the taper, something small and furry chattered and ran between my feet. I smiled and picked up the torch, reaching down and letting the little primate scurry up my arm.

"Hello, you," I giggled, stroking Monkey Nadir's fur as he grabbed a loose lock of my hair and snuggled into my neck. He chattered all the way down to the House, jumping off my shoulder when I entered my bedroom, and scuttled over to Erik.

I stopped short. "What are you doing going through my things?"

He didn't even look over at me, pulling item after item out of the ottoman and setting them in a growing heap beside his kneeling legs. I spotted my prized first edition of Pride and Prejudice sitting on the stone and snatched it up before Monkey Nadir could carry it off with him and tear the pages into a disposable nest.

"Aha!" Erik disappeared from the waist up into the ottoman. He fished about a bit and dragged something out. "Eureka!"

He stood, holding a heavy, hessian sack, and turned to me triumphantly. I frowned and lifted the side of my mouth.

"It isn't a corpse, is it?" I wasn't particularly fond of seeing bodies more than three days past their expiration date.

"What? No! It would have to be some sort of child for that. You know Erik doesn't kill children, not anymore." He walked out to the parlour, his shoes clacking rapidly down the stone steps. I rolled my eyes at the mess he'd made and abandoned, following him to make sure he wasn't going through anymore of my possessions.

"Do you know where Angel is?" he asked, leafing through some papers on the spare table beside the organ. I paused at the top of the stairs.

"Angel?"

His shuffling paused. "Erm... no, not Angel. Christine."

"Of course." I trotted down the stairs with the impossible smirk sticking to my face, taking my time to kick some spare pebbles into the lake. "She's gone to visit her guardian."

Now all I needed was-

"Madame Velarus?" There it was. Erik picked something up and leant back against the table, squinting at it.

"Yes, that's her! The woman's sick, apparently. Christine told me she'd be back by tonight."

"Alright. By the way," he said, his distant voice resounding around the parlour. He held up a folded newspaper as I walked closer, letting it hang open. "Well? Explain yourself."