To Blackwell’s credit, he was a decent instructor. Though she could do without the smug grins whenever she tried something contrary to his suggestions and it backfired.
Though their magic wasn’t the same, he was able to break down the mechanics in his lessons well enough to give her an idea of what to look for within herself. How to feel out the different sensations in her body in order to concentrate her power in a way that gave her more control. Though, that effort became muddied up by the butterflies in her stomach every time he got a little too close to demonstrate something.
He was a bit firmer in his instruction than her mother had been—probably because her mother hadn’t been able to do anything but describe magic to her, and now Ophelia was actually able to feel it first-hand. But all of Blackwell’s critiques were constructive in a way that encouraged her to elevate herself to his level, rather than break her down.
“You’re losing concentration right before you expel,” he told her. “You can’t let go of your focus just because you feel your magic ready to fire. Make sure to follow all the way through. Go again.”
They had been at this for a little over an hour in the cobweb-filled drawing room, facing each other a few feet apart so she had something to aim at. She’d summon her magic, point, and expel, then Blackwell would turn transparent just in time for the blue sparks of her power to pass through him and scorch the wall. The summoning part had become easier the more she flexed that muscle in her core. It was the aiming part she was having difficulty with. No matter how much she tried, the zaps of power always came out scattered instead of streamlined, and though Blackwell never seemed to run out of patience with her, she was running out of patience with herself.
“I’m tired,” she told him. “And I don’t have a lot left in my reservoir.”
Plus, the room had begun to smell strongly of petrichor and salt, a side effect of all the magic that was beginning to make her lightheaded.
He nodded. “Alright. Why don’t we shift our focus to the disappearing?”
“I told you,” she said, sighing. “That was an accident. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“What triggered it before?” he prompted.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Cade attacking me with a knife—”
Before she could finish the rest of her sentence, Blackwell snapped his fingers and a knife suddenly appeared in his hand. There was not even a second of hesitation as he launched the blade right at her.
She choked on a squeal as she tried to dive out of the way, but she didn’t move fast enough and the knife—
—went right through her now-invisible chest. She gawked at Blackwell, half in disbelief half in rage. He met her gaze evenly, quite satisfied with himself.
“It’s definitely a self-defense mechanism,” he confirmed with a wink.
“You’re a menace!” she barked at him. “What if that hadn’t worked?”
“It did work, so there’s no point in being upset about it,” he countered as he procured another knife, tossing it into the air and catching it by its hilt.
“I swear if you throw that at me—”
He whipped the blade in her direction. This time, she managed to dive out of the way, but he already had another knife on deck. She didn’t even bother to protest as he aimed the next one, instead focusing on the way her skin pricked as she traced the knife’s trajectory through the air. When it came closer, a shot of terror went through her veins and an odd sensation—that she could only describe as what she’d imagine evaporating would feel like—rippled through her. The knife passed clean through her chest.
“I got it,” she realized.
This time when he threw the blade, she planted her feet shoulder-width apart and braced herself.
With a sharp nod, she instructed, “Aim for a different spot this time.”
He whipped it toward her left shoulder. Now that she knew what feeling to anticipate, she homed in on that warm tingle, and before the knife was even within arm’s reach, she made her entire left arm disappear.
“Hell,” she gasped as she lifted her invisible limb. Instead of it immediately returning to its solid state, as it had when this happened involuntarily, she found that she had to will it to reappear. It took a bit longer than she expected, but eventually it came back, fully intact.
She looked back over to Blackwell and found a knowing glint in his eyes, as well as another emotion she couldn’t quite place. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” he crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, you just need to keep up the practice until you can fade in and out in a split second.”
“Have you ever heard of a Necromancer who could do such a thing?” she wondered, looking down at her hands in awe.
“No,” he told her. “I think maybe—”
“Blackwell,” a voice suddenly boomed through the room.
