As Ophelia made her way back to her room, she kept wondering if the scream she’d heard had really been Genevieve or if it was just another trick the house was playing on her. It occurred to her, of course, that her own mind might have been the one playing the trick.
The real trials haven’t even started yet, she chided herself. Don’t psyche yourself out of the game before the competition gets a chance to.
A few wrong turns and retraced steps later, she found room 426 exactly as she left it. Though, she regarded the bookshelf with a bit more suspicion now that she knew what was likely still lurking behind it. After a brief debate, she decided sliding the hideous wing-backed chair in front of the shelf was her best chance of getting a decent night’s sleep.
Once that was settled, she opened her trunks and sifted through the contents to find a particular wine-colored dress she had packed. It was made of a lightweight chiffon, with a high collar and billowing sleeves that cuffed around her wrists. The skirt fell in tiers to her ankles, and that made it much easier to walk in than the heavy corseted ensemble she currently wore. In other words, it would be much easier to run away in, not to mention it was closer to the color of blood.
She stepped into the attached bathroom to wash off the remnants of crimson on her rapidly healing arm. Waving a hand through the air before her, she directed her magic toward the sconces on either side of the vanity’s mirror. The flames flicked to life, licking up from the ivory candles and illuminating the reflection of her ghastly appearance.
She peeled off the ruined gown and filled the bathtub with water, as scalding hot as she could get it. Grabbing a washcloth and bar of soap off the vanity, she climbed into the water. Lowering herself until her shoulders were submerged, she relished the steam clouding the air around her. She needed this. A moment to breathe. To think.
She couldn’t leave this wing of the house until level seven. Which meant she was stuck playing this game for at least the next week. It was important for her to maintain her sanity.
She leaned her head back against the edge of the tub and let her eyes fall shut as she worked on lathering the soap into the washcloth.
There would be no more exploring trap corridors or leaving her room unless absolutely necessary. She would go to the dining hall to eat, show up for the levels as directed, and that was it. Minimize the risks she took to avoid any more unwanted excitement.
She ran the washcloth over her flushed skin, gentle circles across her shoulders and décolletage.
Minimizing risks also meant no more encounters with certain green-eyed phantoms… Something about him disarmed her in a way that was concerning, and she didn’t need such a distraction. Even if he was intriguing. And handsome. And exactly the type of being she had been trained to assist. Not that he seemed to need her assistance. Even if he did, he spoke in too many circles and she couldn’t figure him out. His mouth much too smart.
Oh, his mouth.
She wondered what it would be like to have that mouth on her skin. Running along her clavicle, over her chest, down her stomach, to her…
Water sloshed out of the tub and onto the floor as she sat up, ramrod straight. The washcloth in her hand had been trailing down the planes of her stomach before she realized what she was doing, what she was thinking about. She hurried to finish bathing and drained the tub. Drying off and getting dressed for bed with lightning speed, she tucked herself beneath the covers and ordered herself to get some sleep.
This place was definitely going to drive her mad.
Ophelia awoke the next morning at a quarter past eight. Sitting up, she stretched out her limbs before climbing out of bed and headed to the bathroom. As she made her way through her morning routine, she refused to light the sconces, her eyes still too tired for the brightness.
Which meant it took her nearly ten minutes to see the fresh streaks of blood smeared across the wall next to the mirror. A shriek crawled up her throat as she realized that not only were the walls covered in gore, but blood was dripping from the faucet on the tub.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
One, two, three.
Another screech caught in her throat as something began to emerge from the pool of crimson as if it had been waiting for her to notice it. Something human-shaped with long, stringy hair covering its face. This time she knew, without a doubt, what the hellish creature was. A Ghoul. Mindless, deteriorating, with a hunger for mortal flesh.
She stumbled back and spun for the exit to her room. She twisted the knob with all her might, but it wouldn’t turn. She pulled and pulled, her heartbeat erratic as she looked over her shoulder to see the Ghoul slowly dragging itself out of the bathroom.
“What’s with the damn doors in this place,” she cried. “Let me out!”
Click.
She sobbed in relief as the knob finally turned and the door flung open, but it was not a hallway on the other side. Instead, the door had opened to a void of pitch-black nothingness. She halted on the very edge, almost tumbling over. As she checked back over her shoulder, she recoiled at the grotesque smile spreading across the Ghoul’s face beneath their hair. Not waiting for another close call, she turned back to the inky oblivion, and braced herself.
She stepped into the darkness.
Ophelia couldn’t tell if she had been falling for minutes or hours. There was not a single point of light around her. Only whispers.
