Page 14

Barbara

I couldn’t believe he was laughing and telling jokes while reliving this horrible cruelty. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How could people be so despicable? They kidnapped a nine-year-old boy and tried to kill him just because of his species? Like it mattered! After spending a day in Phantom’s company, I almost forgot his face was a skull sometimes. He was just… Phantom. Not an abomination .

“Whoever named your species was an idiot,” I mumbled when he stayed silent, staring at me intently with eyes that glowed silver.

When we sat in the shadows where the light of the desk lamp almost didn’t reach, I glimpsed his eyes set deep in his sockets, their glow helping me see better. He had vertical pupils like a cat, black slashes through the glowing irises. I wanted to lean in to see them better but held back.

“I kind of like it, though,” he said with a shrug, chuckling under his breath. “Did you know that abominations have the highest proportion of criminals to the general population? I mean, we’re almost extinct, so there are few of us left, and still most choose the life of crime. Makes you think, no?”

I shook my head. “If people try to kill you since you’re babies, no wonder you choose violence.”

He laughed darkly. “We don’t choose violence. It chooses us. Because that survival instinct I told you about, doll? Well, it works like this: whenever an abomination feels threatened, we hone in on the threat with one intention: to kill. Everything else falls away. That was what happened to me that day.”

I took a shaky breath, perversely relishing the tang of smoke from his cigarette that he crushed in the ashtray. I never imagined I’d enjoy it, but it was the same scent that clung to the jacket he threw around my shoulders after I was almost murdered. It meant safety.

“My vision slowly turned red. As the pressure and pain in my body grew, adrenaline pumped into my veins. Only one purpose remained in my brain: to kill them all. And then, doll, the unthinkable happened. The wooden stake I was chained to broke before I did. I managed to get free, and I did exactly what I’d fantasized about. I burned some of them. Crushed a few windpipes. Chased a few, and yes, they did piss themselves from fear. I got them all. Killed a dozen people when I was nine.”

He fell silent, his uncanny eyes drilling into me. I sniffed, a hot tear sliding down my cheek. I didn’t sob, though. It was just a reaction I couldn’t control.

I wanted to do something, desperately. I just didn’t know what. Were there words I could say to make it better or thank him for telling me? I didn’t know.

“Say something,” he whispered after a lengthy silence that grew heavy between us.

A cold gust of wind came in through the open window. I threw myself at him, putting my arms around his neck and crushing my chest into his hard armor. I still didn’t cry but just held him hard, shaking. After a moment of stunned silence, he gently put his arms around me to return the hug. His unarmored palm was a single hot spot in his otherwise cold body, and he slid it down my spine in a comforting caress.

“I don’t know why I told you,” he said gruffly, his mouth by my ear. “Sorry you’re upset.”

“Not upset,” I said, my voice feeling hot. “Just… Glad you came out of there alive. Glad you’re here.”

He gave me no answer, just a sharp intake of breath, followed by a shaky exhale. He pulled me closer, and before I realized, I was in his lap, and he nuzzled the side of my neck. Warm bone brushed skin, and then, a scrape of blunt teeth. His mouth.

Hot and cold shivers raced down my spine. No more tears fell. I felt restless, my skin too tight. The feeling of tingly helplessness from the library returned in full force, and I made a sound, something shaky and pleading.

“You really should have called me disgusting and run,” he whispered hoarsely, goosebumps breaking out all over my nape where his breath caressed my skin. “What am I to do with you, hm?”

“You’re not disgusting,” I whispered back, tentatively running my hand down his shoulder, the shape of it muscular and defined under his armor.

I was part-delirious, part-confused, feverish and needing something. I shifted in his lap restlessly, and he grunted, his hips jerking under me.

I froze.

“Oh, God… What… What are we…”

I couldn’t say it, couldn’t even think it, because my thoughts swirled rapidly, all of them screaming how good this was, how bad , that it was exactly right but so wrong, just what I needed yet utterly forbidden.

I shoved myself off Phantom’s lap, landing on the floor with a gasp of pain. I crawled away until we didn’t touch.

“Why did you let me?” I gasped out, looking at his legs.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. I couldn’t understand why he put up with me when I threw myself at him like… like an easy girl. There. That was what my mother would call me if she knew. Though, maybe not. Maybe she’d say something worse.

Phantom laughed hoarsely, sitting back, his long legs clad in black combats spread comfortably wide. I flushed, that sight making me tighten with lurid want.

“Let you?” he asked, amused. “I practically pulled you on top of me, doll. You brought this on yourself by being nice to me. Let this be a lesson: don’t ever be nice to the monster.”

I shook my head. It was jarring and all wrong, his voice too light, like it was all a joke. A part of me felt hurt—that he could joke about me wanting him and twist it so strangely—but didn’t he also laugh while telling me about his trauma just now?

