The room was dark when she returned from her break. Grateful for the quiet – Yasmine half expected Meg to be writhing and tearing at her restraints. Dr. Gangle hesitated at giving her too much morphine, concerned at the amount of codeine she might have ingested earlier. Only enough chloroform to sedate her…then the injection to maintain her rest.

The absence of Mr. Kahn and Madame Giry was concerning, but Meg's being so quiet suggested they felt comfortable leaving – knowing she would return before long. The surgery was long and tedious. So many tiny pieces of glass – Mr. Y insisting each fragment be found. Dr. Gangle concerned about infection. Pressing ahead with them – her back ached and the strain on her eyes gave her a blistering headache.

Both men worked with urgency and determination, despite her own belief that Meg wanted to end the life they so desperately fought to save – otherwise why continue to poison herself.? What power this spoiled, petulant woman had over them she could only imagine. Despite denying it, Darius still had feelings for the former dancer. Perhaps she had once been beautiful, but time and abuse aged her – ravaging not only her face, but the now exposed body.

The scar from the caesarean section lay below a loose skinned stomach, but more than that, there was no muscle tone, the skin wrinkled, reminiscent of a woman at least a decade older. This was the former ballerina – the Oo La La Girl she heard so much about – difficult to believe. What age and dissolution did to ruin her face, the shattered mirror accomplished with aplomb. Despite their best efforts, the mementoes of the accident would be near impossible to disguise. For a moment she felt pity for the woman on the table so exposed and destroyed.

Having returned to the infirmary, she wished she had not offered to stay while the others tended to other business. As the infirmary supervisory nurse – this was her job – what she was paid to do – and yet, for the only time she can recall, she wished she was somewhere else.

Gustave had been of little use and his father excusing him was welcome at first, giving Mr. Y and Dr. Gangle more room to work and for her to assist. At the moment, however, she wished he had stayed – allowing her to beg off from this duty. The room felt strange with a darkness having little to do with the lack of the electric light. The lamp she turned on to help her see better brought little comfort. If anything, her body felt particularly charged. All she could think of were jinns*.

Darius was always teasing her about her superstitions.

"Meg is possessed by a jinn, I am certain of this. My mother agrees. Father as well. I am surprised you and Mr. Khan do not see it."

"Meg has been subject to many disappointments in life – has suffered much pain."

"Exactly. The kind of person some jinn would find suitable to possess. Your excuses simply prove my point."

"She is in therapy."

"An exorcism would be more helpful."

"Modern therapy acts as exorcism in a way. Many modern scholars believe jinns or genies, as some people call them, may be diseases of the mind or the flesh – drugs or alcohol – one of the reasons I believe our faith so opposes the drinking of spirits. You know…spirits?" Darius shook his head, laughing at his little joke and at his earnest beloved. "One would forget you are a modern woman – a nurse. A person of science."

"Do not mock me or our faith. Meg Giry is not a normal person – she is evil. You know it. We all know it, but no one makes any real attempts to help her – like a foot being ravaged with gangrene. When cleansing and bandaging stop working, and the foot must be cut off to stop the infection from spreading. Whether a spirit or spirits are the reason."

"She is not of our faith, and I have spoken to her about demons in the drugs she has used and, it would appear still uses. She agreed to seeing my associate."

"I rue the day when she loses all of her own will. Before someone dies at her hand…or kills her – the jinn will simply move on to that person."

Without even walking to the bed to examine her charge, the absence of life was obvious. What was left on the table was an empty vessel. All her fears had come to pass – or so it appeared. Now who bore the jinn?

"I do not know! How many times must I tell you. This is how I found her when I returned from my dinner." Yasmine replies to Gregory's repeated questioning as she attempts to avoid the reach of his long flailing arms. His agitation forcing her to put Meg's bed between them. Something reminiscent of a comic musical she snuck in to see at Phantasma a few years back with Darius. This, however, is not funny and she is uncertain how she will be able to escape his current madness.

