NIGHT TWO OF PHANTASMA
“Angel, you have not seen even a modicum of what I am capable of,” the handsome, green-eyed bastard whispered in her ear as he pinned her back against the wall with a hand at her waist. “I could make you utter things you never thought you’d possess the will to say just to get a taste of what I have to offer…”
His tongue flicked out to lick the pulse throbbing at the side of her throat to emphasize his point.
She hated the way her body arched into him, of its own volition, as it searched for the friction it craved. He kept his grip on her waist as he slid his other hand into her hair and angled her mouth up to his. She made a sound of breathy pleasure when he bit down on her bottom lip, hard. Her hips began to writhe forward, into the hardness she could feel growing at the front of his trousers, and his hand at her waist began to slide down, ripping away the skirts of her dress to—
A bell tolled.
Ophelia shot up in her bed, hair clinging to her forehead and temples with sweat. She glanced at the clock across the room and was unsurprised to find that she had dozed back off and slept through both breakfast and lunch. Her body and mind had been utterly exhausted from the past few days, not to mention her wounds, and sleep was when the magic in her veins took its time to heal her injuries.
Another toll.
She scrubbed a hand over her face before stretching out her limbs and assessing her clawed-up arm. The skin was as good as new. Her shoulders relaxed with relief. That was definitely one advantage to the family magic.
She pushed back the covers and stood to look around the room, confirming there were no grotesque Ghouls lying in wait for an ambush. The fatigue still clinging to her bones, mixed with the needling paranoia this place constantly bred in her mind, almost made her regret turning down Blackwell’s bargain.
Almost.
She had sent him away after his ridiculous revelation, laughing at the notion of giving up a decade of her life when she could just find Genevieve all by herself. For one, who knew how many years she had left? Giving ten of them away would surely be a perilous decision. Besides, Blackwell hadn’t put up a fight over her dismissal anyway. He had only nodded at her rejection and disappeared to wherever it was he went in the manor when he wasn’t randomly showing up to vex her or intrude on her rest. As if her waking hours weren’t filled with enough Ghosts, now she had a smug Phantom haunting her dreams.
As she started dressing for the day—or rather, night—she had a sinking worry that there might come a point when she’d pay an egregious amount to be able to sleep peacefully.
Shaking off that thought, she nimbly laced up the corset of her black velvet dress, pulling the strings as hard as she could until she was barely able to breathe. Something she would regret later when she’d have to wrestle with the stays to get them off. Sometimes, it took both her mother and Genevieve to undo her corsets with how tight she made them, but she didn’t know what to expect out of Phantasma’s trials, and the last thing she wanted was faulty knots being a hindrance.
Quickly tying a matching ribbon into her hair, she slipped out of her room, hoping it wouldn’t take too much time to find her way back to the dining hall so she could squeeze in a meal before things began. She was already ravenous from skipping dinner the night before. Plus, she was hoping she might finally run into someone—fully corporeal—that she could ask about Genevieve.
It took a bit of trial and error as she retraced her steps, but eventually she found her destination. She walked through the familiar open archway and took in the extravagant display of food on the expansive dining table as her stomach growled. The architecture of the dining hall was more ornate than she remembered, but perhaps that was only because she had been too busy falling through the ceiling to notice. There was no sign of the ordeal now, the ceiling fully intact, the debris nowhere to be seen. There was a large black and gold rug that spanned the entirety of the floor, and the filigree wallpaper beneath the ornate picture-frame molding was the definition of opulence. As were the marble pedestals and statues that lined the walls on either side of the archway, identical chaises to the one she had crashed into sitting between each pair of stone columns.
When she had finished gaping at the elegant details, she was surprised to find she wasn’t alone. The girl with the flaxen braids—Luci, she remembered—was hunched over a bowl of soup, looking alarmingly haggard. Large purplish bags now sat beneath Luci’s hollowed eyes, her pale complexion almost gray, and it wasn’t until Ophelia sat down at the table and began fixing a plate that her presence was noticed.
“Oh,” Luci squeaked out in surprise.
“Long day?” Ophelia asked, tone neutral.
Luci nodded quietly and looked back down at her soup. Apparently, whatever had stolen her sleep had also stolen her friendliness—which was more than fine by Ophelia. The two of them ate in silence before a few other contestants in their group began to trickle in. One was a smarmy-looking man who had missed a button on his vest. A woman with wine-colored curls and an onyx hoop pierced through her septum filed in behind him. The woman looked content to keep to herself at the far end of the dining table, which officially made her Ophelia’s favorite so far.
Especially when the man plopped himself in the chair to her left and caused the plates in front of them to clatter.
“Eric Greensborough,” he greeted. “My father is Donald Greensborough, owner of the city’s largest tobacco plant. You are?”
“Not interested in socializing,” Ophelia answered. Her patience with the men in this place was wearing unbelievably thin.
Something tightened in Eric’s eyes, but his smile didn’t waver as he turned to Luci and tried, “You’re Lucinda, right? Cade’s cousin? Heard you barely survived last night.”
Luci winced a bit but didn’t respond, and Eric let out a deep sigh.
“I would get stuck with the most boring group in this place,” he muttered, mostly to himself, before announcing a bit louder, “That’s just fine. Makes it easier on me when you all inevitably drop out or get slaughtered. Don’t expect any help.”
“You can’t even button your vest correctly,” Ophelia pointed out. “I doubt you were going to be anyone’s first choice for assistance anyway.”
