Page 13 of Bewitched by the Phantom (The Bewitching Hour #6)

Chapter

Thirteen

I try to fact-check myself the moment I get back to my room.

Flipping open my laptop, I search for the old chat logs between me and the Phantom, but I open the folders where I kept them to find them empty.

I instead log into the chat program and hit the history button only to find nothing there.

They’re gone. Not just deleted. It’s like they never existed at all.

“Motherfucker!” I snarl, shoving my laptop away. This has to be some sort of elaborate game, some elaborate ruse to make me think I’m losing my mind.

I hate that it’s fucking working.

Claudia knocks on the door and opens it further. I hadn’t realized I didn’t close it. “We have rehearsal in an hour. You good?”

I press my hand to my forehead. “I think the stress is getting to me.”

“You have been weird lately,” she nods. “You’re taking the vitamin C?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, mother.”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me. If you’re sick, you can’t sing. Remember what happened last year?”

“Yeah,” I grumble.

She nods. “Good. Make sure you’re not late to rehearsal.”

She turns to leave the room, but I stop her before she can go.

“Hey.” She looks at me. “Do you remember me talking about my mentor?”

“The Phantom guy? What about him?” she asks, her eyes studying me.

I open my mouth to explain my theory, that Erik is actually the Phantom, that he’s haunting me in some form or fashion and I think I’m going insane, but I realize how ridiculous that’ll sound if I speak it out loud.

I can’t just drop all that on her. Not while we’re here.

Not like this. She’s counting on me. They all are.

“Oh, nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “Just . . . feeling nostalgic, I guess.”

Her brows shoot up. “I’d say so. I figured that’s why you have that old journal out.” She points to a brown leather journal on the bedside table I definitely didn’t leave there. “I haven’t seen that thing in a year.”

My eyes shoot over to it. That wasn’t there a minute ago. I know it wasn’t. “Yep. That’s me. All up in my nostalgia.”

She smiles. “Just don’t go bringing home any furbies. Those things are the devil.”

She finally leaves and I’m left to stare at the leather journal I didn’t bring with me. It might have been in the van somewhere, but I distinctly remember throwing it away at one point in a drunken fury when we didn’t make it into a local competition. And now here it is, sitting on my table.

I reach for it, my brows furrowed, and flip it open. My own handwriting meets my eyes, songs that don’t need to see the light of day, small doodles, and a piece of paper tucked in between the pages where I could find it.

Written on it are the words Erik had whispered to me, the lyrics from the song on the record. Words both familiar and not, like I recognize them from a different lifetime.

An hour later, we’re walking to rehearsal, the song still stuck in my head. As we walk, a new melody slips in, taking over until I can’t help but hum it softly, trying to figure out where I’ve heard it from.

“Dude!” one of the guys from Grave Rave says when he catches me. “You follow the Devilfoot Conspiracies?”

“The what?” I ask, frowning.

“That song you’re humming,” he clarifies. “It’s the cursed Devilfoot song, the one that they released as a demo right before they disappeared.” At my confused expression, he shakes his head. “Devilfoot. You know, the band from the 90’s?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “I just needed to sing it.”

The guy takes a step back. “I wouldn’t sing that one, chick. There are all kinds of theories on why it’s cursed, but I wouldn’t play with any of ‘em.”

I hesitate. “Thanks for the heads up.”

Claudia watches the interaction closely, and the moment the guy leaves us, she grabs my arm. “You sure are attracting all the weird lately.”

“Tell me about it,” I grumble. “Seriously. It’s starting to feel like a Tim Burton movie around here.”

She laughs, but I’m not joking. I half expect Edward Scissorhands to pop out at any moment.

/-/-/-/

I’m standing in a candlelit corridor in a building I don’t recognize, but somehow it feels more familiar than any place I’ve ever been to. A woman in a large ballgown any woman would be envious of walks in front of me, her hair pulled up on the nape of her neck.

“Hello?” I call but she doesn’t turn toward me. She’s following the sound of a piano playing in the distance, and out of curiosity, I start to follow after her.

What is this place? Where am I?

The woman begins to sing a song that I know, lyrics that I know, as the melody changes to the familiar tune that’s been haunting me for a week now. Her voice bounces off the walls as the piano grows louder, as we grow closer.

We round a doorway, and I catch sight of the piano in the middle of the room, a man wearing a golden mask playing on it.

Erik?

He’s dressed in an old timey suit, his fingers dancing over the keys as the woman sings. She turns, and I get a good look at her face.

At my face.

“What the?—”

They sing together now, their voices rising and falling together in harmony, the sound so pure and blissful, it’s like a spell being cast upon me.

I stumble forward, drawn toward the sound, wanting to wrap myself in it.

When they wind down and finish and the last notes of the piano disappear, Erik looks from the woman leaning on the piano over to me.

“Don’t leave me again,” he whispers. “I can’t live without you.”

I wake up with a start back in my bedroom, sitting up in the small twin bed. My eyes are wet and I reach up to wipe tears I don’t remember crying away, my chest aching with pain. Their melody, our melody, sticks in my throat.