Page 28 of Bewitched by the Phantom (The Bewitching Hour #6)

Claudia

I step off the tour bus into the crisp dawn air, phone in hand, scanning the empty parking lot of the abandoned power plant for a familiar face.

The place is eerily quiet now, or as quiet as a post Battle of the Bands ruins could be.

They’d wrapped up production and cleared everyone out, but I know they left the shattered chandelier in there for dramatic effect.

We’d even had to do a photoshoot with it, Chris in a black shredded ballgown wrapped up in the chandelier, Erik inside the wreckage with her, the rest of our bands draped around the scene.

I’m not gonna lie, the photos had been pretty fucking epic.

I spot Raoul pacing by the grand entrance, white coat collar turned up against the wind. With a sigh, I approach him, my hands in the pockets of my black peacoat.

“Raoul?” I call softly when he doesn’t seem to hear my approach.

He whirls, his eyes red-rimmed, chest heaving. “She made a mistake,” he says, the first words he’s spoken to me since the chaos of the competition.

I straighten and look him in the eyes. “She made a choice.”

“She made the wrong one!” he growls. “It should have been me!”

Sighing, I unlock my phone, my thumb hovering over the play button. I hold it up between us. “Listen,” I encourage him.

I tap play. A deep guitar riff roars to life, followed by our new duet’s chorus.

Hell Hath Honey featuring The Cadaver Cantata.

The label had damn near demanded it, but lucky for them, we were okay with.

Somehow, it feels like the two bands belong together.

The new song blares from my phone speaker.

Erik’s velvet growl weaves through Chris’s raw power, the lyrics practically burning with charisma.

“ From ashes we rise. In shadows, we find our light. We wrote our requiem tonight . . . ”

The track ends on a triumphant note that my bass remembers like a dream.

“Billboard just posted its number one across every rock chart,” I tell him, making it clear that Chris’s choice is set in stone. “It’s our song. Their song.”

Raoul’s shoulders slump, his jaw clenched.

“Try not to search for her, Raoul. She made her choice,” I say again.

His eyes flick up and meet mine with a stab of pain. “Can you tell her . . . Could you tell her I’m sorry? And that I still lover her?”

I nod, my shoulders rising with my sigh. “I’ll tell her.”

He nods once, and without another word, he turns and strides into the morning mist, wounded pride trailing behind him.

I wait until he’s out of sight, until his white coat is eaten by the fog. Only then do I exhale. I pocket my phone and stand there, scanning the parking lot and the entrance to the power plant. “You can come out now,” I say.

A moment later, Chris emerges from the shadows, so much like her ghoul, it’s unnerving. She’s casually leaning against a weathered gravestone the label had planted there after the final battle. Chris’s name is scrawled across it. The label really does like the drama.

“How’d he take it?” she asks, staring off into the mist where Raoul disappeared.

“About like you’d expect,” I say with a shrug. She pats the gravestone, still amused by the charade. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” I laugh. “I thought they were going to get rid of it after we shot the music video?”

“You know how the label likes their drama,” she says, laughing too. It’s been a great music video full of gothic imagery and allusions to the final battle. The label had eaten that shit up. Hell, we all did.

Sunlight breaks through the clouds, glinting off the polished granite gravestone. Chris glances down at her name there. “You know,” she muses. “I never quite thought it would be this epic at the end.”

My eyes soften as I see the happiness shining from my best friend’s eyes. She says that, but I always knew she was meant for something this big. She’s always had it in her. I’m just glad I’m along for the ride.

“So . . . ” I tease, bumping my shoulder with her. “What’s it like, kissing a ghoul without his mask?”

Chris laughs and bumps my shoulder back. “You tell me. I hear you and the drummer kissed last night.”

My cheeks flush crimson. “Shut up.”

We dissolve into laughter, the two of us, alive, triumphant, and finally free of every mask and every rule.

With the numbers we bring in, the label has allowed us our freedom, as long as we agree to their dramatic ideas every now and then.

The power plant looms behind us, quiet witness to a love story no one would have ever thought would shake the world.

The rockstar and the ghoul, the monster and his angel . . .and the music that finally set them free . . .