Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  I wanted to smile at this gesture—at his words, too. My concern wouldn’t let me, though. And now there arose a new concern. One that asked where all this was coming from.

  “To see you standing among them, though,” he went on without seeming to noitce my confusion, “it now leads me to wonder if the beauty is, in truth, all mine to behold.”

  I blinked, uncertain for an instant that I could have heard him right.

  “Erik, what are you talking about?” I asked him. Because I wanted to know if the blush that rushed to my cheeks truly had any business being there. Or if this was all just part of his . . . Victorian-ness?

  “You returned home yesterday with roses,” he said, still way over in the left field of Wait, What Is Happening? Stadium. “They . . . were a gift, no doubt.”

  “I got them from the florist.”

  “You bought them?”

  What was he getting at? “You’re stalling.”

  “I am,” he admitted, keeping his back to me, the response giving me zero comfort.

  “Why?”

  “Because now that you’re here, with me, I find the words that I had resolved to say to you suddenly more difficult to summon than anticipated.”

  Talk about non-answers. “Just spit it out.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me, his scowl returning. “Spit . . . it out?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It means—”

  “I can deduce what it means,” he said, cutting me off.

  “Then why can’t you just say it?”

  “Because I fear what you might think,” he raced to say. A blunter answer for sure, but still useless.

  “Are we in trouble now?” I asked, cutting to the chase because one of us needed to. “Me and Dad. Charlie. Is it too late?”

  He spun to face me, his cloak whirling with the motion. “No. Of course not. I don’t think I would be here now if it was.”

  “I don’t understand.” I opened my arms, then let them flop to my sides. “If you’re stuck here because of the curse, then where else would you be? Why won’t you tell me why, specifically, we have to leave? More importantly, why won’t you let me help you?”

  “I’ll thank you not to berate me when the very reason I have come is to tell you everything,” he said, that familiar chill in his tone returning, his words silencing me. He paused and, seeming to check himself, he began again. “You’ll forgive me for prolonging the moment. How can I help it when I know that, as soon as I finish telling you all I’ve come to say, you will go?”

  His voice, one of the surest things about him, all but died on that last word. As if, after trying so hard to convince me to scram, he’d suddenly changed his mind.

  “You’re . . . different,” I said, scanning his attire that had changed along with his demeanor. Still garbed in mostly black, he now wore a royal blue embroidered waistcoat. A silken black cravat replaced the white one he’d worn before. A spotless ebony dress coat accompanied matching slacks, while his shoes shone in the moonlight that streamed through whatever scant patches of window the roses failed to blot out.

  If it was possible for him to look more handsome than he had before, well, he managed it.

  “I am different,” he agreed. “But then, how could anyone not be after hearing you sing?”

  I shut my mouth, stunned by the question. “You heard me?”

  The tiniest of smiles touched his lips, accompanied by a short, ironic laugh. His gaze broke from mine to focus on one green-vine-covered wall. “With a voice like that, what angel above your head or demon beneath your heel could not have heard you?”

  Again, heat rushed to my cheeks. I folded my arms, a gesture that I’d probably hoped would bring comfort, or a sense of protection from his sudden but not altogether unwelcome barrage of flattery. It did neither.

  “Stephanie,” he went on, still without returning his eyes to mine. “I cannot hope to put into words the exceptionality of your gift. And I would be a liar—more of a liar,” he corrected, “if I did not confess to you how fervently I wish, for your sake as well as for mine, that I had never heard you sing my music.”

  “Your music?” My blush intensified, to the point where I couldn’t have hoped for even one second that he wouldn’t notice. Apparently, being in a dream didn’t change physical responses. Surely I was now as scarlet as half the blooms surrounding us.

  “I daresay only Odysseus, in his circling of the Sirens’ island, could have understood the depths of my ecstasy in hearing the perfection of your song,” he continued, his use of the word “ecstasy” causing me to lift my hand to my brow so that I could physically shield my face from his now unrelenting gaze. Probably, in his time, that word hadn’t carried any of the more salacious connotations it did now. Or . . . had it?

  “Conversely,” he went on, “only a drowning man could fathom the ineffable agony that came in the moments, in the hours, after you fled my presence.”

  Immediately, my head jerked up. “Your presence?”

  “I did not mean to frighten you,” he said.

  I shook my head, once again lost in the labyrinth of Erik’s words. “Are you saying that was you?”

  His eyes shot away, searching the air for the answers he was having trouble giving me. When they returned to me again, they did so only in a sidelong glance, one full of darkness and secrets.

  “Stephanie,” he said. “What I have come to tell you is . . . that I have kept from you the whole truth of this place. Of myself, as well. As a result, I am more afraid for you than ever.”

  If it was him I’d seen under that sheet and not Zedok, then . . . wasn’t there less reason for me to be afraid now?

  “The figure under the sheet,” I said. “It had on a mask.”

  “Yes,” he replied, uttering the word like he despised it.

  “Zedok wears a mask,” I continued.