Ophelia spun around to find the owner of the voice was Jasper. In the Devil’s hands was a leather-bound book so thick, she wondered how the spine was able to hold all of the pages without coming unglued. The contestant logs.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Jasper warned as Blackwell transported himself over to take the book out of the Devil’s hands. “If anything happens to it—she’s the one who will deal with the consequences. Understood?”
Blackwell dipped his chin in a single, sharp nod and then both men flicked their eyes over to her, waiting for confirmation that she understood the stakes. She nodded profusely and Jasper disappeared. Running over to Blackwell, she greedily took in every detail of the book as he flipped the cover open. A language she couldn’t read was written in thick, black letters on the title page. A few more pages in and the list began. Names in tongues from every corner of the world, including those that had been forgotten, were listed one by one. Most were crossed out in red ink, though some were struck through in black, and every hundred or so, one was circled. She didn’t need an answer key to put the pieces together. Killed, forfeited, won.
“This competition must be centuries old,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Blackwell murmured back.
“But if Genevieve knows this Gabriel person, then he cannot be that old,” she reasoned. “Which means we can flip to the end, right?” She flipped a large chunk of the book to the left as she spoke. “And Gabriel had to have been a contestant. Genevieve would never be in contact with someone who worked here—someone of the paranormal variety. She disliked our mother’s practice greatly. As soon as she was old enough to go into town alone, she’d take every opportunity to get out of Grimm Manor.”
And make a bunch of friends I didn’t know about.
Blackwell nodded, the movement oddly tense. “If you’re sure, we’ll start at the end.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a bell tolled through the room. It was time for dinner—and level three.
Blackwell sighed and slammed the book shut, tucking it beneath his arm. “We’ll get back to this after the trial. Listen—from here on out, the second you step through the portals you need to summon me, alright?”
“Got it.” She waved at him and made to move for the door, but he sidestepped in front of her.
“I’m serious, Ophelia.” The earnest way he spoke her name gave her slight pause. “If you don’t summon me quickly enough and get distracted, you could easily get killed.”
She held his gaze as she promised, “I understand.”
With that, they went their separate ways—her toward the dining hall, and him out of sight to hide the book for safekeeping. As she walked down the corridors, she dragged a finger along the intricate damask wallpaper, watching as she left a trail in the dust as she passed. The open hallways here always carried a draft, but the air was surprisingly not stale. The rich scent of something warm and musky, notes of magnolia lying beneath it, actually reminded her of her mother’s favorite perfume. She wondered if it was one of Phantasma’s tricks.
She couldn’t help but think that with a little soap and water, and fewer Devils, this place had the potential to be truly magnificent. For a moment, she let herself imagine that Phantasma was not a horrific competition, but an opulent estate hosting an annual Mardi Gras ball. A place she could don an ornate mask and an egregiously lavish gown and dance and drink until she passed out.
A vision flashed into her mind of her being twirled around a ballroom by a handsome suitor.
The full skirts of her vermilion gown swished effortlessly with each spin and were layered like delicate rose petals. The top of the dress was a structured drop-waist corset made of rich silk, which pointed down in a “V” just below her bellybutton before the skirts began. Matching silk opera gloves stretched all the way to her elbows, and her neck glistened with a choker of glittering rubies. As the dance wound to an end, her suitor led her from the dance floor and pulled her, giggling, into a dark guest room down the hall. He slowly rolled her gloves down her arms and tossed them aside. Next, he discarded the dress, and her lacy undergarments, until all that was left was the ruby necklace…
As he dipped her down, arms wrapped around her waist, lips pressed against the pulse at her neck, Blackwell whispered, “You look ravishing tonight.”
Ophelia snapped back to the present. Just in time to run smack into someone’s back.
No, not just someone. Cade.
He looked at her like a hunter staring down a fox. Ophelia worried that whatever Blackwell had done had reinforced Cade’s desire to eradicate her more than it had inspired the man to stay away.
“You can sic your Demon friends on me all you want, you bitch,” he snarled at her. “But I promise, one of these nights I’ll be getting the final laugh.”
She glowered. “I’m getting really tired of being called a bitch. I didn’t intentionally sic anyone on you, but I can if you’d like.”
