About twenty minutes later, Ophelia was still trying to shake off the stranger’s last words.
But you should hope we do not meet again, angel.
The two-mile walk from the cathedral—or rather, from Phantasma—to Grimm Manor was usually scenic. The road that led out of the inner city was lined with live oak and pecan trees, enormous homes sitting beyond them, away from the noise of the road. Marsh grass sprouted up anywhere untreaded on, and she could have sworn the air still carried the memory of magnolias from the spring. Tonight, however, the shadows and paranoia were drowning out anything Ophelia might have found pleasant. She’d stayed out much too late, and it was taking an alarming amount of time for the static sensation of the stranger’s presence to dissipate.
If you don’t get home in five minutes, Grimm Manor will crumble to the ground, the Shadow Voice whispered in her head.
Her shoulders tensed at the challenge. Five minutes wasn’t enough time. And it didn’t matter that she knew, logically, it was not possible for her to cause such a travesty with only her thoughts, yet she picked up speed.
Nothing is going to happen if I don’t make it back within five minutes, she chastised herself. The Shadow Voice isn’t real.
But it didn’t matter how many times she told herself that. The intrusive thoughts always managed to make a traitor of her own mind.
Her heart begun to thunder louder than her footsteps on the ground. Her fists tightened at her sides as she passed the rose bushes that indicated the gates of Grimm Manor would not be too much further ahead.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock, the Shadow Voice urged.
As the final two minutes counted down, she swallowed thickly, a pressure building right between her eyes as she pushed herself into a run. She was only a short sprint from the gates when she tripped over a fallen branch in the road. A burst of blue sparks, expelled from her palms as she shoved her hands out in front of her to catch herself. But she didn’t have any time to be surprised at the first glimpse of her pent-up magic.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Her legs were tangled in her skirts, panic seizing her as she thrashed on the ground. She twisted, rolling over onto her back—but her time was almost up. The crickets stopped their chirping as her body seized with fear at missing her self-imposed window of time. Grabbing up her skirts, she lurched to her feet.
Run.
Her hands balled at her sides. No. She was going to resist it this time. She took a single shaky step, then another. She was close, so close.
Snap.
She froze. Slowly twisting her head, she glanced behind her, scanning the dark for the source of the unnerving sound.
Nothing was there.
She took another step forward.
Crunch. A branch broke beneath her heel.
That was all it took for her to break into a full-blown sprint, shadows scattering out of her way as she pounded down the last stretch of road. She must have looked silly, running from nothing, but as she neared Grimm Manor’s gates, the tightening in her chest began to loosen.
Thirty more seconds, the Shadow Voice warned.
She cursed and swerved to the right, cutting across the damp grass, her boots squishing through the mud as she ran. She hit the wrought-iron gate that opened to the manor’s driveway with open palms, a metallic clang ringing out as one of them swung wide open. Thorns from the rose vines wrapped around the gateposts cut into her palms and blood began to swell from the shallow wounds. She didn’t have time to think about the pain as she propelled herself further down the driveway and onto the front porch, patting the front pocket of her dress for her key.
Ten, nine, eight…
Another round of adrenaline flooded through her veins as she fumbled for the key, her blood-slick hand a hindrance. When she finally dug the key out of her pocket, her hands shook as she jammed it into the lock and pushed the door open. She stumbled into the house and slammed the door shut. Blood smeared on the locks as she turned them, but once the door was securely fastened, she leaned back against the frame, swallowing large gulps of air to steady her heart rate.
That was a close one.
She squeezed her eyes shut at the voice. It had only been in her mind. It was always only in her mind. She looked down at her hands, at the crimson coating her palms. The sight induced a visceral reaction in her core. Images of her mother’s lifeless body in their living room flickered through her mind. Pictures of Genevieve’s face after she had yelled at her sister so callously in the alley.
The blood needed to be washed away. She couldn’t stand it on her hands.
She tripped over herself as she dashed to the kitchen, turning on the faucet to fill the sink. She began scrubbing at the blood on her palms, ignoring the stings from the thorns as the porcelain turned pink with her effort.
“I need it to come off,” she sobbed. “I need it off.”
Never feel bad for bleeding, Ophelia. Her mother’s voice came back to her now. Bleeding means you’re alive.
A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed it. When her skin was as red and angry as the washed-away blood, she wiped her hands over the skirts of her dress to dry them.
“Genevieve?” she called out, voice shaky with desperation. “Genevieve? Where are you? I need to talk to you. Please.”
The only answer was the echo of her own voice carrying through the dark. She made a beeline back toward the stairs, taking them two at a time, her breath shallow when she finally reached Genevieve’s door. She knocked.