  “Yes,” Erik said again, the repeated one-word response fanning the flames of my frustration. But then my mind derailed, flying off in the direction of something else he’d said.

  “That music couldn’t have been yours,” I insisted. “The paper was old, but the notes were fresh.”

  “That is because I had just written them.”

  “No,” I argued. “That’s not possible.”

  “I’ve come here to tell you that it is.”

  “Then what are you saying? That the details of the curse, the things that Lucas told me, are true?”

  Sudden anguish swept over his expression. “I confess I don’t quite know where to begin. So much of what the boy told you . . . I admit I didn’t want you to know. It never occurred to me why. Not until yesterday, when it all became terrifyingly clear. I know I can’t expect you to understand why it has come to this. Not when our moments together have been so few and brief. Yet, after decades of solitude, after so much silence, how could our interludes not have become as music to me?”

  I blinked several times, my blush flaring anew.

  Sometimes the way he phrased things, like poetry was an actual language, made me want to second-guess his meaning. Often, the things he said did seem to have two meanings. But had he just admitted to . . . caring about me?

  That still didn’t explain why he was having so much trouble saying what he came here to say. But if he wasn’t going to tell me outright, maybe I could guess.

  “He plans to target me specifically in order to get at you,” I said. Though that didn’t strike me as something he should have difficulty saying. “Because we’re becoming . . . friends.”

  “Is that what we are?” he uttered through a dry laugh, like he didn’t believe it. “How ever did I manage to earn something so precious? And yet . . . I cannot accept. For it is too reckless a thing for me to allow.”

  I frowned at him and, suddenly, not giving a rip about any demon, made my way to him, past the smattering
of furniture to stand just in front of him, as close as we had been the night before last when we’d stood together in front of the fireplace. When he’d almost touched my cheek. Now his scent, one of lavender and honey—and something more caustic that I couldn’t name—fought with that of the roses.

  “We’re friends if I say we’re friends,” I told him.

  “And so you speak music as well as you sing it” was all he said, a rueful almost-smile tugging at his lips.

  Peering up into his face and into those sad eyes, so beautiful, I couldn’t stop myself from reaching up to him. My fingers hovered close to his jaw, closer than his own had come to mine that night. But then, before I could make the connection, he caught my wrist. Not roughly, but with an abruptness that suggested my touching him was something he legitimately feared.

  He squeezed my wrist, scowling. Just when I thought he might admonish me or sweep off again, he stepped into me, leaning down far enough almost to allow his forehead to touch mine, the silken strands of his dark hair falling to mingle with my curls.

  And now I had an answer as to what he, in his own Erik way, had been trying to tell me.

  Our moments together had been brief. But each more intense than the last, as if building toward this moment. One that had maybe become too intense. And yet . . . I couldn’t pull away.

  “Tell me what to do,” I said in a whisper. “The curse. Tell me how to break it. Tell me how to set you free and I will.”

  “There is no cure,” he answered, a tremor in his tone, like he was trying to convince himself to let me go even as I was trying to convince myself to pull free. “The curse is absolute, and there is no hope of undoing it.”

  “Then I’ll change it,” I said. Because, curse or not, the world still answered to certain rules. My world might have been irrevocably altered since we’d moved into Moldavia, but the earth was still spinning and he and I were still here. Separated by time and death but, simultaneously, by nothing at all. If that was possible, then so was his freedom.

  My freight train thoughts halted then, stalled the instant he moved in by another inch, his lips hovering that much closer to mine.

  Would he really . . . ?

  More importantly . . . did I want him to?

  Seriously. What was I doing? I should have been stepping back from this stranger who I already knew was dead. And what about Lucas? Did a kiss in a dream count as a real kiss—something that could potentially destroy what awaited me in reality? That question alone should have been enough for me to draw away. But then . . . what I wanted in that moment was clear enough since I wasn’t stepping back.

  “Stephanie.”

  Before I could stop them, my lids fluttered to half-mast, my own lips parting in anticipation. Because no one had ever said my name that way. Soft as a prayer, each syllable laced with longing.

  Erik guided my hand down, his grip on my wrist loosening so that his fingers, as rough and cool as I remembered them, could trail to find and twine mine. He came closer, until we were pressed together, just a breath apart, his hand clutching mine tightly, as though we weren’t hovering on the verge of a kiss, but at the edge of some great divide. I gripped his hand in return, squeezing, a response that I’d meant as encouragement.

  Instead, the action seemed to jar him from a spell. He pulled back, his fingers releasing my unyielding ones, his expression nothing short of horrified.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his words made more of breath than voice. “I . . . should not have dared come to you again.”

  “Erik—” I tried to tug him back to me, but he continued his retreat, dispelling as he did the greenery-covered windows, the walls of vines, the cobblestone floor, the roses, and, with them, their scent.

