Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “I am already skeptical about our ability to come close enough to destroy his heart,” replied Rastin. “If you’re suggesting one among us also implant the heart beforehand, then I know we will fail. As Wes so acutely observed yesterday, Erik, given his current state, is unlikely to submit himself to such an operation.”

  “Acutely,” Wes said. “Did you all hear that? Yesterday I was annoying, but today? Today I’m acute.”

  “So what makes you think Stephanie could do it?” I asked.

  “Short of letting her go,” said Rastin, “I think he would do anything to please her. Even that. At the very least, it is worth a shot.”

  The silence in the room thickened with that, the tension radiating from each of us.

  “You are her friends,” Rastin went on to say. “Your willingness to rush to her aid suggests that you share a strong bond. It should not be unimaginable that Stephanie would be willing to meet us halfway.”

  I took a sharp, quick step toward Rastin, but Patrick moved to block my path.

  “Whoa,” Patrick said. “Simmer down there.”

  “You said he wouldn’t let her die,” I spat. “But what happens if he figures out what she’s trying to do?”

  “I told you he is in love with her,” said Rastin. “He will not harm her.”

  “He is harming her,” I snapped.

  “Lucas,” said Charlotte, her voice soft but chiding. “Rastin is trying to help.”

  She was right. I knew she was. I just wanted his urgency to match ours—mine.

  I retracted my step and, turning away, ran a hand through my hair.

  Again, Charlotte spoke, though this time she addressed Rastin. “So, if you think the next step is talking to Stephanie, why haven’t you tried?”

  “Because,” Rastin said, “she doesn’t know who I am. She will not be as apt to listen to me as she would, say, to him.”

  I spun toward Rastin, who had his coffee cup raised in my direction.

  “Me?” I asked. “But . . . I can’t astral project.”

  “Which is why we”—Rastin gestured to himself and the others—“will be sending you into her dream. Why do you suppose I requested we meet so late?”

  To increase the likelihood that she would be asleep. Of course.

  “You can do that?” Charlotte whispered while I stood frozen, at once swayed to Rastin’s side just by the mere prospect of seeing Stephanie tonight.

  “I am glad you all decided to come,” Rastin said. “After yesterday’s attack, I’ll need the extra psychic energy. Are you ready to try?”

  I glanced first to Charlotte, then to Wes and Patrick, searching for one face that was, in fact, ready. None of them looked keen on this.

  “Yeah,” I said anyway. “We are.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  Stephanie

  Charlie was born in June, so it had been warm then. Now, though, a pall of snow covered everything, softening my steps as they carried me over a slim stone pathway that wound between gravestones and monuments.

  White flecks poured from the sky. The moon, a brilliant silver disc, peered down at me, illuminating the way I shouldn’t have known. Because this place was huge, and I hadn’t been back here since the burial. I’d only been eleven at the time, staring out the window of the limousine, watching the trees and stones file past.

  After walking for just a little while, I turned the corner of a shed-sized mausoleum. And there, surrounded by other stones like it, stood the same unassuming granite marker my broken family had abandoned six years ago.

  In that moment, it was as if winter itself snuck into my veins to freeze my heart solid. My throat clenched tight, and I swallowed. But the emotion wouldn’t go down. Instead, it welled up inside of me, spilling out in the form of stinging tears.

  I gripped the corner of the mausoleum, half hiding behind it as if the marker were an actual person and not just the reminder of one.

  The tears fell as I pushed off from the sepulcher, staggering forward a step. My knees met with the frozen earth when I came to the foot of her grave.

  Mom wouldn’t have wanted me kneeling at her headstone crying. She would have wanted me smiling and happy—all the things I’d found it so much easier to be when she was around. Now, even though the two of us were close again, she remained unreachable. Cold and alone. Just where we’d left her before Dad had uprooted us to one city after another.

  Poor Charlie. Moving around was all she’d ever known.

  Charlie. I missed her so much, too—and Dad. Where were they now? I must have come back here, to New York, without either of them.

