Excerpt of a letter from Sir Erich Lensherr, Warefield, Devonshire, England, to Carmine Pryde, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America.

I want to legally adopt your daughter Katherine. I have no living children of my own, and in the event that I die without issue, she and her children would be my heirs. Even in the unlikely even that I might marry again, she would be entitled to a pro-rata share of my estate. It goes without saying that I will provide her with a dowry, and if I approve the match, it will be a substantial one.

Rest assured that I am aware of the peculiarity that caused you to commend her to my friend, Sir Charles Xavier's, care. It does not dissuade me from my sincere desire to adopt her, and if it is nothing to me, it cannot matter to you.

If you will contact my lawyers in the United States...

Dear Sir:

We must thank you for calling to our attention the deplorable attitudes which were rendering Mademoiselle Pryde uncomfortable. We have taken measures to correct the situation. Your charming and talented ward is a valued addition to our ballet corps, and our ballet mistress regards her as a true find. In our new production of Il Muto, in fact, Mlle. Pryde will be playing the title role of Serafimo, which will be a significant advancement of her career here in the Opera Populaire.

It would give us great pleasure if you would attend this as our guest. Please find enclosed the tickets for Box Three on the opening night. If there is any other way in which we can make ourselves useful to you, we would be only too happy to oblige.

As it so happens, we should like to consult you regarding a significant drain on the Opera's financial resources, to the tune of twenty thousand francs a month, plus the loss of rental revenues from Box Five.....

Charles:

I do not doubt you have also been the recipient of an extraordinary letter from Kitty detailing her illness and convalescence under the care of this 'Erik Dantés'. I am going to Paris myself to get to the bottom of this. I expect I shall be on the boat to Calais by the time you receive this. If I am not satisfied as to what his conduct has been, he will have cause to regret he keeps powder kegs on the premises.

Ironically, the managers of the Opera Populaire sent, in the same post, tickets to her debut in a new production and a plea for help in dealing with their ghost. They shall certainly have it.

I shall write more as circumstances warrant.

Erich

Dear Charles:

I have arrived in Paris and am putting up at the Hotel -. I immediately took a carriage to the Opera House, sent my card up to the managers, and glanced in at the dancers in their public rehearsal hall. Katherine was among them, but as she was engaged in an exercise designed to bring her foot up to the level of her ear while standing on the other leg, I did not disturb her, but went directly up to the to the first tier. She looked well.

As I climbed the stairs, I saw the managers hurrying to the practice hall in search of me, but I let them pass. I did not yet know what advice I would have to give them regarding their phantom. It might turn out that I could tell them that the ghost had ceased to need money, having become a more ethereal sort of specter. On the other hand, if I liked what I saw, I would do everything possible to advance his interests-both with the managers, and with Katherine.

Box five was only the starting point. I quickly discovered the means by which Erik makes his entrances and exitsâ€"a jib door, concealed in a spectacularly tasteless caryatid frozen in an attitude of bondage. It was undetectable to the naked eyeâ€"but it had steel hinges and a steel catch on the inside. Steel cannot hide from my senses. It could not have been easier to trip the catch had he placed it out in plain view of the world.

A short ladder led me down into pitch blackness. But what is the Aurora Borealis but magnetism expressed as visible light? I was certain, and ultimately correct, in thinking that as long as I headed downward, I was going in the direction of Erik's lair. I was expecting to come across traps, and I was not disappointed.

I evaded threeâ€"a tripwire on a steep staircase, a massive steel beam balanced so delicately that the lightest vibration would have served to bring it down on an unwary head, and a particularly ingenious arrangement involving a false door and a set of spring-loaded cage walls. By that time, I confess I was beginning to feel my age.

Naturally, it was the next one that got meâ€"as the 'trigger' mechanism involved no metal. I was descending a massive spiral staircase, when a step that looked like solid rock turned out to be a cleverly painted thin board that bent under my weight...

Don Juan T. is not going well. A strain reminiscent of spring-water and the scent of fresh apples is creeping into the music of smoke and musk that I have labored over. Aminta, the minx, still rushes headlong to meet her ruin, but, although the way of virtue is closed to her, and the path to her inevitable degradation and certain damnation lies smoothly open, easy, and full of decadent pleasures before her, she insists on looking for some other way out. Perhaps I should lay it aside.

(E/Nâ€"Here the manuscript is marred by a squiggle and blot, where the pen was dropped on the page.)

I heard the stair trap, and my first thought wasâ€"'She miscounted the stairs!' Fool that I was, I rushed to make sure she wouldn't drown.

It was not Katherine who floated lazily up out of the oubliette, but a silver-haired man, a stranger in late-middle age, correctly dressed and completely dry. He stood on a disc of metal as if it were a raft and the air was a river.

