Phantom Pleasures

by Julie Leto

  He was still a phantom. Trapped. Captured by a curse set by his greatest enemy—forbidden by fate to have a life with Alexa. A life outside these thick stone walls.

  Damon had acted on instinct, hoping and praying that the destruction of the painting would set him free. But as he looked down at his hands and then back up at the windows, still dark, he anticipated the change that would soon twist through his body—but not the change he’d strived for.

  Soon, the sun would rise and he would fade.

  Below him, a dark-haired woman with round black eyes placed her arms protectively on Alexa’s shoulders.

  The old man who’d come in behind them shuffled toward the painting, throwing aside the broken bits of frame to reach the canvas beneath. He muttered to himself while Cat assured herself that her friend was all in one piece.

  “I take it this is your ghost,” she said wryly, looking up at him.

  Alexa spared her a half grin. “Well, he’s not exactly ghostlike during the night.”

  “Which explains your lack of apparel beneath that cloak,” she cracked.

  Damon cleared his throat and stood taller. “Surely women in this time do not gossip so openly.”

  The women exchanged bemused glances. “Yes, actually, we do,” Alexa informed him.

  He frowned. “Then I assume you are Cat.”

  “None other,” Cat replied, uncertainty and distrust evident on her olive-skinned face. She could have been a Gyspy, this one. She had quick eyes, he could tell. Likely missed very little—a good friend for Alexa to have.

  “I appreciate your hesitation,” he said, starting toward the stairs. He hadn’t much time before the sun rose and banished him again to the shadows. If Alexa’s friends had arrived to help his pursuit, there was no time to waste. “The portrait was my prison. I thought by destroying it, I might find my freedom.”

  “That’s not the way,” replied a gruff voice.

  The old man looked up, his stare accusatory.

  “And you are?”

  The man hesitated. Damon was sure he’d never seen anyone quite so old, yet possessing such strength of spine.

  “Paschal Rousseau,” he informed him, his chin tilted upward.

  Damon locked his gaze with that of the man who assessed him so boldly. Alexa slid next to Damon and took his arm. No doubt, she recognized the meeting for what it was—each man taking the measure of the other.

  “You are the reported expert on the Romani of Valoren?”

  A quick, enthusiastic grin spread across the man’s face, but only for a moment. Just as quickly, he pursed his lips and averted his eyes. The hair on the back of Damon’s neck rose. He pushed Alexa behind him.

  “You should dress,” he said to her, though his eyes never broke from Paschal Rousseau.

  “My bag is by the door,” she replied.

  Damon lifted his hand to summon the bag, but she immediately slapped his arm.

  “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  Surprised by his actions, he lowered his hand immediately. Was the magic so entwined within him now that his instincts reverted to it without thought? How many times could he tempt his soul with the magic before he lost his center completely? Alexa’s inventive means of restoring his humanity had worked well once, but he had no guarantee the strategy would work forever.

  And he didn’t have forever. He would have rather endured the foggy half awareness of the painting than knowing that a world existed beyond these castle walls of which he could not partake. He looked down at the broken portrait frame and realized, with no disappointment whatsoever, that he could not retreat. He wanted his freedom above all else.

  Even more than he wanted Alexa, he acknowledged sadly. He could be no man to her if he dissolved into nothing with the coming of every dawn.

  Damon turned his focus to the younger man, who’d remained in the doorway.

  “What is your name?” Damon demanded.

  The man crossed his arms. “Ben Rousseau.”

  Damon nodded toward the old man. “This is your father, then?”

  “Yes, and he’s come a long way and endured more than a man his age should in order to help you, so I suggest you soften your tone.”

  Damon quirked an eyebrow. Assertive, this one. Quick to anger. Reminded him of himself. He supposed some allowances had to be made for the professor’s advanced age and reputedly useful knowledge.

  “You know of the Gypsy curse as well?”

  Ben shook his head. “I only know what my father told us on the way here. Bottom line is, we’re here to help you. Whatever you are.”

  “Ben,” Paschal chastised, “mind your manners.”

