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Regardless of the ghost’s arrival, rehearsal at the Paris Opera House began promptly at ten in the morning. Cora did her best work in the earliest part of the day, before the afternoon when the abbonés - seasonal subscribers to the Opera - began to wander into the foyer de la danse to observe the ballet dancers at practice. The feeling of being watched made Cora’s skin crawl, which, as she had been made aware of many times, was a ridiculous trait for someone who had been training for the ballet since the age of eight. It was different than facing the electric glare of the stage lights and the enormous, faceless auditorium, but it would have been futile to explain that to any dance master she had ever encountered.
Cora stretched, bringing her foot up and over the bar as she reached down to touch her ankle. All along the wall, the other dancers did the same, perhaps a little more languidly than usual. The dance master had sent them back for another warm-up, but had grown distracted speaking to one of the theatre managers.
On the other side of the foyer were the chaperones and patrons, sitting in somewhat mixed company. A few of the familiar patrons approached their favorites, either to simply admire or to exchange a few lines of conversation. The newer, less bold visitors went through the chaperones first. Luciana had been absent from among them for nearly a week now. She had traveled to the coast in response to a letter from a former colleague - the promise of work had been implied. Without Luciana to glance at, Cora didn’t realize that one of the abbonés was making his way towards her until he was halfway there.
“Might I interrupt - ?” the man said, and Cora hastily straightened herself. He held out his hand, and Cora returned it with hers automatically. “I simply had to say, your elegance is remarkable.”
“Thank you, monsieur…?”
“Monsieur Jean-Philippe Lebrun.”
Cora continued to hold her hand still as the man dipped his head over it. Altogether too familiar too soon, but… “Miss Cora Sabino y Ortega.”
“Ortega - a curious name in this part of the world. Are you of any relation to the writer?”
Oh, so this conversation was going to get worse. “My father, monsieur.”
“How fascinating!” M. Lebrun’s tone of voice made his authenticity clear. There was a certain streak of men who regarded her father as the unsung hero of the revolution - no revolution in particular, just the revolution. Cora had encountered some of them before. So far, they had all been disappointed that she wasn’t a direct vessel for her father. ”Truly, one of the most gifted writers and investigators of our age. But you know the great man, I am sure you are aware of far more than I - have you heard of his recent work in America?”
“I’m afraid our correspondence can be rare,” Cora said. Nonexistent, even. “He is very busy.”
“Of course, of course.” M. Lebrun drew closer, giving Cora a look that was not so much a leer as a casual inspection. Cora withdrew her hands, not sure where to put them; she settled for folding one over the bouffant flare of her skirt and placing the other on the bar. A signal that she was still working? Maybe. But an unfortunate decision nonetheless, as M. Lebrun reached out to lay his hand over hers. “Perhaps we might have a chance to have a longer discussion - dinner at a salon, say? There is a lovely - ”
The foyer de la danse wasn’t like the stage, the other location where the ballet rehearsed: there weren’t any convenient curtains or props to crash to the ground, or catwalks that echoed with strange footsteps. But the room shook nonetheless as some enormous object smashed against the left wall with an almighty thud, making a handful of girls shriek and the gentlemen shout. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors rattled in their casings, and M. Lebrun snatched his hand away from Cora’s wrist as he removed himself from her proximity; Cora had flinched back as soon as the impact hit. At least she hadn’t screamed this time.
She looked up, squinting as dust drifted down from the gold-painted ceiling. One of the murals of a smiling woman had a crack across her face. Honestly, she couldn’t blame all the company members who had decided the opera house was haunted - for a nonexistent spirit, the Opera Ghost had a striking sense of timing.
The rehearsal ended at nearly eight o’clock, and the yawning and aching dancers were dismissed to return to their apartments. But Cora didn’t go home; when she had redressed, she went further backstage, side-stepping the remaining staff members to slip into one of the individual dressing rooms.
The dressing room, unoccupied for the season, was dark and dusty. Cora nearly tripped over a chair someone - probably herself - had left overturned in the middle of the room. On the vanity, she found a lamp and matches. When lit, the lamp illuminated the large and ornate three-paneled mirror on the wall. Cora lifted it up, peering at the silvered glass. Then she rapped her knuckles on the glass sharply.
“Open up,” she said. “It’s just me, the cleaners are done with this hall.”
Silence. Then, something behind the mirror clicked, and the glass unhinged with a creak, swinging back into the dark to reveal a shadowy, cramped passageway. Cora held the lamp up, and the light it cast was just enough to catch a flicker of silver at the end of the corridor, vanishing around a corner.
“I have to do everything myself,” Cora said under her breath, and stepped into the mirror.
It was a long walk to the depths of the opera house. Cora traveled down narrow staircases and thinner, more neglected passageways. The drop in temperature and flush of dampness in the air was what told her that she had reached the level of the cistern. From there, her path turned decidedly away from the water, through an alcove that had been obscured with debris and opened into a series of chambers. Cora often wondered what would happen if someone came down here on a whim and took it into their head to explore the alcove - if they would be able to find the same chambers Cora always did, or if they would return at all.
