Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1)

by Kaylie Smith

To those who’ve had to claw their way out of the dark and still choose to be a light in this world⁠— I’m proud of you.

“What a phantasmagoria the mind is and meeting-place of dissemblables!” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

There were two golden rules their mother had taught them about roaming New Orleans after dark: the first was that if the dark looks at you, you never look back. That was a surefire way to be caught by a Devil.

The second rule was that if you did break the first, never ever make any deals with a Devil. Not unless you wanted to lose your soul.

Ophelia couldn’t help but wonder if she was wildly unprepared to assimilate into normal society without their mother as her guide. Death she was familiar with. Living would be the real challenge.

“The dark is for people who are too cowardly to face their actions in the light,” she automatically responded. It had been something her mother often said.

“Go home,” the stranger advised. “A house of Devils is no place for an angel like you.”

“A heart and a key would set me free,” it said. “But you should hope we do not meet again, angel.”

The man lifted a brow. “I’ve never seen anyone with such a number of possible fears. It’s a wonder you’re able to sleep, with such darkness crawling in the shadows of your mind.”

“Be careful what you reveal out in the open. Even the walls have ears here, angel.”

“If you fail”—one corner of his mouth lifted in a grim smile as he spoke—“one decade of your life span will be transferred to me.”

“Call her a name one more time,” he threatened, his tone bored but his eyes alight with mischief. “I dare you.” Cade gawked at the sight of Blackwell’s tall frame, but his expression quickly soured as he spat, “Incredible, even Demons have whores⁠—” Blackwell grabbed Cade’s wrist and twisted his arm until he screeched in agony. “Incredible,” Blackwell echoed. “The audacity of men worth less than dirt.”

“This is real,” he promised. “I’m real. I’m sorry the illusion used my likeness to trick you. I need you to know if you were to ever let me touch you, in any way, the moment you wanted to stop—I would. No hesitation.”

“I’ll try not to be insulted that you believed whatever stale pleasure that imposter was giving you could have come from me. I think in the future it would be objectively beneficial to let me prove to you exactly what it feels like to be kissed by me, just in case such a thing were to ever happen again.”

“If you thought that was your threshold of pleasure—imagine being worshipped by the real thing.”

“Oh no…” Ophelia cut her off. “You like him? If I could give you some advice? This place seems to like to twist good, sweet things until they break. Don’t let it.” Soft hearts don’t survive here.

She buried her face into the crook of his throat. “You came.” “You called,” he answered.

She wanted to tell Vivi about their ill-advised bargain and how infuriating she thought the Phantom was. She wanted to tell her about the annoying way he gave her half-answers to every single question and made her want to stab him, just for him to turn around and save her life or make her laugh. And she absolutely, desperately, wanted to tell her sister about the mind-blowing way he touched her, how intoxicating his kisses were and how one erotic encounter with the Ghost made her realize that maybe she wasn’t broken after all. The complete opposite of how Elliott had made her feel during their brief affair.

I never let pain get the better of me, Genevieve’s voice pierced through her panic. I’d much rather let it bring me clarity.

“Tell me who the Shadow Voice is,” Blackwell pressed gently. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “Angel?”

“I don’t know,” she finally answered, sniffing. “Sometimes, I think it’s me. All the bad parts of me. But the things it tells me to do… I know I would never want those things. I hate it.”

“Now, we will get to the bottom of this Shadow Voice later, but right now I want you to listen to my voice and my voice only,” he directed. “You only need about five more weights. We’re going to take this one at a time.”

With him was the safest place she could be.

“Ophelia.” His tone was firm now. “You don’t need to fix yourself. You’re not broken. But it’s okay to get outside help if it gets too loud.”

“You don’t get it,” she whispered. “No one gets it. They only judge. The girl who has to tap on walls before she leaves a room—or everyone she’s ever talked to will die. The girl who can’t run a simple errand because a dark thought popped into her head that something catastrophic would happen if she left the house that day. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to satisfy the voice long enough to get a break from having to listen to every single sin I’ve ever committed on repeat.”

“Listen, if you need to punch a wall to relieve yourself from whatever insidious voice is in your head, I’m not going to judge you. That is one of the least strange things I’ve ever come across in Phantasma, I assure you.” He narrowed his eyes. “But letting yourself believe you’ve done something so sinful that you deserve to be in pain is another sentiment altogether. And if you’re upset about what may have happened

to the others in that trial… taking care of yourself first is not a sin. You ...

“It’s just… all my life people have had thoughts about what my mother was—what it is that I now am. Necromancer. Blasphemous. Demon. It’s all the same to some people. Sometimes, it’s easy to listen to the voice in my head when it tells me I don’t deserve something. Who wants to be around someone tied so closely to death and darkness? It’s morbid.” “Because I, of all people...

“I want you to let me see you.” His mouth began tracing up her jawline, languidly, torturously. His words tickling her skin. “All of you. There is nothing I have seen yet that has made me look away. No atrocity you could commit to make me not want you like this. No matter how forbidden.” He seared a kiss into the sensitive spot at the end of his trail. “I want to know everything. I want to see all the darkest corners of your mind.”