  And what was I doing here anyway? How had I even entered the cemetery?

  Shifting into a sitting position, I propped my jeans-clad knees up and wrapped my arms around them.

  “Mom, I’m lost,” I murmured. “And I know that must be why I’m here now. Except . . . I can’t remember where I went wrong. Or if I’m too late to fix it.”

  No answer came from anywhere, none but the hiss of the snow—a sound I’d heard before and recently. One that now caused my skin to prickle and my pulse to race.

  Turning my head, I laid my cheek against my knees, my focus shifting from my mother’s simple marker to another, more elaborate one. An old stone figure’s hooded form stood sentinel over another grave, poised atop a plinth with its head dipped low, its hood draped forward to shield the face I couldn’t be certain the statue even had.

  And that was somehow familiar, too.

  Sniffing, I pushed once more to my feet, stepping in the direction of the other grave, certain that if I cleared the snow covering its plaque, I would know the name inscribed there, too.

  Before I could touch the stone, though, I froze, arrested by the whispered sound of my name.

  I hesitated, afraid of who I would find there when I turned. With a scrape of my heel on the stone pathway, I spun—and started.

  “Lucas?”

  The sight of him standing there in the snow without a coat or scarf, the moon glinting off the lenses of his black-framed glasses, caused everything to come rushing back to me. All at once, I understood exactly how I’d gotten here. And where here really was.

  “I’m dreaming,” I said to him. “This . . . is a dream.” I laughed a little to myself. Then the tears started again, streaming too hot down my cold face. Because while it would have been an act of kindness for Erik to send me here after what I’d shared with him, it struck me as unbearably cruel of him to bring Lucas into this. No doubt this was a trick. Erik’s way of mocking me over our bargain. Or was he seeking revenge because I’d stolen his mask?

  “It’s a dream, but it’s real,” Lucas said, his tone hushed, like he was trying to convince himself as well as me. “Or . . . I am.”

  He pointed at himself, his fingers trailing over his heart, the words making me hitch a breath. Because this had happened before but in reverse, with Erik. I hadn’t believed him then, and that had been a mistake. One I was still paying for. One I couldn’t afford to make again.

  “Lucas,” I whispered as I started toward him. Because I knew how these dreams went. They could lie and they could pretend, all while seeming so real. Worst of all, they could end at a moment’s notice. I couldn’t let this one end without at least touching him first.

  Lucas opened his arms to me, seemingly as stunned as I was that he was here. I ran to him, and as I flung my arms around his middle, wrapping him tight, I told myself that for at least as long as I got to hold him, it didn’t matter if this was real or not.

  “I want it to really be you,” I said through a choked sob, half of gladness, half of despair, reveling in his warmth and that familiar scent. “Tell me you’re not a lie.”

  “It is me,” he assured me, squeezing back. “But . . . I don’t know how much time I have her
e with you. If you wake up, or if the circle gets broken—”

  “Circle?” I pulled back enough to peer up at him, pressing my hands into his chest like that could keep us both here, and connected, no matter what.

  “There’s no time to—” He stopped himself, a scowl erasing his anxiousness as he took my hands in his. He turned them palm-up, examining the bandages Erik had wrapped them with. Had the bandages been there when the dream began? Or had they appeared only after I remembered everything?

  “The blood,” Lucas said. “This is why there was blood in Charlie’s room.”

  “Charlie?” Terror flashed through me. “What’s wrong with Charlie—is she hurt?”

  Suddenly desperate to know with more certainty if he was or wasn’t a dream, I gripped his hands, ignoring the pain it brought to my own. Like Lucas’s presence, the pain was welcome, though, because it vouched for the realness of this moment with him. But then maybe I shouldn’t want him to be real as badly as I did if he’d come to tell me something terrible had happened to Charlie.

  “No. She’s okay. She’s . . .” He stopped himself and then began again. “Stephanie, the police are looking for you. They found blood in the house after you went missing. After he took you.”

