Chapter Fourteen

Kicking open the alleyway door of the hotel nearest the opera, Erik cornered the first person he stumbled upon. The dumbfounded maid didn’t have a chance to scream before Erik had her backed against a wall.

“A room. Now!”

The girl stammered nonsensically, stumbling backward up the servants’ stairs as Erik came toward her. With a trembling hand and two mousy eyes that never left his mask, she pointed toward a door at the top and leaned far out of his way. Erik pushed passed her.

“Follow us!” he demanded, taking the steps two at a time.

He kept Anna cradled protectively in his arms. He chanced a look at her face. Her eyes were tight with God knows what sort of pain. A swallow moved up and down her throat. Erik kicked the door open once upon it and rushed Anna to the bed. He snapped toward the maid. “Find me hot water and what clean towels you can. Do this without breathing a word as to why and I will pay you handsomely.”

The girl whirled out of the room.

“Erik, I’m fine,” Anna said moving to sit up even as Erik made her lie back.

“You are bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

Erik tore off her cloak. The breath he held escaped as soon as he saw her arm. Aside from flecks of wood and some badly torn flesh, the bullet’s damage had been mostly to the door. The only thing saving Erik’s knees from buckling in relief was the maid standing in the doorway. She trembled with such ferocity the bowl and pitcher of steaming water rattled in her arms.

Striding across the room, Erik spoke as sternly he dared. He didn’t want to frighten her more. “Speak of this to no-one.” He relieved her of the pitcher and towels and pressed two coins into her palm. Erik nodded her toward the hall.

As if she had known and adhered to his whims for years, she left and closed the door behind her.

Erik’s thoughts sloshed in his head like the water in the basin he carried. He set it down on the bedside table wanting never to endure a moment like that ever again. Erik felt Anna’s forehead and face.

“Stop, Erik. I’m fine.”

“No, you are not.” He couldn’t help but notice something beyond pain in her eyes as he tended her. “Chagny’s new marksman is fortunate I did not kill him.” Erik eased up on dressing her arm when she winced again.”

“New marksman?”

“A clown called Loup.”

Ugly emotion flashed across her face. A combination of utter revulsion and fear, unlike anything he had ever seen. He dabbed at her arm, concerned over how she paled. It was unlike Anna, yet given the circumstances; he couldn’t blame her for being so unsteady. She had just been shot.

“He is an inconsequential human, Anna. Pay him no mind.”

She was silent for a long while. Erik wrung the towel out in the water partly to have some noise in the room. He couldn’t tell if it was the adrenaline of the last few moments draining away that made her pale and silent, or some other thought racing through her mind. It didn’t surprise him that she had had the wherewithal to look for him at the opera. Somehow he suspected finding him with Christine had done just as much harm as a close call with a bullet.

“You were a fool to leave those catacombs,” he muttered.

“It seems there are many fools in this room then.”

The look in her eyes he couldn’t quite comprehend, but it was enough to confirm that she wrestled with more than just being shot. He tore a second towel into strips, bandaged her arm, and rose. A sliver of light from the oil lamp pointed his path toward the window. Erik slid his finger through the curtain, barely parting it enough to peer down at the bustling streets of Lyon before lifting his eyes in the direction of the opera house. There was no telling how long they’d be safe. No telling if, when he left, Anna would follow.

“Anna, promise me after what I tell you that you will still love me.”

There came nothing but silence behind him.

His tongue felt thick in his mouth. When Anna wanted to, she could say volumes by saying nothing at all. “I needed the comfort of something familiar after we fought. That is why I left.” The noise in his mind had demanded it, though he kept that thought locked away. He dragged his hand down the curtain and watched, as it swung shut. He struggled to find room for more words. His reasons ran much deeper than his confession but didn’t know how to put a voice to his rising madness. Erik folded his arms and focused on the layers of dust trapped in the weave of the curtain. “I taught her again, or rather the Angel of Music did.”

