Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  She had gone with me into the dark, too. Even knowing what I sought.

  How could she not when, due to our connection, there was no way for me to hide from her? But then, had there ever been?

  There, in the nothing, I did what I had wanted to so fiercely that night I had first begun to love her, bending to take her lips with mine.

  And oh, how her own had answered.

  Her hands had dared to wander over my garments—and then so boldly beyond them.

  Continuing as it morphed into something else entirely, our dance proceeded from there into forbidden territory. Dauntless, we accompanied one another there. Our entwinement—had it not been made all the more irresistible, all the more unstoppable, all the more ecstatic, by the precarious mingling of our two souls?

  As it all escalated into rampant fire, which of us could have hoped to stop the other?

  It was my contention that neither of us would have. Certainly not I.

  Except . . . there were people in the house.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Lucas

  “Erik!” shouted Rastin as Wes, Charlotte, Patrick, and I entered through the front door behind him.

  “Well,” muttered Wes, who turned in a slow circle, “so much for the element of surprise.”

  “He’s gone,” said Rastin, who pressed a hand to his forehead. “His spirit. I can’t feel it.”

  “Lucas?”

  “Oh my God,” said Patrick at the sound of my name, uttered by the softest of voices that had all five of us pivoting toward the grand staircase. Stephanie stood at the landing, her eyes hollowed with disbelief, her dark hair tousled, her expression at once bereft and lost.

  “Stephanie,” I said, taking one halting step toward her, afraid that this could be a trap.

  “Lucas,” she said again, blinking in the brightening sunlight. “What are you doing here?”

  I started at her response, my steps taking me to the base of the stairs. “I . . . I told you I would come for you. But . . . how did you get back?”

  Her hands went to cover her mouth. Pain etched itself on her too-pale features. And then tears appeared on her cheek. Tears of relief and . . . torment.

  A huge silver ring gleamed on her left hand—a skull with glistening ruby eyes.

  I knew whose ring that had to be. But . . . what was it doing there on her left ring finger?

  While Rastin and my friends watched on, I began to climb the stairs toward her. As I did, Stephanie’s tears began to fall more readily.

  “Lucas,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . so sorry.”

  “Why?” I asked, scarcely able to believe it could really be her. I took another step toward her but paused, utterly shocked when she took a sharp step back from me. I scowled, confused.

  “No, I’ve . . . I’m,” she stammered, but her words wouldn’t come.

  “Stephanie,” came Rastin’s voice next. He approached the base of the stairs, peering up at her. “What has become of Erik?”

  “He . . .” Trailing off, she glanced down at herself, shaking her head again, like there was something about her being here she couldn’t understand. Almost like she thought it couldn’t be true. Or even . . . like she didn’t want it to be.

  I glanced back at both Rastin and the members of SPOoKy, searching their faces for an answer. Wes’s eyes darted between me and Stephanie and back again. Charlotte frowned, uncertainty knitting her whole frame. Patrick shook his head, his gaze roving the foyer, the parlor, and the hall, like he expected an ambush.

  “Erik,” Rastin prompted again, his voice breathy, almost desperate. “Where is he?”

  “He . . .” Stephanie began. “He brought me back while I was sleeping. I didn’t know it. I didn’t expect . . . He left. He told me to leave. He’s on the other side. I . . . I can feel him there.”

  “What do you mean, you can feel him?” Patrick asked, giving voice to the question we all had to be thinking.

  “It’s the heart,” she said, her delicate fingers trailing over her chest. “I gave him a heart. Somehow . . . that connected us.”

  “Wait,” I said, my scowl deepening. “You gave him a heart?”

  “What kind of heart?” asked Rastin.

  “A rose,” Stephanie answered, her voice shaking, fingers twisting and twining themselves with one another. “He says it will break, though. And that . . . something awful will happen. That’s why . . . it’s why he brought me back.”

  My eyes met with Rastin’s and with that look, we exchanged all we needed to say.

  Rastin turned, exiting the foyer by way of the back hall.

  “Guys,” I said to Wes, Charlotte, and Patrick, “take Stephanie and get out of here. Now.”

  “Lucas,” Charlotte began, but I shot her a glare that silenced her.

  “We won’t get another chance,” I told her, keeping my voice low, so that Stephanie wouldn’t hear my words. Though I wasn’t sure why.

  With that, I made to follow Rastin.

  “Lucas?” Stephanie called after me. “Wait. Where are you going?”

  I ignored her and, skirting the fallen chandelier where it still lay, I trailed after Rastin as he entered the kitchen—moving in the direction of the door I knew he would open next.

  I paused in the center of the kitchen as Rastin opened the cellar door to reveal a darkened stairway. He shut it quickly, then opened it again.

  “It’s as I feared,” he muttered, shutting the door a second time. “With my connection to Erik now severed, there is no link binding us together any longer. The heart Stephanie gave him. Somehow, it must have focused his entire soul. Including the missing shard. There is now no way for me to reach his side.”