"How can you not know. You were supposed to be watching over her," he says, turning away from the frightened woman to rage around the room without any direction. "She was recovering when we left. Out of danger."

"Are you accusing me of something?"

"You have always been jealous of her," Gregory sneers. "Worried that your precious Darius would never divorce her. I watched you."

"What are you talking about – he did divorce her – at my insistence. Dr. Gangle you are not making sense."

"He clung to her for the money – she told me so. Her share in Phantasma."

"Please, stop this talk. Darius is my husband and an honorable man," she says, keeping her voice low, staying out of his reach. "He maintained their marriage to protect Meg and the money you are talking about from the vicomte or others who would take advantage of her. That was years ago."

"You should have known she needed more care…something we missed…" he screams at her, the veins protruding from his long neck.

"How could I? Please Dr. Gangle this is insane. Please stop. What you are saying is madness."

Entering the examining room, Erik frowns at Yasmine's desperate, then relieved eyes when she sees him. "What is this? You can be heard in the waiting room." Looking past her to Gregory, he wonders at the odd situation on view between a nurse and doctor poised on either side of the equally strange looking bandaged body lying on the bed. Still as death, in no need of the restraints to prevent her doing further harm to herself.

Were this a stage and not an infirmary, he might have laughed out loud. Poor Yasmine is most certainly terrified. Whatever brought Gregory to this? "William told us you called – there was some sort of emergency with Meg. She looks unchanged from the time I left."

Christine follows him, stifling a cry as she, too, sees Meg's lifeless form. "What on earth? Why is she wrapped up like that?"

"There were cuts all over her – some sutured, some just left to heal. I can see how a few bled through the bandaging," Erik explains, talking over his shoulder as he walks to the bed. "The restraints were to keep her from pulling them off – we had to sedate her, despite her drugged state from whatever she ingested..."

"She is dead!" Gregory cries. "Hardly unchanged. Dead is most definitely a serious change, and our nurse does not seem to know why. Finally rid of her former rival."

"She was fine when Madame Giry arrived to visit with her," Yasmine says through pursed lips. "Sleeping. Heart rate was perhaps slow, but not excessively so – normal for someone recently under anesthesia. Respiration normal. I am a good nurse. Had there been something abnormal, I would never have left her and would have called one of you."

"You are blaming Yasmine for this?" Erik asks, sending a piercing look to Gregory.

"No, I am not. I was just asking what happened."

Erik raises his eyebrow. "In tones capable of reaching beyond walls?"

With a sharp look at Gregory, Yasmine faces him and says, "Over and over and I kept telling you what I just told Mr. Saint-Rien. When I took my break, at Mr. Khan's direction, I had no concerns about leaving."

"Adele came to see her?" Christine asks. "Nadir as well?"

Yasmine shakes her head. "Not Mr. Khan – he stayed in the waiting room. Madame wished to see Mrs. Gangle alone."

"What about when she left?" Erik asks. "How was Meg when Adele left."

Yasmine's shoulders fall and she sighs. "I do not know. As I said Mr. Khan suggested I take a break. I went to get something to eat. I assumed they would wait for me to return before leaving. They did not. When I returned, I checked her, and she was like this. I called William at the theater and Albert at the hotel to locate both of you."

"How long were you gone?" Erik asks.

"Half an hour, possibly a little longer." Her coffee brown eyes only now fill with tears. "I am sorry. I was tired and hungry…and he said they would be here."

Christine walks over to her to wrap an arm around the frail shoulders. "No one is blaming you for anything. Are you?" The glare in her eyes finds Gregory. "You know full well Meg's marriage to Darius was one of convenience. She never loved him or Raoul, for that matter. Your upset with Yasmine makes no sense."

"I agree," Erik interjects. Nodding to Yasmine. "Time for you to go home to your husband. I am sorry now we let Gustave leave. Get some rest."

