Disclaimer: I don't own PotO! I want to but I don't! I own Adrien and Isabella!
Chapter IV – The Mask
Erik had covered his face again, it seemed, when they had reached the room above the ladder. Adrien noticed this and picked up a stark white half-mask lying on the table. "Erik, I can't believe you forgot this. You've never forgotten it before. Of course, you've only been out a few other times, but still…" His voice trailed off, and Erik replaced the mask on his face.
Isabella looked at him, now with the mask on. Things were so strange… In the stories she'd heard about the Phantom of the Opera, he had had a disfigured face. He had worn a white half-mask to conceal it. He had had an enormous organ to play. Could it be… Could Erik be the Phantom? No, she told herself, no, the Phantom was years ago… Perhaps Erik was simply disfigured in the same (however coincidental) way? Perhaps he, too, had heard the stories (or maybe, she thought, lived through the time) and bought the mask at an auction similar to the one she had seen today? Isabella knew this would mean a set of highly unlikely circumstances and twists of fate, but Erik just didn't seem the type of person to have been a man capable of murder, seduction, or any of the things the Phantom had done.
Admittedly, his age was disconcerting all in itself, but he also seemed too gruff (among other things) to have been a man sleeping with a seventeen-year-old girl, however many years ago it was.
"Isabella?" Adrien stared into her eyes. "Is everything alright?"
She came back to reality with a start. "Yes, I'm fine."
He smiled. "Come with me; there's a room you can have. And we've got plenty of clothes and things, so you can change out of that if you want to."
"Thank you so much," she said, and followed him through the room with the piano and back down the ladder.