Page 15 of Bewitched by the Phantom (The Bewitching Hour #6)

Chapter

Fifteen

A pparently, the collaboration challenge isn’t so much a round as much as it’s supposed to just show off what kinds of things we can do to the audience watching around the world.

NYX keeps changing the rules as we go and I’m not sure I enjoy their reasoning.

When someone had asked about it, they’d merely said that in the music industry, things change on a dime, and while sure, that can be true, a competition is nothing if it doesn’t have rules.

Changing them mid-battle doesn’t make sense.

And now, this collaboration round doesn’t even have high stakes attached to it.

We won’t be eliminated if we do badly, but maybe we’ll get voted off when the real round two happens.

Or maybe they’ll change the rules again and we’ll get whittled down anyways.

Despite that threat hanging over us, the constantly changing rules are starting to make me a little less excited about winning.

If it’s this stressful now, then how bad will it be if we were signed by this company?

Raoul has been as aloof as Erik has been attentive since we’d sung the duet.

My childhood friend, who’d previously sought me out to reminisce about old times, is suddenly avoiding me.

Every room I walk into, he leaves. Every time I try to talk to him, he’s curt and ends the conversation.

I don’t really understand him being upset with me.

We haven’t seen each other in years and he’s never really made a pass at me since we’ve been here.

The more he plays this game, the more annoyed I get until I stop trying to talk to him altogether.

If he wants to be a jealous asshole despite having no right to be, then fuck him. I don’t have time for that.

Erik, on the other hand, is almost always floating around somewhere.

Sometimes, he’s just present in the room, him and his band mates watching us rehearse.

Sometimes he’s there beside me when I never heard him approach.

The man’s a literal ghost. It feels a little bit like he’s stalking me, but .

. . weirdly, I’m getting used to it. Claudia hasn’t shut up about our moment during our practice.

I can’t imagine how she’d react if she knew I’d kissed him in his room.

Or if she knew how much I wanted to do it again.

For fuck’s sake, I don’t even know what he really looks like. He never takes that damn mask off.

Today, we’re going to be performing our collaborations.

I’m going to be playing my guitar for this one.

We’d all taken the strange haunting song that Erik and I had sung and turned it into a rock ballad worthy of winning.

I can’t foresee anyone topping what we’re about to pull off, but maybe I’m wrong.

I’d heard a snippet of Angels Bleed Mercury’s collab and it hadn’t sounded nearly as polished.

Here’s to hoping we stand out in the end.

We’re about an hour out from the performance before things start getting weird. Like, weirder than usual. And it starts with Medusa Rising rushing over to us.

“Have you guys seen Trixie?” she asks.

When I stare at her blankly, she adds, “Tall, blue-haired woman with permanent resting bitch face? Spider tattoo on her neck?”

“Oh! No, we haven’t seen her since yesterday,” I reply, frowning. “Why?”

“She’s missing,” she grunts, running a hand through her hair. “She was with us this morning, said she was gonna go smoke, and never came back.”

“Oh, shit,” Claudia says. “You looked everywhere?”

“Of course, I did,” the woman spits, clearly panicked. “I can’t find her. And no one has seen her.”

“It’s okay. We can help you look,” I offer, gesturing for everyone to get up. “If everyone looks, we’ll find her faster.”

But we don’t find her. Thirty minutes later, after every band had joined in on the search and we’d traversed every part of the power plant from top to bottom, there’s no sign of Trixie anywhere.

Whispers start to circulate and a hushed fear spreads over everyone as we all gather back in the main performance area.

“I know everyone is spooked,” Ted begins. “But we’re on air in thirty minutes. We’re gonna have to pause our search efforts. Besides, maybe Trixie just left.”

“She wouldn’t do that!” her band mate hisses. “She cares about this competition more than anybody. Hell, she’s the one that brought our band together.”

“Regardless, people do weird things under stress,” Ted reiterates. “And we can’t do anything it about it right now.”

Which, to me, seems like a terrible position to take.

Someone is missing. It’s not even the first time someone had gone missing, but no one seems to remember the band I do that had been here before.

And now that there are only eight of us here from the original sixteen, there are even less people to remember.

At least this time, everyone seems to know what’s going on.

I’d rather us all be panicked than feel insane alone.

