[b]Chapter 1[/b] [b]Paris, France, 1916[/b] KR-KR-KR-CHHHHHH! Faye ducked her head as lightning snaked across the Parisian sky. In the old days, she exulted in thunderstorms. Nature’s symphony, Da had always said. She and her father would sit on the porch of their little farmhouse and revel in the wondrous display of light and wind and rain. But, that was before… Now, storms meant cold and damp pouring onto her head, mocking her turn of fortune. Faye turned away from the gloomy road her thoughts were leading her to. She had to find shelter, and soon. This storm was one of the worst ones she had seen since arriving in Paris, and the worse they were, the more likely all of the good shelters were taken by her fellow homeless. Another flash of light shot over her head startled her into a run. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be trapped in the worst of the rain and catch sick, and people who caught sick in the streets rarely recovered. So preoccupied was she that she didn’t notice where she was running until she tripped over a stone protruding from the street. Faye went sprawling face first into the mud. She stood, spitting muck and water. Looking around, she realized that she was in an unfamiliar part of the city. Most of the buildings were old, slowly decaying. From either side of the street gaped huge, rotten monoliths to eras far gone. One of the ancient walls was scrawled a simple charcoal message, probably by one of the many street-urchins or beggars that littered Paris. [i]Méfiez-vous des fantômes[/i] Beware the Ghost. Faye snorted. Ghosts, bah. She didn’t have the leisure for entertaining fantasy. Not anymore… Faye shuddered from the cold and marched on through the rain. The streets were deserted, of course. The rain made sure of that. Still, even with people milling around, this neighborhood would’ve sent shivers down the spine of the stoutest gendarme. She kept walking past the moldering buildings until she reached the end of the street. Here stood a building that was bigger than the rest. In its prime, it must have been glorious. Faye could still see the remnants of gilded crowns and pillars along the outside, and tatters of curtains that surely once were velvet. Through the open doorway peeked a grand staircase of marble. Yet now, this once-shining gem of Parisian artistry now stood as decimated as the rest. But where the others had been ravaged by time, this former beauty had been destroyed by a fire. The sign above had been blackened almost past reading. Only one word stood clear, [i]Opera[/i], and the building stood as a dark shadow, looming over her. Still, it would be warmer and dryer inside than standing out here in the rain, Faye decided. She climbed the crumbling stairs and stepped across the threshold.