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Cooper stared at the note on his desk. He was sitting in his room next to the open window, and the breeze blew through the curtains, tugging playfully at the little piece of paper.

He picked it up, opened it again, reread it, and dropped it again.

Should he go?

Or should he tell Luke?

His mind was made up almost instantly: Luke was still hung-over, locked in his room, and, most likely, having a temper tantrum over the last rude note he'd gotten from the Phantom. He didn't need to know about this one, tiny meeting.

I fiddled with the hem of my skirts, watching the breeze swirl the dead leaves into a sort of maelstrom, and wondered if Cooper had gotten the note. What had he decided?

If I were Cooper, what would I have done?

You would have hid in your room, I thought. You would have thought the note was creepy. Yes, you would have done the sensible thing. Like usual.

The Phantom scuffed the tip of his boot against the cobblestones, and I looked up at him. He was wearing the same outfit he had when I had first seen him, along with the black mask from the staircase incident. All of these combined to make him look rather dangerous, along with the muscles alternately tensing and relaxing in his back and shoulders as he flexed his hands.

I could see these muscles because he had taken the cloak off, and slung it over the wing of an angel, and because he was facing away from me. He was in charge of watching the door. I was in charge of questions.

He said, "Let me see if I have this whole plan correct, as you explained it somewhat out of order."

I opened my mouth to interject (I had explained the plan perfectly! What was he talking about?) but he went on, drowning out anything I might have said.

"Cooper gets here, I scare him to the point of near-unconsciousness, and you ask random questions. After which he loses it and runs away, whereupon I go after him and bring him back. Whereupon you nag him some more, after which he decides he must tell you everything or die, and thus, he does so. Talk, I mean, not die."

"That was concise," I said, dryly. "And I sound so sensible and intelligent in this version. Cooper is not that stupid. He'll do what I say. He trusts me."

The Phantom chose to pretend he hadn't heard my last sentence (which I knew he disagreed with, as he had already taken exception to it earlier), and folded his arms imposingly over his chest.

"Where is he, anyways?" I said, getting up from my seat on the base of my statue. "It couldn't have taken him that long to read it. You said he was sitting in his room when you slid it under his door."

"He was," the Phantom said, sounding bored. "You already asked me that. Twice."

"Well, I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that I'm freezing and this is taking all night. He had better be here soon."

"I'd offer you my cloak," he said, "but you'd only refuse it."

"I probably would," I said, thoughtfully. "Thank you for sparing me from having to say no."

Cooper hurried up the staircase, holding the stitch in his side, and stopped momentarily to suck in a few much-needed breaths. He wished, briefly, that he had gone to bed instead of on this wild goose chase, but he didn't want to waste time now, especially since he was so close. He took another deep breath, mounted the last of the stairs, and pushed the door to the roof open.

There was a whoosh as he went through the doorway, and he looked up in surprise and horror, fully expecting to see Luke.

"Come sit down, why don't you?" said an eerily familiar voice, and Cooper moved backwards, reaching for the doorknob in a panic, but not finding it.

It was the Phantom, he knew it was. Curse it, he shouldn't have come up here. He was going to die.

"I wouldn't do that," said the voice again, but now it was behind him and Cooper froze and stopped trying to locate the door.

"What – what do you want?" he asked, praying that he would reach his knife in time, and he was preparing to snatch for it when an entirely different voice broke in.

"I think," said this voice, (Cooper stopped glancing around wildly for the Phantom, and focused his attention on the center of the rooftop) "I think we should all calm down. Cooper, why don't you come over here? I'd like to speak to you."

"I would go," growled the Phantom's voice, and Cooper went.

"Katelienne," Cooper said. He was standing a few feet away, his shoulders hunched as if he wanted the wind to pick him up and blow him away. His voice was tired.

I stared at him, hard. "I know you're working for Luke. And I know who Luke was. So do you."

Cooper swallowed, made a small effort to shake his head, sighed resignedly, and nodded. "John Monett. Yes."