Luci’s lips curled up in a small smile as she sipped another spoonful of her soup. Eric’s mouth twisted at the insult, but he still looked down to check her claim, standing from the table to stalk away when he noted that she was, in fact, right about the buttons.
“He’s insufferable,” Luci muttered.
“That seems to be a running theme with every man here,” Ophelia observed.
Luci gave a humorless laugh before leaning forward and whispering, “Rumor has it that his father’s business is nearly bankrupt after a whole debacle with not paying their property taxes and that’s why he’s here. They used their estate as collateral. And I certainly have no room to judge…”
Ophelia nodded politely but didn’t offer anything more, and they both settled into silence once again. She needed to get to level seven before she could look for Genevieve, and she suspected that blending into their group was a better strategy than sticking out too much, and she didn’t want to risk making any attachments. She wasn’t sure what game Phantasma was playing by forcing players into these groupings, but she was sure it wasn’t in order to help them win—which meant trusting anyone here was not a strategic move.
By the time everyone in their group had finally appeared in the dining hall and she had finished eating, it was almost sunset. Their first trial was about to begin, and anxious conversations on what they might expect began to buzz through the room.
“The levels are based on the Nine Circles of Hell,” said a middle-aged man named James with sandy hair and a thick beard. “I read an interview by a past contestant in the New York Post once. They described games of Deceit, Wrath, Greed, Limbo…”
“Are you saying they’re going to transport us to Limbo?” Eric mocked, smoothing a hand down the front of his adjusted vest.
James huffed. “Not the real Limbo on the Other Side. At least, I don’t think. It’s more of an illusion from what I’ve heard. One that feels very real.”
“We aren’t going to have to work together, are we?” someone else asked.
“I sure hope not,” Cade said from where he leaned against the back wall with a sneer.
“What? You’re too good for help?” James countered.
Cade gave a quick, sharp laugh. “I have a bet running that you’ll be the first one out, old man.”
“When the Hell is this thing going to start so all of you can shut the fuck up?” the woman with the septum piercing muttered from her corner.
The second those words were out in the open, every light in the room snuffed out.
“Welcome to level one,” a deep masculine voice boomed. Ophelia’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark as he continued, “I’m your host, Zel.”
With that, a puff of smoke wafted up from the floor by the archway, and Ophelia’s mouth went slack at the sight, her dinner forgotten. A Devil.
Gasps around the room resounded at the sight of the egregiously tall man dressed in an impeccably tailored crimson suit. The curved horns that adorned the crown of his head jutted out from bronze curls that complimented his dusky brown skin and amber eyes.
Horns. His Devil’s Mark.
The grin on Zel’s face stretched as he took in the terrified expressions around him as if this response was exactly what he was hoping for. Ophelia fought the urge to roll her eyes at the pure drama.
Zel’s amber gaze flicked over to her for a brief moment then as if he could hear her thoughts. She froze.
Each Devil possessed a range of different abilities, which made it hard to anticipate exactly what you were dealing with if you ever met one. And Ophelia knew from her mother’s lessons that mind-reading was not off the table.
“I have the pleasure of explaining how the events of each level will transpire—do listen carefully, because I do not repeat myself,” Zel warned, waving a hand at the wall to his left where a doorway now appeared. “This is the portal that will take you into the first level. Each of your hosts will provide you with a clue that contains what to expect inside. That will be your last chance to forfeit. Once you step through, the level will begin, and your only ways out are winning, bargaining, or death.”
The tension in the room grew thicker as people began to shift uncomfortably on their feet, glancing around as if they hoped the others’ presence would be a reassuring sign that they couldn’t possibly be mad for participating in such a risky game when everyone else here was doing the same.
“If you complete the trial successfully,” Zel continued, “you will be brought back to Phantasma and receive your winner’s mark. Are you ready for this level’s clue?”
Before anyone could confirm they were ready, the older man, James chimed, “Winner’s mark? What does that entail? Will it be permanent? And what happens if you don’t complete the trial—is there a mark for losing?”
Zel’s smile was unforgiving. “I suppose you’ll find out if you fail, won’t you? Now, pay attention, here is your clue.”
They all watched with rapt focus as the Devil flicked his hand toward the portal and words began to burn themselves into the door’s surface with his magic.
In deepening light, where senses fade, a labyrinth vast, a daunting maze.
No sight, no sound, no touch to guide, navigate true or be crushed inside.
Beware the beast, within the heart, and find the door, back to start.
Ophelia tried to commit as much of the riddle to memory as she could, but the Devil wasted no time moving on.
“When I call your name step through,” Zel directed. “Lucinda.”
Everyone snapped their heads toward Luci, who was now a sickly shade of white. Cade snickered when she hesitated. Something about the sound must have bolstered her determination, though, because she tilted her chin up, rolled her shoulders back, and took a step toward the door. The entire group waited with bated breath as she swung the entrance open. Ophelia wasn’t sure what she expected to see on the other side, but it certainly wasn’t a plain white wall.
“Step through,” Zel ordered. Luci took a deep breath and followed his directions.
The room tensed, waiting for a scream of agony or some other sign of distress, but none came, and an instant later, Luci completely disappeared from view. The Devil called the others’ names in turn, and when he finally got to Ophelia, there were only a few contestants left waiting. She could still turn around and leave—with very few to witness her embarrassment—but she steeled her nerves. She could do this. She would do this. For Genevieve. For Grimm Manor. For her family’s legacy.
She stepped through the portal and into the nothingness.