The silence seemed to linger longer than death before she finally spoke.

“You didn’t merely cross paths with the comtesse then.”

“While a coincidence we were both there, I did call on her. I had to see if she would end this madness.”

“And will she?”

Erik half turned his head when he heard the bed creak. From the corner of his eyes saw Anna sit up.

“Stay still,” he insisted before studying the dust once more. “She believes she has no control, but she assured me she has no intention of telling Raoul where I was. She asked for my help in retraining her. She fell ill. Ruined her voice. If you call bedding that confounding boy falling ill.”

“She is with child as well?”

From what he could tell, Christine thrived in the throes of motherhood, and Anna was still terribly small. His heart pinched so tightly he thought the worry for her would bleed through his shirt. “Apparently.”

“You spent years coaching her voice. I suppose you couldn’t reject her request.”

Erik whirled around. Anna stared at the ceiling instead of looking at him. Disgust flooded his mind as their last conversation came roaring forward. “Reject her? Wonderful choice of words!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Anna sat there, rubbing her bandaged arm and giving him that scolding look he always hated. “When I left, I assumed you did not want me and when I arrived at that theater I was wanted, by her. Both my music and me.”

Anna’s mouth had set into a thin line. A sure fire sign that she was ready to go toe-to-toe. “What are you telling me?”

Erik folded his arms, daring her to challenge him. “I was intimate with her.”

The sting of his words reflected in the way she blinked. Her small hands clutched the edge of the bed as she gasped. He was too blunt. Damn it, how was he supposed to tell her? He didn’t mean to sicken her but did so anyway.

“You laid with her?”

“God in heaven, woman—no!”

“Then what?”

“Merely a kiss. That is all.”

“Merely a kiss?”

Anna’s gaze turned stone hard as if a kiss were an incomprehensible crime. Her voice shook when she spoke next. Not the tremble of grief or anger, but more of a stammer of frustration. It confused him.

“That’s… we’re not… we’re not married, not in the eyes of the church. You left me. You can be with whatever woman you want.”

Erik scowled. She wasn’t making much sense. “You act as if bedding her would have been a lesser offense.”

“It would have!” she snapped.

“You are unbelievable. So, according to you, I have the right to bed any woman I like because some God of yours does not believe we are wed? Well, I believe it!” The pitch of his voice surprised even him, but only made her eyes go harder. “Are you going to sit there and profess to understand this so simply?”

Anna shook her head and cocked her jaw. “No, Erik. I don’t understand this, except for that what I feared is true. I became hunted for no reason. I am second in your eyes to her. You rely on her and memories of this Philippe person. I was second to her from the start and will be from now on, so just go. Be with who you want.” Anna jerked to her feet making the bed shriek in protest. She yanked her cloak back around her. “But tell me one thing first. As you were kissing her was that damn thing on or off?”

“What damn thing?”

“That mask, on or off?”

Erik’s teeth ground together so hard, he heard it in his ears. “On.”

Anna’s gaze, so sharp and sure, sank right into him. “When my father whored me out to pay his debts, all I could ever imagine was what it would be like to experience a real, loving kiss. Now you’ve taken the memory of having that with you and replaced it with the image of you kissing her. So leave, but remember one thing. When I’d reach for you the first thing I always took off was that mask, because I made love to the man, not the Angel of Music, not the Phantom—the man.” Anna thrust her good arm to the door and pointed him to it.

Erik took one long stride into her, pushing her arm back to her side. “Kissing her did not feel right!”

“That doesn’t make it any better! Not after the choices, I made for you, not after carrying a part of you inside me.”

Erik grabbed her shoulders wanting to shake sense into her as much as he tried to comprehend all the words bouncing around his brain. He couldn’t get them out fast enough or in the right order. “I did not want this to happen, Anna!”

“But did you want her? After all she has caused, did you want her?”

Erik could easily lie, but Anna would see right through that. “Yes, but it did not feel right.”

