Master of the Opera Read online

  Hally clapped her hands, squealed in joy—putting a total lie to the won’t-be-hurt bit—and kissed her on the cheek. “Goddess bless you! Now take your clothes off. You’re my next stepping stone to fame and fortune.”

  “What?” Christy’s stomach clenched and she wrapped her arms protectively around it.

  “Don’t tell me you’re shy.” Hally pulled out a partially finished canvas and set it on an easel by the east window. The background had been painted in from the edges, swirling with shadows and suggested shapes. In contrast, a lighter area in the middle waited, vacant and expectant, for a figure to be added. The person—presumably her—would recline on a fainting couch. From what Hally had already roughed in, the chaise looked very similar to the one in the Master’s den.

  Christy found herself next to Hally, reaching out to touch the painting. “It should be green.”

  From the corner of her eye, she caught Hally’s start and her assessing look. “How did you know I planned that?”

  “Why did you pick me to model in this painting?”

  “I had a vision.” Hally said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “I woke up this morning with it in my head and I had to paint it. When you called, I’d been plotting how to get you to pose for it—I figured it was meant.”

  “You don’t have a couch like this.”

  “I figured you could lie on my futon. Close enough.”

  “I’m not posing nude.”

  “But it has to be!” Hally insisted, none of her usual mellow self in evidence. “You’re naked, stretched out with your arms over your head, gazing out. Please? I have cookies.”

  “No. Not nude.”

  “Chocolate-chip cookies?”

  “Not even for chocolate-chip cookies.”

  “You said you owed me.” Hally narrowed her hazel eyes in mock threat. “Don’t cross the goddess blessed.”

  A chill shivered across Christy’s skin and she met Hally’s gaze. The other girl’s face had gone white, with a greenish cast beneath. Christy swallowed the dryness in her throat. “Well, that was dramatic.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “I do.” Christy glanced uneasily out of the closed windows. “Still, you shouldn’t say such things.”

  Hally sighed. “I know. Now I’ll have to light a bunch of candles and do penance.”

  “How do you do penance?”

  “It’s personal—I’ll give up something I don’t want to. It’s between me and the universe.” Hally shrugged her acquiescence and started to pack up the paints again. “Probably not being able to finish this painting will be enough pain.”

  Christy chewed on her lip, tugged between conflicting emotions. The sense of being drawn along by fate both unsettled and excited her. In the painting’s background lurked the shadows of furniture that could be the Master’s. And one dark form could be his cloaked figure. Would the painting give her some sort of answer?

  “I’ll pose.” She blurted it out before she could change her mind. “But naked from the waist up only. I’ll drape scarves over the rest and you can use your artistic license or what have you.”

  Instead of her earlier excited squeals, Hally studied her with grave concern. “What changed your mind?”

  Christy lifted a shoulder and let it drop, tried a smile that came out wobbly. “I want to see how it comes out.”

  “The painting?”

  “All of it.” She reached out again, this time toward the shadowy form in the dimness. The suggestion of him faded, became mere brushstrokes. “Remember how I said it was a long story, what happened last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was here.”

  3

  Christy undressed in Hally’s tiny bathroom. She only had a shower stall, too. Such a long way from Roman’s opulent sunken tub. The medicine cabinet mirror didn’t reflect below her breasts, so the scars on her belly were thankfully out of sight. She wore Hally’s robe back out, and the other girl kept her back turned until Christy had arranged herself, strategically draping the off-limits portions of her body with scarves left handily nearby.

  “Okay,” she said, once she was reasonably sure none of the scars showed.

  Hally scrutinized her, her face absorbed. “Don’t hold your breath. Relax.”

  Easy for her to say—she wasn’t undressed in broad daylight for the first time in, oh, eleven years.

  Bringing a few more pillows to approximate the angle of the painted chaise, Hally tucked them under Christy’s shoulder, coaxing her to lie more on her shoulders, but with her hip turned up so her thigh dropped over in front, hiding the vee at her crotch. When Hally adjusted the scarves, Christy stopped her.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Hally knelt on the floor in front of her, her lips pursed. Not meeting her gaze, Christy focused on the scarves. “Surgery scars?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. Our scars reflect that we’ve struggled—and won.”

  “How do you know I’ve won?” The words came out in a strained whisper. Such a small thing, to yank her back to that time.

  “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s a win every time. When you’re ready, stretch your arms over your head and turn your face toward me.”

  Christy did, lying her cheek against her arm. Hally frowned at her.

  “Something’s not quite right. Can you cross your wrists and stretch them up more?”

  She followed suit, feeling how the more strained position raised her breasts, her nipples peaking taut even in the warm apartment.

  “Now think of him.”

  Hally didn’t have to specify—they both knew who she meant. She let herself think of the Master, imagined lying naked in front of him, her wrists tied over her head. The desire for him, never completely cooled, simmered between her legs.

  “Yes,” Hally breathed. “Exactly.”

  Being painted gave her time to think in a way that lying by Roman’s pool hadn’t. She held still, thinking of the phantom and his mysterious ways, of what he had and had not asked of her. Though she never doubted he could be dangerous, her gut insisted he’d told the truth about Tara. He wanted something else from Christy.

