Master of the Opera, Act 5: A Haunting Duet Read Free Page B

glints of light and slanting shadows giving her face a witchy cast.
    Reluctant to startle her, Christine knocked on the window with a light tapping. Hally’s eyes opened, not seeing her at first, then sharpened, and she plucked the seat lever, springing herself upright. She rolled down the window.
    “Get in,” she hissed, though no one could possibly hear them. “We’ve got problems.”
    It felt odd to talk to someone from the regular world again. To be wearing her shirt and shorts and to sit in a car while Hally drove it down the road. Her body still pulsed from that last orgasm, her mind spinning from all she’d witnessed and learned, her heart brimming over with sticky-sweet emotion. She hummed a tune, the ancient melody part of it all.
    “What song is that?” Hally cocked her head like a bird, listening. “It seems so familiar.”
    “A really old one. But I don’t know the name. Names don’t matter anyway.”
    Hally slid her gaze over, the whites of her eyes catching the streetlights, then back to the road. “Hoookaaaayyy.”
    “What?”
    “You haven’t been smoking the peyote or anything, have you?—’cuz you’re acting pretty whacked.”
    Christine giggled, the giddiness spilling over, sparkling stars spilling through the darkness. “No. I don’t think any drug could induce what happened to me tonight.”
    “Jeez.” Hally shook her head. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
    “I wish you could.” Christine turned in her seat. “It was the most incredible experience, but I don’t think I could put it into words.”
    “Well, we don’t have time for it now, anyway. Time for you to sober up and deal with the non-numinous. Gritty reality awaits, chica .”
    “Where are we going?” Christine blinked as they passed Toma-sita’s, now closed for the night.
    “My place.” Hally sounded grim. “Hopefully they won’t look for you there again tonight.”
    “Who?”
    “Christy! Focus, would you?”
    “Christine.”
    “Huh?”
    “Call me Christine, okay?”
    The whites of Hally’s eyes gleamed again, this time as she rolled them. “Okay, fine, whatever, Miss I’m a Whole New Person.”
    “I feel like I am! I’ll call you Halcyon, if you want me to.”
    “Dear gods, please no.”
    “Why not? It means peace and tranquility, especially around the winter solstice. I looked it up.”
    “I’m perfectly aware of what it means.”
    “You’re that for me, an oasis of calm.”
    Hally pulled into a parking spot surprisingly close to her apartment, then dropped her forehead to the steering wheel. “We need to bring you down. I wonder if yogurt would work? I might have some acidophilus in the fridge.”
    Christine wrinkled her nose and got out of the car. “I don’t like yogurt.”
    “Well, it’s not as if you took mushrooms, anyway. Did you?”
    “Nope. I haven’t had anything.” She grinned. “Except the most phenomenal sex of my life.”
    “That explains a great deal.”
    Hally unlocked her apartment door, peering around the edge before she let Christine in. “A hot shower should ground you. Sorry I can’t offer you a glam sunken tub like Roman’s got. Make sure you get the mud out from under your nails, okay? The cops might wonder about that.”
    She looked at her hands. Lake mud was caked in nearly black crescent wedges under her fingernails. Hally was in the kitchenette, cooing a singsong to her kitties, giving them some extra supper.
    “The cops are looking for me?”
    Hally turned, propping a fist on her hip and leaning against the counter. “Aha! There’s a working brain in there, after all.”
    “Why are they looking for me?”
    The redhead suddenly looked exhausted. And worried. Not a good sign. “Go shower. Pull yourself together and we’ll talk. They’ve already questioned me once, so it’s entirely possible they’ll come looking for you here again. I would really rather you didn’t look like you’ve been crawling around in the bowels of the opera house when