“Your lips touched hers! You wanted her. I don’t care what it felt like.” She wagged her shoulders shaking free from his grip.

Confound this all! That is not what he meant! “When I kissed her, there was something between us.”

“Oh. Good for you. I’m so glad you shared that with me!”

“There was something between us!”

Blast his tangled words! Erik grabbed her again and pressed her close; frustrated by the way she stiffened in his arms. Erik reached between them to spread his palm across his child. He held her stare until she squinted.

“There was something between us,” he repeated. By the manner in which Anna dipped her head; he hoped she understood his meaning. “I could have kept all of this from you, and you would have been none the wiser, but I cannot lie to you. I betrayed you just as the world betrayed me, but you need to understand one thing. I am not a normal man. I will deal with deciphering what and how I feel in my ways. Even if it means leaving and shunning everything in the way the world shunned me.” He pressed his lips close to her ear so that she would feel the intensity of his words. “That does not give me permission to do what I did to you, but in many ways, this face gives me the liberty to do as I please and curses me with the consequences.”

Anna squirmed, causing him to lessen his grip immediately recalling her freshly bandaged arm. He stepped off and looked at her. There was more than a wound to her body. The injury he’d place on her soul was evident in the saddened slump to her shoulders.

Erik sighed. “I played myself the fool when I kissed her and realized it was not my child pressing against me. Anna, I do not expect you to forgive me; yet do not expect me to apologize either. This had to happen. I cannot escape this manhunt, so curse it all. I will run as long and as far as I have must, because I am in love with you and I am hopelessly in love with my baby. If it took Christine to make me realize that, then I finally did something right.”

Anna’s tears fell like a silent rain down her cheeks. Erik looked around the room, and not finding any answer to her sorrow magically appearing in the air; he reached to stroke her cheeks dry. She yanked her head away.

“I don’t have a mask to serve as the cross I bear, Erik. But I do have my own burdens.”

Erik crossed his arms. He knew whatever she was about to say; it was going to hit him between the eyes.

“I get through this manhunt knowing you’d never shove me aside when I was through being useful. I never had a place to run to when I felt afraid and I never had two people in love with me, Erik. You do.”

He unfolded his arms. They hung at his side as he watched Anna wither as a violet plucked too soon.

“And, I don’t want you to have us both. Leave.”

“No.”

“Leave, now.”

Erik dug his nails into his palms until the veins surfaced on the back of his hands. “No.”

“You don’t love me. You love her. Now, leave.”

Without warning his arm arched out, releasing his confusion the bedside table. The basin clanged to the floor, dousing the linens with water. Anna cursed his temper, but already his emotions were too scrambled in his head to hear her.

“I do love her, damn you! There was to be our wedding at the Madeleine. I wrote the Kyrie and composed our nuptial mass. Our wedding,” Erik shouted, “was to be the end of my miserable life and that end never came. You showed up and interrupted everything I knew to be true! Music consumes my life. I see it in everything. I hear music in every passing whisper.” Erik bent down and snatched a piece of broken porcelain. He shook it at her. “I wrote Madrigals because of the packages you left for me. Packages I never would have opened if not for Philippe de Chagny’s blasted matchmaking! Of all things I can compose, I wrote Madrigals.” Erik launched the shard into the far wall hoping it would break into as many pieces as were in his emotions. It bounced off the wall. “No instruments. Just voices, like the damn noise in my mind, manipulated to laugh, cry, and scream. Like I wished to do. I wanted to write a new life and write out of the old. Create a new beginning because of those blasted packages.”

A vice had clamped around his head. Still, when he looked at her, she had a way of calming the sounds that were turning a crank to his temples. Blinking away the pain, he watched with sickening dread as Anna shook her head.

“You can start anything over, Erik, anyone can. But you do have to do it like a normal man. The rest of the world needs to learn from their mistakes and so do you. Go. Leave me alone.”

“No,” Erik reached toward her despite the distance now between them. “Do not send me away. Do not take me from my baby. The only thought keeping me from plunging into the abyss of madness was returning and taking him from you, but I am not complete without you both.”