  “Wait,” I said, squeezing even harder the hand that dissipated from mine, suddenly as intangible as smoke. “Erik, please—”

  But it was too late. He’d gone. Leaving me to the blackness that fast rushed up to consume everything and, along with it, me.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Zedok

  Pain, unmistakable and wrenching, echoed through my empty chest, resonating inexplicably from the hollowed place where there was nothing—no heart from which such agony could derive.

  The sensation, like an all-consuming rift had opened within me, came mere seconds after I had ended the dream with Stephanie.

  I had only just risen from the armchair, and weakened by the onslaught, I staggered to the piano, which I leaned against for support. The keys, in response, uttered a discordant clangor.

  God. What . . . was this? Lifting one trembling hand, the same one Stephanie had clenched with her own in the dream, I gripped at my waistcoat, wadding the material into my fist, as if the action might help to alleviate the feeling that, any moment, I would collapse into myself and implode as a dying star.

  If only I could be so lucky. If only she could.

  Gritting my teeth, I forced myself upright.

  This anguish. Was it meant to serve as some form of punishment?

  Doubtless Lucifer himself would not have dared what I almost had. To touch lips with the purest of angels.

  One moment longer with her, and I’d have done the unthinkable.

  How could I have let this happen?

  Fury overtook me, driving me to shove the lone standing lamp from the piano’s closed lid. It crashed with a horrible racket. The knowledge that my surroundings would not permanently sustain any damage only served to fuel my ire.

  I stumbled to the mantel next, which I cleared with a sweep from both arms, sending the decimated artifacts toppling to shatter against the floor. Chief among them was my father’s clock. How many times, in a bid to win refuge from its incessant ticking, had I broken it?

  Stephanie. How could I save her now that I had allowed her to become entangled in the strings of the heart I did not have?

  I stilled. The remnants of the ache abating once again, ushered away this time by the realization that I was not alone.

  I had a visitor. Not another mask, though.

  Instead, I had company in a much truer sense.

  And his presence. Should I not have sensed it the very moment he had encroached upon my domain? No doubt I would have had I not been with her.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked him.

  “Long enough,” answered the man.

  “I thought I told you never to come back.”

  “You did,” he said. “But I thought we also agreed that you would not give me reason to.”

  “And yet, having no reason has never stopped you before.”

  So. He knew of the Armands. It had been my intention that, by the time he became privy to such information, the Armands would be gone. Though I wanted to ask him how he had come by the truth so soon, I refrained. For did the answer, whatever it was, matter at this juncture?

  In command of myself once more, albeit with some tremulousness, I eyed him from over one shoulder.

  He sat on the chaise, having invited himself in per his usual annoying habit. Though I hated that he had borne witness to my brief lapse, it did please me to see that he, too, was attempting to hide the slight tremor in his own hands and frame. His fear, more than anything, told me that he could not be counted responsible for the attack I’d experienced.

  The man, a living man, was none other than the famed psychic medium Rastin Shirazi. Six years had passed since we’d first been introduced. And does any manner of meeting acquaint two souls quite so well as a duel to the death?

  “You should leave,” I said. “Things never bode well for either of us when you are here.”

  “And yet you know as well as I do,” said Rastin, “that I am not really here.”

  “Indeed,” I grunted, hating him. For his stubbornness. For his horrible habit of dropping in on me whenever he pleased. Perhaps what I hated most about Rastin, tho
ugh, was the conflicting gladness the sight of his meddlesome face brought to me in this moment. “I suppose it could be said that I am the only one who is truly here.”

  This last part I uttered as a test. To determine exactly how much he knew.

  “Except I know that is not currently true.”

  “Is it not?”

  “Erik—”

  “Don’t,” I said, cautioning him against the use of my Christian name. I had shed it for a reason, adopting in its stead—as a reminder—the alias I had operated under while carrying out all the dark dealings that had led to my perdition. And the resurrection of my given name. Wasn’t that how we had all gotten here—to this dire predicament?

  “I know that there are people living here,” Rastin said, for once arriving at his point with relative swiftness. “After I discovered as much to be true, tell me, what other choice did I have but to confront you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “There is always the option of minding one’s own business.”

  “Given the circumstances,” replied Rastin in that grave, scolding, and almost parental tone he sometimes liked to take with me, “I’m afraid that you are my business.”

  “Well. As you can see.” I paused to gesture to the broken clock and the rest of the mantel debris. “I have everything well in hand.”

  “Clearly,” he replied as he regarded me over the narrow frames of his wire-rimmed glasses.

  As before, he sported the same neatly trimmed goatee and mustache. A gray scarf, worn over a black blazer, looped his neck. He appeared thinner and more worn than in times past, though, his face prematurely lined.

  My fault, I was certain.

  “I would offer you tea,” I said, as if it was possible to divert subjects with him. “If you were actually here to drink it.”

  “Just now,” he said, ignoring me, “you were in pain?”

  Once confident I could do so without wavering, I pivoted to face him, and for the briefest of instants, terror caused his face to pinch, his fear springing from the memory of that night in the cellar. With Wrath.