  Tension seeped into Damon’s neck, and when he held out his hand to Ben, who’d picked up Alexa’s bag and brought it to her, Damon wondered why he felt so ill at ease with strangers who claimed to want to help him. When Ben turned away, Damon grabbed his arm and gazed into eyes, trying to read his true intentions.

  Ben tugged his arm free. “What are you? A ghost?”

  “No, son,” Paschal interjected. “He’s not dead.”

  Cat tugged Alexa toward the dining hall to dress, but she hesitated until Damon assured her all would be peaceful until her return. In the meantime, he meant to extract what information he could, knowing he could not trust either of these men until they had proved their worth.

  “How do you know I am not dead, sir?” he questioned Paschal. “It is my understanding that your knowledge of my predicament has been gleaned entirely from books and heresay.”

  Paschal chuckled and, while raspy, the sound was hauntingly familiar. “That is a misconception I myself created. For obvious reasons.”

  “Obvious to whom?”

  “You’re just as haughty and overbearing as ever, aren’t you?” Paschal accused, though his tone lilted with humor.

  Alexa and Cat returned to the foyer. Dressed hastily in pants and a blouse, Alexa cradled Rogan’s cloak over her arm. The fire opal broach on the collar flamed in the light from the torch beside her. Damon turned back to Paschal, whose eyes suddenly looked even more familiar than his son’s—because they looked so very much like his own.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  They could not be descendants, could they? All his brothers had died or disappeared, though he imagined Aiden or Logan might have had an illegitimate son at some point. He’d had no uncles. To the best of his knowledge, thanks to Alexa’s computer, the Forsyth line had died that night in Valoren.

  Or had it?

  Paschal’s smile, so easy, so full and relaxed, instantly gave him away.

  “Good Lord above,” Damon said, his gut tightening as if he’d just been pummeled. “Paxton? You bloody, duplicitous whelp!”

  “Paxton?” Ben asked, planting himself firmly between Damon and his father. “Who the hell is Paxton? This is Paschal Rousseau, the noted Gypsy researcher.”

  “Like hell,” Damon shot back. “This old coot is Paxton Forsyth, my devious younger brother.”

  29

  The collective gasps in the vast entryway nearly sucked the air from Alexa’s lungs. She searched her memory for information about Paxton, recalling only that he was one of the twins, the youngest of the sons borne to John Forsyth and his first wife. But what were the chances that her Gypsy expert and Damon’s assumed dead brother were one and the same?

  “Your brother?” she asked. “How is that possible?”

  “It’s not,” Ben insisted.

  Paschal leveled his steely gaze at his son. “It’s more than possible, son. It’s true.” He then spun on his brother, his arms akimbo in a jaunty pose that shaved twenty years off his reputed age. “I’d wondered if after all these centuries, my arrogant, self-centered git of a brother would recognize me.”

  Alexa searched Paschal’s expression for signs of real resentment but found nothing but twinkling eyes and a devilish grin. After a tense moment, a similar smile lit Damon’s face and he laughed heartily. With a push, he removed his grown nephew from
his path and enveloped his long lost brother in a massive hug.

  Cat grabbed the back of Ben’s jacket to ensure he didn’t interfere.

  “This isn’t possible,” Ben muttered.

  Cat patted him lovingly on the shoulder. “Just four hours ago, I contacted your father using a catalog of swords as my psychic telephone line. Just four days ago, Alexa walked into this monstrosity of a castle and freed a cursed phantom from a painting. The fact that your father is just under three centuries old seems par for the course.” She turned to Alexa. “Small world, huh?”

  Alexa exhaled a whoosh of air. “So he’s an expert on Valoren because he lived there.”

  Cat bounced on the balls of her feet. She always loved a good cosmic connection. “Who better? Still planning on turning this magic magnet,” she said, gesturing to the castle, “into your flagship hotel?”

  Alexa’s smile nearly hurt her face. Suddenly, the banners flapping on the walls looked brighter, the tapestries richer, the carpets more lush. Even the sparkling stone and its incessant chill seemed warmer when filled with the people she cared about—Cat, of course. Damon, particularly. Even Ben and Paschal—er, Paxton—as they were Damon’s family. She suddenly felt a connection to her castle that went beyond business, beyond ambition, beyond pride. This was where she’d found him. And this was where, with Paschal’s help, she would set him free.