Anna staggered backward. Her eyes had gone wide. “You were going to take the baby?”

“I did not want to be rejected again. I was secure and in control at that theater, and I am in control of nothing anymore.” As Anna took another step further away he punched his frustration in the air with his fist. “This manhunt is. Something I cannot control dictates every move I make! I need to control!” He closed his eyes, allowing the confusion to consume him. “You have had all the power in this and never has a woman had such command over me. I wanted what I thought was solely mine, so I could return to the pathetic life I understood and do so without being so alone.”

“I don’t recognize you anymore.”

“Anna, it was a twisted moment between man and madman! I prepared to leave all of humanity behind again, and there was no way I was going to leave my child behind to be rejected by anyone. Let alone leave him with a woman I thought was rejecting me.” It sounded absurd to his ears as he stood there and realized more how twisted his thoughts had been. Erik’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Yet, I was the one doing the rejection.”

“Where did my Erik go?” she hollered back. “My Erik wouldn’t think to hurt me in that way! Who are you?”

Something inside him snapped. His breath poured back into his lungs, hot and fast. He spoke as quickly as his strides did, backing Anna toward the door. “Erik is the Phantom of the Opera and will never be only your Erik! Erik is not a normal man! Erik does not want you and Christine.” A quiet shock rose behind the blue of her eyes.

“Slow down, right now, and breathe.”

The gentle warning, given in the same tone as she had in times past stunned him back to sanity. Erik stared at the pools of her eyes, taking note of the damage he’d done to her reflecting behind them.

“I do not want you and Christine. I want you and my child. You must believe that.” Erik slid his ring from his pinky finger and studied it for a moment. Nothing could erase how he had yanked it off of Anna’s hand not so long ago, but he knew he’d die trying. “I am a prisoner of my mind. There are things I will never escape. There are things I will never stop questioning or believing I am.” Erik looked from the ring to her eyes. She stared at him as steadily as his heart beat. “I do not recognize your God, and in the eyes of any normal man, we are not wed. But I will tell you one last time: I am not normal.” He rolled the ring between his fingers. “I wore this so I could believe in the illusion that I would have someone to love someday.” He took her left in his and slid his ring back onto her finger. The water that now grew in her eyes had him fighting the lump in his throat. “You are my beginning, my end, my ability and my love. You, Anna, are my heartbeat—my Madrigal. You lift me out of darkness. Please, teach me how to find the light.”

Anna responded by pressing his palm across her belly. Erik’s lips slipped open as he laid both hands on the movement in her womb.

“Mon Dieu.” Erik sank to his knees. With a press here and a nudge there, he explored the life below his fingers, delighting as it reacted to his every move. His lips formed silent words of wonder. Erik almost didn’t feel Anna removing his mask. He looked up to see her staring down at him.

“This is our baby,” she said. “He can feel you. He can hear you. I want this child to grow knowing the man that created him. Not a Phantom, the man.” Anna entwined a hand over his. “You’ve hurt me in a way you’ll never understand, and that won’t go away overnight, but you’re the only future I ever want to know.”

He knelt for a long while at her feet, like an obedient beast or a repentant priest, his eyes downcast and his forehead resting against the life that had long since settled down. Erik slowly looked up to gaze into Anna’s eyes. She stayed rooted to her spot for as long as he needed her to and cocked her head in that curious way of hers that questioned him without words.

Rising, he was not confident as to if her focus was with him or dwelling on the words they had let fly. He raked aside the hair that hung in her face. He cocooned her cheeks with his palms and kissed her, artfully whispering her name over and over. He controlled the resonance in his voice, making her buckle at the knees. She breathed deeply against his warmth and gave in, opening for him so he could kiss her deeper. Erik probed and explored her sweet recesses as if it was their first kiss all over again.

She shoved away, her hand flying suddenly to the blush on her cheeks. “Erik, no.”

