No it is not. Who's ready for some cross dressing?

     An hour before the first shadows of night reached for the end of the day, a harsh, yet soft knock sounded on Grace's door, startling her. She had been reading Anna Karenina and had been caught crying, since the interupted scene was Anna's death. She flung open the door, wiping her eyes.

    Erik stood, dashing and dangerous on her threshold. He usually wore dress clothes when he stalked the halls... but now he looked fancier than usual. The visible part of his face glared down at her, carved into a scowl. He carried a bundle of clothes in his arms.

  "Is this how you look at Christina Nilsson? Because if it is,  I can at last comprehend why she is engaged to Pierre."

   Grace let him in and took the bundle from his arms.

   "Says the girl who cries when reading Anna Karenina," he retorted.

  "How did you know that?" Grace spun around, horrified.

   "I am the very soul of this theatre. I know everything that goes on within these walls."

   "So are you watching Christina dress and kiss Pierre? I thought you were scary, every time you stabbed me with your eyes, but this is worse." She disapeared behind a screen near a desk.

   Erik smirked. "You think I'm scary? Good. It's about time." He laughed.

   "Shut up, you smug bastard."

  This only served to make him laugh harder.

   Grace decided to change the subject. "This meeting you have tonight, what do you usually do during it?"

   "I sit in the rafters and listen. Lefay executes my wishes. The patrons do not know I'm there, and no one can see me. Only Lefay knows I attend. I do not speak to anyone, and make as few appearances as possible."

   "Good."

   Grace stayed behind the screen, doing God knows what with his clothes, and Erik did not break the silence.

  He questioned himself. What was he, a powerful, well established man doing seeking help from a girl who was ignorant of his world? She might remind him of someone else, she might even be that someone, but he still hated to be put in such a position. He was Erik, he didn't have to attend a silly meeting if he didn't want to. But then the patrons were always trying to slip things past him, to decrease the quality if only to increase material quantity. If Lefay, for one moment thought he wasn't there... oh damn them all! Even Christina. Her angelic face flashed behind his eyes.

   "Thank goodness you are so skinny. If you weren't a walking skeleton, these would never fit." Grace broke his train of thought.

   His eyebrows, though not entirely visible, knit in confusion. "What -" he began, just as she stepped out. He couldn't control his shock.

   Grace was standing in just his poet's shirt and black pants. The hem of the pants brushed the ground, almost covering her bare feet. The white shirt hid the curve of her chest, and the sleeves only needed to be rolled up once. She had somehow pinned her hair up and back so that it lay short and flat against her head. She looked like a man.

   "Why are you wearing my clothes?" He asked as she threw his waistcoat, cravat, and overcoat onto a chair, and went to look in her mirror.

   "I thought it was obvious from the moment I asked you to bring them: I am going to pretend to be you."

   Erik immediately recovered from his shock. "I don't see how that will work. You did not think this plan through."

   "How is that? Improvisation can be the best form of acting." She faced him again.

   Erik sauntered closer. How could she ask that? Her gaze was earnest too, she wasn't jesting.

   "Well... there is the large distance between our heights  - you are nearly a foot and a half shorter than I -"

  "I am not! I am only a foot shorter. If that."

   His eyes flickered away from hers once, then trailed back. "And the physical contrasts? Between men and women, anatomically?"

   "Both of those things are easily fixed." She tied on the cravat, which kept the shirt completely closed, up to her neck, and put on the waist coat, which did in fact hide any possible curve of her figure that the shirt alone could miss.

  "And the height?" He asked. Her chin barely came up to his shoulder, if that.

   Grace took out several pieces of cloth from a drawer and stuffed them into the boots. Once she put them on, and leaned slightly on her toes, he need only to slouch and they'd be eye to eye. She'd cleverly created hidden heels in the boots.

   "Wait, where is the mask?"

   From his coat, Erik produced a white half mask.

   She put it on, and he found a smaller version of himself looking back at him.

  "Well?" She asked.

  "Marauding around in a man's clothes is one thing... but mine?"

   Erik scrutinized every detail. She leaned into the shadows of the room to make it seem more believable. "If you get discovered, I will kill you." He paused. "No, I won't just kill you, I will also kill the person or persons who have discovered you. You will have blood on your hands, be responsible for the death of another, be -"

   "So you'll let me pretend to be you?" She asked eagerly.

   "Yes, but if you fail, I will kill you painfully. A slow, torturous death. If you think what was going to happen to Mademoiselle Fleur was bad, then there - what are you doing?"

   She was scrambling around for a piece of parchment and a pencil. "I have a terrible memory, so I often write things down that I want to remember. I don't dare forget a detail from this meeting lest I face your wrath, O Great Scary Masked One." She teased him.

  "I don't appreciate being called 'Masked One.' But scary and great will do."

   "I don't like having to be serious all the time... and with a man who is so comical."

   "Come on, I'll take you to the meeting."