Ophelia yanked and prodded at the magic gateway for nearly ten minutes before she decided to give up. She had no doubt that her right shoulder would be purple by sunrise, having jammed it against the solid wood to make it budge—to no avail.
“You are the worst tour guide ever, you know,” she admonished the cat, which was currently bathing itself at her feet.
“Well, he is a cat,” a deep, vaguely familiar voice commented from behind her. “Do you need assistance with that?”
Ophelia startled, and the feline let out its own chirp of surprise. She spun to snap at whoever had snuck up on her, but as soon as she spotted them, no words came out.
The man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, only a few years older than her, tilted his head in amusement as he opened his arms to allow the feline to leap up into them. For a moment, she wondered if he had been the one she had felt watching her, but his gaze didn’t elicit the same uneasiness.
“You’re…” she began, a bit breathlessly. “Um…”
The man smirked as he gave the cat’s white fur a long stroke. The ghostly creature purred loudly as it rubbed its head underneath his chin with familiar affection. “I’m what? Very handsome? The most striking person you’ve ever seen?”
Ophelia began to nod, before realizing that perhaps that was a very embarrassing thing to do. She felt her cheeks flush as he laughed and let the cat drop back to the floor.
Others would probably describe him as being very tall, but at five feet and eleven inches herself, he only had about three and a half inches on her. He had shocking white hair and bright jewel-green eyes. The rest of his facial features were almost as sharp and delicate as her own—except he managed to look less gaunt than she did.
Another detail that spiked a small bit of jealousy in her stomach was how impeccably dressed he was. His waistcoat was made of deep viridian velvet that matched his eyes almost exactly, but his collared shirt and cravat were a rich onyx, the embroidered details of both pieces executed in a monochromatic silk thread. His pants were the same material as his shirt and tailored to perfection. If it wasn’t for the disheveled state of his hair and the way he had his sleeves carelessly rolled up around his—surprisingly muscular—biceps, she would have thought he was some sort of aristocrat.
But what she really noticed most of all was that he was a Ghost, though not like any she’d encountered so far. The edges of his silhouette didn’t have the same haloed blue glow that the other Apparitions had; rather, there was a faint white illumination about him instead. And there was very little transparency to his form unless she was staring very hard at him. Which she wasn’t. At all.
Yes, he looked just as corporeal as she did, except she could feel that something was different. There was an intensely warm static buzzing over her skin just like…
The stranger.
“You,” she said, a hint of accusation in her tone.
But there was no recognition in his emerald gaze. Only the briefest flash of confusion.
“Last night,” she continued, “we… you were…”
“Here, as always.”
“Yes, but—”
He gave her a pointed look as he lowered his voice and implored, “Be careful what you reveal out in the open. Even the walls have ears here, angel.”
She scowled in confusion. She didn’t understand what that meant. But all she said was, “Stop calling me that.”
His eyes turned sharp. “Are you implying I’ve called you that before?”
She thought of the night before. The feeling of his warmth making her want to linger in the dark despite knowing better. The way she had been desperate for him to know her name. The feeling of his invisible touch on her face…
“Are you going to act as if you don’t remember me?” she demanded, kicking herself for holding on to the details of a moment that was clearly very forgettable for him.
“Unfortunately, many mortals come through here.” He tilted his head, flicking his eyes up and down her figure. “Though, none have been as much a vision in red as you are.”
She looked down at herself then, remembering how ghastly she must look. The blood that had been gushing from her nose had finally dried up, leaving only a dull throbbing and the grotesque scarlet stain behind.
“That looks like a nasty wound,” he noted with a glance at her forearm.
She shrugged. The newly flowing magic in her veins had healing properties. Her arm was already beginning to scab. From what her mother had taught her, it would take her a quarter of the time to heal than normal mortals, and she didn’t need to worry about infections anymore either. Besides, she liked the sharpness of the pain. It reminded her that she needed to stay alert.
“If you don’t remember me, why are you bothering me?” she pressed.
“Call it curiosity. Or boredom. Whichever you prefer, it’s hard to ignore a contestant drenched in blood summoning a gateway in the middle of the manor.” He snorted. “But why don’t you jog my memory of our supposed meeting?”
“We met last night,” she told him, trying to shove away the embarrassment she felt for remembering the interaction so viscerally. “By the front gates. But I couldn’t see you, I could only hear you.”
“Then how do you know it was me?” He lifted a brow.
“All Ghosts have their own energy—like a fingerprint—and yours is even more distinct than most. I’ve never come across anything like it before.”
He smirked, and her defenses raised.
“I’m not crazy. I know it was you,” she snapped. “Whether you want to admit it to me or not.”
“You’re not crazy,” he agreed, gaze softening. “This is clearly your first time meeting a Phantom.”
Phantom. That was it. No wonder he was so… solid.
Apparitions were regular mortal souls that had died but not passed over to the Other Side. Completely non-corporeal and intangible by anything except each other and, of course, Necromancers. The worst type of Ghost, according to her mother, were the Ghouls. Apparitions that had stayed too long without crossing over, becoming zombie-like creatures as their ghostly energies began to fuse with that of this corporeal plane, making them strong enough to be semi-solid but also becoming mindless in the process. A horrible combination, to have power and no sense of morality. And she was beginning to wonder if that was exactly the sort of creature she had encountered in the secret corridor.
Poltergeists and Phantoms, however, were the rarest of the ghostly paranormal beings. The most powerful.
“When we met last night, what did we talk about?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.
She gave him an exasperated look. “Are you teasing me? Do you really not remember?”
“My memories are… complicated.”
“I asked if you were stuck here, if you needed help,” she said. “You told me to go home. That a house of Devils was no place for me.”
“I see you didn’t heed my advice. Pity,” he murmured. “It was an agreeable encounter, then?”
“Agreeable?” She snorted. “That wouldn’t have been my first choice of words. Vexing, perhaps. As is our current conversation. But nothing unpleasant or insidious happened if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded absentmindedly for a moment before flicking his eyes behind her. “How did you do this?”
“How did I do what?”
“How did you summon this door?” The undercurrent of his tone turned a little too serious for it to be a casual question.
“I didn’t summon it. It just appeared,” she explained.
“Hmm,” was all he said.
“Do you work here?” she interrogated. “Are you part of Phantasma’s staff?”
He slid his piercing eyes back to her. “Staff? No, not exactly.”
“Well, is that your cat?”
“Poe belongs to me as much as he belongs to anyone else, I imagine.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and changed the subject back to the locked door. “Do you know how to unlock this?”
“Yes.”
Ophelia waited for him to step forward and help, but when he didn’t move, she tapped her foot impatiently. One, two, three. When he still didn’t say anything, she finally implored, “Would you unlock this?”
“No.” He smirked.
“Then why did you offer to help before?” she demanded, propping one of her hands on her hip. The one still smeared with blood.
His eyes immediately snagged on the crimson lines that stained her skin, but he only said, “I didn’t, actually. I simply asked if you needed help.”
“That’s quite misleading.”
“Sorry, angel, but I can’t help any contestants during Phantasma.”
She frowned.
“At least, not for free.”
Before she could form a response, a piercing shriek rang out through the hall.
“Genevieve?” she called, pushing past the stranger, heart pounding at the sound of her sister’s voice.
When she turned back to ask if the scream had been real, she found that the stranger, and the cat, had disappeared.