He tilted his face up to whisper his next words right into her ear. “I want to taste your sins.”

She didn’t know it could be like this—Hell, if only she had. She wouldn’t have wasted time with anything less. And now she understood why some people sold their souls to experience even a fraction of this feeling. The feeling that she’d never be able to get enough, that she needed more or she might explode, overwhelmed her. Every thrust of his hips and she saw the stars. So clear in her mind, she had forgotten how much she missed them these past few nights until now.

Fall in love within Phantasma at your own risk.

“For what it’s worth,” he started, “being normal is incredibly dull. Almost as dull as living vicariously through someone else. Why rely on your sister to divulge her adventures to you for the rest of your life when you can live your own?”

The problem with secrets was that they festered and tore open wounds that were starting to scab.

Quickly righting herself, she said, “I am not your angel, but I will be your nightmare. If you sabotage my chance of getting my sister back, I will find a way to haunt you until every single one of your inner demons looks like me. You will never know a moment of peace again.”

Blackwell took a deep breath. “I knew something about you was special the very first time I saw you. Of course, I know I do not remember our true first meeting, but I suspect if I was somehow a different being then, one with all my memories, I was clearly still enamored with you enough to tell you about the key that would bring me my freedom. Something about you calls to me in a way I cannot explain, and your essence has always felt familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. You mentioned you were looking for someone named Gabriel”—he took another deep breath—“and things slowly began to click.”

He winced. “Gabriel White is your father.”

“Your disappearing act? You get that from him. It’s how I knew the knives wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Your father was a Specter,” Blackwell explained. “It was the reason I chose him for my bargain. In hindsight, he was one of the worst contestants I’ve ever offered it to. Stubborn. Distracted. But he could shift himself in and out of visibility and pass through solid objects and walls if he chose. Specters are incredibly rare beings, and I suspect that if he met your mother during his first experience with Phantasma… well, it doesn’t surprise me that two paranormal beings might find a connection with each other.”

Perhaps she would always be destined for darkness no matter what she did or where she went.

“I think you might be the closest to heaven I’ll ever get,” he whispered.

Blackwell was the one to speak first. “I feel less alone with you, too.”

I think maybe I’m falling for you.

“I did not beg.” She wrinkled her nose, cutting him off before he could finish that thought. “But… we aren’t being careful. Everything that just happened… what was said… consider it the last time. We cannot become attached to each other. I cannot want you like this. You leave for an hour, and I’m craving your company. That’s not just foolish, it’s dangerous. And I cannot rely on you to save me from everything when in less than six days I will never see you again.”

“But you…” he told her as he brushed the rag beneath the swells of her chest and over her smooth stomach. “You are apparently anything but forgettable.” “You forgot the first time we met,” she reminded him. “Did I?” he murmur. “Because I felt you the moment you stepped into Phantasma. It was an undeniable, magnetic pull that led me to finding you that first day. Yanking on that door, making conversation with a cat, dressed in blood.” A soft smile began to curl at the corners of his lips at the memory. “I wanted to offer you my bargain then and there, but I knew I had to be patient. So, I made myself leave you, determined to give you space for the rest of the night—and

then you found me. Because it seems that’s what we do. We find each other.”

The corners of her eyes began to prick at his sweet words. “You only felt my presence that first day because you recognized the essence of my father. Not me.” “No, that’s just what I let you believe,” he told her, determined. “I didn’t want to scare you further with the intensity of it all in such a vulnerable moment. The familiarity of your bloodline helped with the part of connecting you to your father, yes. But it’s you I am drawn to, Ophelia. You claim that I told you to stay away from here the very first time we met. Then you were erased from my memories and yet…” ...

“I saw you save that girl,” he told her, meeting her eyes. “When you didn’t summon me, I became worried and went to the Other Side to watch the trial play out. You saved that girl when not a single other soul would. You joined this competition knowing it would cause you harm not because you want money or fame or a stupid fucking prize, but for your sister. There are times that you’re afraid of yourself, but you’ll look a Devil right in the eye and insult them. You have learned so much about your magic in just a few days than people do in months, even years. You… you figured out that imposter in level two wasn’t me and you had barely known me for three

days. I can’t think of any other person who knows a single thing about me. I am honored that I have gotten to spend this time with you. I only wish we had more.”

“The voice in my head has told me to do worse,” she confided. “It’s always telling me to harm someone no matter how much I beg it to stop.” He tilted his head. “And do you?” “No,” she whispered. “But it makes it easy to think anything good about myself is simply neutralizing all the darkness in my head. I’ve done nothing extraordinary—all of my energy goes toward trying to atone for the negative energy I put into the world every time the voice awakens.” He huffed a laugh. “That’s not how things work, angel. Life is not measured in good or bad thoughts—it’s how you treat the world around you despite them. All the people who only do good deeds because of what that might gain them in the afterlife are no better than those who indulge in a little sin every once in a while.” “Eric died because of me,” she reminded him. “He was trying to kill you,” he deadpanned. “That is what I call neutralizing.”