  “The only thing that matters at this point is that he has a heart,” I said. “There’s got to be a way we can draw him out.”

  “Erik!” Stephanie screeched, causing me to whirl in the direction of the hallway. “Erik, no, you can’t!”

  At hearing these words, Rastin and I made a break for the kitchen entrance, both of us jumping to the conclusion that he’d crossed back to this side, to Stephanie. We halted, though, at the unlatching of the basement door, which then creaked open.

  Neither of us turned. Not even when a voice emanated from within the cellar.

  “I am here, gentlemen.”

  A spear of ice pierced me through the gut. Together, we spun, Rastin and I, to find a figure in the doorway. A masked one.

  Shock rooted me to the spot.

  I had come here knowing I would face him. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the sight of him.

  Tall and rail-thin, cloaked and garbed in ebony, he emerged from the nighttime blackness of the cellar into the daylit kitchen, twin lights glinting at us from within the eyeholes of his split metal mask.

  Unable to help it, I stumbled back a step, into Rastin, who quickly pushed himself ahead of me, an arm extended. As if he could have done anything to protect either of us.

  “Erik,” said Rastin. “What trick is this?”

  “No tricks this time, Shirazi,” the creature said.

  “Erik, no!” Stephanie screeched again, her voice coming from farther away now. Because the others. They must have taken her out of the house.

  Stephanie, though . . . Why was she yelling at him like that? Like she was afraid. Less of him and more . . . for him.

  Her fear. It didn’t seem to stem from where it had before, in the graveyard—that he would kill me. But that didn’t make any sense.

  “Why is she calling to you?” I asked him. Because I had a right to know if I was reading this all wrong. If Stephanie was shouting for him because he was in the process of killing me already. But then, in that case, wouldn’t Stephanie have been shouting my name?

  “She senses your plan,” the monster said, surprising me by answering.
“She senses it because I sense it.”

  Confused by these words, and by Stephanie’s panic, I risked a glance in the direction of her distant shouting. If Stephanie knew what we were going to do, though, why would she want to stop us?

  As though in answer, an echo of Charlotte’s words from the hotel room swam through my mind, banishing the remnants of my doubt that she had known what she was talking about—that she’d been able to perceive something vital that I hadn’t.

  And Stephanie—she’d said he, Erik, had let her go. She’d also said he’d told her to leave.

  Now here Rastin and I were, more defenseless in this phantom’s presence than either of us had thought we would be. Still, he’d yet to make an attack. Or even a threat.

  His having a heart. According to Rastin, didn’t that mean his soul was, for now, intact?

  What, though, did it mean that he and Stephanie could now sense one another’s whereabouts and, in a way, each other’s thoughts?

  “Mr. Cheney.”

  Numb, I snapped my attention to him, the figure whose mask hid the face of a dead man. A creature who had called me by my name. And had so far refrained from cutting my throat.

  “Rastin,” it—he—said next. “Both of you. This way, if you please. So she cannot interfere.”

  With that, he stepped suddenly between Rastin and me, his shoulder, real and tangible, faintly brushing my own as he went. I turned my gaze to follow the sharp path he cut past us, my expression of astonishment briefly mirrored in the polished side of his iron mask.

  Then he vanished around the corner, heading in the direction of the rear door.

  Rastin moved ahead of me to follow after him. It took me an instant longer to jar myself into action.

  Though Rastin went straight through the open back door, passing into a world of rain and melting snow—a world that had inexplicably turned to night—I hesitated.

  “The girl,” Rastin called after Erik, following his cloaked form down the path and into the dark. “How did this connection come to be forged between you?”

  Drawn to the lip of the doorway, the one leading straight into his domain, I hesitated before drifting through, ending up outside on a perfectly restored porch.

  Ahead, he waited on the muddy pathway leading to the conservatory.

  Rastin was halfway to him when all three of us turned back to the open door at the sound of his name.

  “Erik!” Stephanie called, her shouting growing near. Along with the thump of running steps.

  “Mr. Cheney,” said Erik. “I find myself incapable of shutting the door. Her will to reach me keeps it open. And so, the task falls to you.”

  What? Me again?

  “Mr. Cheney,” he said, this time with more force. “The door.”

  I turned my head toward the hall as Stephanie appeared, her face white with terror, her mouth open. Calling someone’s name. But . . . not mine.

  “She will never be free if you let her cross to me again,” he hissed. “Never.”

  And that was the only thing he could have said to make me do as he had commanded.

  Catching the door, I pushed it shut just as Stephanie reached it, our eyes meeting for one brief and horrible moment. I’d never seen that look in her eyes, either. Or in anyone’s. A beseeching stare. One of horror and utter devastation.

  From the other side, she screamed to me. “Lucas, please don’t!”

  I glanced back at him, the monster, Erik, who now clutched a hand over his heart.

  “Very well” was all he said as he turned from me and Rastin, continuing down the path to the conservatory. “Follow me. Quickly.”

