On the drive here, we passed what felt like a half hour in dead silence, other than the sound of the hearse’s motor, our breaths, and the wind streaming through the slightly cracked windows. The dampness of evening sifted in and a slight breeze rustled the loose curls at my neck—an odd, unsettling tickle like the one inside my head, warning me: turn back, turn back, turn back.
Our ride has now come to a stop. The car doors open. No words are exchanged as someone helps me and my friends out and removes the headbands from our wrists. It’s not the driver. Whoever loosens my “cuffs” isn’t wearing gloves. The blindfolds stay in place but my coat is coaxed off my shoulders and tossed into the backseat. Cool night air chills my skin as we’re herded like sheep away from the hearse. The one thing that keeps me from changing my mind is the bone-deep knowledge that my maestro is here, waiting for me. I can feel his anticipation. It matches my own.
“Hey, what about our bags?” Sunny pipes up, causing our escorts to pause. “I got money in there!”
“You have wristbands.” The driver’s nasally French accent answers from behind us. “That’s all the currency you need inside. I’ll keep your personal effects locked in your car. They’ll be here for the trip back to the city.”
Back to the city . . . where exactly are we? Goose bumps erupt on my bare arms, an acutely vulnerable sensation when paired with my blindness.
“Just want to reiterate”—Jax grumbles at my left as we’re nudged forward again—“how stupid this whole plan was, in case it’s the last thing I ever say.”
Sunny snorts from my right, and Quan moans from her other side.
The clomp of several sets of feet keep time with my stiletto heels as, arm in arm, my group is guided along a rough surface that feels like cement. Our direction shifts and we follow a gritty, descending incline, enveloped by a musty odor. Every sound echoes, as if we’re moving through a tunnel.
The unmistakable ping of an elevator greets us and we’re steered into the small space, the air thick with carpet cleaner and foreign colognes. The hum of a motor under our cushioned feet carries us down. As the elevator doors sweep open at our stop, an unrecognizable subgenre of dance music shuttles through my body and hammers my ears. It’s like chamber music meets underground techno rock. My heart pounds in time with the frantic beats.
We’re led out, instantly slammed with a fusion of perfume, sweat, and the faint sting of sulfur—reminiscent of summers on Fourth of July with my friends. That thought sends me spiraling back to Trig and Janine, and how crazy they’d say I was for doing this. Just like I was crazy when I went to that frat party.
Poor Ben . . .
Jax tightens his arm through mine. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie. If he knew what I’d left in my wake in Texas, he’d already be running in the other direction. So would Sunny and Quan. But I’m not going to let them out of my sight. I’m the only protection they have here. I can’t allow anything to happen to them tonight. Tensing my arms through Jax’s and Sunny’s, I link the four of us tight as an escort removes our blindfolds.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the contrast of darkness and throbbing, neon lasers. From our bird’s-eye view on the narrow balcony, a pulsating surge of reflective, brightly colored clothes makes the floor appear to shiver under the black lights.
“Holy goat balls of fire,” Sunny says as she looks over the waist-high railings. The shimmers across her face blink in time with the rainbow lights on her wig. “Are you seeing this, Rune?” The question sounds like a whisper under the growing swell as the band onstage at the back wall begins a new techno-dance number.
I home in on the architecture and décor.
“Incredible,” I mumble. I’d know this place anywhere, thanks to all the Phantom research I did online. The infamous opera house. But it’s a grand deception . . . an intricate design crafted upon the walls by skillful strokes of fluorescent paint. Instead of a flat and false representation, the glowing 3-D scene looks as if you could walk straight into it . . . become a part of its baroque resplendence: interweaving corridors, winding stairs, bronze statues of Greek mythos, alcoves and landings, and row upon row of velvety seats. The cleverly executed optical illusion gives the stadium-size space the appearance of stretching on for miles, while accommodating the frenzied movement of ravers who would otherwise trip over any real stairwells, seats, or statues.
In place of the infamous crystal chandelier, a massive, black wrought-iron replica spins at the center of the domed, mirrored ceiling. The scrolling tentacle arms seem to multiply with each rotation like a larger-than-life mutating octopus. Thorns, the size of sewing needles, jut out along the lengths instead of suction cups. At the tips of the tentacles, candle sleeves with black-light luminaries drape the room in phosphorescent splendor.
“It’s a mirror image of the Palais Garnier, gothic-glammed,” I answer at last, talking over the music.
“Exactly my thought,” Sunny answers. “Things just got weird.”