SWNOVELS Phantasma: Chapter 28
When Ophelia woke, deep into the witching hours, Blackwell was still beside her. Back in his ghostly form, he had moved to sit up against the headboard with the book of Phantasma’s past contestants open before him. A wave of his hand in the air and the page he was reading turned in tandem.
“Clearly, I didn’t wear you out enough if you’re already awake,” he drawled.
She flushed a bit at his words, so casually said for what they had experienced together. But she supposed that was a good thing.
It had only been sex, she reminded herself. Plenty of people just have sex and nothing more.
Genevieve had always been an advocate for women to indulge in intimacy just as casually as men did. A trait Ophelia had always admired, though now she thought it might be easier said than done for herself. It had probably been a mistake that she asked Blackwell to stay the night—especially because waking up to him was more comforting than she’d like to admit.
So, she forced herself to murder every butterfly fluttering in her stomach as she sat up and stretched, holding the covers he had tucked around her at some point tight against her bare chest. She was surprised to find the exhaustion that had lingered in her bones over the last week was gone. It seemed that for the first time since her mother died, she had slept well. Refusing to look too closely at why that may be, she distracted herself with the list of names Blackwell was scanning.
“How many pages have you gone through?” she wondered.
“About two hundred,” he answered.
“I can take over for a while if you need a break,” she offered. “I just need to get dressed—”
He snapped his fingers and suddenly she was fully clothed beneath the covers. The silk dress was a sensual burgundy color, like the ripe seeds of a pomegranate, and was definitely more luxurious than anything she had brought with her—or ever owned. The boned bodice was molded to her like a second skin and pushed her bosom up in such a flattering way that it managed to give her a semblance of cleavage. The sleeves were draped in a way that hung off her shoulders and the same meticulous draping detail was featured in the skirts, which had a slit on one side that reach all the way up to the middle of her thigh. She’d never worn anything so risqué. He’d even added a matching ribbon to her hair.
“This is gorgeous,” she said as she gaped down at the elaborate garment, brushing her hands over the butter-soft fabric of the skirts. “Where is it from?”
“My fantasies.” He winked.
She cleared her throat, “Anyway. Do you want me to help you search or not?”
“No need,” he said. “I’ve already found a few handfuls of entries with the first name of Gabriel; I’ve bookmarked them all so you can look through and see if any seem familiar to you. You should get some more rest, though—it isn’t even dawn. You need another few hours at least.”
She sighed. “I won’t be able to go back to sleep now, plus my entire sleep schedule has been ruined by this place anyway. Also a few handfuls? This is going to be a waste of time if there are already that many.”
“I told you it was a common enough name. Not as bad as William or James, though. Humans have gotten increasingly less creative in the past few decades.”
She snorted and reached out a beckoning hand. “Show me the pages you’ve marked.”
He made to move the book closer to her when a rippling shriek rattled the hallway outside of her room. She raised her brows at the eerie sound.
“There’s another scheduled haunt going on right now,” he explained. “I took care of yours before you woke up.”
She didn’t bother to thank him. It was the least he was supposed to do as part of their bargain. Another thing she needed to constantly remind herself of. Hell only knew what sort of perverse violations they committed by having sex with each other with a blood oath in place. Her mother’s grave was probably nearing seven feet deep with how many times she’d made the woman roll over in the past week.
She asked, “Is there somewhere quieter we can go? The screams are going to give me a migraine.”
“Your wish is my command.” He smirked as he took her hand and transported them away.
Blackwell ended up bringing them to the dining hall first, which had quickly become her least favorite room in the house. But he insisted on snagging her some food—careful that they were in and out without being caught by any roaming Devils or Apparitions—since she hadn’t managed to digest the last meal she’d eaten. After making sure that was taken care of, he brought her to what she was starting to suspect was his favorite place in the manor—the dusty old drinking parlor.
While he toiled over which amber liquor to pour himself, she sifted through the pages he had dog-eared. Tracing her eyes over each letter of every entry of strangers named Gabriel, she waited for one of them to jump out at her, to feel familiar in some way. A part of her even hoped her locket might respond and give her an inkling on which lead to follow, but no such luck. Not a single one of the names inspired anything. She slammed the book shut in a defeated huff.
“I’ll look through some more the next time you’re resting,” Blackwell told her as he took a sip from his glass, ice clinking with the movement.
“What’s the use?” She shook her head. “We should be spending time looking for your key. And even if we did figure out who he was, what would I truly do with the information without Genevieve here? She’s the missing piece to this puzzle now.”
“Have the two of you always been so at odds?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his tone. “You don’t make it seem like you’re very alike.”
“We aren’t,” Ophelia admitted. “But I never thought… I never thought we were this far apart. She’s kept such intricate secrets from me. I knew she could be a bit impulsive at times, but this is all downright foolish.”
“Perhaps it only seems foolish because you don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle,” he reasoned.
