Page 18 of Guarded By the Phantom

“If you don’t behave the right way, Barbara, this will be your home,” she said pleasantly, tapping the picture of a beautiful French colonial building. “And what this leaflet doesn’t show is the high wall surrounding the estate, the guards making sure no one gets out, and the amounts of shots and pills required to keep the patients calm and agreeable. Your aunt Nina spent a few months there before she came around and did what was expected. Do we understand each other?”

I threw up after that, but only when she left the room. Even in that, I was strong.

So no, I wasn’tweak.Then why couldn’t I protect myself? I clearly got it from the manipulator’s mental gloating that my mind was easier to penetrate than others. That meant I could learn to resist him in the future.

Maybe. If I knew how.

I walked over to my window nook with a comfortable padded bench and looked out, mindlessly fingering the thick material of Phantom’s jacket. My bedroom was a huge corner room, and yet, it was also like a tower. I was on the third floor, high enough that falling might kill me, and there was no way to sneak out.

My door locked only from the outside, too. I could lock myself in my bathroom, but there was no way to lock the bedroom door. And sometimes, when my mother sensed I was in a rebellious mood, she locked me in for the night.

I wondered if she’d do so right now. Could she tell I was on the brink of losing it?

As I looked out at the dark garden, seeing it clearly since I hadn’t lit any lamps, I wondered what my life was really worth to me. The answer came quickly: not much. At least, not in its current form.

That realization shook me to the core. It wasn’trightto feel this way. It wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t how I wanted to keep living.

Wasn’t I an adult? I could change my life, couldn’t I? So maybe I was conditioned since childhood to bend to my mother’s will, but I wasstrong, I reminded myself. I could break through that conditioning. I had to, or else, I’d never be free.

And one day soon, my mother would produce a suitable fiancé for me. I was twenty-three, old enough to get married, and now I was causing trouble. I knew how her mind worked. She’d try to replace the current scandal with something big, and a wedding would fit perfectly.

I had to be ready when that happened.

A red, glowing dot appeared in the dark outside. I jolted, my gasp fogging up the window pane as the image of glowing amber eyes flashed in my mind. It took me a moment to realize this was different. It was the glow of a cigarette, and I had a pretty good idea whose it was. I watched it, holding the jacket around me while I smelled the cigarette residue that clung to the fabric. Suddenly, I didn’t feel alone anymore.

Someone turned on the light in a room downstairs, the golden glow spilling out onto the grass. I saw the contours of his body as he leaned nonchalantly against a tree with one foot propped on the trunk, smoke curling around his head.

His face was turned up, his bottomless eye sockets trained on me. I stared back, and he raised the cigarette to his mouth, taking a long drag. Some of the smoke escaped through his nose hole, and suddenly, I itched with curiosity about how it was possible for him to smoke.

He didn’t have lips, did he? How, then, did he manage to suck on a cigarette? How did he eat? And what did he think as he watched me, alone in my tower, still clutching his jacket to my breast?

The light turned off, and he was plunged back into darkness, only the glow of his cigarette betraying his presence. I went to bed without changing my clothes or washing, his jacket still wrapped around me for comfort.

Tomorrow would be a very hard day, and I needed to rest.

Chapter 7

Phantom

If anyone asked, I’d be the first to admit I had no fucking idea what a healthy human family was supposed to be like. My own parents kicked me out of the nest as soon as I could walk, which was normal for abominations. When you were a hated species everyone wanted to hunt, kids were a liability.

Besides, an abomination who couldn’t survive on their own since early childhood wasn’t likely to survive at all.

So no, I didn’t know how loving human families behaved, and yet even I noticed there was something horribly wrong in the Ashford-Kingsley household. It threw me, how angry and forlorn Barbara looked when her mother offered to arrange a talk with a therapist instead of trying to talk to her daughter herself. After she almost died.

It was fucked up.

Maybe that was why I made the stupid mistake of checking up on her under the pretext of getting my book. And why I let her keep my jacket.

Rookie mistakes, both of them. I knew very well any fraternization with a client was forbidden, and I was smart enough to know it started innocently. A smile, a few minutes spent talking, and yes, giving them your jacket when they were cold.

Well, it had to end. I wasn’t an idiot and I wouldn’t behave like one.

I growled under my breath, tearing into the raw steak that had been laid out for me. The residence was enormous, and it included separate rooms for having your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I sat in the breakfast room, where an antique sideboard was laden with multiple breakfast choices and decorated with fresh flowers.

There was also a heavy crystal bowl filled with lollipops, bless Clarissa Ashford’s shriveled heart.

The madam herself was gone from the house, having left with her husband at half past six. From the snippets of their hushed conversation that I made out as I strolled outside the open breakfast room windows I understood she was busy at work fixing “Barbara’s mess”.

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