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Stephanie

  I crashed against the door as it slammed shut, blocking out the sight of Lucas, and of Rastin and Erik.

  “Lucas!” I gripped the handle, but when I opened the door again, it was the sun and the day that greeted me. Things I should have been glad to see again.

  I wasn’t glad, though.

  Terror for Erik’s plan, the one I felt in my heart, seized me.

  “Where did they go?” asked a voice behind me.

  I whirled to find Charlotte there.

  The boys. They’d held me back, pulling me to Charlotte’s car. That was until Charlotte had ordered them to let me go.

  “They’re going to kill him,” I told her.

  “Lucas?” Patrick asked as he and Wes entered the hall behind her.

  “No,” Charlotte answered for me. “Not Lucas.”

  Had she seen him shut the door on me like that? She must have.

  “Zedok,” said Wes.

  “Erik,” I corrected in a breath.

  “They’re going through with the plan,” said Charlotte as she passed through the door and onto the porch, like she thought doing so could still take her to Lucas. “And Erik’s going to let them.”

  I gripped my heart, a horrible ache ricocheting through me with her words. The pain was the same he must have felt all those times. An ache more of the soul than of the body.

  “I can’t lose him,” I whispered, robbed of the ability to breathe, my steps taking me out into the world I hadn’t quite been ready to return to after all. “Not when I just got him back.”

  “It’s true, then,” said Charlotte out of nowhere.

  I looked up to her, searching her for the answer I didn’t have but, apparently, she might have found in all of this.

  “You love him.”

  I gaped at her, awestruck, because she’d put into words what I’d been unable to. Not even to the person to whom it would mean the most. To whom it would mean everything.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. And she would know why. She’d warned me not to break Lucas’s heart. He didn’t know it, but I already had. Because it was true. Without meaning to, without even realizing it, I had fallen in love with Erik.

  And now I wouldn’t ever get to tell him.

  “Charlotte, I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “No,” she said, coming to take my hands in hers. “I’m sorry.”

  I was taken aback by this response, even in the midst of my panic. Still, I gripped her hands tight with my own, because in my tilting world they felt like something to hold on to.

  For a moment, her expression mirrored my anguish. Then she shook her head, as if despair and helplessness were things that could be thrown off.

  “You said you were linked,” she said, wringing my hands in hers while she wracked her brain for any scrap of hope she might offer. “Before we got here, Rastin said he and Erik were linked, and that their connection might allow him to open a door to Erik’s side. What if . . . what if that means you can open the doors between your worlds now, too?”

  My mouth fell open at this suggestion. One that struck me as possible.

  Was it, though? I’d opened the door after Lucas had shut it to no avail. At the same time I hadn’t thought I was capable of traversing sides. And maybe there was a trick to it, some method Erik used whenever he wanted to cross from one side to the other.

  “I don’t know how,” I said.

  “You never saw him do it?” Patrick prompted.

  “No, he never—”

  “Come on,” said Charlotte, grabbing my hand. “They were headed for the greenhouse.”

  We burst away from the porch at a run, the boys following after as we rushed down from the ruined porch, taking the path to where I sensed him now.

  The conservatory, the door to which, on my side, stood ajar.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Zedok

  Roses all but coated the inside of the glass house, the vines tangling to the point that they would soon devour the door. No doubt they would all die when I did.

  I’d left the door ajar behind me and, coming to a stop at the far window, the one against which I’d pr
essed myself the night Stephanie had given me my new heart, I waited.

  Rastin entered first, the boy close behind him.

  “My soul,” I told them both. “I believe it has somehow become entangled with hers. Enough so that she now mistakes the love I feel for her as her own emotion.”

  “You’re saying she thinks she’s in love with you?” the boy asked, and I was glad to note his bravery had grown since my initial appearance. He would need it in these next few moments.

  “Crudely put,” I said. “But that is my guess, yes.”

  “Your guess?” Cheney challenged. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “You allowed Stephanie to reenter this house at great risk,” I replied. “You cannot disagree that action has helped to bring us here. If you love her even half as well as I do, then I know I can count on you not to gamble with her freedom a second time.”

  “Her soul,” said Rastin, at last speaking up. Could I count on him to be the voice of reason? His next words told me no. “If it’s entwined with yours, as you now claim, then it’s too dangerous to do as we had planned before.”

  “It is too dangerous not to do as we had planned,” I argued, unlatching my cloak and tossing it off. It unfurled in midair, dissipating to nothing. That’s when I unsheathed Tumult’s wavy-bladed kris dagger, the same weapon with which I’d attacked the boy in the dream. Flipping it in my grip, I now offered it to him, pommel-first.

  He blinked at me from behind his glasses, no longer the man I’d faced in the graveyard but the uncertain boy who had first entered Moldavia, an unbeliever of all the truths he had told Stephanie regarding what I was.

  “I can’t,” he said, holding up both palms and shaking his head in refusal of the blade. “Not if Stephanie doesn’t want—”