Erik pushed up the trap door over his head, and flinched as it creaked, but he knew the room was empty. He lifted himself out of the hole and almost hit his head on the bottom of the bed. Once he had managed to pull himself out, he examined the room. It did not take him long to find what he was looking for; burned pages of his Don Juan triumphant were spread across the woman's bed. He gathered them quickly and tucked them back into the leather folder. He had not believed any relics of Don Juan had survived the fire, and it was incredible that this many pages remained. He scanned the room quickly, making sure there was nothing he had missed. Once his search was concluded he slipped back through the trapdoor from which he came and back into the darkened tunnel. A few tunnels under the opera house led to a few dressing rooms and other various rooms, though their original purpose was unknown to Erik. Luckily one of the passages led to the blonde haired woman's room, the one he had seen at the Populaire. He wanted to know how she knew of Don Juan, and now he had his answer. He was relieved that was all there was to it, she had simply found the pages... But what would she think when she discovered the missing pages? Well that didn't matter to Erik, as long as he had those pages he was fine. He needed to relieve the world of all evidence that the Opera Ghost had ever existed. Lightly he touched the mask that covered the right half of his face. Meg had returned his mask to him while he had been living with her, and he was glad to have it back, he felt almost naked without it. He had worn a mask of some sort for his entire life, and he wasn't going to stop now, even if no one was going to see him. Erik tucked the folder under his arm and continued walking.

()

"Alice," I asked after checking under my bed, "Did you do something with those pages?"

"No," Alice said slowly.

"Odd," I murmured, I don't remember ever taking them off my bed after I left my room that day... Had they simply disappeared then? That was highly unlikely. I combed my room for them, but all I found was the first piece of burnt paper I had discovered first, which I had stored at the back of the wardrobe. Since it only had a few bars of music, it was a little useless.

"Do you think someone took them?" Alice suggested.

"That's how it seems..." I replied.

"Who would have wanted steal a few pieces of an old manuscript?" Alice muttered.

"I don't know..."