Page 11 of Wolfsbane Hall #1

Green Room

This time, there will be no resurrection .

The Phantom’s wicked voice lingered in Celestine’s mind long after he had disappeared from the room, leaving her reeling. The cast spoke to each other in soft, confused tones, but Celestine was a limestone statue. Frozen forever in a state of horror.

There was no way to process what had just happened.

Poison. A phantom figure. A true death if they guessed the Specter’s name wrong, with no Specter to rescue or resurrect her. It was all too much.

A tear rolled down her face, and she somehow made her way to the green chaise lounge and nearly fell onto it.

She wasn’t strong like her peers. She didn’t want to process or deal with anything that had just happened.

She wanted to curl into a ball in her bed and give up.

For now, the lounge would have to do, because her legs were too wobbly and useless to make it all the way to her bed.

Babette didn’t have the same sensibilities.

She was all fight, the kind of girl Celestine so longed to be.

“Wait, don’t leave!” Babette yelled at the ceiling.

“I have questions.” She drew her lips into a flat line, waiting for a response that didn’t come.

She turned on Everett, rage sparking in her irises.

“Where’s the Specter? He’s just letting this happen? ”

Everett stepped back, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I don’t know.”

Babette shook her head. “If you don’t know, why didn’t you drink your elixir?” She raised a furious eyebrow. “You were always a terrible liar, Everett.”

Babette stomped out of the room in a fury, and Frances followed her, trying to calm her down.

Celestine agreed with Babette, but none of it mattered.

The world fell into a haze, and she barely listened as she pulled her knees into her chest, staring vacantly out into the room.

She knew the Specter better than anyone else, which meant she knew how useless this task was.

They were dead women walking. Souls stuck in decaying vessels.

No one had ever successfully unmasked the Specter.

She’d tried to figure it out for the last nine years, ever since her first day at Wolfsbane Hall.

But there was nothing to find. The magic wouldn’t allow it.

It was an impossible riddle with an impossible answer.

Celestine’s death was inevitable. It would just take five hours to become official. What was the point of fighting? She already felt it settling into her. The poison in her veins was a physical force, like hungry acid. She felt it eating away at her already sickly body.

Time slipped away, and she completely lost track of her surroundings.

The voices in the room were merging into eerie music—or possibly the Phantom was simply pumping the music into the room.

It didn’t matter. Celestine clutched her chest, feeling her traitorous, broken heart, and begged it to end quickly.

Just finally give out and let me be.

She didn’t mind death; she just wanted it to be quick and painless .

But, of course, that was never in her cards.

Her life was shaped by pain, and it had been ever since she was ten years old hearing her family brutally murdered.

Listening as her mother and older sister died, screams coating their tongues.

Only her father was spared, because he had already abandoned them long before that night.

If Celestine died, at least she could finally join her family in heaven—or hell. For her, probably hell, with how many times she’d murdered.

“I think you broke her,” one of the Ashbrooks said, but Celestine couldn’t decipher which one. They had similar tones. Plus, her brain was too engulfed by fear to hear properly.

The men continued to speak, but she didn’t let her eyes focus.

“You mean we broke her.”

“This place broke her.”

One of them touched her face.

“Cellie, can you hear me?”

“Let me try. Celine? Darling, look at me.”

The Specter? Only the Specter called her Celine.

Maybe it was him, but she still couldn’t get herself to care.

Betrayal tore her insides apart. Her Specter was allowing this to happen.

He had just let the Phantom take over this show, and so had these men.

It was a betrayal—by all of them. And it was that bit that was too painful.

“You have to snap out of it and play the game.”

She blinked, but her eyes didn’t focus, and she refused to look at them. Willfully avoiding them.

“You’re the only one who can win, Celine.”

“No, go away. I will stay here and die in peace,” Celestine said, her voice cracking.

One of the men grasped her hand. Probably James. He never could keep his hands off her. Celestine used to like it, but now his touch only felt like treachery.

“You have to fight, Celine; this isn’t how you die,” the man with the velvet voice said. “You must fight.”

No. The heartbreak would kill her anyways; the poison was simply speeding it up.