“I don’t understand,” I said miserably, burying my fingers in the thick carpet at his feet. “I’ve never… We’ve just met.”

He sighed heavily, leaning closer. I jerked when his warm, unarmored knuckle gently pushed my chin up. We were face to face, so close, the air was charged with his proximity. I stopped breathing.

“I’m as perplexed as you are,” he said, his eyes twinkling, no longer silver. They seemed… kind of pink. “But sweetheart, understanding this thing won’t make it any better. You should go. For your own good.”

I recoiled with a gasp, hurt flaring in my chest. So first, he let me practically grope him, and now, he rejected me. Maybe he was just too polite to throw me off when I attacked him. I bit back a groan of utter shame and got up, stumbling over my own feet.

“Goodnight.”

I was out of the room before he had a chance to say it back.

The next few days were awkward. I had my ballet lessons and a session with a public speaking coach who mainly taught me about the best ways to present myself on screen, since I was never required to actually say much. Phantom shadowed me everywhere but kept to himself, becoming the professional bodyguard he should have been from the start.

I hated it. Even though his behavior on our outing to the library was so annoying, I realized I had enjoyed it. Now I missed his antics, and although we went out a couple of times when I was free, visiting that pawn shop and a few other places, he remained professional and rarely spoke to me.

And while he grew completely indifferent, I had to force myself to keep my eyes off him whenever he was near, which was almost always. It was excruciating. I had this stupid craving to look at him, to study his expressions and the way he stood or played with his knife.

When I sat in the window nook of my dark bedroom at night, watching the orange ember of his cigarette in the garden, I longed to go out there and just talk to him. But he had grown detached and polite, and I wasn’t brave enough to seek him out.

Instead, I allowed myself to fantasize in bed about the things I couldn’t have. They made me blush, and in the morning, when I had to look at his polite face, I blushed even harder, remembering what I imagined at night.

Those fantasies weren’t even that bad. I didn’t know what he looked like under his armor, so I spent hours wondering about it. And then, I replayed those few moments of intimacy between us. How he’d pressed me into the bookcase. The touch of his naked hand on me. The brush of teeth in the crook of my neck.

It was a trying period. With Phantom behaving so properly, my little trips were far less fun, but I still planned more. My goal wasn’t to enjoy myself, after all, but to learn how to function in the normal world.

So that, if I ever gathered up the courage to move out, I wouldn’t be helpless.

But even though he treated me with distance, Phantom also kept his word. After he was done with the mind manipulation book, he gave it back to me, a few passages underlined with a black pen, the pages dog-eared so I could find them easily. When I saw the state the book was in, I told him off, glaring at him with fury.

“You could have used bookmarks and a pencil! This is a rare book, and the only one discussing this subject. I wanted to give it back to the library after we were done, but now, I’ll be too ashamed.”

He laughed at my angry tirade, and for a moment, it was like before. He grinned with his usual audacity, saying in a low, seductive voice, “Careful, sugar. You’re way too hot when you’re angry. It might unleash something in me.”

That made me stomp in helpless rage, because there he was, joking like this was nothing, while I was in complete agony over my unwelcome, ridiculous crush on him. I grabbed the book with an angry huff and stormed away, chased off by his laughter.

I settled down in my room and looked through the pages, stopping every time I found an underlined sentence or paragraph. Some were useless, some confirmed what I already knew—that it was possible to resist mind-control—and some gave me ideas. Phantom seemed to have underlined every relevant bit, which made me grudgingly appreciate how thorough he was.

“The study on rakshasas suggests the victim’s strength of character is inversely proportional to their susceptibility to mind control.”

My stomach churned unpleasantly after I understood that sentence, since it confirmed what I already suspected: I was weak. Yet, the rest of the chapter didn’t offer any solutions for weakness of character, so I huffed and went on skimming the book until I found one of the last passages Phantom underlined for me. He had also doodled tiny skulls on the margins. I smiled, tracing them fondly, my anger at the book destruction almost forgotten.

“The pookah entrap those who display a lack of self-awareness and crippling anxiety. In a truly predatory fashion, they assess potential victims to gauge their level of self-assuredness, and settle on those who walk with fear in their step and look to outside cues for directions and reassurance that they are not in the wrong.

The best protection against a pookah is thus a confident mind and a self-aware constitution in one who knows oneself and understands perfectly one’s goals and desires.

A mind unsure of its own preferences will easily bend to another’s will.”

I spent a long time sitting in my window nook and thinking while outside, the world plunged into a misty October dusk.

Could it be that I didn’t truly know what I wanted in life? Did I rely on outside cues to know how to conduct myself?