“Vivi, please. I’m sorry. Please, don’t leave me alone.”
No answer.
Tears stung at the corners of her eyes as she sank to the ground outside of her sister’s door, pulling her knees into her chest.
“Please,” she whispered one last time. “I’m so alone.”
Eventually, she stood and made her way to her own room, taking time to bathe and wash away the rest of her sorrow before tucking herself into bed. She didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight, and when she woke to the bell tolls that announced dawn, she knew something was very wrong.
The first place Ophelia checked was Genevieve’s room. Nothing seemed off, but then again it was quite hard to tell when her sister’s décor theme was clutter.
Thinking Genevieve might be in the library, Ophelia got dressed for the day and made her way downstairs. Something small and pink caught her eye on the entryway table—an envelope. She must have missed it on her rush into the house. Her name written on the front in Genevieve’s elegant penmanship. She dashed for the letter and tore it open, the foreboding that had been prickling through her body since she woke reaching a crescendo.
Dearest sister,
I hadn’t meant for my departure to be in such haste, but after our conversation yesterday I see now that this is the way things must be done. What you said… I knew that if I told you my plans beforehand, you would try to stop me. So, I will be gone by the time you find this letter. Seeing Mother in that coffin was almost too much for me to bear, but seeing you with no hope for your future is something I cannot live with. If all goes as planned, I will return in no more than two weeks’ time.
Let me be the one to bear the burden for once.
With all my heart,
Genevieve
“What have I done?” Ophelia whispered into the dark.
Ophelia stuffed the letter in her front pocket and hauled herself up the stairs. She pushed her way inside Genevieve’s room, this time noticing things she hadn’t before. It wasn’t the clothes strewn all over the bed and sticking out of the dresser, or the bits and bobs scattered across the vanity—that was all normal. It was the absence of Genevieve’s suitcases, the missing jewelry pieces she knew her sister never left the house without, and the stationary littering the desk.
Genevieve was really gone.
Ophelia began to rifle through the vanity and desk, looking for any hints or clues. She yanked open drawers, sifting through the baubles that rolled around inside. She tore the room apart all the way down to the floorboards. When she found the diary, shoved beneath a plank in the back of the closet—along with a brooch Ophelia had never seen before, and a wad of cash—she felt a heaviness settle over her shoulders.
Scooping the leather-bound journal out of its hiding space, Ophelia sat back and flipped it open to one of the middle entries.
April 30
I found another letter. I still haven’t confronted Mother about the last one, and I don’t want to tell Ophelia until I’ve spoken to her. I feel like Mother already puts too much pressure on Ophie and I worry what this might do to her. I also worry what this would do to my relationship with Ophie if she ever found out I hid this from her, but hopefully, I will be able to find out more from Mother when she’s back from her trip this weekend. And hopefully, Ophie will never need to know.
X, Genevieve
Ophelia squeezed her eyes shut. This was a violation, she knew that. Yet she didn’t know where else to even start. Her mother was gone, Genevieve was missing—and keeping secrets—and the darkness in Ophelia’s mind was beginning to wake up again.
No, she snapped at the Shadow Voice in her head. I don’t have time for distractions right now.
Ophelia threw the diary into the wall with some strength, and something fluttered out from between the pages. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees to catch the piece of paper floating down through the air, turning it over in her hands. A newspaper clipping.
Phantasma: Coming this fall
“No,” she whispered. She scooped the diary back up and opened it once more, shuffling through the pages for any other signs that Genevieve may have been collecting information about the Devil’s Manor.
She turned numb as she uncovered more clippings shoved between the yellowed pages. She spread them all out in front of her and quickly realized that the articles spanned the last several years.
Ophelia’s breath caught.
No. It couldn’t be.
She hastily read each of the articles, once, twice, memorizing as much information as she could. Some were about the people who had died inside the macabre competition; others speculated about the Devil that ran it—rumored to be the most heartless and insidious of them all. One of the clippings was an interview from a past contestant detailing the horrors inside the haunted estate. She squinted down at the corner of that particular piece, noticing two words scribbled in the margin.
Find Gabriel.
Ophelia flipped back through the journal looking for any signs of the name Gabriel, noting that some of the pages had been torn out. She finally paused on an entry from July.
July 23
I’m getting closer to finding Gabriel, I know it. I suspect Mother is becoming suspicious of my questions lately, so I have to pull back. But if my findings are correct, I know where he will be next.
X, Genevieve
Ophelia gathered herself together, stuffing the clippings back into the journal and taking it with her as she stalked back to her room. She needed to pack.
