Shutting us in, I followed as he wound through the secret tunnel. We passed a dozen different hidden door panels while climbing the stairs. With my phone lit up again, I could make out rooms on each floor from the other side of the two-way mirrors, and understood at last how Etalon had kept tabs of my daily schedule. On the second flight, I recognized Bouchard’s workshop, Madame Fabre’s sewing dorm, and Professor Tomlin’s science lab. It was too dark to see much detail, but his costume for the masquerade was still hanging on his cabinet door where I saw it Friday—a gas mask of black leather shaped like a jackal’s head, along with a matching jacket. Even his costume was cooler than anyone else’s.
Diable and I passed a few of the burned-out storage rooms on the upper flights, and even with the glass barrier, the sight of the scorched props and singed costumes felt too close, too real. It brought back memories of that fiery Valentine’s party in second grade, and Grandma’s vendetta. Tucked in the corners here and there were small barrels with wires swirling out from the bases. I had to make a conscious effort not to get sidetracked by them, assuring myself I’d try to find a way into the rooms to explore later. My meeting with Etalon was too important to miss.
It took ten minutes to make that climb. Now, I can sense Etalon on the other side of the door. His emotions emanate through the wood, threatening to boil over: anxiety, anger, attraction, and dread. I can taste their vaporous sizzle, and I share every one. If I walk through, neither of us will go unscathed or be the same again. But he owes me explanations, and it’s time he pays up.
Shoving the key into the hole, I click to release the lock. A gush of night air sifts across me, chilled with the scent of damp stone, greenery, and roses.
I step out, close the door, and button my shin-length sweater to cover the scar on my knee peeking through the rip in my jeans. My hair billows in unruly waves, and I scold myself for forgetting to at least wear my knit cap. I knot the strands at my nape in a loose bun that will never hold in this wind.
White pinpricks dot the black sky overhead and drape the dark shadows in lucent shrouds, like webs made of starlight. In the dimness, Etalon’s signature Fire and Ice roses deck every corner of the long expanse, spilling out of giant pots. Their vines and blooms wind along the five-foot-high stone wall encompassing the roof’s circumference like a guard rail.
At last, I know the origins of his supply.
He’s nowhere in sight, but he discarded his gloves a few feet from the threshold. I lift one and sculpt my cheek with the black leather, remembering how I wore it weeks ago. How he took it back during our first magical dance in the theater. Placing it atop the other glove, I continue my perusal of the surroundings.
It had to have taken years to convert this place from a barren rooftop to a moonlit courtyard. How long has he lived at this opera house, haunting the corridors and passing through mirrors?
I peer over the top of the guard wall where the chapel, cemetery, and forest dot the landscape below like grayscale imprints—dark and borderless.
The stony surface is level beneath the soles of my boots as I move on, no wooden beams or shingles to trip me up. Strands of miniature greenish pearls glimmer along the auditorium’s cupola where it rises like a tower on the far end of the lengthy rooftop.
At this end, overshadowing me, the fifteen-foot Apollo and Pegasus statue stands guard, lit by those same luminescent strings. The greenish lights trail down to outline the back of a stone bench beneath the stallion’s giant wing. They’re like Christmas decorations, but softer and more natural, gilding everything in a misty glow, without electrical outlets or cords.
I stop at the bench and lay my tote on the seat to caress a strand. The tiny orbs feel warm and slick beneath my fingers. They brighten at my touch, and their light hums through me with a revitalizing pulse. Their glow is an aura. They’re organic—living things.
“Eggs maybe . . . or worms?” I conjecture aloud.
“Firefly larvae,” comes Etalon’s husky answer, muffled but close.
I spin around in the direction of his voice.
“Up here,” he summons, coaxing my gaze skyward. Above the bench, an empty can that looks suspiciously like one of the tins Professor Tomlin uses in his lab to store solvents hangs from a red ribbon laced through one end. The string stretches across the horse’s raised foreleg and disappears around the other side of Apollo. “Take it.” Etalon’s instruction seems to travel from the ribbon into the tin cylinder. He’s throwing his voice—a practiced ventriloquist.
In spite of my anger over his deceptions, a smile teases my mouth as I drag the can down. There must be another one tied to the ribbon he’s positioned somewhere behind Apollo, out of sight. It’s a replica of the homemade toy phone Mom and Dad once used to talk to me at the hospital, before I started first grade. He had to have climbed a ladder to thread the ribbon through such a high point in the statue.
To think he went to all that trouble just to re-create the comfort of sharing secrets with the two people I trusted most disarms me. I consider the fairy tale book I gave him, and the toe socks I finished today that are tucked in my bag on the bench, and at last understand why we’re so determined to help each other hold onto our most safe and precious moments. We’ve both missed out on carefree childhoods and lost parents we love.