  I shook my head, not comprehending. “It’s . . . not mine.”

  “It was,” he insisted, presenting my own hands to me as proof. “He did this to you. He must have. Or . . . did he make you forget?”

  My hands curled into fists, the palms burning. Even if I tried to explain to Lucas what happened, he wouldn’t understand.

  “He didn’t do this,” I said. “It . . . was . . . sort of an accident. Lucas, where’s Charlie? Where’s my dad?”

  A flash of anguish twisted his features, telling me that whatever the answer was, it wasn’t a good one. His lips started to form words, but nothing came. I wanted to give him a shake or a shove, something to knock the truth out of him. But then, at last, he spoke.

  “They’re okay . . . Charlie’s with friends. Your dad . . . he’s fine but . . . Stephanie, there’s something more important. It’s why I came. I need you to just listen to me without saying anything. It . . . it’s about him.”

  My fingers leapt to press Lucas’s lips. He hadn’t said either of the names. But what if he did? Speaking the name would surely call him here. Unless he was already present. Watching. Listening . . .

  I scanned the vacant cemetery, fighting to see through the screen of snow that, in thickening, turned the light of the moon bleary.

  Life-sized angels populated the grounds, some leaning grief-stricken into crosses, others shedding tears over their stones, their wings outspread or tucked close to form the silhouettes of hearts.

  I shoved Lucas backward, and he went at my insistence, both of us stopping at a craggy oak. The two of us then hid behind it, huddling close to each other. In reality, there was nothing that could shield us from Erik’s sight—not if he was determined to see, to hear. And Erik must have been the one to bring me to this dream.

  If that was the case, Lucas had chosen an inopportune moment—perhaps the most inopportune—to come to me this way.

  “We’re coming for you,” Lucas said. “But if our plan’s going to work, there’s something we need you to do.”

  His words and our surroundings still warring for my attention, I shook my head. Because while I wanted more than anything for Lucas to come and take me out of Erik’s dark world, the idea was also something I couldn’t bear the thought of. I’d made my deal with Erik. If Lucas showed up now, I wouldn’t be able to leave with him. Not if I wanted us both to make it out alive. Not if I wanted him to.

  “Whatever you’re planning,” I said, speaking fast to keep him from trying to interrupt me, “don’t. It’s too dangerous. He’s already attacked someone. He—”

  “Rastin,” said Lucas, uttering perhaps the one word that could have muted me in that moment. “Stephanie, that man who came looking for you, that was Rastin.”

  “Rastin?” I blinked rapidly, my heart beginning to race. Because the pieces kept coming together to suggest Lucas couldn’t be a figment.

  Lucas nodded. “He got my message. That’s how I’m even able to be here right now.”

  I gaped at him, his words sparking in me a potent hope. Again, I gripped Lucas by the arms, my nails digging in this time. Because that voice that I’d heard shouting my name from the other side of the house—it had been familiar for a reason. Because I had heard it before. Through one of the earbuds Lucas and I had shared that day in the library.

  “He’s hurt,” I said, fear squeezing my words. “God. Is he okay?”

  “He’s okay. Stephanie—”

  “How did he—?”

  “None of that’s important!” Gripping my arms in return, Lucas shook me once. The action won my silence, but only long enough for a soft flutter to catch and steal my attention.

  “Shh!” I commanded him, turning my head sharply. “Did you hear that?”

  The noise had been like the flap of a bird’s wing. Or the hem of a heavy cloak . . .

  “Whatever it was, it’s not real,” Lucas said, attempting to turn me back to him. “Nothing here is but me and you. This is a dre—Stephanie, where are you going?”

  Though Lucas tugged my arm, I managed to pull away. I drifted out from behind our tree, my steps returning me to the clearing near my mother’s grave. Again, I scanned our surroundings, searching for the source of the noise.

  Then a horrible sensation, like the ground and all of reality had dropped out from under me, caused my stomach to plummet.