“And whose fault would that be?” She wrinkled her nose. “For the last twenty-one years Genevieve’s made a point of avoiding all things even remotely strange—our mother’s practice, visiting relatives at the cemetery, any mention of our family’s magic—but Phantasma she jumps right into? And then I find out she has an entire social life I’ve known nothing about. From a contestant here, of all people!” Her voice grew thicker now. “Genevieve and I had an understanding. She got to be the one society considered normal. And I would never once complain about having to take over our family’s legacy if she would just let me live that sort of life through her. I don’t know when she stopped telling me everything. And it hurts to think that all this time I thought I knew exactly where we stood, and she was somewhere else completely.”
He steadily sipped from his glass during her rant, not offering any reaction in his expression, but she could tell he was listening to every word intently. When she finally finished, he turned back to the crystal decanter on the bar and replenished his glass.
“Here.” He held the bourbon out to her. “Drink.”
She took the glass. “The only thing I’ve ever really drank was absinthe that my sister and I stole from our mother’s liquor cabinet.”
“This ought to be mild, comparatively,” he told her. “Try it. I can only imagine your poor nerves are at their wits’ end.”
She took the glass with a begrudging mumble beneath her breath, and he watched in abject amusement as she lifted it to her mouth to take a tentative sip. She felt her expression sour as soon as the brown liquor hit her tongue, its deep vanilla undertones not enough to mask its burn. He tilted his head back and laughed.
Her lips curled, aghast. “How in the Hell can you drink this stuff?”
“You learn to tolerate it,” he said.
“Sort of like your personality?” she quipped.
He smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you admitting I’m not so bad?”
“Never,” she answered as she took another sip. The liquid burned all the way down her throat.
“For what it’s worth,” he started, “being normal is incredibly dull. Almost as dull as living vicariously through someone else. Why rely on your sister to divulge her adventures to you for the rest of your life when you can live your own?”
“And when can I do that?” Another sip. “When I’m finding a way to pay off my mother’s debt—another thing Genevieve knew about that she didn’t tell me—or when I’m taking calls for the citizens of New Orleans day in and out to resurrect their dead relatives? My mother spent her youth traveling and seeing the world before she tied herself down to the family business. I’ll never get to do that.”
“Then don’t take up your family business.” He shrugged. “Who’s going to die if you decide not to keep it? No pun intended.”
“Me,” she whispered into her now-empty glass. “Twenty generations of Grimm women have taken on the responsibility of being Necromancers, and I will be damned if I let all of them down because I’m too selfish to carry on.”
She hiccuped and held the glass out to him. She was beginning to feel all warm and fuzzy and she wanted more. He obliged. She tipped the glass back, draining it in three gulps this time.
“Well, that’s one way to drink bourbon that’s taken three decades to age,” he noted.
She held out her glass again. “More.”
About an hour and two more glasses later, Ophelia was feeling amazing. Blackwell, however, almost seemed stressed as he ushered her over to the jacquard silk couch in the center of the room, a hand at her waist as she wobbled a bit on her feet. She sank into the couch cushions, a giggle bubbling in her throat as she grinned up at him.
“I think maybe I’m drunk.”
He crouched down in front of her, until they were eye level. “Yes, I think maybe you are. Do you feel any better at least?”
“About what?” she questioned, the only thing on her mind the warmth spreading through her blood and the vibrant emerald of his eyes.
“Perfect.” He smiled, content.
She trailed her finger down his cheek. “You have pretty eyes.”
He reached out and cupped her face, brushing his thumb across the apple of her own cheek. “So do you.”
She shook her head. “Everyone thinks my eyes are creepy. They used to be different—before I got my magic, I mean. Like turquoise instead of ice.”
“And what do you think?” he prompted.
“I think…” She stared into his eyes, so clear she could see her own reflection. “I think they look like my mother’s.” She leaned forward and placed her forehead against his, let her eyelids flutter closed. “Why do I feel like this?”
“That would be the four glasses of liquor you downed,” he murmured as he leaned back so he could brush the hair from her face.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she whispered, then she blinked her eyes open and tilted her chin up until her lips brushed lightly against his. “You… and I…”
“Need to sober up before there’s any more kissing,” he said firmly, pulling away.
She tried to protest, but he ignored her, standing to scoop her up and lay her out horizontally on the couch. He blinked out for a moment and returned with a blanket. Once she was tucked in, he took up post on the ground against the armrest near her head, leaning his back against it and propping his elbows onto his bent knees. She squirmed into a position on her side to face him—or rather, the back of his head. In the silence she softly brushed her fingers through his hair, sifting through the strands at the nape of his neck to admire all the silver threaded throughout the white. She’d never known anyone with such striking features as his, and something inside her was saddened that soon enough she wouldn’t know him any longer either. That one day she might forget how vibrant a green his eyes were. The way his smirk was slightly crooked on the left. The sound of her name on his lips. The way he called her angel. The way he kissed her and how she was positive no one else would ever be able to live up to that experience.
“Go back to sleep, angel,” he murmured. “Right now, I’m here.”
She hadn’t realized her eyes were already shut, and for a second, she wondered if she had been talking aloud, but before she could ask, she was slipping under.