Almost everyone was in the parking lot. Aunt Charlotte and Bouchard, included. Besides Tomlin, every teacher was accounted for. Same with the students, other than Sunny and my friends, who Aunt Charlotte saw leave shortly after “Tomlin” followed me out of the ballroom.
She couldn’t find Bouchard to help, so she went after my friends herself, to make sure they didn’t get involved. She lost them by the time she hit the second floor and saw the swarms of bees surrounding Bouchard and Jippetto. Because neither of them was moving, the insects hadn’t attacked. Another unexpected detail that gave me hope . . . The Phantom had commanded them to stay still for their safety—I saw that with my own eyes. Or maybe it was to protect the insects, so they wouldn’t sting and die.
Aunt Charlotte released her smoke bombs to daze the bees. Then she woke Jippetto and Bouchard out of their trances right before the screams started in the ballroom. The doors had slammed shut just as the three of them got back up the stairs. Together, they were able to remove the hinges and get everyone out before the flames engulfed the room. The overhead sprinkler system had been disabled.
The Phantom was nothing if not mercurial.
When I realized that they’d also had to remove the hinges from the front door to get outside, it wasn’t hard to piece together where Sunny and the others went once they spotted the bees that would be deadly to her. I hadn’t even thought about my roof key being missing again until that moment. Since all of the second and third floors were up in flames at that point, and the secret passages were also consumed by fire, I turned to Diable for help, remembering how he and Ange had stormed the roof the night before, during my rendezvous with Etalon.
Bells jingling, the cat led me to a secret passage behind some shrubbery—a flap similar to a large doggie-door—on the back of the building. It led all the way up to the cupola on the roof, so I was able to guide my friends to safety and won the title of hero.
But I knew who the real hero was, and my heart ripped a little more every time I thought of him.
I found out, as I walked with my friends to the parking lot, all of us arm in arm, that after I left the ballroom, Sunny told them about Tomlin “helping me” find my creeper. Quan, Jax, and Audrey debated for twenty minutes before deciding that Tomlin might actually be the one stalking me. That’s why they followed me, to have my back, like they always did. Like real friends do.
When the cars arrived to take us to the city—those of us not riding in ambulances—I realized Diable was gone. And I whispered a prayer on the smoky, floral-scented wind that he’d found his master and they were somewhere safe.
A day later, my mom arrived in Paris to stay for a week . . . to make sure I didn’t want to come home. I told her Paris was where I belonged now.
As they searched the academy, the police discovered Tomlin’s corpse behind the mirror wall, which had shattered during the fire to reveal the secret passage. The science teacher was burned and sliced with glass shards, but not beyond recognition. They suspected he was behind everything. The elaborate setup in the ballroom—complete with hallucinogen-laced food and punch—and the bees filtered through pipes he’d installed in Bouchard’s wall behind her plaques. He was also responsible for my torn uniforms, the dead crow on my chair, the broken white half-mask, the “fake” letters, the roses in the chapel, and the wristband and tubing—although me and my rave partners never dared admit that those led us to a club; what difference would it make, since we couldn’t remember where it was or what happened there anyway?
A part of me regretted him taking all the blame. I myself saw how easily Erik could manipulate people. Tomlin wasn’t all bad. He was just . . . misled. I did, however, have to admit he kidnapped me and held me in the secret passages where I saw him flipping gadgets and switches for the nightmare in the ballroom. The police also combed the chapel for evidence, but found nothing there, other than a red swan that fluttered out the moment they opened the door and flew into the cover of the forest before she could be captured. Yet nothing was mentioned about luggage filled with clothes, masks, and a violin.
At the end of the day, the police decided it was an open-and-shut case: a teacher whose bright mind had been damaged in a motorcycle accident years before. Who’d never been the same since. Who harbored a sick obsession with The Phantom of the Opera, and decided to live out his fantasy via the academy’s up-and-coming opera star, Rune Germain. The girl once possessed by song.
The girl who was cured by the Phantom’s son.