Phantom of the Operetta

By John C. Bunnell

While serving as an artist-in-residence at a small Pacific Northwest college, stage actress Juliet McKenna is directing Gilbert & Sullivan's The Sorcerer. Rivalries among the student cast are only to be expected--but are other troubles the work of the theater's restless ghost?

Nonsense, Juliet insists, and with Sidhe-born senses to back her conclusions, she should know. But as the curtain rises on opening night, she's forced to revise her opinions. With one performer in chains and another possessed, the show seems poised to end in disaster--because even if Juliet can improvise a new ending, she may not be able to free her students without revealing her own Sidhe origins. This title is published by Uncial Press and is distributed worldwide by Untreed Reads.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Untreed Reads
• Release date: Mar 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9781601740441

Book preview

Phantom of the Operetta

A Novel Byte

By

John C. Bunnell

Uncial Press       Aloha, Oregon

2007

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-044-1

ISBN 10: 1-60174-044-1

Copyright © 2008 by John C. Bunnell

Cover art and design by Judith B. Glad

All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Published by Uncial Press,

an imprint of GCT, Inc.

Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

for Jack R. Freimann,

from whom I learned much more about theater than he may think

and in memory of Linda Haldeman,

Juliet's literary godmother

Phantom of the Operetta

The exploding teapot was the first sign trouble was brewing.

Gentleman sorcerer John Wellington Wells had just intoned the first verse of his incantation: Appear, appear, appear! As if in response, the teapot on the stand in front of him erupted with a sudden fwoosh, an outpouring of gray smoke, a burst of fire-bright orange light, and the sharp crack-tinkle of shattering ceramic. There was also a loud THUD and a curse from behind the billowing smoke.

What the hell was that? demanded Lyle Applegate, dropping out of character and abandoning the sorcerer's roguish British accent in favor of his natural Texan twang.

I was out of my fourth-row aisle seat and mounting the stage before he had finished the sentence. The smoke was already dissipating as I stepped around the stand, extending a hand to help my lead actor to his feet. A very good question, I said. I gather you did not trigger the flash mechanism.

I didn't touch it, Ms. McKenna, he said, eyeing the stand and shaking his head. Hey, that's weird. I followed his glance. The teapot's fragments lay in a tidy ring around the edge of the small, nearly chest-high table, which was unmarked save for a dirty black stain in