Chapter 1

Christine looked up at the balcony again. She saw a shadow there, but it didn't move. She'd thought it was the curtain at first, but the shadow seemed to be standing just behind it.

"Hello? Is someone up there?"

No one answered, and the shadow remained still.

She knew there were other people working in the theatre, but she didn't like the idea of some unknown person watching her work. She stared up at the figure a moment longer, then went back to taking her measurements.

The managers had promised they'd have a renovated stage for the new season, but that promise had fallen through. Again. Now she was stuck yet another season designing sets for a stage that needed to be at least five feet longer and ten feet wider. She knew it was a money issue, but she couldn't help feeling bitter.

"Stupid managers. What do they know about the arts?" she murmured.

She heard a man laugh softly somewhere behind her. She turned around, thinking she'd see one of the new grips getting a good look at her ass, but no one was there. When she turned back to the balcony, she noticed the shadow was gone.

Someone had been standing up there.

"Hello?"

"He won't answer you. Not yet," said a voice behind Christine.

She sighed as she turned to the dance mistress. "Who won't, Madame Moncharmin?"

"The theatre ghost. He will reveal himself when he is ready to do so."

"This isn't Paris, Madame. We don't have ghosts wondering the corridors here in America."

Madame Moncharmin smiled. "Every theatre has a ghost, and it is bad luck to deny their existence. This is New England. Is it not the most haunted part of America? Tell me I am wrong."

Christine knew she couldn't. "It has more ghost stories, yes. It's older, and the buildings have been around longer. But that's all it has, stories and old buildings."

"I can't make you believe me. That will be up to him."

Christine had grown tired of the stories, which she'd been hearing off and on for five years, and she really did have work to do. "Is he cute? Because if he isn't, I'm not interested."

Madame Moncharmin's face stiffened as she frowned at Christine. "I don't know what he sees in you, or why he has never appeared to you in the years since you came to work here, but something in you has touched him. Please don't say such hurtful things again." She turned on her heels and walked away.

Unsure what to think, Christine stared after her. Madame Moncharmin possessed a fierce temper, but in this case, she had seemed genuinely hurt by what Christine had said, as if it made her sad instead of angry. Christine had grown accustomed to the superstitions of the theatre, but the dance mistress certainly took them to extremes.

Sighing, she pulled the clip out of her long black hair, shook it out, then started to put it up again. She had a lot to get done and the curls kept getting in her face.

She jumped when she felt something tug on her hair. She did a complete circle, hoping to see who had done that, but there was no one, and she wasn't close enough to anything that could have caught her hair.

It hadn't really felt like a tug though. It had felt like someone running their fingers through the ends of her hair. She quickly finished securing her hair in the clip and picked up her tape measure. She wasn't going to let Madame Moncharmin or any of the other members of the company spook her into believing in ghosts.

Christine shone her flashlight up as high as she could. She saw there were at least five backdrops hanging quite a way out of her reach. Based on the inventory, she knew one of the company's original backdrops for Mozart's Don Giovanni hung among them. The opera had been staged twenty years ago, so the backdrop might be useless, but she wanted to at least get a look at it.

The whole theatre buzzed with gossip because of what had happened during that production. The young singer playing Don Giovanni had been crushed when the lights above him had crashed to the stage right in the middle of opening night. The season had ended then, and the manager had left, claiming the theatre was cursed. The theatre had stayed closed for five years before new investors were found and a new company was put together. Madame Moncharmin was the only original employee to return.

Christine shook her head. Shouldn't the tragedy have attracted people? Most people had a macabre fascination with tragedies, and a haunted theatre seemed like a pretty nice tourist attraction to Christine.

"Silly people. There's no such thing as curses or ghosts."

She took one last look toward the rafters before turning away, but a movement made her stop. The backdrops swayed as though a breeze was blowing across them. As she stood frozen, she realized that one of them was being lowered. When she saw the flames at the bottom of it, she knew it was the very backdrop she'd come to find. She backed up, almost afraid it might fall on her. She realized the backdrops hadn't moved because of a breeze. They'd moved because someone had passed by on the catwalk behind them, and now that person was lowering the one from Don Giovanni.

She waited until the backdrop was just above the ground before she spoke, not wanting to startle the person lowering the massive cloth down to her.

"Who's up there? Can you come down and help me?"