  “Absolutely,” she replied.

  “He was supposed to be your resident ghost,” Cat reminded her.

  “The guests can get their own ghost,” Alexa quipped.

  “I don’t know…he was your big draw.” The doubt on Cat’s face and her singsong voice were clearly for comic effect.

  Alexa watched Damon and Paschal part, then after a moment of checking each other out from head to toe, they fell into another fraternal embrace.

  “He’ll always be my big draw,” Alexa mused, her hopes helplessly pinned on Paschal Rousseau—or Paxton Forsyth, as the case may be—to reveal the secret that would set Damon completely free. “As for my previous plans, I believe I’ll look into the possibility of special effects.”

  Cutting their banter short when Paschal and Damon finally released each other, Alexa sent Ben into the dining hall to retrieve a chair for his father, who seemed wiped out from the explosion of emotion, not to mention the aftereffects of a kidnapping and rescue, all of which Cat recounted. Ben wordlessly placed the high-backed oak chair near his father. Paschal sneered at the seat, but took it nonetheless.

  “What happened?” Damon asked, a hint of a frown tilting his mouth as he knelt beside Paschal, his hand protectively atop his brother’s knee.

  “You mean, why am I so old?”

  Damon’s brow creased his face severely.

  Paschal clapped his brother heartily on the shoulder. “Think this is what awaits you, do you? Immediate aging once you are free of the curse? If I’d aged to where I should be chronologically, I’d be nothing more than a pile of dust. No, I was freed of the curse over sixty years ago at the height of the Second World War, thanks to a lovely French girl who had an eye for beauty even amid the ravages of war.”

  Damon glanced at Alexa, a grin teasing his lips. Her own eye for stunning lines and magnificent symmetry, along with her penchant for fantasy and an insatiable hunger for a secret lover, had drawn her to the castle and into Damon’s world with just as much romanticism as the lilt in Paschal’s voice.

  “White blond hair,” Paschal mused. “The shapeliest legs I’ve ever seen. Since women in our time were scandalized by the exhibition of a well-turned ankle, you can imagine how the shortage of fabric in Europe worked to my advantage.”

  He waggled his eyebrows and Alexa had to admit that Paschal’s impression of history was much more passionate than hers. In her catch-up session with Damon two days before, Alexa had barely touched on the world wars, not to mention the radical changes in women’s fashion since the Georgian era, but over the next fifteen minutes, Paschal regaled them with adventurous recollections of the French Resistance against the Nazis and of the brave and trusting twenty-year-old girl who’d found a mirror in an abandoned shop in Provence that had, because of Rogan’s magic, contained Paxton’s soul.

  His voice adopted an increasingly dreamy quality as he slipped farther back into his memory and described the night Damon and his brothers had stormed into Umgeben to free their kidnapped sister.

  “As you ordered, Logan and I went in search of the tinker,” he said. “His shop had been abandoned, just like the village square. We searched for any sign of evacuation, but everything seemed to be exactly where it belonged. Except for two stunning mirrors in a velvet-lined case, sitting in plain view. Logan couldn’t believe anyone would leave such wonders of workmanship behind. Or out in the open. They were, admittedly, brilliant pieces of silverwork, with jeweled handles. And since Logan was always in search of a new gift to offer his latest conquest, he grabbed them. Handed one to me. For a split second, we looked at each other. Then, a bright white light. And that was that.”

  He finished his story with a nonchalant shrug.

  “That was that?” Ben repeated incredulously. “That was what?”

  Positioned behind his father, Ben’s arms were so tightly crossed over his chest that Alexa thought the constricting pressure was the only thing keeping the vein on his neck from bursting. She glanced at Cat, who sidled over and placed a hand quietly on his back.

  Quietly and…intimately.

  What exactly had her best friend been doing with this guy during his father’s rescue, hm?

  Paschal threw an exasperated glare over his shoulder. “Loosen up, Benjamin. You weren’t born yesterday. This is your uncle. This is your history. You should be very interested.”

