SWNOVELS Phantasma: Chapter 30
The problem with secrets was that they festered and tore open wounds that were starting to scab. Kneeling there, tears pricking at her eyes, Ophelia was beginning to question if anything she had ever known was true. Or if she had just been going through the motions of a distorted reality for her entire life.
Growing up, she hadn’t questioned her mother often. After all, Tessie Grimm had experienced so much more life than her, had been kind even when she wasn’t necessarily warm, and only harped on her strange rules out of protectiveness of her daughters.
Don’t make deals with Devils. Don’t stay out in New Orleans after dark. Don’t sleep with an oculus in front of your bed. The voice in your head will ignore you if you ignore it. One day, you will be at the helm of this family, Ophelia, and I know you will carry on our legacy with grace.
Her mother’s voice followed her everywhere she went, colored everything she did. And when she felt suffocated by the weight of what it meant to be the eldest Grimm heir, she reminded herself that her mother gave up a life of adventure when Grandmother died to be loyal to her birth-gifted destiny. How could Ophelia be so resentful of being the first born when magic was an honor? How could she be jealous of her own sister who was only ever bright-eyed and loving? But something about all these secrets made the already dulling, rose-colored lenses shatter entirely. The only reason she was in Phantasma was because her family didn’t trust her with their secrets, and she hated it.
She hated that she had never known that her mother had been one of Phantasma’s contestants, but Genevieve clearly had. Her sister had spent years obsessed with the Devil’s Manor, and it seemed she was trying to contact another contestant that their mother presumably had known. And Ophelia suspected this was all much more intimate to her family than Gabriel White just being a random player. Something she couldn’t look at too closely at the moment or she worried she’d lose another meal all over the ground.
She hated that Genevieve had also known about their family’s debt and had forged their mother’s signature at the bank to keep Ophelia in the dark. Was forced to do Hell only knows what to get the money to help out. And Ophelia had to wonder whether her mother and sister did not believe she could handle such information. That her mind was already too fragile, had become too crowded by the Shadow Voice to take on anything else that might be considered stressful.
But what she hated most of all was that the only person she wanted to see right now, to talk to about all of this, was Genevieve. And Genevieve was missing. Because of Ophelia.
What a broken little family, the Shadow Voice whispered, awaking in her mind. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken.
“Ugh!” Ophelia screamed. She pushed herself up from the ground and jabbed a finger into Blackwell’s chest. “I was foolish for coming here, and I was even more foolish for ever trusting a single word you said.”
He curled his hand gently around her wrist to keep her palm against his chest. “Angel, please listen—”
She ripped herself from his grip and stumbled back over the forgotten book on the floor.
Quickly righting herself, she said, “I am not your angel, but I will be your nightmare. If you sabotage my chance of getting my sister back, I will find a way to haunt you until every single one of your inner demons looks like me. You will never know a moment of peace again.”
His jaw clenched, but he didn’t offer up a retort. Just stood there and braced himself against the venom in her words.
“Did you not bother to show me my mother’s name because you thought it would distract me from our bargain?”
“No. It isn’t like that. I just needed more time to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” she demanded.
Blackwell took a deep breath. “I knew something about you was special the very first time I saw you. Of course, I know I do not remember our true first meeting, but I suspect if I was somehow a different being then, one with all my memories, I was clearly still enamored with you enough to tell you about the key that would bring me my freedom. Something about you calls to me in a way I cannot explain, and your essence has always felt familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. You mentioned you were looking for someone named Gabriel”—he took another deep breath—“and things slowly began to click.”
Her gaze was razor sharp as she asked, “Who is Gabriel?”
He winced. “Gabriel White is your father.”
Ophelia felt like the floor had dropped from beneath her feet and she was freefalling as the words echoed through her mind again and again and again. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Gabriel White is your father.
Find Gabriel.
When she opened her eyes again, she demanded, “Tell me everything.”
Holding out a hand, he implored, “Can I take you back to your room first?”
