Read Chapter 9: The Rival's Shadow

The announcement came at the start of Tuesday’s rehearsal, pinned to the callboard like a verdict. Élodie read it twice, the words blurring together: *Laure Bisset will perform the role of Marguerite in Friday’s preview*. Not “is cast.” Not “has been offered.” *Will perform.* As if it had already happened, as if Élodie’s name had never been in contention.

Laure materialized beside her, smelling of expensive perfume and smugness. “Oh, you saw. I thought Delacroix would have told you himself, but you know how he is—avoids confrontation.” She smiled, all porcelain teeth. “I’m sure you understand. The theater needs a sure thing, not a girl who hears ghosts.”

Élodie’s jaw tightened. “I don’t hear ghosts. I hear *her*.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, darling.” Laure swept past, snatching the lead score from the piano. “Watch and learn. This is how it’s done.”

The rehearsal was agony. Laure had a fine voice—crisp, trained, technically flawless—but there was no *ache* in it. When she sang Marguerite’s grief, she produced the correct tears, hit the correct notes, beautifully. Hollow. Élodie stood in the wings, clutching Céleste’s note in her pocket, her knuckles white around the paper. The ghost had sung with more soul in a single phrase than Laure summoned in an entire act.

But the ghost was silent today.

Élodie had arrived early, hoping for a whisper, a hint, *something* to prove she wasn’t losing her mind. Nothing. The theater had felt empty, cold, as if the presence had retreated somewhere unreachable. She tried not to take it personally.

Halfway through the second act, a sound cut through the orchestration—a high, thin *keening*, like a violin string tightening past its limit. The accompanist stopped, hands hovering over the keys. Laure faltered, turning to scan the wings.

“Sorry,” the accompanist said. “One of the stagehands must be tuning something upstairs.”

Laure cleared her throat, restarted her aria. The keening returned, louder this time, climbing toward a pitch that made Élodie wince. Laure missed her note entirely, her voice cracking.

“What *is* that?” Laure demanded, turning to Vautour, who sat in the front row taking notes.

Vautour lowered his pencil, his face unreadable. “Probably the pipes. This theater groans in its sleep. Continue.”

Laure resumed, visibly rattled. The keening swelled, then stopped abruptly when she sang the first phrase of the second verse—as if it was listening. Élodie watched from the wings, her heart accelerating. The ghost had never done this before, not during a rehearsal.

Then, without warning, there was a sharp *rip* of fabric. Laure gasped, clutching her dress. A tear had opened across the bodice, as if an invisible hand had dragged a blade through the silk. The corset beneath gleamed through the gap.

“My costume,” Laure hissed, her composure finally cracking. She looked wildly around the stage. “Who did that? Who’s there?”

Vautour stood, folding his program. “Costumes wear thin. The wardrobe will repair it. Take a break.”

Laure stormed offstage, skirts billowing, nearly colliding with Élodie. “Enjoying this? I know you’re behind the sounds—those strange recordings you keep playing in the dressing room.”

“I’m not,” Élodie said evenly. “I haven’t recorded anything.”

“Then it’s your little ghost friend,” Laure sneered. “Either way, you’ve cost me the performance. But the preview is Friday, and you won’t be on that stage. I will.” She pushed past, leaving the scent of her perfume and menace hanging behind her.

Élodie stood alone in the wings, listening to the echoes of Laure’s footsteps fade. Why had the ghost acted now? If Céleste wanted to help her, sabotaging her rival made sense. But the note had spoken of being *found*, not of petty theatrical revenge. The ghost had a purpose, and Élodie was beginning to suspect it wasn’t always aligned with hers.

She found Julien in the basement, where he had been cataloguing old rigging equipment. He looked up when she entered, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, a pencil tucked behind his ear. His face was dusted with plaster dust. He was infuriatingly handsome in the half light.

“I heard,” he said before she could speak. “Vautour told me about the casting. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not about me.” Élodie sank onto an overturned crate, suddenly exhausted. “It’s Laure. She heard the sounds. And her dress—it tore by itself. The ghost is acting out, Julien. I don’t know why.”

Julien set down the rope he was inspecting, his brow furrowing. “Acting out how? Protecting you?”

“If it was protecting me, it would have torn *her* dress during a performance, not a rehearsal. This felt… deliberate. Like a warning.” Élodie pulled the note from her pocket, smoothing it on her knee. “‘They will close the house and bury me again.’ What if the ghost knows we’re getting close? What if it’s trying to stop the rehearsal process so the theater won’t open?”

“Or it’s trying to stop *Laure* specifically.” Julien crouched beside her, his voice low. “Julien’s grandmother told me that Céleste was famously jealous of other sopranos. There’s a story—the director once cast a rival in her role, and Céleste’s voice was so powerful the rival lost her nerve and quit. Some say she cursed her.”

“We don’t know it’s a curse.” But Élodie couldn’t shake the feeling that the ghost’s actions were pointed. Laure had mocked her, and then Laure’s dress tore. It was too convenient.

“This note,” Élodie continued, tapping the paper. “This aria—‘The Last Breath.’ She must have meant something specific. What if it’s not just a song? What if it’s a clue to where she is? Delacroix said she performs at exactly 11 PM. That’s her vanishing hour. She’s stuck in a loop, reliving the moment she was taken. What if ending the aria—finishing the song—somehow breaks the cycle?”

Julien was silent for a long moment. Then he pulled his grandmother’s scrapbook from his bag. Élodie had asked to see it before, but he’d always claimed it was too fragile. Now he opened it carefully, revealing pages of yellowed newspaper clippings and handwritten annotations in a precise hand. On one page, a photograph of Céleste, radiant and young.

“My grandmother kept a diary,” Julien said. “This is what led me here. She wrote that on the night Céleste disappeared, she heard singing come from the stage after the theater had emptied. The same phrase, over and over. ‘The Last Breath.’ She said it sounded like a prayer.”

“Did she ever mention the man in Box One?” Élodie asked.

Julien’s jaw tightened. “She called him ‘the patron who came too often.’ But she never said his name. It was the only thing she refused to write down.”

Élodie looked at the photograph again. The man in Box One was visible in the background, a dark silhouette with only the suggestion of a profile. The partial name from the police file—*De*—clung to her mind like a splinter. *Deveraux? Delacroix?* Vautour’s family had been with the theater for generations.

She couldn’t ask him, not yet. But Julien had admitted his mission was personal, and Vautour had secrets of his own.

“We need to find where they buried her,” Élodie said. “The file said no corpse was ever recovered. But the ghost—she’s not lost, she’s *here*. She’s trapped. If the demolition closes the house, she’s gone forever.”

Julien’s hand brushed hers, the gesture accidental but electric. “Then we find her before Friday.”

Élodie looked up at him, the dust settling between them. The ghost keening had stopped, but she felt the weight of something watching. The theater had gone silent, as if holding its breath.

Then, from the stage above, a single voice rose—high and clear and achingly familiar. The opening phrase of the lullaby. Élodie’s blood went cold.

It was Laure’s voice, but not Laure’s voice. It was layered, doubled, a phantom harmony underneath. And it was singing *the wrong words*.

Not a lullaby. A warning.

*Beneath the boards, beneath the stone, the one you seek is not alone.*

The voice cut off abruptly, leaving only the sucking silence of the theater’s darkness.

Julien had gone pale. “That wasn’t Laure.”

“No,” Élodie whispered. “It was Céleste. And she just told us there’s someone else down there.”