  “If this fairy tale is so important,” Ben challenged, “why haven’t I heard any of this before now?”

  Paschal’s snow-white brows rose high over clear gray eyes. “You would have thought I’d lost my mind and had me committed—and don’t say you wouldn’t have, because that’s precisely what I would have done had the roles been reversed. Your mother and I considered telling you years ago—”

  “Mother knew?”

  “Good God, boy, of course she knew! She’s the one who freed me from the curse, just as I suspect Miss Chandler here did for your uncle.” He turned back to Damon and spoke directly to him, though behind his hand, as if everyone couldn’t overhear. “He’s a handsome boy, and bright, too, but has a nasty stubborn streak. It’s in the genes.”

  “The what?” Damon questioned.

  Paschal waved a hand dismissively. “You can learn about genetic studies later. Of the lot of us, you always were the book learner. Funny. Now I’m the one with the knowledge you need. The one who used to put toads in your bed.”

  Damon and Paschal laughed, but Ben remained in stunned silence. The merriment didn’t die down until Paschal turned his gaze to Alexa’s throat. Instinctively, she drew her hand to the charm Jacob had given her. Paschal’s stare narrowed, then he waved her forward.

  She bent low so he could examine the necklace. “Ah, yes. The Queen’s Charm. I highly suspected, after Miss Reyes explained your circumstances, that you’d somehow gotten ahold of it.”

  “My brother gave it to me,” she explained. “For protection.”

  He nodded knowingly. “The primary purpose of the Queen’s Charm is protection, but I gather you’ve already learned as much.”

  Damon scooted closer. “The Queen’s Charm, you say? I thought this was but a trinket Father gave to Sarina.”

  “So did I,” Paschal reported, “until circumstances forced me to find out where Father got it in the first place. Apparently, the old King George’s queen, Sophia, before her banishment, received the charm from a Gypsy artisan she’d done an accidental kindness to. The Gypsy claimed it was a key to unlock a woman’s greatest desires. The queen must have passed the trinket to our father before he left to oversee the colony at Valoren. Rumor has it, she was fond of our father
. But the poor woman likely didn’t believe in the magic. Nevertheless, Father gave the charm to Sarina years later as a gift.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Sarina wrote about it in her diary,” he answered. “I take it you haven’t read it.” Paschal nodded knowingly. “Delving into our sister’s secret passions was not easy for me, either, not when we don’t even know what became of her. But I can tell you—after Rogan fell in love with her, he further enchanted the charm to protect Sarina from his magic.”

  “Fell in love?” Damon spat, shoving to his feet. “The mere thought is as revolting as it is insane. Rogan lacked the heart to love anyone.”

  Paschal shrugged. Clearly, his spite and anger toward Rogan had lessened with time. Or else he’d never experienced the same all-encompassing rage Damon struggled so hard against, since Rogan had been his friend.

  “Why did this sorcerer need to protect your sister from his magic?” Cat asked. “If he cared for her—even if he only meant to seduce her,” she amended, witnessing the affronted look on Damon’s face at the implication that Rogan might have genuinely loved Sarina, “why would she be in danger from him?”

  Damon, Alexa and Paschal all sighed knowingly.

  “The magic,” Alexa piped up, laying her hand softly against Damon’s arm, “comes with a price. It corrupts the sorcerer who wields it. Makes him very dangerous.”

  “Very good, Miss Chandler,” Paschal said, ignoring the flash of regret that streaked across Damon’s face. “You figured out in a matter of days what took me years to learn. Once I got my hands on the necklace again sixty years ago, I was able to breach the castle’s defenses and move the structure here. Seem to remember I procured this island during a rather dicey poker game.”

  “You gamble, too?” Ben asked incredulously.

  “Life’s a gamble, my boy,” Paschal said with a dismissive snort. “I brought the castle out of Valoren because a nasty group of cultists had been trying to take the castle for their own nefarious intentions. I anticipated I’d need years to sort out Rogan’s magic. I’d hoped my brothers had been trapped as I was, and I, of course, intended to free them. I took the castle as far away from Germany as I could, knowing it might be the key—the source of the curse.”