Etalon’s job, while the Phantom is preoccupied with us, is to dismantle the machine in the cellar lab that aids in the transfer . . . in case we fail and the Phantom still manages to drag me down.
If that happens, or if anything else goes wrong, Aunt Charlotte and Bouchard will be charged with everyone else’s safety. Etalon will supply them with smoke bombs to set off the alarms and sprinklers, so all the teachers and students will run outside, away from Erik’s undiscovered pitfalls.
It would be easier if we weren’t trying to hide the secret vampire society, and if the Phantom wasn’t a mad genius with traps around every corner. This is the only way to protect everyone.
My gut twists again at the dangerous conspiring. I’m just about to sift through Christine’s letters for a distraction when I hear a knock. More eager to see Aunt Charlotte than my food, I swing my door open to find Sunny’s freckled face looking back, lunch tray in hand and book bag hanging over her shoulder.
A groan escapes my lips. With all of the secret spy tunnels and mirror windows in this place, you’d think someone would’ve thought to install peepholes in the dorm room doors.
The scent of roasted cod drifts between us, making my stomach growl.
“Exactly as I thought,” Sunny says. “When I saw your eyes last night, I knew you must’ve taken a page from my playbook and stolen them from your aunt.” She leans in close. “Coolest zombie contacts ever. How’d you get her to forgive you and let you wear them today?”
A few students walk through the foyer on their way to the stairs and glance over their shoulders at us. It’s too late to hide from Sunny, but no one else needs to see me. I usher her in and go along with her creepy contacts theory. If she only knew the irony of it all.
As I shut the door and lean against it, she sets the tray on my nightstand and plops onto my bed. Diable jumps down, taking a jingly, dignified stroll to the chaise.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” I say to my unexpected guest. What I want to say is: How did you see my eyes last night?
Sunny frowns and drags her book bag off her shoulder. “I swiped your lunch tray before your aunt saw it. I wanted to tell you that I know what you’re up to. It’s honorable and all that, but there’s gotta be another way.”
I struggle to stay standing. She can’t possibly know my plans for the party. “What do you mean?”
“What you said yesterday, before you went out for Renata’s part. That isn’t like you. You had an ulterior motive . . . you’re planning to roll over so Audrey can have the lead. Am I right?”
I sigh. As many secrets as I’m hiding, I can’t resist sharing at least one with Sunny. “Yeah. And it’s working. Jax hates me, and Audrey’s not mad at him anymore.”
Sunny shakes her head. “He don’t hate you. Neither does she. All of us—well, everyone but me—are just confused, that’s all.”
I make my way over to the bed to take a seat at the other end, playing with the ruffled cuffs of my dress shirt. “Well, I’m a confusing person.”
“And secretive.” A weird expression crosses her face as she sees the pile of letters from Christine on my pillow behind her. She grabs them before I can. Her bluish-purple eyes turn to me. “The Christine?”
I scramble for an excuse. “I—I found them.”
“Oh yeah? In the chapel, or on the roof?” Her eyebrows shoot up accusingly on the last word.
The sick nausea pools in my stomach again, and the cod no longer smells appetizing except to Diable, who’s seated himself at the base of the nightstand and is staring up, sniffing the air.
Sunny leans down to open her book bag, the letters snug in her lap. She drags out two familiar tin cans with holes in the bottoms, and a cracked white half-mask. “At first I thought this belonged to Professor Tomlin, since these are the tins he uses in our labs to store solvents and stuff. But why would you be meeting him up there? And why the mask?”
The room tilts topsy-turvy. Etalon must’ve been in such a hurry last night that he left some things behind. But how did Sunny find the secret passage? And how did she unlock the door? “I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right.” Sunny’s smug glare stands out against the purple-lit walls, brighter than her red hair. “You were so busy arguing with the Bride of Frankenstein about stealing your aunt’s disposable contacts, you forgot you dropped this, huh?” She places the rooftop key on the bed beside the other items.
My tongue freezes. I piece together the events of my encounter with Bouchard last night, her words to me before she snapped off the necklace: I’ve seen these eyes before. She’s going to want to know about this. Sunny construed that as Bouchard accusing me of stealing contacts. But where would she have been, to see and hear everything?
Then I remember. “You. You were the rustling I heard behind the phantom cutout . . . you were on the stairs—”