"Good Morning." he greeted me, as the disc drifted down the stairs until we stood at eye level with one another. "I am Sir Erich Lensherr, Baron Ware. More to the point, I am Katherine Pryde's guardian. You must be Erik."

Yes, she had mentioned this man, I recalled, and more than once. Those pearls...They had been among the pile of belongings Madame Giry brought with her. She had handed a flat leather box to Katherine, saying, "I do not want to take responsibility for these a moment longer than I must. They ought to be in a safe or a bank-box."

"Are they so valuable, then?" asked Katherine.

"They are of the finest." Madame Giry replied.

"May I see?" I moved in, my interest piqued. The box concealed and protected a strand of pearls no lady patroness would have disdained to wear, with an emerald ornamenting the clasp.

"They were a present from my guardian, Baron Ware." she explained. "I should give them back."

"Ahâ€"the managers' banker." nodded Madame Giry. "That explains everything. If you return them, it would be an insult. I would think it over."

Money. This man had the power of money, as well as the other powers he obviously possessed.

I returned to the present moment, and the man who stood before me, extending his hand. "You can take it." he urged, gently, with the hint of a smile about his lips. "It's not red hot, and I, at any rate, have neither claws nor poisonous barbs. I'm apt to take it amiss if you refuse it, you know."

He was mocking me. Well, I could mock him in the same vein. I took it and shook it, "I am very glad to make your acquaintance, m'sieu."

"And likewise, I assure you. I trust you will forgive me for invading the outskirts of your domain. Do not think that Katherine gave away your secrets. She is incapable of betraying a trust. That she mentioned 'Box Five' was yours, and that you lived underneath the Opera House was enough. I worked out the rest on my own. I must compliment you on your security arrangements; you have a decided talent for them. Far too many designers ruin a good trap with overly elaborate construction. However, they are not particularly effective against your fellow Evolved, such as Katherineâ€"or myself.

"Fellow Evolved." I echoed. More mockery. It amused him to pretend I was his equal, this man with his aged but still handsome face, this man whose powers extended through several realms. He had the bearing of a king, more so than any singer in robes and a crown, or any foreign head of state I had ever seen. And he was pleased to mock me.

Then it hit me. "That was how she spoke of the school, Xavier House." Then it was realâ€"all of it was real.

"Yes, Xavier House. My friend, Charles Xavier runs it, and I give him ten thousand pounds a year to help keep him out of the bankruptcy courts a while longer. Katherine was educated there. Charles takes in the lion cubs who have had the misfortune to be born among sheep. They are often frightened, lost, betrayed, and rejectedâ€"but nevertheless, they are lion cubs, and must be trained up into lions. Such are the Evolved among the Sapient.

"And here I am, old lion that I am, to determine if a particular young wolfâ€"which is you, my ladâ€"and son, don't bristle at that, for I am at least twenty years your seniorâ€" come to determine if you recognize that Katherine Pryde is a lioness, albeit a very young one, and not just a sacrificial lamb."

I could understand that. He was telling me I had no business even thinking of herâ€"she was of the lionsâ€"and I, a creature out of her sphere. How long would it be before he would offer me money, to forget her?

I managed an answer, if a stiff one. "Mademoiselle Pryde has no more respectful friend than I."

"Really? I am glad to hear that. If we are to continue this very interesting conversation here on the stairs, tell me so, and I will make myself a chair. Or if you have some other spot in mind, you have but to lead me to it. I can feel a cold draft, and I am no longer a young man."

"No." I knew what would come. More false cheerfulness on his part, and then the humiliating offer of money. And at some point I would read his mind, and see what his true opinion of me was, how he regarded me as some abortion of evolution, less than a worm in comparison to beings such as himselfâ€"and Katherine.

"No?" He could counterfeit wonderfully well. If I did not know men so well, I would have thought he meant itâ€"that he truly wanted to talk to me, as to an equal.

"I see no point in continuing this conversation. While I do not know if I can compel you to leave, I can make it most uncomfortable for you to stay." I summoned fire, and flung a curtain of it between us.

"Thank you. That takes the chill off my bones. Let it be as you wish. I did impose myself on you, after all. I will just put this back the way it wasâ€"and" and he turned the disc of metal back into the grillwork that should have trapped him underwater until he drowned. It pulled apart and re-formed as if it were taffy-candy. "No doubt you will know better than I how to rearm your trap. I bid you good day."

He went back up the stairs.

I should have known.

I don't blame her. Oddly enough, I think her part in this is one of innocenceâ€"she never tried to deceive me. I deceived myself. I wanted to think her alone in the world, as I wasâ€"as I am. It was easier to think her mad than to imagine the Heaven such an angel came from. Plagues are not allowed into the place of light.

Well, let him return when he will, and any other of her friends. Let them kill me for daring to approach her.

I will not go down to Hell alone.