  The plinth that had previously supported the solemn and hooded stone figure now stood empty, vacated by its guard.

  “Lucas,” I said, my breath leaving me in the form of a small white ghost. “Lucas, you have to go.”

  “I can’t go! Not without—” His steps crunched in the snow, growing nearer until, along with his words, they halted abruptly.

  Dread overwhelmed me while my mind painted pictures of what I would find when I turned. I spun anyway, my heart stalling at the sight of the black-hooded form brought to life. He loomed behind Lucas, one gloved and ring-lined hand clasping the hilt of a dagger, the wavy blade of which he held to Lucas’s throat.

  “She has instructed you to depart, sir,” came that distorted voice from within the hood. “You may take your leave or, if you prefer, I will see you out.”

  Lucas’s bright blue gaze dulled with hate. He remained frozen, though, seeming to understand completely just how real all parts of this dream were—how real the consequences were about to become if he didn’t do as I’d told him.

  More seconds elapsed, however, and Lucas remained in place.

  “You can kill me,” said Lucas at last, his words shocking me almost as much as Erik’s sudden appearance. “You can kill anyone who comes near her. You must think I’m still here because I don’t understand that, but I do.”

  “Lucas, don’t,” I warned, able to sense where he would go next and knowing there would be no coming back from it.

  “You can keep her forever and never let her go,” Lucas continued, ignoring me. “But what you don’t seem to understand is that none of that is ever going to make her love you.”

  The hand clenching the knife tightened, prepared to strike. But in that same instant, Lucas moved, uncoiling himself from the arm that, when it should have killed him, simply . . . let him go.

  This was my chance. I sprang forward and, inserting myself between the two, as if that could do anything, I flung my arms wide, giving them each one of my bandaged palms.

  “Leave, Lucas!” I screamed at top volume, recognizing fully that the only reason Lucas was still alive was because Erik had so far decided to keep his promise. With Lucas instigating this way, though, goading Erik, how much longer could I hope for that resolve to remain?

&n
bsp; Instead of listening to me, Lucas squared off from his enemy and let loose more words—his only weapons.

  “You’re dead!” Lucas yelled. “You don’t belong here.”

  “Lucas, please!”

  “Even if you were alive and not some thing of nightmares, she would never choose you!”

  “Erik, no!” I screamed as, with that, the hooded figure darted forward, lunging past me toward Lucas, who only narrowly avoided the swipe of the blade that sang as it sliced lengthwise through the snow and air. Lucas delivered a return swing with his fist. The cloaked figure dodged it, the motion fast enough to cause his hood to fall back—and reveal the flawless face I had not seen since that night in the boat. Erik’s.

  The sight of it, even twisted with hatred, caused something within me to shift and upend. Because unlike the horrible silver death’s head mask, this face was one that I had come to know. And the pain beneath the beauty in those features, beneath the fury—it echoed my own.

  “Erik, he’s leaving,” I said. “He’ll go. Lucas?”

  With a growl, Lucas rushed Erik again.

  “Stop it!” I shrieked at both of them when, in response, Erik slashed Lucas’s sleeve open, sending a spatter of crimson over the snow. That strike had been yet another warning—no doubt Erik’s final. Lucas had to know this. Why, then, was he swinging at Erik yet again? Did he think being in a dream protected him? Did he think he could win?

  Erik’s face. What about it had tipped Lucas out of defiance and into rage?

  “You belong in hell,” said Lucas through gritted teeth even as Erik shoved him against one side of the stone sepulcher. “And even if it kills me, I swear I will be the one to send you there.”

  The words stunned me, cracking my heart in two. Not just because they were filled with hate but because they proved that, in this moment, what Lucas cared most about . . . was revenge.

  Dropping the knife, Erik seized Lucas by the throat with both hands.

  Lucas cringed, clawing at the gloved fingers that squeezed harder, threatening to crush his windpipe.

  “Erik!” I ran to him, latching on to his arms as if I had the strength to pry them off. But now he wasn’t listening, either.