Ampersand was waiting in the third chamber Cora ducked into. The lamplight reflected gold off of his pale hide and those enormous eyes caught the light and held it as his oblong head swiveled towards her. The overall effect was both like walking into a dragon’s lair and walking in on an enormous cat waiting to deposit a dead mouse in your lap. He didn’t have a properly draconic hoard, but he did have a few copies of La Citoyenne that Cora could bear to lend out, and several stacks of books, clockwork items, and other curiosities Ampersand had acquired from who knows where - she suspected the owners’ offices, where the shelves had been gradually growing bare. As of their most recent conversation, Ampersand was making leaps and bounds towards actually comprehending human literature. Whatever fantastical skill he used to put his voice in Cora’s ear with the prick of a needle didn’t give him the context or practice to understand most of the things humans wrote about.
“So what was the problem this time?” Cora said. She lifted her skirts as she crossed the dusty stone floor.
“There are many constraints in this habitat,“ Ampersand said, his dully metallic voice echoing in her right ear.
“You can turn invisible,” Cora said. “And walk through walls, seemingly, so I have no doubt you can manage within these constraints. Or you could leave the Opera.”
“This population center is…unpredictable.” Ampersand laced together his needle-tipped hands, flexing them like a fine cage of wires. “Navigation would be easier in another location. With the services of an interpreter.”
Her stomach flipped. “I…I couldn’t leave. Especially not now. My family needs the income, you know that.”
That got no response from Ampersand. Only a long, watchful look with those glittering eyes.
Cora’s pursuit of dancing had come about as the result of a musical inclination, exhaustive practicality, and a certain amount of poverty after her father’s permanent departure at age twelve. Achieving a contract at the Paris Opera had been her great success; her reluctant second ambition was to find a patron who wasn’t extremely unpleasant and didn’t mind a mistress who wasn’t the same slim-pretty type as the other girls. It was hard not to drift into resenting the dancers who garnered more of their attention, but they were all rats in the same gutter - or deer in the same hunt, to use a more accurate comparison.
And then one evening Cora had opened a closet and found a massive, unconscious monster inside, and now he was bent on sabotaging her.
With a sigh, Cora gave up, sitting down among the stacks of books. Her skirt was worn enough to withstand it. In a mirror to her Ampersand came to roost, body a flicker of serpentine movement as he reclined in a half circe around Cora; with his long neck she could still look him in the face. Eyes. Whichever.
“Those accidents could end up killing someone - one of the stagehands, or a dancer.” Like me, she wanted to add, if that would get the point across.
Ampersand’s eyes widened slightly, as they did every now and then. Cora had come to consider it loosely equivalent to the the same expression in humans. “My movements will not cause unintentional harm.”
“Still…be careful. Please.”
A long pause. Then a heavy little purse dropped into her lap, made of black velvet with a gold latch. Cora looked up at Ampersand without comment, brow furrowed, then opened the purse.
At a rough glance, it contained about ten thousand francs.
Cora closed the purse.
“Where did you get this?” she said, then immediately backtracked. “Who did you get this from? Ampersand, you can’t steal from the patrons - people will notice!”
“It was not stolen. It was given.”
As if that wasn’t worse. “Why? Did they see you?”
“Of course not. It was in payment.”
“Payment for what?”
A longer pause - evidently, Ampersand did not intend to answer that. Cora held the purse between her palms, almost afraid to let go. “…Thank you.”
“As my charge your physical caretaking is my responsibility. Financial compensation seems to be the most efficient method of furnishing this.”
“Thank you, anyway.” And should she thank him or curse him for that timely interruption this afternoon, Cora mused? Probably not. Reinforcement would be the last thing he needed. Besides, despite his tendency to keep a close eye on her, she doubted he was listening to her every conversation. He’d get bored far too quickly.
Ampersand lowered his head to look down at her more directly. “Do you consent to further contact?”
“Yes,” Cora said. Ampersand’s reptilian frame swayed forward, and Cora leaned back against his flank. He did not stroke her hair - part of his ‘emotional caretaking’ routine - but instead rested his head atop hers, a closer gesture. To her relief, he did not continue to press his suit about leaving the Opera. Cora sighed again. She should get up - sitting still for too long on the hard stone floor would make her ache, and she’d be missed if she took too long to return home, but…she could stay a little longer. Long enough to relax and, when Ampersand made one of his strange, brief requests, to sing a little. Just part of the aria from Act 3 that she’d heard in practice. One day, she thought, she’d get her hands on a guitar again and give him a real show. One day.
When Cora finally climbed out of the underground labyrinth into the Paris night, she was still turning over Ampersand’s parting words: another assurance that she was his charge, and that he took his caretaking of her seriously. She had gotten used to hearing him discuss her that way, but something in his repetition stuck in her mind: like an emphasis, or maybe a promise. But she doubted she was going to figure it out tonight, and so forgot it.