As she fell, she passed through wisps of words. Shameful secrets and confessions of love. Snippets of conversations and hushed arguments. And one voice that seemed louder than the rest. A voice that felt hauntingly familiar. She strained to hear more from that voice, but she was falling too fast, and their words drifted away. She tried to call out, to scream for help, but no words would come out of her mouth. When she wondered if she would be adrift forevermore, she crashed through the floor.
“Quite an entrance.”
Debris rained down atop her and the firm, cushioned surface she’d landed on. Sitting up slowly, she was too stunned to even grunt with pain. When her gaze locked with a pair of deep viridian eyes, she sucked in a sharp breath of disbelief.
“Missed my presence already?” the stranger drawled.
She dusted herself off with shaky hands, giving him as much of an indignant look as she could manage through the shock. “Ah, so that’s the true distinction of a Phantom—an ego.”
“That, and what I’m able to do with my hands,” he taunted, lips curling up at the corners. “Shouldn’t you be settling in before breakfast? Or was there something wrong with your room?” He lifted a crystal goblet of amber liquid to his mouth.
Her forehead wrinkled at the sight. “Are you drinking?”
“Would you like some? It looks like you might need it.”
“No,” she deadpanned, though the idea of having another conversation with him that went round and round in circles made her think perhaps a drunken stupor would be preferable.
“Here.” He snapped his fingers, and she was instantly clean of the dust and chunks of ceiling clinging to her dress. He set his glass down on the table he was leaning against and moved to crouch before her. “How did you find your way to this room?”
It took everything in her not to flush at his proximity, which piqued her a bit.
“Ghosts can’t eat or drink,” she noted, ignoring his question.
“I’m special,” he retorted. “Now, focus. How did you get here?”
“I’m not sure where here even is,” she answered, waving him back so she could stand from the chaise she had fallen into.
He obliged, rising and stepping away. He was looking at her as if she were a puzzle and he was deciding whether to bother solving it.
She sighed, then explained. “I went to wash up in my bathroom and there was blood all over the mirror and in the tub—”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the scene,” he told her. “The Ghouls and Apparitions haven’t gotten very creative over the years.”
“You mean they use the same tricks every time?”
“Yes. Ghouls don’t have the capacity to be retrained once they’ve been stuck doing something for so long. Even the Devils use the same nine levels of terror for every competition—and yet there’s still an incredibly low success rate.” He shrugged. “Why fix what isn’t broken is sort of the philosophy around here.”
“Devils,” she whispered, mostly to herself. She hadn’t had time to add them to her list of worries yet. But it was only a matter of time before she came across one. It was called the Devil’s Manor after all. They were the only beings with magic powerful enough to operate a place like this.
A slow grin spread over the stranger’s face. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a Devil before?”
“I don’t make it a habit to seek out trouble.”
He raised a single, silvery brow. “Don’t you, though? You claim I took the time to warn you away and yet here you are.”
She opened her mouth to retort until she realized he was right. To him, it probably did seem like she was a glutton for punishment.
“Well, I didn’t use to,” she muttered as she looked away from him and finally took in the room around them.
There was an enormous table dressed with intricate black and gold centerpieces in the center of the room, at least fifteen blood-red upholstered chairs lining each side. A large crystal chandelier hung from an ornate ceiling rose, sending scatters of rainbow light over the dark walls.
“Is this the dining hall?” she asked.
“Yes, and you shouldn’t be in here while it’s being prepped,” he told her. “You shouldn’t have been able to leave your room yet at all—you were supposed to be locked in.”
“I was,” she spat. “And then I finally got the door open, and the hallway was gone. There are too many magic doors in this place.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but something stopped him. His eyes narrowed and began to dart around the room, and she was about to ask what was wrong when she felt it. That dark, invisible gaze.
Is something watching me? Or is it him they’re following?
A beat later, a low sound of frustration came from his throat, and he moved into action. Guiding her around the chaise by her elbow, he gently steered her out of the room through its wide, arched entrance.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
“Someplace we can have a conversation that won’t get you into more trouble,” he murmured. “Though, I’m starting to suspect that keeping you out of trouble wouldn’t be an easy task.”
She gave an indignant hum in protest, which he ignored. He led her down the main hall and into the first room they came to, which just so happened to be a broom closet, identical to the one in the other corridor that had magically appeared. He snapped his fingers as he kicked the door shut behind them, and a candle flared to life on one of the wooden shelves.
“Shouldn’t you take me back to my room?” She lifted her brows as she soaked in the details of the dingy space, trying to put as much distance between herself and his towering figure as she could; the size of the room, however, made putting more than five inches between them rather difficult.
