There are only two kinds of people who can drain your energy: those you love, and those you fear. In both instances it is you who let them in. They did not force their way into your aura, or pry their way into your reality experience.

How do you hate someone who pulled you from the brink of death, not once, but twice?

This can’t be a coincidence, and there’s no longer any doubt in my mind. I am in a horror story.

Maybe being here won’t be so bad after all… as long as I can avoid the music, the bloodthirsty diva duo, and the phantom’s shadow lurking around every corner.

He’d walked as a ghost in the gloomy bowels of this opera house for so long, darkness had become his brother, which was fitting, since his father was the night, and sunlight their forgotten friend.

He appears close to my age. The left half of his face stands out beneath the hood: one side of plump lips, one squared angle of a chin. Two coppery-colored eyes look back at me – bright and metallic. The sight makes me do a double take. As far as he is from the car, I shouldn’t be able to make out the color, yet they glimmer in the shadow of his cape, like pennies catching a flashlight’s glare in a deep well.