54. Talented.

“But…” Ava stammered “Didn’t he...attack you?” 

The woman practically purred. “He did. Wasn’t it delicious?” She held up the knife, now gleaming, and gazed at it fondly. “Poor you,” she said, turning to Ava. “I’m sorry, dove, but, well, witnesses.” She shrugged as if she was talking about emptying the dishwasher. 

But then she moved quickly, more quickly than Ava was ready for--she grabbed Ava’s wrist and pulled hard.

Ava screamed and dropped her phone, but its low light still lit their faces from below. “Wait, please!” she cried. Lisette held Ava close to her face and hesitated.

"Wait?” she asked. The shadows cast on her face truly did have a ‘fantome’ effect now, and she looked terrifying. “For what?” She pressed the edge of the knife, still warm from its last kill, against her prey’s pulsing neck.

Ava swallowed nervously. “I know you have to kill me,” she said, adopting a humble tone, “but first--first will you just tell me how? How did you trick that man? How did you manage to...actually kill him?”

Now Lisette actually laughed out loud. “He? He was simple!” 

"But I bet the others weren’t all simple,” said Ava, glancing down at the woman’s skirt. “You must be quite talented.”

53. Her Scarlet Dress.

The man yelped in pain and grabbed his cheek. In the process he released the woman’s arm, dropped the candle, and the light crashed out. 

They were enveloped in the thick darkness of the catacombs. “Run!” Ava yelled, hoping the French woman would have a chance to escape. There was a scuffle, the sound of something like cloth ripping and meat tearing, a grunt, and a thud. Her heart pounded inside her throat. She crept forward and reached around to where she knew her phone must be, just feet away from where the man was standing. He was panting heavily. 

"I can hear you.” But it wasn’t a man who spoke in this surprisingly excellent English. Ava breathed a sigh of relief that the woman was alive, and felt her fingers finally close around her poor phone.

But her breath caught in her chest when the white light of her screen fell across the man’s bloodied body. Lisette, as the man had called her, stood over him, wiping a thin, dripping knife against her petticoat. She was holding her outer skirt up as she did so, smiling calmly. There were several other, darker stains across the petticoat, but as soon as she dropped the scarlet trail of her dress back over it, the stains disappeared from view. 

Lisette took a slow, deep breath and met Ava’s gaze with a grin.

52. Phone Tag.

The frenchman’s threats gave Ava an idea. Honestly, it sounded ridiculous in her head, but she had to do something. They’d never seen this kind of technology, after all. 

Feeling like an eight-year-old at a campfire, and without any clue as to whether this would be a stroke of genius or just, well, a stroke--she held her cell phone up to her chin and clicked the home button. Instantly her face lit up with the white silvery light of her twenty-first century screen, in what she hoped was a phantom-esque appearance.

The woman yelped in fright and tried to step back, but the man's grip on her was firm. His eyes widened, fearful for a moment, before narrowing into suspicion. Ava cursed and clicked the lock, swallowing herself in darkness again. So much for scaring him away.

She glared at her phone in annoyance. “What good are you, then?" The man gasped at the sound, but before he could react any further she lunged forward and hurled the phone right at him. 

It smacked against his bony face with a satisfying crack.

51. Le Fantôme.

Ava fell back into the shadows and waited, her breath caught like a hook in her throat. The scuffle of feet and approaching candlelight told her she only had seconds before they discovered her, and she instinctively walked back down the hall to avoid being caught in the light. She couldn’t go too far -- she knew she had to straighten out whatever moment in time her grandfather had messed with if she wanted to get back. 

"I know you are there, American!" the man said in a thick French accent. He scanned the shadows furiously, but his candlelight was dwarfed by the weight of the catacomb’s darkness. He still gripped the poor woman’s wrist in one hand, and her eyes, too, shifted back and forth as she also searched the corridor. “You coward!” he said with a curl of his lip. “Hiding in the shadows, leaving me with your woman!” The girl whispered something in French, and the man laughed. “Did you hear that, American? Lisette thinks you are a fantôme - a ghost! Why don’t you come out and let me kill you so she will know how truly human you are?”

50. The Argument.

Ava heard a woman’s voice down the corridor and quickly shut off her phone to avoid being seen. The woman was arguing in French with someone, and a sultry man’s voice responded silkily, apparently undisturbed by her tone. A glimmer of candlelight came from around a corner up ahead, so Ava approached it carefully and peered around the edge. 

Less than ten feet away, a tall, greasy-looking man stared down at a woman who was clearly telling him off. He wore a coat with tails and a high collar; she, a dress fitted at the waist with a bustled skirt and poufed sleeves. They looked like they might have been shooting a period film. She spat something at him in French, but he still seemed unperturbed. He reached to tuck her hair behind her ear tenderly, at which point she slapped his wrist away in fury. He then grabbed her wrist and wrenched her so fiercely that Ava involuntarily let out an audible gasp. 

She cursed her foolishness as she watched the sound of her shock echo towards the couple--and twist their faces curiously in her direction.