“Anna?”

“I can’t. I see you with her. I see you holding her and kissing her and I can’t, not now. I love you, but right now I need—”

“What Anna?” That tone in her voice sent the music in his mind scrambling in unorganized notes. He panicked. Were words not enough? The idea he might still lose her tied a noose around his heart. “What do you need?” She didn’t reply. The noose yanked tighter. Erik pawed at her shoulders, wrinkling the fabric of her dress. “Tell me.” He fought for her lips again. She squirmed away. “Anna, what I am to do?”

Dread, heavy as an iron curtain, lowered upon him as Anna stared at the floor. He slid his hands over his exposed face, his fingers brushing his paper-thin face and ridges of his skull. He locked his hands behind his neck and pressed his elbows to his ears attempting to drown out her soft tears. He may never experience the glory of her kiss again.

What had he destroyed?

“I need that apology.” Her voice shook with a passion he’d never heard before. “In just this one thing, I need you to be more man than madman.”

She was asking the impossible. Man and madman had been intertwined with him for so long there was only one way to untangle them…

Erik cradled his violin like the child he’d never have. Candlelight ebbed in and out of his consciousness as the thought washed him away into sweet and dizzying oblivion.

The rocks scraped his back as his knees gave way and he slid down the wall. His grip slackened, and the needle he held fell from his hand leaving in its wake the lopsided sound of metal rolling away on stone. His eyes were heavy, and by the time he landed on the floor, the tantalizing arms of sleep were beckoning to him. He was yanked back to consciousness every time his mind floated off on the waves luring him closer to the drug’s effects until the cycle repeated. Eventually, he couldn’t feel the rise and fall of his chest. He felt nothing, and nothing—was sweet.

The pull of his past disappeared into the blackness, snuffed out like a pathetic flame too weak to survive. The fearful shouts that once greeted him whenever he dared to go were nothing more than a cotton-stuffed memory. No battles were waging in his mind between music and madness. To not see the horror in the eyes of man, to not be rejected or denied, but to finally be accepted in an oasis of peace—was sweet.

Most of all, he didn’t long for the scent of a woman. He had no desire for Christine.

Erik fumbled with one deadened hand, reaching across his violin in attempt to find his opposite arm.

Beautiful Christine. She had returned to bury him, only to bury the body the stranger had laid out as him instead. Erik’s breath shuddered with the memory of her whimpers as she had struggled with the shovel. That is until the drug took over and he was floating once again.

He groped for the ring on his pinky finger feeling dirt still caked around it. She had buried the skeleton with the wedding band he wore now. The same band he had given her before she left him. Erik couldn’t bear to see it disappear for eternity with an anonymous corpse.

The grave she had dug was shallow—haphazard. She had seemed more frightened than anything. His stranger was right—she did love the Vicomte de Chagny more than him.

No matter. His death had been faked, and, with nothing left to live for Erik could die as well. Running his hands up and down the violin, he hugged the only things that loved him: music and solitude.

Numb fingers could barely feel the edges of his mask as he struggled to remove it. Better to greet Death without it. They were, after all, old friends. The mask dropped to the floor as the world slowed around him.

Death must be soon. Chills doused him, rushing down his body before heat made his painfully cold hands alive with pins and needles. He suffocated one second and then gasped for air in the next. Death’s grip was twirling him around like the mist on his lake.

Then Death cried out his name.

What a sweet sound.

“You sorry son-of-a-bitch! You fucking, sorry, son-of-a-bitch!”

The voice was so piercing; so alive with fury it nearly shattered his eardrum. It grabbed his sweet oblivion and ripped it to shreds. Erik took an enormous gasp of breath, one that made his lungs sharp as glass. Icy water ran off him, puddling on the floor.

“I waste the better part of my time on you and—you fucking son-of-a-bitch!”