The Phantom was leaning against the winged horse statue, a few feet behind me, and I could hear his surprised intake of breath at Cooper's rapid descent into truth-telling. Obviously, he knew nothing about my interviewing skills.

"I want you to start at the beginning," I said. "Clearly, you're not going to leave this rooftop until I have what I want."

Cooper's eyes shifted from me to the Phantom, and his face noticeably paled. "He's real after all, isn't he?" he asked me. "And all this time, I thought it was a great big joke…"

"He's very real," I agreed. "Now. Tell me about John Monett."

Cooper's story was long and involved, and it was an effort for me not to get out my notebook and start writing things down, but I managed to control my twitching fingers and only listen.

He had met John Monett three years ago, just after John had married Claire.

"His wife was beautiful," he told me. We were sitting on the bases of our respective statues now, (Cooper was perched underneath an avenging angel – how appropriate –) and the Phantom still leaned against mine, his fingers brushing my shoulder every now and then as if to tell me that he was still there.

Cooper continued, "Her name was Claire. She had the most beautiful hair – dark waves, like a fairy tale princess, and her eyes… Her eyes were lovely. John was happiest when she was around. It was as though he was a completely different person."

"How so?"

I watched as Cooper's eyes flickered, went dim. "I was a lawyer back then. It was Paris; criminals were everywhere, and I had helped a couple of them out in court, made sure they went free. It was only over money, of course. Nothing serious. But if anyone found out – I would lose my license. I would lose everything. And John knew about it. Somehow, he had found out."

"Was he your friend?"

"No. You see, we had first met at a café; Claire wasn't with him, and he had gotten a little drunk. I was good at calming people down – I escorted him out, as he was bothering a few of the customers, and he looked me in the eye and said, 'You're the one they call Wordy.' "

"Wordy?" What a stupid name.

"On account of the fast talking I had to do to free my clients. I was well known, you see. But John – he knew more than most. More than anyone else. He took hold of my shirt that night at the café, and he said, he said, 'I know what you did for Fontaine.' And that was it. He smiled and let go of my shirt and walked away. He hadn't been drunk at all; it was only a trick to get me outside and alone."

Cooper paused and looked up at the sky, shaking his head as if to ward off old ghosts.

"Of course, I went looking for him. I wanted to make sure he wouldn't tell anyone. I was prepared to threaten him, to bribe him, to rough him up – anything to make sure he wouldn't tell. I knocked on his apartment door, and his wife opened it instead."

I caught my breath. Claire had never told me about Cooper.

"She asked me who I was; I lied, I told her I was one of John's friends, and she invited me in without a second glance. She was so happy that John had made a friend: she offered me tea and cookies and little cakes, told me to sit down and rest my feet. I sat down, drank my tea, made pleasant small talk. I knew that I couldn't hurt John now – his wife was like an angel. She would be completely crushed if anything happened to him."

I stiffened. "And when John came back?"

"I was still there. He opened the door, he saw me, and he smiled. Then he went along with my charade, calling me Martin and pretending that we had known each other forever. In fact, he did know quite a lot about me – it was disturbing, so I left as soon as possible and vowed to catch him alone next time."

"What about Claire? Was she happy to see him?"

Cooper sighed. "I'll never forget how lovingly she looked at him when he came home that night. It was like he was the only man alive."

I tensed up, feeling sick.

The Phantom spoke curtly from over my head. "Spare us the quaint similes. Give us the facts."

"All right, sorry. Look, after that, nothing happened for a long time. I saw John every once in a while and avoided him like the devil: I had decided he was up to no good, and I wanted nothing to do with him. Unfortunately, about a year and a half later, John showed up on my doorstep."

"What did he come to see you about?" I asked.

Cooper stared at the cobblestones. "He took a while to explain, but he was covered in grime and soot and muck, as if he had been climbing up chimneys or something, so I knew something was very wrong. He sat down on my couch and said that he had killed his wife."

