Read Chapter 5: First Rehearsal

The rehearsal room stank of dust and varnish. Élodie stood at the center of the chalk-marked stage, Delacroix’s crumpled score in her trembling hand. The theater was empty—no orchestra, no audience, just the hollow promise of a future that might never come.

“From the top,” Delacroix called from the wings, his voice thin and tight. “Act two, your entrance. *Mira, o Norma*.”

She breathed in. The aria swelled in her chest, but before she could release the first note, a sound drifted from the darkness beyond the stage—a lullaby, soft and low, carried by a woman’s voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Élodie’s lips parted. The music wrapped around her like silk, ancient and gentle. A melody she had never heard, yet somehow knew in her bones. She forgot Delacroix. Forgot the chalk marks. Forgot Norma entirely.

The lullaby urged her forward. One step. Then another. Her feet carried her past the footlights, past the dusty curtains, until she stood at the edge of the orchestra pit, staring into the abyss where shadows pooled like water.

“Élodie!”

Julien’s voice cut through the spell. She blinked, disoriented, finding herself inches from the pit’s edge. The lullaby stopped. The silence rang in her ears.

Delacroix stormed onto the stage, his face pale. “You missed your cue. Completely. I called you four times.” He glanced toward the darkness, and something flickered in his eyes—fear, or recognition. “What did you hear?”

“A lullaby,” she whispered. “A woman singing. It was—” She shook her head, trying to find words. “It was like she was calling me.”

Delacroix’s mouth tightened. He looked at Julien, who had climbed onto the stage from the house, his toolbox abandoned in the aisle. The restorer’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes were sharp.

“We need to talk,” Delacroix said. “Both of you. My office. Now.”

---

The office was small, crammed with ledgers and old programs, the walls papered with decades of forgotten performances. Delacroix poured himself a glass of something amber and did not offer them any.

“The lullaby,” he said, settling behind his desk. “You’re certain it was a woman’s voice?”

“Yes. And it was *old*. Not in the sound itself, but in the melody. I’ve never heard it before, but it felt—” Élodie hesitated. “It felt like it was written for me.”

Delacroix stared at her for a long moment. Then he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a worn leather journal, its spine cracked with age. Vautour’s ledger, the one he had given her. But Delacroix had his own.

He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. “My grandfather documented everything about that night. The night Céleste Aubry vanished.” He turned the journal toward them. “The time was recorded precisely. The police arrived at midnight. The stagehands claimed she had been there at eleven. Her dresser said she left the dressing room at ten forty-five to go onstage for the final act. She never arrived.”

Julien leaned in, scanning the yellowed page. “And the lullaby?”

“Not mentioned. But there’s something else.” Delacroix traced a finger down the cramped handwriting. “The stage manager’s notes from that night. He wrote that at eleven o’clock, the entire company heard a woman singing backstage. Not from the stage. From *offstage*. A melody none of them recognized. It lasted exactly three minutes. Then silence.”

Élodie’s breath caught. “Three minutes. The lullaby I heard—it couldn’t have lasted longer than that. I don’t know how I know, but it felt *complete*. Like it reached a natural end.”

“And what time is it now?” Julien asked, his voice low.

Delacroix glanced at the grandfather clock against the wall. “Eleven twenty.”

“But it started at eleven,” Élodie said. The pieces clicked together with terrible clarity. “Every time I’ve heard the phantom rehearsal—the chorus, the Casta Diva, the lullaby—it’s been at eleven. I thought it was coincidence. I never checked the time.”

Julien moved to the window, staring out at the Paris night. “It’s not coincidence. It’s a ritual. Whatever happened to Céleste Aubry happened at eleven o’clock. A century ago tonight, at this very hour, she was standing on that stage. And now, every night, twenty-one hundred miles away in time, she’s still living that moment.”

“Or dying in it,” Delacroix muttered.

The words hung in the air like smoke. Élodie thought of the chair scraping inside the locked dressing room. Of the soprano’s line breaking mid-music, desperate and raw. Of the lullaby pulling her toward the pit’s edge.

“She’s not reliving it,” Élodie said slowly. “She’s *rehearsing* it. Practicing. Like she knows something is coming and she has to be ready.”

Delacroix set down his glass. “Ready for what?”

“For the final act. Norma’s final act.” Élodie pulled the locket from beneath her blouse, the silver warm against her skin. The photograph of Céleste smiled up at her, eternal and unknowable. “The inscription says ‘To my song. Until the last act.’ What if the last act hasn’t happened yet? What if she’s been waiting here, rehearsing every night, because her story was never finished?”

Delacroix’s face went gray. “If that’s true—” He stopped, swallowing hard. “If that’s true, then the demolition isn’t just the end of this theater. It’s the end of her. Whatever she’s waiting for, whatever she needs to finish—if we tear this place down, she’ll never get her final act. She’ll be silenced forever.”

The clock ticked. Eleven twenty-two.

“Then we don’t let them tear it down,” Julien said quietly. “We find out what she’s waiting for—and we help her finish it.”

Delacroix laughed, bitter and hollow. “You’re talking about solving a century-old mystery with three months to go. Do you have any idea how many people have tried? Scholars, mediums, journalists. They all came looking for Céleste Aubry. They all left with nothing.”

“They didn’t have her,” Élodie said, holding up the locket. “And they didn’t have me.”

A long silence stretched between them. Then Delacroix stood, crossing to a filing cabinet in the corner. He unlocked it with a key from his vest pocket and pulled out a folder, yellowed and brittle.

“My grandfather left this too. I’ve never shown it to anyone.” He handed her the folder. Inside, she found a single photograph—a man in formal evening wear, seated in a private box. The Box One of the old opera house, with its gilded rail and velvet curtain. His face was partially obscured by shadow, but there was something familiar about the set of his shoulders, the way he held his program.

“Who is he?” Élodie asked.

“That’s the mystery. Grandfather wrote that he was seen with Céleste the night she vanished. They were seen arguing outside her dressing room. No one knew his name. No one ever saw him again.” Delacroix’s finger hovered over the photograph. “But here’s the thing. Before he came to the theater that night, he had one conversation with my grandfather. He asked him a single question.”

“What question?”

Delacroix met her eyes. “He asked if the theater had a crypt. A place where someone could be buried beneath the stage.”

The floor seemed to tilt beneath Élodie’s feet. Julien swore softly. The photograph trembled in her hand—not from fear, but from something deeper. A certainty that had been building since the first ghostly note joined her audition.

“She’s not haunting the theater,” Élodie said, her voice barely above a whisper. “She’s buried in it. And she’s been trying to tell us where to dig.”