She gave a single, sharp nod and grabbed onto his hand, hating the way her stomach fluttered whenever their skin touched. He transported them back to her room, and she pulled her hand from his the instant they arrived, taking a few steps back to put some distance between them as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“A few days before Phantasma came to New Orleans, Gabriel lost his second attempt at this competition.” Blackwell shook a hand through his hair as he searched for his next words. “I’m unsure of exactly what happened because halfway through the trials, he had stopped summoning me and I lost track of him entirely. What was abundantly clear by the end, however, was that he lost.”
“Summoning you?” Ophelia gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “You mean—?”
“I offered him my bargain and he took it,” he confirmed. “I knew I recognized something in your essence when we first met here. Half of your essence comes from him and the life force he owed me is what’s currently sustaining me.”
“Is that why you couldn’t leave me alone?” she asked. “Something about my essence called to you because of him?”
He hesitated for a moment. Then said, “Perhaps.”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “You’ve met my father and yet, before now, I hadn’t even known his full name. My mother always refused to talk about him. I just don’t understand.”
“There’s more,” he told her. “Your disappearing act? You get that from him. It’s how I knew the knives wouldn’t hurt you.”
“What?”
“Your father was a Specter,” Blackwell explained. “It was the reason I chose him for my bargain. In hindsight, he was one of the worst contestants I’ve ever offered it to. Stubborn. Distracted. But he could shift himself in and out of visibility and pass through solid objects and walls if he chose. Specters are incredibly rare beings, and I suspect that if he met your mother during his first experience with Phantasma… well, it doesn’t surprise me that two paranormal beings might find a connection with each other.”
“I need to… process this,” she told him. “You’ve been testing me this entire time? To prove your theory that he and I were connected. And didn’t bother to tell me.”
“I know. I didn’t do things in the right order.” He stepped closer. “I just need you to understand that Sinclair wants to create a divide between us to make it harder for you to succeed. And that must mean he believes you’re truly capable of finding out how to release me.”
“What is Sinclair’s vendetta against you?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “The holes in my memory won’t allow me to go that far back. All I know is that any time I’ve gotten even remotely close to figuring things out here, he intercedes and makes sure I fail.”
Ophelia was quiet for a long moment. Her mind didn’t know what information to focus on first. Her father, her mother, or the Devil determined to make her a new enemy. Finally, she said, “I’m still not sure how I feel about the fact that you weren’t going to tell me who my father was.”
“I only had a strong suspicion at first, which is why I suggested checking the contestant logs in the first place. It was our lessons together that I finally felt very sure of what was going on. And then I found the page while you were sobering up in the drinking parlor to confirm my theory before I upset you for no reason. I made the mistake of mentioning my hunch to Jasper when I was convincing him to let me see the book. Sinclair must have caught wind of what I was looking for and waited for the prime opportunity to make you as paranoid as possible. He was watching us. The only reason I was going to wait until after the next level to tell you was so your head could be clear.”
“I get it,” she said.
He sighed in relief.
“I just have one more question. Why didn’t you seek him out when he stopped summoning you? Why didn’t you watch him in the trials on the Other Side as you’ve done for me?”
The light in his eyes dimmed a little bit as he answered, “I think I had begun to give up. That last round when it was clear that he wasn’t trying… I didn’t have it in me to try anymore either.”
The sadness in his voice made her heart ache. So much that she had the urge to throw her arms around him in comfort. Instead, she said, “I need to be alone. I need to think.”
He gave a single nod. “When level four begins, summon me.”
“Okay,” she said and then he was gone.
Finally alone, she threw herself onto her bed, face down, and let herself mourn the version of her life she once knew and would never have again. The idea of never knowing her father had never bothered her the way it seemed to have bothered Genevieve. Which made the fact that her sister had unraveled all of this the least shocking part of it. But the idea that her father had been here, of all places, had known Blackwell, of all people, made her participation in this game almost inevitable. Perhaps she would always be destined for darkness no matter what she did or where she went.
She sniffed and wiped at her face, trying to pull herself together, despite the evidence of her devastation soaking the blanket beneath her cheeks. The next trial was starting soon, the anticipation of a different sort of pain twisting her nerves into knots. She knew she needed to keep her morale strong until she got through this competition and she had more space to mourn. But she couldn’t help but feel the walls were going to close in on her long before she got the chance to escape.