Page 123 of Fame And Secrets

Chapter Forty

Julian

The room is dark and damp. I’m not sure how I got here, but I want out. Unfortunately, I can’t find a door—or a window.

“Phoebe?” I don’t know why I’m calling out to her. It’s not like she can walk through walls. Then I feel hot breath on my neck.

“Boo.” I don’t have to turn around to know it’s her. Still, it doesn’t occur to me to ask her how she got inside the circular room.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Her hand trails my shoulder. “I know, silly.” She walks in front of me. She’s wearing a flowing white gown. I must make a weird face because she laughs. Phoebe would never be caught dead in a get-up like that.

“Where are we?”

She shrugs. “Here. There. Lots of places.”

I snort. “Could you be vaguer?”

She laughs a melodic laugh. “You’ll understand someday.”

I’m impatient. “Tell me now.”

A knowing smile plays on her lips as she shakes her head. “I can’t. I have to go.”

I reach for her hand. “You just got here.” I look around at the blackness. “Wherever here is.”

She brings her fingers to her lips. “Shhh. He’ll hear you.”

My eyebrows shoot up in warning. “He? Who’s he? Who’s here, Phoebe?” I notice her face. It’s pale. Almost white. And her hair is wet. “Where have you been, and why is your hair wet?”

She smiles again. It’s starting to piss me off. “Princess fell fast asleep, and dreamt she heard them rhyming; but when she awoke, she found it a joke, for the air was thick and climbing.” In the distance, heavy footsteps jarred the entire room, and Phoebe’s mouth turned downward. “I have to go now. He’ll be angry.”

“Phoebe!” My heart is racing. Before I can stop her, she walks through the stone wall and disappears. As I yell for her, a chorus of invisible children start chanting that goddamn nursery rhyme from somewhere beyond my vision.

The volume is deafening, and I cover my ears. “Stop!” They laugh. “Phoebe!”

I awoke in a mass of pillows, blankets, and sweat. I scanned the room for the woman I’d held against me all night. My hand roamed the sheet for her. I reached all the way across the bed.

Nothing.

Princess fell fast asleep…

The rhyme rang in my head as I searched the bedroom, the bathroom, every room in the goddamn house.

Empty.

Flinging the front door open and blinded by flashing cameras, I knocked a few to the ground as my eyes furiously scanned over their heads at each car, each curb, each house.

Her car was gone.

Phoebe wouldn’t just leave. She always wrote a note when she had to leave without me knowing. I knew my wife.

Slamming the door, I grabbed my phone and frantically dialed Jaxon Hough’s hotel room.

“Yeah?”

“Get over here, Hough.”

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