I had been expecting something like this, but not this blunt. I closed my eyes in pain and brought my hands up to my face.

The Phantom's cloak brushed the edge of my cheek. He had stepped in front of me, hiding me from view, and it was his voice I heard next.

"He bribed you to keep him out of prison."

"Yes. He had strangled Claire in a drunken rage, he told me, but there were no witnesses, so if I argued it right, I could keep him from execution. I came up with the story: Claire had attacked him (insanity, I said, ran in her family) and John had fought back in self defense. Her head hit the corner of the fireplace, and she died from the injury."

"But her body? The bruises on her neck?"

"Oh, only the landlady's drunk son and an inspector saw the body, so I bribed the inspector, and the son – well, I made sure no one talked to him. No one thought of questioning the people in Claire's apartment, so no one else heard the rumors about her demise."

"The grave?" I spoke up again. "Who arranged for the grave?"

"I did," Cooper said, from behind the Phantom. "I paid for the headstone. And I thought of the inscription; it was ironic, I know, but I had to put something on it or the police would get suspicious. You have to understand – my life would have been ruined if John had told anyone about me. He had left one of his friends a letter, he said, with all the cases I had falsified. My life would have been over, Katelienne. I would have lost everything."

"You covered up John's murder," I said, and I got to my feet. "You were his accomplice. May you rot in hell."

I didn't know what I would have done if the Phantom hadn't been there to stop me: I wasn't thinking at all anymore, only flashes of memories. A dim red haze had swept over my vision.

Claire laughing at a party… Claire hugging me, telling me she was so happy to be finally going to Paris… Claire's letter, the one that started with: "Kate, I've fallen in love! His name… Oh, but I can't tell you yet. It will be a surprise! I know you'll never guess who!"…

Claire's face as a little girl, her tiny voice and bright eyes, her delicate, pale skin, her wicked smile… Claire, dancing with some boy during a masquerade, her head thrown back in delight, winking at me as I caught her eye, twirling around in circles on the grass outside, catching grasshoppers in the meadow, wishing on stars, telling me she would have twenty children, that I would be her maid of honor at her wedding: "And the second prettiest one there! The first will be me! Oh, I'm only joking, Kate, wipe that glare off your face!"

"Katelienne!"

Cooper was lying on the ground at my feet, and there was blood dripping down his cheek, oozing from his forehead. I was holding a rock (where had it come from?) and the Phantom was gripping my left arm, twisting it painfully behind my back.

"Put the rock down."

I dropped it. I was staring at Cooper's blood-drenched forehead. What had happened? Was he even alive?

Then the man at my feet groaned as he began to regain consciousness, and I stepped away from him, colliding with the Phantom, who released my arm.

I turned to look at him, ignoring the pain in my arm. I had intended to ask him what had happened, but as soon as I met his eyes, I said something else entirely.

"Luke will ask him about the cut on his forehead."

"I'll handle it," the Phantom said, sounding dangerous. "Go sit down over there, where I can keep an eye on you."

I went.

Cooper had pulled himself into a sitting position; the Phantom crouched down next to him and began speaking softly.

A minute passed, then two, and Cooper nodded, almost frantically, and nodded again. "Yes, yes, I won't say anything, I promise." His voice was, if possible, even shakier than when he had opened the rooftop door.

The Phantom rose lithely to his feet, and Cooper scrambled to his feet and scurried across the rooftop, not even pausing to shoot me a glance. He opened the door, shut it behind him, and his footsteps faded away into stillness.

There was a rush of wind across the rooftop, a pause, and then silence.

The Phantom turned, slowly, to look at me. "Well, I suppose that went well. Despite everything."

I got to my feet. "Yes. Despite everything."

My voice was low. I had never thought Cooper was capable of this. I had never thought anyone was capable of this. I drew a hand down my face, took a deep breath, and forced the words out that would break (at least, momentarily) the spell of misery that had descended upon the roof.

"You messed up the plan."

The joke was weak, but he crossed the rooftop anyway, and put his arms around me.