“The last thing I read was that he died, but there were rumors of sightings years after.”
Her finger taps the page. “It was his death that was the rumor. He faked dying, then took his leave of society to travel with a caravan of gypsies with whom he shared all things alchemy, herbs, magic, and holistic. He grew powerful feeding off their superstitions and lively music. He even bargained an instrument of his own from an artisan witch—a Stradivarius violin made of enchanted black heartwood. Saint-Germain became the Romani Roi of the group—their gypsy king. He took a wife, and had children. Some fifty-three years later, a masked boy stumbled upon that very gypsy camp after escaping his abusive mother. Saint pitied him, and took him in. He recognized that he was one of his kind. A young incubus, although disfigured and emaciated.”
The photograph Etalon showed me of the childhood Phantom surfaces in my mind’s eye. “So, Saint-Germain gave him the violin?”
Aunt Charlotte shuts the Book of Blood. “Not in the beginning. Our predecessor was growing old by then. He no longer wished to accrue any extra life. There is such a thing as outliving your soul. And he was wise enough to know he had. He wanted Erik—the mysterious incubus child—to take his place as Romani Roi, for he could see the genius in him, even at such a young age. Not only because he could play any instrument put before him, not only because he could sing and enrapture even the most cynical audience. But because he had the ability to absorb knowledge and talent at an unprecedented rate. Saint schooled him as his apprentice. Taught him all his tricks and wisdom. Told him all his secrets. Things he hadn’t told his own children, like where he’d hidden his jewels—here, in the bowels of the Liminaire, in a secret labyrinth of tunnels. When Saint died a few months later, he bequeathed his grown children and young grandchildren his beloved Stradivarius violin. But that wasn’t enough for them. They turned on Erik, locked him in a cage, stripped him of his clothes and dignity, and forced him to perform like an animal with that very instrument, because he refused to confess where Saint-Germain’s treasure was hidden. Erik at last escaped, and took Saint’s violin with him. He knew nothing of its rumored magic, but it was all that was left of the only father he’d ever known, and he deemed our ancestors unworthy of it.”
My stomach turns. I never thought I’d empathize with a stranger over my family. But after the way they treated him, they were unworthy. “We got the violin back. When?”
Aunt Charlotte lays the newspaper clippings in my lap. “You know of Leroux, the author of the fictionalized account.”
I tilt my head.
“As it happened, in 1909, while researching a piece on the Palais Garnier, Leroux stumbled upon Christine’s letters wrapped up with a delicate necklace threaded through a ruby wedding ring. They were tucked beneath architectural blueprints in a box marked O.G. and hidden inside one of the opera house’s crawlspaces. The letters were actually loose-leaf journal entries, dated forty-five years prior, and were Christine’s account of her time with the opera ghost. Leroux tracked down the only soprano by the name ‘Christine’ who would’ve been performing around that date under the stage name: Christina Nilsson. She was sixty-six by then, an old widowed woman who became distraught when confronted with the letters and ring. She claimed they weren’t hers . . . how could they be, she insisted, when she’d never performed at the Palais Garnier? Perhaps it was partly for show, since her maid was in the room, but she demanded Leroux take the letters and the ring out of her sight and never return. Since there was no last name, Leroux published the letters, embellishing versions of the story, in bits and pieces as a serialization, keeping the only two names that were in the original papers: Erik and Christine. The rest of the cast he made up. He hoped by doing this publicly, he might draw out their true author.”
I sort through the newspaper clippings from Le Gaulois, my gaze passing over the text and eerie illustrations of a ghastly phantom creeping through the underground labyrinth of the opera house. The scent of ink stings my nose and black smudges my fingers.
“No one ever came forward for them,” my aunt continues. “However, the letters and necklace were stolen out of his office shortly after the final serialization in 1910. It didn’t matter to Leroux. He went on to write the tale as a book, building upon the scant details gleaned from his articles.”