The Ashbrooks didn’t understand. What the Phantom did was bad, but it was the Specter’s betrayal that truly hurt her.

She had expected him to keep her safe, and now their deal was broken.

She would be a victim or the murderer—playing his stupid games—as long as resurrections were in play.

But now, they were completely off the table.

No resurrections, and an impossible puzzle.

So what was the point of fighting? In trying? There was none, not when she barely had life left anyway.

“Fight, Celine…”

“No, I can’t,” Celestine whispered.

“If you don’t play for yourself, play for Frances. She’s like a mother to you.”

Now that was just dirty.

Whichever man said it, he knew Celestine down to her core. Because there was one thing above all else that she cared for. Her family. And the cast—even Babette—was her family.

As fucked up as that family was.

Celestine hugged her knees tightly to her chest. Frances was her greatest motivation.

“What is it that you suggest I do?” Celestine blinked a couple of times, and the world finally drew back into focus. Her eyes caught first on Dean, who was standing directly in front of her, then James, who clutched her right hand, and finally Everett, who was on the other side.

“Play the game. You’re the best at solving the shows,” James said, chewing on a piece of gum. Except when he was kissing her, he always seemed to have a piece of gum .

“The show will help you discover the answers.” Dean leaned slightly away, as if he’d just realized how close he was standing. Too close.

“And how do you know that?” Celestine once again hugged her knees, a surge of frustration stewing in her stomach.

“Because it’s the Phantom,” Dean said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Right, and you know who the Phantom is?”

Dean shrugged and brushed a piece of nonexistent lint off his suit coat.

“Then perhaps you could simply tell me who the Specter and the Phantom are so I can win this futile game and punch him in the face.” Celestine would never, even if she could, but the sentiment felt good. It felt like milk chocolate and salted caramel. Glorious and fulfilling.

“Which him are you going to punch?” Everett asked, playing with the cufflink of his disheveled shirt. “You weren’t clear on that part.”

“ Everett ,” Dean and James both reprimanded at once.

Everett raised his arms in a what-gives gesture. “Seemed like a fair question.”

“Both.” Celestine glared at all three men in turn.

It was apparent none of them were taking her impending death seriously.

She never expected seriousness out of Everett—he didn’t have a serious bone in his body—but she expected it out of the other two.

But more irritating than their lack of seriousness was that they tried to dodge her questions.

“Everett, you’re avoiding the question.”

“Even if we did know the answer, we couldn’t tell you.”

“Why?”

They shared a look between them. A look that meant understanding, secrecy, and unbreakable promises.

They were vaults, and she wouldn’t ever get anything out of them.

But now she knew all three of them were aware of the identities of the Specter and the Phantom.

It was the only logical conclusion. One of them had warned the others not to drink the poison.

Warned them .

Yet, all three of them let her drink it.

Betrayal’s claws ripped at her spine, and she wanted to scream.

“I don’t know,” Everett finally responded. “I don’t know who the Specter or the Phantom is. It just felt like the right thing to say.”

Lies .

Celestine inhaled sharply.

So many fucking lies.

This house and the Ashbrook family were built on them. She shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Then how did you know not to drink the elixir?”

Dean answered. “We all got a note, from who I now have to assume is the Phantom, warning us not to drink it.”

“Right,” she said. It was just more lies. Lies on lies on lies. It was what rich men did. “And you couldn’t possibly know who sent it.” Sarcasm spilled from her crimson lips.

“Even if they knew, the magic wouldn’t allow them to say it.” The hairs on Celestine’s arms had rose seconds before the booming voice of the Phantom returned.

Shadows leaked down the walls, covering the sconces in darkness and setting her head ablaze. The Phantom was so liberal with his use of magic, like his very essence—his very breath—was varnished in spells. So different from the Specter.

The Specter was a showboat, but he rarely used his magic before the guests arrived or after they left. He didn’t show off to his cast. But the Phantom used magic as a tool of communication to set the tone and get under one’s skin .

“Magic is a fickle thing, little Celine—”

“Don’t call me that,” Celestine interrupted.