Erik barely had a chance to think before water rammed up his nose, choking him. His eyes flew open as he choked on water and jerked against the hand forcing his head deeper below the murky surface. Seconds later he was staring up at the ceiling, coughing up the acrid water stripping his throat raw. Whatever held him prisoner finally released its grip. Erik scrambled away from the shores like a demented animal terrified of drowning. Flat on his back, he couldn’t get air in his lungs fast enough. He barely had a chance to think before a needle was shoved in his face.

“How much of this did you take?”

The stranger stood over him, dripping wet, his eyes like that of a wild man.

“Answer me, Maestro!”

A slap stung Erik’s chilled flesh, rocking his face sideways. The man aimed to strike again, but Erik blocked the blow.

“Good,” the stranger growled, thrusting the needle aside and grabbing Erik’s collar. “Fight me. Fight back and get this poison out of your system.”

“Release me!”

“Pardon, Maestro? I didn’t hear you.”

“Unhand me!” All the hatred he could summon bled past Erik’s waterlogged lips. The stranger’s forearm pinned his throat to the ground, mangling his next protest.

“Make. Me.”

His stranger’s sweet smelling breath was warm against his face. The last things Erik saw were the small black pricks of his irises before grabbing the stranger’s throat and slamming the side of his head against the floor. Getting to his feet, Erik staggered as his uninvited guest followed suit.

In a violent drug induced rage, Erik attacked.

Furniture splintered into pieces as Erik tackled the stranger into a chair. He felt the pop the man’s shoulder as their bodies hit the stone. His agonized cry vibrated against Erik’s face, but limited attempts were made to fight back.

“That’s it,” the stranger rumbled instead. “Work it out of your body any way you can.”

Erik silenced him with one crack of his fist against the side of that perfect face. Blood splattered across the floor. The stranger attempted to roll out of the way of Erik’s oncoming kick, but it collided with his side. A bone broke, its sickening crunch of vibrating up Erik’s leg. As he prepared to deliver a deathblow against the man’s face, the room spun in dizzying colors. Both Erik’s knees hit the ground simultaneously as that peaceful sensation rolled over him once more.

“No you don’t!” his stranger yelled.

Erik heard the man’s ragged breathing somewhere near him, but from where he couldn’t tell. All he wanted to do was press his face against the cold stone and sleep.

“You can want to give into that bloody drug all you have to. I might be an aristocratic, arrogant bastard, but I’m not about to let you die.”

Erik’s face met the water again as Death’s grip faded away.

Hours might have passed or simply seconds and Erik wouldn’t have known. His eyes fluttered open for what seemed like the millionth time. As he stared up at the ceiling, he couldn’t recall the music in his mind ever including timpani. He lay on the floor for several minutes pressing his unmasked face against the stone as he tried to calm his pounding head. Eventually, Erik hauled himself to his feet and swayed as he tried to make sense of time and space.

Across the room, his stranger huddled in a corner, his immaculate evening dress muddled. The only concept of the passing time Erik had were the stranger’s clothes—part light, part dark as it slowly dried. Once red blood, now turned brown, soiled the man’s white shirt and vest, One eye was swollen shut, and the color on his face the deepest shade of purple Erik had ever seen.

“Ah. Mr. Mephistopheles is awake,” the stranger grated through swollen lips. One of his arms hung limp and useless. “Oh joy, oh rapture.”

Each step Erik took threatened to shoot vomit up his throat. He collapsed onto his organ bench. “What happened?”

“I saved your sorry ass a second time. Suicide is a coward’s way out. You disappoint me, Maestro.”

Erik rubbed his hand down his face, staving off the memory of that once sweet oblivion. “Why did you do that?”

“I’ve been awake all night asking myself the same damn question, yet my virtues get in my way. I really need to rid myself of them.” The man coughed causing him to clutch at his side. “Any life is too precious to throw away, even one as vile as yours.”

“You should have let me die.”

“But I didn’t. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

“What?”

“Are you going to wallow and moan about your mistakes in life or pick yourself out of the mess?”

