"What was that?" Elizabeth asked, looking around.

"Sounded like Mira." Beth said, standing up. They looked at each other. "You think she's in trouble?"

"That, or she just saw a spider or a clown." Elizabeth replied.

"It's me! It's me! Calm down!" Gwen said, stepping into the candle light, "Relax! I'm sorry!"

"Sorry?" Mira squealed, "You scared me half to death!"

"Thought I was the big scary Phantom out to get you?" she asked with a laugh.

"It's not funny Gwen! You seriously freaked me out."

"Me too," Adrienne added on, "I wish you would learn to make noise like normal people. Or just announce your presence instead of appearing out of nowhere." The other girl shrugged.

"I don't hear anything else." Beth said, "You think it was nothing?"

"Well, considering that it could very well have been a spider, and I don't hear Gwen or Adrienne screaming, yes. That… or the Phantom killed all three of them really quickly." The laugh at the end of her sentence wasn't as real as she hoped. Beth bent down next to her bag again, actually managing to open it without interruption.

"Well, looks like all my stuff is in here. Wait a second, my twizzlers aren't here. That's a shame." While Beth spoke, Elizabeth glanced around. She thought she heard fabric rustling. There was nothing now, maybe it was just her friends again? "I mean not that I really needed the entire bag, but I would have liked to have had them." Elizabeth let out a muffled yell as two very strong hands grabbed her. She didn't think, she reacted with every ounce of self defense class knowledge, her head whipping back into the general area of the person's nose. A pained yell was her reward.

By now Beth had come to her aide, leaping at the attacker, who somehow was still in the shadows. The hands released her and shoved Beth away. The Phantom never got the chance to shrink back into the shadows. Another athletic body had pelted into him sending them both careening.

Adrienne and Mira came running after their friend. "What the hell is going on?" Mira demanded. The light of two candles managed to illuminate the rest of the room a little more.

"I found the Phantom." Gwen said with a mix of humor and terror. Tackling the Phantom had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but the fact that he was much larger and much stronger than her hadn't come into the equation.

"Tell me who you are and how you got down here," he said, the threat in his voice was unmistakable. Everyone stood there, staring at him, "Now."

"Okay! Okay! Names! Umm," Mira felt like she was shouting in comparison, "I'm Mira. This is Adrienne, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, and the person you're currently…" holding hostage seemed like it was likely to have bad repercussions, "well, she's Gwen." There was a pause.

"You still haven't answered my second question."

"We don't know," Beth spoke up when words failed Mira, failed everyone really. How could they explain that they'd been watching a movie in the 21st century and ended up in the 19th? "We got lost and accidentally ended up here. Completely by mistake I can assure you." He surveyed her for a moment, as if he could tell whether she was lying simply by looking at her.

"And your state of dress?" Adrienne could have sworn there was an undertone of humor in the question, but then…five girls, three in pajama pants, one in a black and white dress, and the fifth in skinny jeans and a tank top…probably didn't fit well in the 1870s. Everyone glanced around, what could they say about that?

"Costumes," Adrienne said suddenly.

"I beg your pardon?" the Phantom's tone couldn't have disagreed with his statement more.

"Costumes," Elizabeth repeated, "We were on our way to a costume party when we got lost. We're obviously not from around here and got our directions mixed up." No one else said anything to back her up, "We were supposed to look like we escaped from an insane asylum."

"You succeeded," he said dryly.

"So, we answered your questions. Can you please let our friend go and we'll just be on our merry way?" No one asked Adrienne where 'our merry way' was. He silently debated, they seemed relatively harmless (and quite possibly as insane as they were pretending), the likelihood of anyone believing that they'd actually seen the Phantom of the Opera was slim. Did he want to take the risk and let them go?

"Come on Erik, please?" Mira said when she couldn't stand the silence any longer. Gwen yelped as the grip on her neck suddenly tightened.

"What did you just say?" he demanded. The subtle glares being shot her way did not escape his attention, "How, exactly, do you know my name?" Erik snarled. There was no point in denying that he was, indeed, Erik.

"Lucky guess," Mira offered weakly, "It was between Erik or Sean, I just felt like you looked more like an Erik."

"Tell the truth." Gwen made a gasping noise as his grip tightened compulsively.

"The truth?" she half wheezed, "I'll tell you the truth, just let go of my neck." It was the looks of silent horror on the other girls' faces that made him finally switch his grip. "The truth is, we know a lot about you…or as much as someone can know about someone like you. Though, now that I see you, you're definitely not seven feet tall. Whether or not you can breathe fire is still up for debate though." Not a single one of her friends had any idea what Gwen was saying, but they didn't have anything better. "It's surprisingly easy to find people that are willing to talk about the Opera Ghost who caused the famous disaster. So, we did some research."

"We even read a book," Adrienne muttered before Beth and Elizabeth silently elbowed her.

"A rainy day project, if you will," she continued on, "because let's face it, who isn't fascinated by this sort of thing?"

"That still doesn't explain how you know my name." Despite her explanations, his voice wasn't any friendlier than it had been. There were very few people on the planet that knew Erik's name, and even fewer that those girls would have been able to track down.

"I believe you are familiar with" Gwen cast around for a name, "the Viscount de Chagny?" The girls' looks became even more horrified, as one of them face palmed and another looked like she wanted to burst into tears. "He was quite reluctant to talk about the subject. Your name was the only question he saw fit to answer." She took a step towards her friend, "Speaking of questions, it seems we've answered all of yours, so then we'll just get out of your hair. It was….lovely meeting you."

"Not quite." Gwen gently attempted to yank her arm out of his grip to no avail, "You see, I happen to know it's quite impossible to get lost and find this place. So, if the Viscount didn't tell you how to find me, who did?"

"Oh, this is your Lair?" Adrienne asked, "All yours? Beth, did you know that?"

"No, no. Of course not, I had no idea this lovely lair was his. Did you?" the Hispanic girl replied.

"No!" the both turned to their smaller friend, "Meg?"

"Uh-huh!" she said brightly, the horrible consequences of what she said hit her a split second later, "Huh-uh." She scrambled to fix her mistake. "What I meant was that I figured out that this beautiful establishment was his after we ran into him, because I mean, who else would decorate this wonderfully? I mean-"

"Quiet!" silence fell rather quickly. "Tell me who got you down here."

"Uhh…" no one seemed to have an answer. It was Elizabeth who came to the rescue. Thinking on her feet, she repeated Gwen's earlier action, careening into the Phantom and his hostage, the combination of force and weight sent all three of them falling backward. The back of Erik's head met the very solid rock floor and he didn't get up.

"Did you kill him?" Mira squeaked. Gwen felt for a pulse.

"No, he's definitely still alive."

"Great, let's get out of here!" Beth said, grabbing her bag and running for the door. Elizabeth pulled Mira with her and Adrienne helped Gwen up. None of them notice the small, but all so important, rectangular device fall out of Gwen's pocket and next to the unconscious Phantom.