Phantoms In Philadelphia (Phantom Knights Book 1)

by Amalie Vantana

  Chapter 1

  Bess

  10 February 1817

  Charleston, South Carolina

  Being a spy had taught me some valuable tricks, like how to pick locks. When I was fourteen, I had discovered that I had an aptitude for unlocking barriers that were meant to keep people out. I had yet to come up against a lock that I could not undo. The key was to control your breathing. If you control your breathing, you control the beating of your heart and in turn, the fumbling of your hands. If you stay emotionally controlled, you will find your way.

  It also helps when people are trusting, for trust leads to unlatched windows, and the people of Charleston appeared to be very trusting.

  Stepping through an open window that was nearly as tall as I was, I let myself into a large house on Fort Street. I knew the owner to be away from Charleston; I also knew the owner had information that would serve me well.

  When I took a good look at the room I had entered, I paused to stare. It was a two-story book room. On three of the walls were stocked bookshelves, and in one corner was a wooden spiral staircase that led up to a second level of bookshelves. There was a narrow walkway that encompassed all three walls. The room was unlike any I had ever seen or dreamed. Jack, my little brother, would possibly kill to possess such a room.

  The window I had entered through was one in a wall of windows that overlooked a garden. There was a large desk with books and papers all stacked in orderly piles. Snapping out of my stupor, I moved to the desk first. There was a map unrolled across the center, and all the books were nautical ones. There was a stack of opened letters, so I started going through them.

  Bills, invoices, correspondence; there had to be twenty letters there. Finally, at the bottom of the stack, I found one that interested me. It was written in a woman’s hand; the flourishing script and the slant told me as much. There was no signature, but there was a list of names—associates in league with the secret society known only as the Holy Order.

  Folding the letter, I tucked it into the pocket of my black trousers. There were only two more drawers but as I pulled them open, the sound of the front door opening halted my hand. When a man’s voice spoke, coming clear and loud through the wall, my heart felt like lead in my chest. I knew that voice, but I had been told that his return was not expected for another three days.

  Closing the drawers quietly, I moved away from the desk to the window, slipping through without a sound.

  Crouching low, to avoid being seen through any of the windows that covered the side of the house, I inched my way toward the front gate.

  Everything that happened only a month ago still haunted both my waking moments and my dreams like a never ceasing nightmare. I felt as if I should have known that I was walking into a trap, but I had not, and now a friend was dead, and my dreams of a new life were shattered.

  Three persons had escorted me to Charleston; Levi, who was a former Phantom under my leadership, Reverend Gideon Reid, and Mrs. Beaumont my mother’s housekeeper. My mother had insisted I bring her housekeeper with me for respectability since I would not allow my mother to accompany me to Charleston.

  When I walked off the Queen’s Reward, there was only one plan in my mind—to find all the information on the Holy Order that I could and depart the city.

  George Crawford, founder of the Phantoms, had sent me to Charleston to work for his nephew’s team of spies, but when he told me that Samuel Mason had been tracking the Holy Order for months, I formed my own plans.

  As we set out at the port, Levi and I were supposed to follow Mrs. Beaumont and Reverend Reid to the church he would be ministering in for a year, but Levi and I had made good our escape, directing the coachman to take us to Samuel Mason’s house instead.

  Levi was down the street in our hired carriage waiting for me. When I approached Samuel’s house, I had to stop and stare, for it was beautiful. All the houses in this waterside city were different from those in Philadelphia; colorful and exotic. Samuel’s was made of grayish white bricks with three stories of white porches and white columns flanking the front. There was a black, iron fence running the length of the front of the house with a black gate. When I looked upon the house, the face belonging to the master of the house flashed in my mind. Seven months had done nothing to diminish his image from my thoughts. I would have been intrigued by both the house and its master, if I did not detest the man so much.

  The gate was ahead of me, but I paused at the edge of the house, for coming through the gate was a woman, smiling slightly and idly swinging her gloves from her hand. My breath stalled in my lead-feeling chest.

  All of the pain from the past year slammed through me accumulating into one delirious conviction. She was responsible for it all.

  She halted when she saw me. Her eyes that were a mixture of deep blue and purple, widened, and her mouth opened. She was small in stature and blonde, but I knew that the color of her hair was a pretense, like every word that ever fell from her lips. I rose up to my full height of five feet and nine inches, a giant in a sea of dainty women. Then again, I had fought a giant in the past, and he and I were nothing alike.

  “Raven,” the woman before me hissed recognizing the mask I wore that had a black leather raven on one side. She turned and ran.

  I pushed off the ground with the balls of my feet, running hard as I pursued her. After six months of waiting for that moment, I would not waste it.

  She ran across the cobblestone street into a wooded area of land that stood between the house and the water. She was fast, but she was also wearing a dress, and the fashionable boots women wore were ridiculously difficult to run in with their high heels. I was on her heels, so I leapt forward, knocking her to the ground from behind.

  As a puff of air exploded from her at the force of landing on the ground, I took advantage of her momentary weakness by sitting up, rolling her over, and slamming my fist against her middle. She jerked up, gasping. Throwing my fist forward to hit her again; she jerked to the side, and my fist hit the ground. Pain shot up my hand and into my arm. I shook my hand trying to dispel the pain, and that distraction cost me.

  She pummeled me in the side. Groaning against the pains her fists were creating, I grabbed her right wrist, but she used her left hand to grab my knit cap and pull my face down toward her. I released her wrist and grabbed her neck, trying to choke her. I did not want to choke the life from her, only scare her—repay her for all the trouble she caused me. When I thought about that, anger boiled my blood, and for a moment, I did want to kill her.