The stranger struggled to his feet and unceremoniously swiped his hair away from a sweaty brow. He looked like a drunkard making his way out of a bar-fight.

“You did this because of her didn’t you?” the stranger demanded once he stopped swaying. “You’re pathetic.”

Erik pinned him with his eyes before pivoting on the organ bench to turn his back to him. The man already looked near death. Another comment like that and Erik would push him over the edge of it.

“I prove that she loves another man, so you roll over and decide to die? When are you going to realize she’s not the be all and end all? That maybe there is something else out there worth living for? Dare I say someone else? Why do you think I offered to assist in faking your death and covering for you?”

Erik curled his lip and did his best not to leap up and twist the man’s head off. Erik turned. “Because you are a mere rat who wandered uninvited into my maze.”

The stranger stumbled. For a moment, Erik thought the fool would pass out without any aid.

“You really have no concept of how long I’ve been a part of your charade do you?” the stranger said.

Erik squinted, watching the man dab at his swollen lip, and tried to make sense of his rambling.

“How you went from the Opera Ghost to such a madman is beyond me. You used to be reserved. You’re a criminal and extortionist, granted, but at least you were a quiet one. But maybe, just maybe there’s a ray of light somewhere. When was the last time you tried to find hope outside of Christine?”

Erik shifted at the mention of that name struggling to stay stuck to the organ bench.

“You’re a genius. An unparalleled genius and you squander it. Perhaps you should have some faith that men can look beyond the atrocities you’ve committed and see what good you could achieve if given a chance.”

Erik watched the man grab furniture for balance as he wobbled across the room.

“Someday, Maestro, if you let it, all this is going to be overlooked, and the world will stand up to recognize you.”

“Like you?” Erik sneered. “You, yourself can barely stand upright in my presence.”

The stranger gestured as if wiping something disgusting away. Air rolled over his tongue. “I give up. Do what you want. Be a coward, be a Phantom, be whatever you damn well want. I’ve done all I can. I’m sick and tired of roaming these damn cellars for you.”

“And whose fault is that? No one invited you here to begin with!”

“Yours! I’m sick and tired of dragging unsuspecting people away from these vaults in that blasted, stupid costume! It has been too long for me, far too long. I’ve destroyed relationships in the process and driven myself insane because of you.”

The stranger had made it to the organ bench, and for a moment Erik thought he was going to land on the pedal board nose first. Instead, he stopped before the organ pipes and scrutinized his purple jawline and puffed lip in the polish.

“Look at me.” The stranger’s voice sounded like sandpaper against rusty metal. “How am I going to explain this? I’ll have to go with some sort of mugging. That should keep them from questioning my whereabouts.”

“Them?”

Erik arched his brow and watched as the man gathered items out of a coat draped on a nearby chair. A pocket watch and billfold landed with a thump on the organ bench. The stranger grumbled loudly, fumbling one handed to remove a crucifix and religious medallions from his neck. Erik tilted his head as the man kissed the cross before laying it reverently down on the billfold. The small pile grew to a gleaming stash of wealth. Eventually, the stranger paused, struggling to remove an ornate signet from the ring finger of his left hand. The motion of yanking it off must have caused a raging pain down his arm, for he doubled over and cursed. Painful sounding huffs filled the seconds that ticked by next, before the stranger finally slapped it down on the organ bench.

“Just one more thing to add to the illusion of a mugging, if you will.” He limped from the organ and toward the drawing-room door, where beyond lay the shores of the lake. “Random acts of kindness, Maestro, come in all shapes and sizes. I, unfortunately, was yours so deal with it. But be forewarned.”

Erik had no doubt the man was raving mad as he watched him pick up a candlestick and throw it through the open door. The sound of the splash as it landed scarcely lasted longer than the man’s groan. The stranger pointed toward the water.

“When you toss out a random act of kindness it creates ripples that reach outward until they hit the shores and come back at you. What are you going to do when that happens? Ignore it, or act like a man?”