The concierge handed her into the cab, and smiled his thanks when the gratuity was the size he had hoped for.
Rose hardly noticed the congestion; surrounded by all the bustle of a busy city street, she felt oddly isolated, as if she were not entirely centered in the real world, as if only part of her rode to the Opera, and the rest of her was elsewhere.
The journey from the Palace Hotel to the Opera House was not a long one; soon enough, she descended from the cab to join the rest of the three thousand music-lovers fortunate enough to have tickets to hear the great tenor in his San Francisco debut.
She settled herself in Cameron's box and asked the usher to draw the curtains partway closed. Tonight she had no wish to see or be seen by anyone in the audience. In honest truth, she wanted most to be alone with her thoughts, but the isolation of her hotel room was not the kind of isolation that she craved.
She settled back as the house-lights went down, and the first strains of the famous overture rose from the orchestra.
But music did not have the usual effect of taking her out of herself or even of removing her from reality to that fairyland where the incredible events of a lifetime could pass in three or four hours. Not even Caruso's unbelievable voice could lift her spirits, even though the pudgy tenor seemed to grow in stature and nobility the moment he opened his mouth. He easily transformed from a fat little Italian with oily hair, to Don Jose, the noble soldier and tragic lover. Perhaps the problem was with his co-star, a Wagnerian soprano from Germany, normally found filling out the breastplate of a Valkyrie or donning the gold-horsehair braids of Elsa von Brabant. She was making her debut in the role of Carmen, and it was one she was ill-suited for. Instead of being transformed by the music as Caruso was, she seemed ill-at-ease in the role of the Gypsy temptress, as ill-at-ease as Rose herself was tonight. She switched her skirts as if she was chasing flies rather than trying to seduce Don Jose with a glimpse of leg and bosom. And as for the fight with the other cigarette girl—they looked like a pair of hausfraus squabbling ill-naturedly over a cabbage, rather than a pair of ill-bred Spanish cats ready to take knives to each other. The audience was as restless as she, and probably felt the same; when Caruso sang, a perfect hush filled the theater, but when the diva took the stage, she heard whispers, the rustle of programs, and other noises of inattention.
So at the interval, although Rose had enjoyed every note Caruso sang, she had not been distracted much from her troubles; certainly not as much as she had hoped to be.
When the lights came up for intermission, she decided to remain in her box rather than brave the crowd in search of champagne or milder drink. It seemed like far too much effort to squeeze through the mob just to obtain a single glass of indifferent wine or weak lemonade.
But a tap at the door of the box startled her, and she answered it before she thought. "Yes?" she called, revealing that the box did have an occupant.
The intruder took her tentative reply as an invitation, and opened the door.
She found herself facing a middle-aged man of relatively good looks; one whose figure suggested that he might be allowing good living to overcome the athletic physique of his youth. His dark hair was perfectly groomed, as was his small mustache. He was attired in perfectly-tailored evening-dress, and the cut of the suit suggested that the large diamond stickpin in his cravat was the genuine article and not paste.
He looks like some character out of an opera, but I cannot think who! Don Giovanni in modem dress, perhaps?
He held two glasses of champagne, and Rose was certain that he had mistaken her box for another.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Hawkins, but may I come in?" he said, disabusing her at once of the idea that this had been a mistake. "I hesitated to disturb you, but I had a perfectly good bottle of champagne and no one to share it with—and then I saw that you were occupying Jason's box, and hoped you might do me the favor of drinking half." He smiled, but it was a smile of confidence, rather than an ingratiating smile, as if he was quite certain of his welcome. "You see, it would be a very great favor. Half a bottle of champagne never hurt anyone, but to drink a whole marks one as quite the dissolute."
He apparently took her stunned silence for assent, and walked in, with an usher with a plated bucket of ice and the open bottle of champagne following behind. Before Rose knew what to say or do, the man had handed her a glass, given the usher a tip, and settled himself into one of the chairs opposite her. All of her old diffidence around a strange or powerful man had reasserted itself.
"I beg your pardon, I never introduced myself," the man said, acting as if he had all the right in the world to be there. "I am Simon Beltaire. I am not precisely a colleague of Jason Cameron's—more of—shall we say—a gentleman of his circle."
She found her tongue. "Oh, really?" she replied. She had hoped to make it sound sarcastic, but the words emerged weak and without intonation. Beltaire's black eyes glittered in a way she found both repellent and fascinating, she found it difficult to look away. How did he know who I was? That can't be exactly common knowledge—
"Jason and I share many, many interests," Beltaire continued, as she automatically sipped at the glass he had put into her hand. "More than you might think."
He managed somehow to draw her into conversation, although she could not imagine how; his probing questions prompted her to reveal more than she had intended to, and his eyes seemed to catch all of the available light as he spoke. She had never felt herself quite so maladroit at conversation before; she learned nothing of him, until their conversation lulled for a moment, and he sat back in his chair.
"I will be frank with you, Miss Hawkins," he said, finally. "Because I can see from what you have told me that Cameron has let you into more of his secrets than I had supposed. Many more. In short, he has trusted you with the reason why he needed your services."
"He has?" she replied inanely. "I can't imagine what you're talking about, sir—"
He waved his free hand in the air, dismissing her prevarication as precisely that. "Do not think you need to dissemble with me, Miss Hawkins. If he can trust you, why, so can I. You are probably wondering how it is I knew that you even existed, much less your name and your vocation, and your relationship to Jason." He leaned forward again and refilled her glass—a glass she did not recall emptying. "It is very simple. It is impossible for one Firemaster to keep many secrets from another."
His words sent an electric shock down her spine, riveting her to her seat. His next words shocked her even further.
"I know everything there is to know about his so-called 'accident' as well, Miss Hawkins. It was no accident that gave Jason Cameron the face—and the nature—of a wolf."
She had not even realized that the opera had started again, and the wild strains of the "Fate" theme served as an eerie punctuation to his words. The glass fell from her suddenly-numb hands to the carpeted floor, where it bounced without breaking, spilling its contents on the red wool beside her feet.