  She shoved her hands beneath the sleeves of my jacket and dug her nails into my flesh. The pain was like little knives piercing me. I released her neck with a yelp, pulling my arms away from her clutches. She started to cough. Drops of blood were trickling down my arms, sliding onto my gloves. I threw my arm back to punch her again, but she jerked her head to the right, and her fist hit my side again, knocking me back. She scrambled up, but I was quicker.

  Grabbing a fistful of her hair, pins went flying as I pulled her blonde wig from her head. It served her right for not wearing a hat. Netting was covering her ebony hair. She moved until a good ten feet were between us. I stood, holding up her wig in a taunt.

  “What do you want, Bess?” she asked, clutching her stomach.

  “The Holy Order,” I replied smoothly, running strands of her wig between my fingers.

  “No,” she said.

  So be it! Dropping her wig, ready to run at her again, she raised her hand, and the late morning sunshine glinted off a silver blade. I had but a second to react as her hand came down, sending a dagger flying at my chest. I leapt to the right, and the blade sailed past me.

  Landing on the hard ground, pain shot through my ribs. As I blew out a furious puff, everything inside of me went rigid in a burning desire to cause her as much pain as she had caused me. I pushed myself to my knees, but she was beside me before I could get to my feet. She kicked my stomach, and I let out a shout as I fell back. The witch drop
ped to her knees on my stomach; the tip of a sharp blade placed against my temple.

  “I do not want to hurt you.” She shrieked as I pinched her leg. She slapped my cheek, sending pain through my face; then she pressed her blade against my neck again. “But I will if you do not leave Charleston.” She kept the blade against my throat as she rose. I did not move for I knew she would cut my throat. “Today,” she added before kicking my side, hard. Fiery pain covered my whole side as I rolled over gasping then coughing.

  She started to walk away.

  “Guinevere,” I called out, she looked over her shoulder at me, “I am not leaving.”

  “We shall see,” she replied before retrieving her wig and half running, half limping down the street.

  As I rose up, she disappeared around the corner of a house. Fury was soaring through me as I held my side that felt like it had some cracked ribs.

  The sunlight glinted off the steel of the dagger she had thrown at me. In her haste to retreat, she had forgotten it. I stumbled toward it, but could not bend over to retrieve it, so I lowered to my knees to pick it up. It was nine inches in length, and seeing the handle caused me to suck a sharp breath. Engraved in the center of the gold handle was a heart with the letters J and G. I knelt there for several painful heartbeats as my mind shouted what that stood for. It was for her, after all, that Jack had deserted me in November. He loved the vixen and would not stop until he found her.

  Though Jack had never told me, I had known he was betrothed to her. I had overheard their stolen conversation at a ball when Jack had given her an engagement ring. It was the same night that she was supposed to murder James Monroe, who was about to be inaugurated as the President of our country. She had not done it, switching the poison with a sleeping draught, but the woman had done many other travesties, which was reason enough why I should keep her whereabouts a secret. I did not want my brother to do anything foolish, like marry the witch. Betrayal flashed in my heart, followed by bitter anger, for I knew he would do that if I did not stop him.

  Gripping the dagger, I pushed myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the pain in my side.

  “Raven?” said a deep voice from behind me. My eyes slid closed as unpleasant flutters came alive inside my stomach. I knew who stood behind me.

  Seven months ago, Samuel Mason and I had ‘met’ under mysterious circumstances when his uncle George Crawford had been captured by a corrupt secret society and I had broken into George’s house, searching for clues as to his whereabouts. It was while I was there that I was set upon by a masked man. He attacked me, and when he had me restrained, he kissed me. That we were on his uncle’s bed, and I was dressed as a man only added mortification to the memory. I would have been able to forget all about it if it had not been for the letter. Later that night after I returned home from a party, it was to find my pistol that he had stolen from me and a mocking, detestable, atrocious insult of a letter. Since I had been masked as well and dressed as a man, I had thought that he did not know me, for I had never met him. Then came the letter and the realization that he knew that not only was I Raven, leader of the Phantoms in Philadelphia, but that I was also Bess Martin, heiress and debutante.

  I had hoped that I could break into his house, find whatever information he had on the Holy Order, and escape the city without ever having to see his lying, deceitful, rag-mannered, annoyingly handsome face again. On the ship to Charleston, I had thought too many times about that interlude and his perfect kiss.

  Knowing I could not run if I tried; I slowly opened my eyes and turned. The cavity around my heart that had felt nothing but a dull ache for the past month, filled with an alarming amount of warmth. My mouth dipped open slightly as my gaze took in all of him. I was gawking, but truly it was not fair.

  The man was not only handsome as I remembered. He was an intensely, poetically soul-burning Adonis. His honey brown hair was pushed back with perfect wavy curls falling to his nape. His gray eyes traveled the length of me while his lips curled up in the way I remembered all too clearly.

  “Just so.” He murmured the word, but I knew he was mocking me, for he had said that after he had kissed me.

  My breath hitched as he advanced toward me, stopping much closer to me than was proper. He held out his large, strong hand. “Miss Martin, I presume.”

  My mouth snapped closed as my common sense flooded back like a wave striking a ship. With seven months of mortification backing the action, my hand flew up and struck his cheek hard enough to make his ears ring.

  Acknowledgements