“Do you want to go back to your room and finish the haunt?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Why do you care where I do or don’t go?”
“I think you’re grossly misusing the word care.”
“What would you call it, then?” She shifted on her feet with impatience. “Concern?”
“More like self-preservation if we’re going to continue running into each other,” he corrected. “Now back to my question—tell me the rest of how you ended up falling through the dining room ceiling.”
“But I don’t know how I ended up there.” She threw her hands up. “Like I said, I opened the door to my bedroom, and when I went through, I fell.”
“Fell where?” he pressed.
“It was some sort of void. There wasn’t anything around but pitch-black. Only… whispers.”
He froze. “Whispers?”
“Yes.” She felt her forehead wrinkle at his reaction. “A bunch of whispers of conversations and—”
“You found the Whispering Gate?” His eyes grew wide.
“What’s the Whispering Gate?”
“A place that you should not be able to access. It’s on the Other Side.”
“The Other Side. You mean—”
“Only those who are non-corporeal, or Devils, should be able to access the Whispering Gate,” he confirmed. “The fact that it showed up for you is… interesting, to say the least.”
“I’m sure it was just Phantasma playing a trick on me,” she reasoned.
“No, the Whispering Gate is summoned, and no normal mortal should be able to call it.”
“Who said I was normal?” she challenged.
“Clearly, you aren’t,” he agreed with a slow flick of his gaze over her figure, not leering, but scrutinizing. “So, what sort of being are you, then?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m a Necromancer.”
“Now that is something.” His smile turned almost feline at her claim. “Which would maybe explain why we were able to meet yesterday.”
“That reminds me… why do you think I wasn’t able to see you then? And why did you bother to warn me away? Isn’t everyone here supposed to want people to enter the competition?”
“There are wards around the perimeter of the estate to stop passing mortals from being able to interact with any beings beyond them unless they enter the competition. Your Necromancy abilities must have messed with their effectiveness. Stop thinking about any being in Phantasma as having good intentions or motives to help you and start asking yourself how their actions are really beneficial to them.”
“I’m not sure I’m very fond of your riddles,” she said.
The twinkle in his gaze turned sinful. “That’s too bad. I find riddles and puzzles to be rather thrilling. Most mortals who enter this competition are usually fond of such things as well.”
“I didn’t enter because I wanted to. I’m here to find my sister.” He didn’t need to know all the murky details; like the fact that Ophelia was actually just making a very strong educated guess that this was where Genevieve had run off to. “I need to find her and convince her to come home before she can get herself killed.”
“Don’t you think if your sister came here, of her own volition, that she knows exactly what she signed up for?”
Ophelia shook her head. “Genevieve can be impulsive. I worry she didn’t understand the full scope of what she was signing up for.”
“If you’re both already here, though, wouldn’t you like to see if you could win?”
“I don’t care about winning. I don’t care about whatever prize this hellish place is promising. I just care about getting my sister home.” She tore her eyes away from him when she felt tears prick at their corners. She would not show him any sign of vulnerability. “She didn’t leave me much to go off of, and no one here will tell me if they’ve even seen her. Oh, and that she wrote in her diary that she’s trying to find someone named Gabriel.”
His eyes flashed when she spoke the name, and her guard immediately went up.
“Do you know a Gabriel?” she demanded.
His expression was carefully blank. “I know many people.”
“That isn’t a real answer,” she chided. “And if you’re not going to be helpful, then I would like it if you stopped holding me hostage in this broom closet.”
“You shouldn’t be exploring right now,” he warned. “If the wrong person catches you outside of your room during a haunt, they’ll know you’re different. And who said I couldn’t be helpful? What if I told you I could make sure you get to your sister?”
Now she was the one who crossed her arms. “And at what cost would you help me do that?”
“You’re catching on,” he murmured.
“I offered to help you yesterday, you know,” she revealed. “And you pretty much told me that wouldn’t be a good idea for my own health. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go, please.”
Surprise shined in his eyes. “You offered to help me?”
“Yes. I’m a Necromancer. Helping wayward Ghosts is part of our job description.”
His expression shifted to something like thoughtfulness. “What is your name?”
She stared at him for a long time, deciding if she should risk giving it over this time.
He gave a dramatic sigh. “If I give you my name first, would that help?”
“Possibly,” she answered.
“You can call me Blackwell. It’s nice to officially make your acquaintance…?”
A long pause. Then, “Ophelia Grimm.”
“Ophelia,” he repeated, tasting every syllable. Her name on his tongue sounded like a wicked prayer. “You are exactly the person I’ve been waiting for.”