"Are you sure?"

"Go home," Christine repeats the suggestion. "There is nothing you can do now."

"I do not have to remind you to keep your own counsel."

"Darius?"

"Darius, of course. Otherwise this must be kept confidential."

"Yes, sir." With visible relief on her face, Yasmine tosses on last look at Gregory before closing the door behind her.

"Do you plan to attack me now?" Erik asks the tall man. "Meg loved you and married you and bore your child. You are blaming yourself, I know you too well. Stop it."

"I should have stayed with her," Gregory says, all the fight gone from his lanky body.

"Is that why you are so angry with Yasmine?" Christine asks gently.

"We both needed to get away," Erik answers. "Gregory especially needed some rest."

"Still…" The former Master of Ceremonies replies.

"Still nothing." Erik bends over the body.

"I must apologize to Yasmine."

"I am certain she understands," Christine walks over to him, taking his hands and squeezing them. "I am so sorry."

"Is it possible that shard nicked the carotid – that we did not remove all of it?" Erik asks, removing the bandaging around her neck.

Gregory shakes his head a vigorous no. "That sliver, however vicious, was nowhere near the carotid – you know that better than I. None of the glass, for all the damage it did superficially, even came close to entering her blood stream."

When Erik removes more of the bandaging, he draws back. "Gregory, come here." He waves the doctor to the bed. "Did you examine her?"

"Only her heart – to confirm she was dead. Why? What is it?"

"Can you not smell it?"

"What? The chloroform? We used chloroform to sedate her. This room always smells vaguely of the stuff."

"Smell this," he says holding out a strip of bandaging he removed from her face.

After a small whiff, he pulls back, covering his nose with his hand. "She was bandaged after we anesthetized her. After removing the glass. I gave her an injection of morphine for the pain and to keep her sedated. There was no further need for chloroform."

"She was murdered then." Christine states in a matter-of-fact tone. "Someone came in here while you were all gone and killed her."

"Murdered?" His regained composure evaporates, Gregory throws himself over Meg's body. "Oh God, no. We worked so hard to save you. We saved you, my beautiful Marguerite. Why? Who?"

"Could someone have snuck in during the time she was alone? After Nadir and Adele left – before Yasmine returned?"

"How would someone know she would be alone?" Erik says. "This makes no sense."

"I should have stayed. This never would have happened if I had stayed."

"Louisa needed you and Erik needed to let me know what happened."

Erik presses a hand against his friend's back. "This was not your fault, my friend."

*This is a very brief definition – and in small part explains the differences between Yasmine's and Darius' understanding of jinn, also called genies. The definitions were found in Wikipedia. In Islam, there is a belief that spiritual entities—particularly, jinn—can possess a person, (or a thing or location). Jinn are often believed to take control over a human's body. Although this is a strong belief among many Muslims, some authors argue that since the Quran doesn't explicitly attribute possession to the jinn, it derives from pre-Islamic beliefs. Morocco, especially, has many possession traditions, including exorcism rituals. However, jinn cannot enter a person whenever the jinni wants; rather, the victim must be predisposed for possession in a state of dha'iyfah (Arabic: ضَعِيفَة, "weakness"). Feelings of insecurity, mental instability, unhappy love and depression (being "tired from the soul") are forms of dha'iyfah.

Many modernists tried to reconcile the traditional perspective on jinn with modern sciences. Muhammed Abduh understood references to jinn in the Quran to denote anything invisible, be it an undefined force or a simple inclination towards good or evil. He further asserted that jinn might be an ancient description of germs, since both are associated with diseases and cannot be perceived by the human eye alone, an idea adapted by the Ahmadi sect. F. Gulen leader of Hizmet movement, also related jinn to illnesses, when he put forward the idea that jinn may be the cause schizophrenia and cancer, and that the Quranic references to jinn as "smokeless fire" could, for that matter, mean "energy".