He sneered at her threat, but didn’t linger, turning on his heels and stalking into the dining hall. She kept her distance as she followed, silently wishing that Blackwell had drawn more blood. Cade was definitely going to become a problem if his hatred for her influenced the other contestants and they had the chance to band together against her in one of the trials.
In the dining hall, however, the other contestants—aside from Beau and Eric—looked equally as wary of Cade’s presence as they did hers. She wondered what Cade held over the two men for them to be so loyal to him. Or maybe it was just that insipid sense of comradery assholes always seemed to have with other assholes that made them stick together. Regardless, she liked that they took the guesswork out of who she needed to avoid.
The only person who bothered greeting her was Luci, lifting her hand in a small wave as Ophelia went over to the dinner table to grab some fruit. Leon was uncomfortably stiff by Luci’s side, and Ophelia wondered if Luci had told him about the rest of their conversation in the library.
The silence as everyone ate was thick, and the appetites around the room had gotten noticeably smaller. Most people had a few grapes or a slice of buttered French bread on their plates. Leaving the richer dishes—crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice with honeyed cornbread, fried boudin, and praline bread pudding—completely untouched. Any other circumstances and Ophelia’s mouth would have been watering, but the image of the dining table crawling with maggots and spiders was still too fresh to make even her absolute favorite of their local cuisine tempting.
“I think the cruelest torture this place enacts is feeding us right before each trial,” James muttered as he dusted crumbs from his single slice of bread out of his mustache.
A few grunts and mutters of agreement resounded before the tense blanket of quiet fell over the room once again. Ophelia stared at the clock on the far wall, willing the time to tick by faster as she picked grapes from their stems and absentmindedly arranged them by size on the plate in front of her. She began to pop them into her mouth, smallest to largest, one by one, letting the sweet juice run down the back of her throat as her knee bounced beneath the table.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
She was anxious for the trial to begin, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the warning Blackwell had given her. Or maybe it was the anticipation of seeing him again as soon as she stepped through that portal…
He’s been gone for less than an hour, get a hold of yourself.
Kissing him had been an astronomical mistake.
Go back to finding him annoying, she told herself. But the problem wasn’t that she had stopped finding him annoying—the problem was that she had started finding him enticing.
A flash went through the room, and Ophelia swallowed the last of her fruit, twisting around to get a good look at their newest host. The Devil was wearing little more than a bolt of gold fabric strategically tied around their body and their platinum hair was so long it pooled on the ground at their bare feet. With so little on, their Devil’s Mark was easily distinguishable—a series of bone-colored spikes lining their forearms. A vicious smile.
“My name is Devon. Welcome to level three,” they said as they summoned the portal and revealed this level’s clue. The routine was becoming familiar to the point that people were nudging each other for a spot at the front so they could get the best look at the incendiary script.
Above a fiery abyss, your gilded cage must rise, but when it does, others will dive.
Golden weights, around your chains, greed’s alluring song, a dangerous game.
A sea of temptation, a choice to unfold, decide if your life, is worth its weight in gold.
Ophelia watched as one of the other contestants procured a pen and paper in order to scribble the clues down. Smart. At least, it would have been, if the words didn’t fade away as soon as they were jotted down. Ophelia watched with rapt curiosity over the contestant’s shoulder as they tried over and over to make the ink stay on the page—to no avail. Phantasma would not let the clues be written.
Devon began calling names, and Ophelia took the opportunity to update the roster of the group in her head as she braced herself to enter herself. A fiery abyss being mentioned in the very first line of their clue did not bode well. Neither did the realization that there were only seventeen of them left and they had only completed two levels.
Summon Blackwell immediately, she reminded herself as she took her turn stepping through, letting the portal’s magic envelope her.
The moment she stepped out, however, everything except the crisp feeling of fear flew from her mind. She was trapped in an enormous, gilded cage hanging in the air. And a thousand feet below, was an ocean of boiling lava. A fiery abyss.
