Read Chapter 24: Stepping into the Light

The dressing room smelled of dust, roses, and terror.

Élodie stood before the cracked mirror, her hands shaking as she fastened the last button of Céleste's costume—the reconstruction Julien had labored over for weeks, copied from faded photographs found in the theater archives. The ivory silk clung to her like a second skin, and beneath it, the locket burned warm against her sternum.

Behind her, the gold chain lay coiled on the vanity like a sleeping snake. She hadn't put it there.

"What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out?" she whispered.

Julien appeared in the doorway behind her reflection, his shirt untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He'd been running cables all day, his hair a disaster of dust and sweat. He didn't laugh. "Then I'll sing for you."

"You'd clear the house in seconds."

"Exactly. They'd leave, you'd regroup, and everyone would blame me. I'm the perfect scapegoat." He stepped closer, resting his hands on her shoulders. "You've done this a thousand times, Élodie. This is just one more."

"Except the last time I performed publicly, I cracked on the high C in act two and was replaced by a woman who lip-synced her way through the entire tour." She closed her eyes. "I hear the music too loud tonight. The phantom chorus is warming up backstage."

Julien was quiet for a moment. "Do you hear them now?"

She listened. The theater hummed around them—the distant murmur of an audience taking their seats, the creak of the ancient fly system, and beneath it all, that other sound. Voices without bodies. Notes without breath. She heard the ghost chorus warming up, a tide of sound just below the threshold of hearing, like blood moving through a heart.

"Yes."

Julien squeezed her shoulders. "Then let them sing with you tonight. Maybe that's not a curse. Maybe it's a gift."

A knock at the door made them both jump.

Mademoiselle Delacroix entered without waiting for permission. She was dressed impeccably, as always, in a severe charcoal suit, her sharp face framed by silver hair. A thin smile played on her lips as she took in the scene.

"Miss Marchand. How theatrical." She gestured to the costume. "And the make-up. Very tragic heroine. I do hope you won't need it for the role."

"What do you want?" Élodie asked, too on edge for pleasantries.

Delacroix's smile didn't waver. She produced a folded document from her jacket. "The final lease transfer papers. I thought I'd bring them myself, as a courtesy, so that Édouard can sign after tonight's performance and we can all move forward." She paused. "Assuming, of course, the theater is still standing by then."

"It will be," Julien said flatly.

"So I've heard. It's funny." Delacroix tucked the document away, her eyes drifting over the room's cramped corners. "I hear voices in this old place. Must be the acoustics. Or perhaps the stress of the event." She gave Élodie a look sharp enough to draw blood. "I do hope you're not too stressed, dear. A performer's mind can play terrible tricks when she's overtired. I'd hate for you to... hear things that aren't there."

She left with a rustle of silk and a click of the door.

Élodie exhaled. "She knows."

"She suspects," Julien corrected. "There's a difference. And what's she going to do about it? Tell everyone the theater is haunted? Not exactly great for her chances of getting the deed at a discount." He tilted his head. "You let me worry about her. You focus on the stage."

The house lights dimmed. Somewhere overhead, the grand chandelier Julien had repaired sparked to life, casting a warm glow that made the old theater feel almost alive again.

Élodie walked to the wings, her heart hammering against her ribs. The audience beyond the heavy curtain was a shapeless murmur, somewhere between anticipation and boredom. They had no idea what they were about to hear. The lost opera of Céleste Laurent, reconstructed from fragments of memory and half-burned scores, performed for the first time in a century.

And she had no idea if she could still sing.

The overture began. The small orchestra Julien had assembled—students and veterans, friends of friends—struck up the opening phrases. Élodie knew the notes by heart. She'd been rehearsing nonstop for three days, stumbling through the passages Julien had pieced together, filling the gaps where Céleste's score had crumbled to ash.

But in the room, in the dark, before an audience of investors and creditors and skeptics...

Her voice failed.

The breath wouldn't come. Her throat closed. The stage lights swam before her eyes, and she gripped the curtain so hard her knuckles went white.

*I can't. I can't.*

The ghost chorus swelled behind her, louder than it had ever been. Vague figures shimmered in the darkness of the wings—the tenor who had vanished in 1923, the chorus girl who'd fallen from the catwalk in 1931. They turned to her, their spectral faces expectant.

And then, beneath them all, a voice she knew. Warm and rich and unmistakably human.

*Little bird.*

The ghost of Céleste Laurent stepped out of the shadows. Not the emaciated specter of the crypt, not the screaming apparition that had hurled Laure from the stage. This Céleste wore a gown of silver-blue, and her face was almost kind.

*You were not made for fear,* she said, and the words felt like hands cupping Élodie's cheeks. *I was not made for silence. Sing for me, and I will sing for you.*

The ghost opened her mouth, and the first note rose—crystal and perfect, the exact pitch the lost score demanded. It wasn't a song without words; it was pure tone, pure shape, the architecture of the aria made audible.

Élodie's voice caught it. Like a hand catching a bead of water.

She walked onto the stage.

The lights hit her face. The audience was a dark blur beyond them. For one terrible moment, she was empty, hollow, paralyzed.

Then the ghost sang again, and Élodie's voice followed. The opening phrase rose out of her, clean and true, and she felt the warmth of Céleste's presence wrapping around her like a second skin. Not controlling her. Guiding her. Two voices in one breath.

*Let go,* whispered the ghost. *I've got you.*

Élodie let go.

The aria poured out of her—the lost lament of a woman who had loved and been betrayed, who had been silenced but refused to die. She sang the despair of the crypt, the fury of a century spent in darkness. She sang the hope of a new beginning and the terror of trusting someone else with your voice.

The theater held its breath.

When she hit the high C—the one that had cracked in her last public performance—her voice soared through it and past it. The audience erupted. The orchestra surged. Élodie felt tears tracking down her cheeks, hot and real.

And the ghost sang with her, a harmony no one else could hear.

For the first time in her life, Élodie understood what she was for.

The encore was deafening. Three curtain calls. Flowers thrown on stage, a cascade of pink and white roses that piled around her feet.

Élodie stood center stage, breathless, glowing. Julien watched from the wings, his face split by a grin so wide it looked like it hurt. Édouard Vautour had risen to his feet in the front row, applauding like a man released from a hundred-year sentence.

The phantom chorus had gone quiet.

For a moment, the theater felt peaceful. Clean. Almost new.

Then Élodie heard it—a note buried beneath the applause, so faint she might have imagined it.

A single voice, thinner than thread. Coming from the locked room at the end of the third-floor corridor.

The sealed room they had never managed to open.

And the voice was not Céleste's. It was a child's.