But everyone gets their shit together for the performance. We’ll continue the search after because apparently, this can’t be postponed. The TV networks are waiting for the live broadcast. Just when the show’s about the begin, Raoul finds me back stage, his eyes bright with fear.

“Chris, can I talk to you?” he asks, grabbing my elbow.

I jerk out of his hold. “Oh, now you wanna talk? Thought you were busy ignoring me?”

He winces. “Look, that’s not what I need to talk about. It’s about Erik.”

I scoff. Of course, it’s about Erik. “What about him?”

“Look, I don’t think . . . there’s something off about him. He’s not . . .He isn’t . . .”

“He isn’t what?” I hiss. “Spit it out, Raoul.”

“I don’t think he’s human,” he finally says, his expression apologetic, as if he understands how insane that sounds.

“You don’t think he’s human?” I repeat, staring at him in disbelief.

“He’s dangerous, and I think he’s planning to hurt you,” Raoul continues as if my tone doesn’t make it clear what I think about his words. “He’s way too interested in you. It doesn’t make sense. The man follows you around like a lost puppy!”

“So, it’s weird that he likes me?” I ask, staring at him.

“Yes! I mean . . . no. That’s not how I mean it. You’re beautiful, but he’s obsessed with you, Chris.”

“And?” I cross my arms. “Is a man not allowed to be obsessed with me?”

“You’re not listening, Chris,” he growls. “I’m only trying to protect you!”

“I can take care of myself,” I hiss. “You can’t come in and try to control my life, making up bullshit about him not being human just because you’re jealous?—”

“I’m not jealous,” he tries to argue, but we both know that’s a lie.

“And what kind of creature is he then?” I goad. “A vampire? He gonna drain my blood? That might be pretty hot actually. What about a werewolf? I’ve always liked dogs.”

Raoul shakes his head. “He’s awake during the day and he was fine during the full moon a few days ago.”

I stare at him, really stare at him, this man that I used to know so well when we were kids.

Clearly, we’ve followed different paths because he answered that question with a certainty that makes me think he really believes what he’s saying.

His concern may be genuine, but his jealousy is still seeping through. This big story isn’t necessary.

But a part of my mind, the shaken part, remembers what Erik had done to that painting, remembers how he’s always there, remembers the golden record. He’s strange, and there are unexplained things going on, but . . . not human? That’s insane. Monsters don’t exist, not the kind without people faces.

“I think he has something to do with the disappearances,” Raoul begins. “I think he’s?—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I growl. “You can’t go around accusing people of shit like that.”

“Just listen to me, Chris! I’m trying to?—”

“Stop. Please.” I study the man I thought I knew, the one who was always sunshine and brightness, and realize that we don’t have much in common anymore.

All of our conversations are about the past, about the good times, but he hasn’t made any effort to create new good times, to really get to know me.

I’m not the same person I was when I was a kid.

I’ve walked in darkness for much longer now, and someone with as much sunshine as Raoul wouldn’t know what to do with that.

“I get it. You wanna protect me, but I’m a big girl,” I tell him. “I appreciate your concern, but I can take care of myself.”

His face darkens, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him wear such an expression. “Don’t do this, Chris. I can help.”

“I’m good,” I repeat. “Just . . . I gotta go get ready.”

And then I leave him there, turning my back on the man who at one point had been my best friend.

He hasn’t been that for a while though now, and honestly, I’m not sure we could ever be that again.

Besides, for all Erik’s weirdness, he’s just quirky.

We’re artists. It comes with the territory.

There are literally people here who cosplay as vampires twenty-four seven.

Fake fangs and everything. Erik being a little spooky makes sense.

“There you are,” Erik purrs when I reappear backstage. But when he sees my expression, he frowns. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I grumble, reaching for my guitar. “Yeah, it’s all good.” I throw my shoulder strap on and go to run my fingers along my strings. It’s a comfort thing. I do it all the time. But this time, when I do it, it comes with a bite of pain on my fingertips that surprises me. “Ow! What the hell?”

“What?” Claudia asks. “What is it?”

I jerk my hand away and look at my fingertip where a drop of blood wells. “My strings. They’re . . .”

Erik’s face twists and he kneels down before me, getting eye level with the guitar. He reaches out a hand and presses a finger against one of the strings and immediately jerks his hand back. His eyes flick up to mine.