With tightness in my throat, I answered both questions at once. Yes, I did. I followed orders like a brainless sheep and didn’t even stop to think what I wanted, because I believed everything I came up with on my own had to be wrong.

I rarely spoke up for fear of saying the wrong thing. Even with my friends, I was always reserved, always careful in what I said and did. Honestly, they weren’t even my friends, just acquaintances. I never let anybody close enough to call them a friend.

The more I thought about it, the clearer it became how insecure I was. I studied every person I talked to for cues and adjusted immediately if their reaction suggested I said something unwelcome. I was so afraid of their judgment, I held myself rigid, never speaking my truth, never even wondering what my truth might be.

I was a puppet.

And yet, there was one person who aggravated me so much, I couldn’t even focus on playing my part. He spoke so freely and was so clearly non-judgmental of himself and the world that it was easy to talk to him. To be myself.

Someone rapped on my door, jerking me out of my thoughts. The knock was demanding just like my mother’s, but it was also way louder than hers. I realized I sat in the dark, the only light coming from my bedside lamp. The window I sat by was streaked with raindrops.

“It’s open,” I called out, hugging a pillow.

Phantom came in, leaving the door open. He leaned in the doorway, regarding me with a grin.

“Are you trying to starve yourself? Did your teacher’s comments about your horse legs really affect you that much? ‘Cause I can tell her a word or two.”

I smiled. I had another long session with Madame Morozova that day and Phantom sat in on it, polishing his gun and glaring at my teacher when she criticized me, which was all the time. Tough as she was, Madame ignored his gun and posturing, conducting the lesson as usual. She told me I was almost passable at the end, which was practically glowing praise.

Phantom continued with that easy grin. “I can tell her a whole bunch of words, and I guarantee, she will be as nice as pie. Which, incidentally, you missed at dessert. I ate it all.”

I snorted, shaking my head. He was right. It was dark outside, and I’d missed dinner. It was telling that my mother didn’t come to see me, though. She was usually angry when I missed meals, but these days, she chose to give me the cold shoulder.

“I wouldn’t have had the pie, anyway,” I said with regret.

My mother hated it when I ate dessert. She said she could see it turn into fat on my hips at once.

“Why?” Phantom asked, folding his arms as he settled more comfortably in my doorway, as if it was the exact place he wanted to be in. He had that way of commanding space as if whichever part of the world he occupied belonged solely to him. I secretly envied it.

“Because…” I broke off, realizing I was reaching for a good argument because… because…

I lied. I actually did want the pie. And I was angry he ate it all.

“I want pie,” I said suddenly, the force in my voice surprising me. “Now. I want it now.”

Phantom laughed and stepped out into the corridor. He came back a moment later, bearing a tray with dinner and, yes, a big plate of blueberry pie with a dollop of whipped cream on top. My mouth watered.

“I was going to eat it,” he said. “But I left this one piece in case you wanted some.”

“How kind of you,” I said drily, which made him chuckle as he came in, setting the tray on my desk. “You can have my dinner. I hate steamed chicken breast. I’d rather just have the pie.”

He looked at my plate with a grimace. “Yeah, you know what, I’d rather skip this one. Looks so unappetizing. If I had a cook and she made me this, I’d cook her instead.”

I froze, staring at him. He snickered and patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, doll. Some abominations eat human meat, but I’m not one of them. Tried it once and wasn’t a fan, to be honest.”

He pulled out my chair for me, but I didn’t move. “You tried… human meat.”

“Well, yeah,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “That night I told you about, when they almost burned me to death. See, abominations heal real fast but we need crazy amounts of protein to heal extensive damage. There was nothing else to eat, so if I wanted to live, I had to make do.”

He watched me expectantly. I blinked a few times, digesting this, and finally decided it wasn’t objectively bad. If nine-year-old Phantom had to eat the people who tried to kill him to survive after they hurt him… well, so he did. If I looked past the gruesomeness of it, it sounded a lot like justice.

When I sat down and put a forkful of delicious pie in my mouth, Phantom settled on my bed, watching me intently.

“What?” I asked after swallowing. “Have you never seen a woman eat?”

“After telling her what I just told you?” he asked incredulously. “No. In fact, you should be hurling about now. Go on. Be disgusted.”

I shrugged and took another bite. God, this pie was so good. I didn’t understand why I’d denied myself in the past. Though, it was easier to eat without my mother staring at me with derision across the table. Maybe I could find a way to have my meals in my room, without her judgmental company.

“Well, I’m not. Why do you want to disgust me?”

“Because I can’t handle this weird limbo!” he exploded, throwing up his arms. “Come on, doll. We touched. You grinded on my cock. I need this to go one way or another. Either climb on top of me and let’s do the nasty or tell me you hate me so I can move on.”

I choked on my next bite.

Grinded. On. His. Cock.

Oh.