  He wanted this.

  And, lying there while Hally captured her languid desire for the unknown, Christy wanted him to have it.

  She wanted to be his Christine.

  * * *

  The next morning, Carla confronted Christy as soon as she arrived at work, sizing up her too-expensive slacks. With her grubby jeans gone and her only other pair too dirty to wear again before laundry day, Christy had chosen the best of several unhappy options. It would be more than a relief to get her things out of storage and stop living out of a suitcase. Until then, she had only so much to work with.

  “Carla, I’m really sorry about the other night. I, um, just—”

  Carla held up a talk-to-the-hand palm and looked to the heavens, shaking her head.

  “You know, I tried to give you a chance. ‘Maybe she’s not a spoiled rich girl,’ I said to myself. And then I ask you to help me with one little thing. Twenty minutes of your precious time, and what happens? You run off to take a nap?”

  Christy cringed under the lash of Carla’s scorn. Stupidest excuse on the face of the earth.

  “I’m sor—”

  “I don’t want to hear your apologies. I want you to know that I asked Charlie to let you go.”

  “You—you did?” Misery welled up. All the starry-eyed fantasies about seeing her ghost again shriveled up in the stark light of Carla’s anger.

  “Of course I did. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t have lasted that first week. Hell,” Carla laughed bitterly, “you would never have been accepted in the first place. Do you realize you’ve taken the place of people who’ve sweated and worked their way for a chance at an apprenticeship here? And you flounce about here, like some fancy accessory we can’t afford.”


  “I want to work hard! I—”

  “You don’t know how.” Carla pronounced her verdict as the worst insult possible. It hung in the air between them, mean and rotten. “You’re soft fruit. A hothouse flower that won’t thrive in the real world. Go home to Daddy.”

  Never. That resolve straightened her spine. No matter what happened with this job, she would never live under her father’s roof again. He could cut her off, but she was a legal adult in every way. He couldn’t force her to do anything.

  Not unless they think you’re crazy.

  But she wasn’t a scared adolescent any longer. She had grown up, into a calm, reasonable, and determined adult.

  “Am I fired then?” She made her voice as even as possible. She’d find another job. Hally would help her. Other people did it and so could she.

  “No,” Charlie said, coming down the hall. “Which I told you, Carla.”

  She stiffened, planting her hands on her hips. “We agreed she’d be on probation.”

  “Yes, and we also agreed that I’d discuss it with her.” Charlie, several inches shorter that Carla, even in his heeled cowboy boots, returned her furious stare with equanimity. “Didn’t we?”

  Carla threw up her hands in exasperation. “You’re a goddamn pushover, Charlie Donovan. Always a sucker for a pretty face.”

  Charlie grinned at her. “You know it, darling. And good thing for you and your pretty face.”

  She grimaced at him but, shockingly, giggled when Charlie shooed her along with a pat on the ass. She actually fluttered her lashes at him and then sauntered down the hall, Charlie watching her go with exasperated admiration.

  “My wife has quite a temper, but she makes up for that failing in other ways.”

  “I, um, had no idea.”

  “Why would you? It shouldn’t come up in the work place.”

  “It must be kind of hard to work together.”

  “Yes and no. The good outweighs the bad. Now,” he fixed his faded denim-blue eyes on her, “you want to tell me what really happened the other night?”

  “Detective Sanchez didn’t tell you?”

  “Oh, he relayed your story, all right. Along with his opinion that there’s a lot you’re not telling.”

  Christy shifted her bag, wishing she’d had the chance to at least unlock her office door and set her things down. “I’ve thought and thought and I don’t know what else to say.”

  He nodded, scratched his bristly chin. “Did you know all the cameras went out?”

  Feeling her eyes widen, Christy pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  “Sure did. There’s you, watching Carla wheel that totem pole out, and pffft,” he chopped a hand down, “nothing but static. Every camera in the building became a pricey piece of metal and plastic.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. That’s what Detective Sanchez said, only in more colorful terms. His people seem to think some kind of massive electrical pulse fried ’em all simultaneously. The Board is going after the company guys who did the install, though they’ve inspected and they say nothing is wrong.” Charlie shrugged and tucked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans. “They’ll sort it out. Meanwhile, the cameras still aren’t working, so keep that in mind.”

  “Okay.” Christy searched for something else to say—not about the chandelier—and dug in her bag for her keys instead.

  “Any more encounters with the ghost?”

  “What?” The keys dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and plummeted into the depths of her bag. Dammit. She looked up and Charlie leaned in, bracing an elbow on the doorway and propping his head on his hand. The position created a kind of privacy shield around them. One Christy strongly wanted to step out of.

  “I watched one of those Discovery Channel shows and they said ghosts can do that—some kind of electromagnetic pulse that zaps our electronics. Got me to thinking about what you said, and the singing. Our conversation over lunch that day.”

  “Surely you don’t believe that’s what’s going on here.” At last her fingers found her keys again. She had to kind of duck under Charlie’s arm to fit them into the lock, but she did it anyway, relieved to escape through the opened door.

