“Yeah. We all decided it was an urban legend, since no one we know has ever actually found any proof of the place.” Quan takes over, still eyeing the IV tube. “Yet here’s something used to drain corpses during the embalming process, and there’s an address staring back at us.”
Sunny offers the wristband to me. “More than an address. Rune’s name is on that dang thing. And there’s a time and date. A month from now . . . two days before Halloween. This isn’t no hospital identity bracelet. It’s an invitation for a pickup. You’ve been tagged.” She presses my fingers around the plastic band, then slips out of our circle wearing an expression that wavers between concern and curiosity.
Every muscle in my body tenses as I glance at the clear tubing now dangling from Quan’s hand, unable to look away from the red droplets clinging to the inside.
My name bleeding across an infant’s grave, and now written on an invitation to a morgue.
What’s it mean? That I’m tagged for death? My blood runs cold.
I study the cardboard cutout that Quan kicked out of the way so he could shut the door when he came back earlier. The Phantom would’ve already taken me if he wanted to harm me, right? And he wouldn’t be helping me with my music if he had bad intentions, would he?
In the chapel, we connected on some indescribable level. He showed me his memories; he felt like home.
Audrey touches my elbow. I flinch.
“Hey, you okay?” she asks. “You’re as white as a ghost.”
“She has reason to be scared.” Sunny’s standing next to my pile of dirty clothes, holding up my bloody shirt. “Rune, it’s time you’re straight with us. What really happened today?”
I’m rescued by a knock at the door and Bouchard’s voice, rounding everyone up for dinner in the atrium.
14
ROMANCING THE ABYSS
“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
At dinner, I sit with my friends, since my aunt hasn’t yet returned from Versailles. I tell them enough to give them the illusion that they’re my confidants, but not enough to put them in danger. I can only imagine how it would go if I confessed: “I might be a monster, though I’m not sure what kind.” Or, “I might be under a gypsy curse, and that’s why my grandma tried to kill me.” Or, the best one of all: “The Phantom is real, and he’s helping me master the music that has possessed me since I was four years old.”
Yeah, none of that would get me sent home for a psych evaluation.
This whole thing has become too unfathomable, like the premise to a horror movie. So once again, I elaborate on the truth: that I suspect I’m being pranked—the torn uniforms and cut-up roses (their blood remains my secret), the dead bird, and the wristband—but I have no proof who’s behind it, and until I do, the teachers will think I’m lying after my earlier confession. I convince my friends to support my claim that the cat found my bag of uniforms and tore up my clothes.
They agree, but only once I promise I’m not going to use the wristband. They reiterate that the rave scene is known for drugs, and they’ve all sworn off getting high out of respect for what happened to Audrey’s sister.
Sunny, however, still wants us to go to the pickup address and see who comes. She won’t let it drop until I finally pretend to toss the wristband into the trash in the atrium at breakfast on Sunday; unbeknownst to any of them, it was a sleight of hand trick, and I still have the band.
I can’t throw away the opportunity without thinking things through. As far as being seduced by the rave club world, it would appear I already have the upper hand in seduction . . . just ask Ben, if he ever wakes up.
While everyone heads back to their rooms to do homework, I search the orchestra pit and find that the message and book I left for the Phantom the prior day are gone. My reaction fluctuates between apprehension and anticipation. The rest of Sunday afternoon, I hole up in my dorm with a borrowed sewing machine, piecing together my uniforms with embellishments and scraps until they look more bohemian chic than Victorian. All the while I wonder if the Phantom will contact me—if it was a mistake to reach out to him.
I don’t have to wait long to find out. That night, with Diable curled at my feet, my maestro’s violin music drifts down from the vent over my bed. I take comfort that the metal slats are on a downward slant. No one could see me anywhere else in the room other than when I’m lying in bed. Maybe that knowledge shouldn’t make me feel safer, yet when combined with the ballad he’s playing on that familiar violin, it soothes me to sleep.