  “I think there’s room in this world for all sorts of explanations. If you encountered the ghost, I hope that you’d tell me about it.”

  “So you could do what, Charlie?” She dropped her bag on the desk with a thunk of exasperation. “Call in the Ghostbusters?”

  “Or a shaman. There are some working ones around here.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “The spirit world is nothing to toy with. Damn straight I’m serious. Serious as a heart attack.” He grinned crookedly.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Bad luck?”

  “Yes.”

  “See—you’re as superstitious as any of us. All this,” he waved a hand in the air, “started with you. I think you’re at the center of it, somehow. Carla thinks so, too, though she wouldn’t put it in the same words.”

  “It didn’t start with me.” She took a drink from her water bottle to salve her dry mouth. “Tara disappeared before I was even hired.”

  “Aha!” Charlie held up a finger. “But after your dad called about putting you on the roster.”

  She ran a shaky hand through her hair. Oh. “What are you saying?”

  “I think our ghost likes you, Christine.”

  “Well.” She neatly stacked her supplies. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I have not met any ghosts.” Because the Master was definitely flesh and blood, whatever else he might be. That much she was sure of. Pretty much.

  “I wonder.”

  “What are you saying?” She let her Davis temper flare. Don’t hesitate to let them know when they’ve pissed you off. Most people back down from confrontation. “Are you asking me to leave—am I fired after all? Because this back and forth is getting tiresome.”

  Charlie only smiled, a quiet, closed-lipped grimace. But then, he had to face Carla over the breakfast table. “I’m not in a hurry to anger Carlton Davis, or one of our patron families—or our resident theater ghost either. I was raised to have respect for these things.”

  Somehow she knew he mainly meant the last one.

  “You’d do well to think about that.”

  4

  After Charlie left, Christy sat on the cracked vinyl of her ancient office chair for a moment, toying with the silver spiral pendant and staring at the poster on the opposite wall. Torn, and from a season ten years past, it glowed with sunset colors. The graceful golden lines of the opera-house roof seemed part of the landscape, as if it had grown there.

  A good artist could do that—make it seem as if a construct hadn’t been built but rather had evolved naturally.

  With its own resident spirit, it seemed.

  “Ready, boss?” Matt punctuated his cheerful greeting with a knock on the door frame that made her jump, and he grinned, wagging a finger at her. “Daydreaming about Ryan Gosling again? And after a bonus day off, too. That’s not the workaholic I’ve come to know and love.”

  Christy snorted. “Ryan Gosling is your boyfriend.”

  Matt patted his chest with fluttering fingers. “I wish! Though I’d do Emma Stone, too. Think they’d be up for a three-way?”

  “With you? They’d be fools to say no.”

  “That’s what I say. Okay, so here’s what I did while you were off gallivanting.”

  * * *

  By the end of the day, Christy had made up her mind.

  She waved good-bye to Matt and stopped in to see if Carla needed any help—anything to try to patch things up—but the prop shop was dark, thankfully. The door to Charlie’s office stood closed and locked, too, with no light showing beneath. Making a good show of it, she exited with a few of the carpenters from the scene shop and drove off in a mini caravan with several of them.

  Then she drove around and parked in the big patron lot, but behind a Dumpster, so it wouldn’t
be obvious. Through a long succession of texts, she’d convinced Roman that she planned to go down to the mall in Albuquerque, to bypass the Santa Fe boutiques and buy new jeans, among other things. He’d sent her a couple of unhappy faces but perked up when she agreed to dinner the next night and Sunday church and dinner with his family.

  If things didn’t go well Thursday—or if they went really well with the Master in between—she’d beg off the family deal.

  This juggling men thing wasn’t easy.

  Especially when one of the men was . . . whatever the Master was.

  She snuck back in through the backstage apron, letting herself in quietly, then sat in her office pretending to work until the opera house settled into its familiar evening silence.

  With a sense of fluttering anticipation, she fixed her lipstick and gathered her things, thumbing off her phone. She’d made a preemptive call to her father earlier, so he shouldn’t be looking for her. Mentally, she ticked off all the points to make sure she wouldn’t be missed tonight. Sneaking around took great attention to detail.

  Turning off the lights behind her and armed with her flashlight, she headed down the spiral staircase.

  As she descended, the clinks and whispers of the cooling opera house swirled together in its nighttime song. Weaving up through it, a golden thread reeling her in like a fish hooked on a line, came the phantom’s song.

  Her body warmed and her blood fluttered in the soft points under her jaw. He seemed to know she was coming to him. Everything in her focused into a sharp point of anticipation. Soon she would see him again.

  Anything could happen.

  The song intensified as she reached the lowest level, though it still drifted just out of reach of her comprehension. Shining the flashlight on the door, dust motes filtering through the narrow beam that was the only light in the massive building, the emblem carved in it stood out in sharp relief. A whip and a collar.

  From the first day, she’d wanted to know what it meant. Now she would.

  A whisper of sound.

  Then his voice. From nowhere and everywhere.

  “Christine.”