Page 37 of Guarded By the Phantom

“Aunt Nina spent a few months there. She told me… Well, she didn’t remember much from her stay. See, they were drugging her. She got pills in the morning that kept her happy, then other pills at night to make her sleep, but every night… After she got the pill but before she fell asleep, a doctor would come in and tell her… things.

“He’d say she was misguided and infantile. That she couldn’t think for herself, and her parents only tried to look out for her. That she was helpless on her own and should follow directions because otherwise, she would just make mistakes all the time. Stuff like that. Stuff that finally got to her enough that she agreed to marry that man. She told me… She still remembers all those things. It’s like they are weeds in her mind, and she’s unable to pull them out.”

I fell silent, hugging my knees to my chest. Phantom said nothing, and I sighed, soothed by the smoky tang of his cigarette riding the chilly edge of the night air.

“I know how it sounds. It’s not like she was tortured. No one really hurt her, you know? But ever since… Ever since my mother said she would send me there, I’ve been terrified. I’m a coward, I know. It’s not like… Like I’m a child. I should have moved out long ago. I should have been strong. Found a way to make it impossible for her to do that to me.”

I chanced a look at him, wondering if our strange camaraderie would stop now. This wasn’t the type of thing you told people—I knew that, and I’d been taught to keep dirt in the family. But truth was, I desperately needed to talk tosomeone, and he was the only person available.

Phantom wasn’t staring out the window anymore. His eyes were focused on me, his eerie face frozen in a grin. I cringed, wondering why he was silent.

“Well, say something,” I murmured, fidgeting nervously.

He flicked his cigarette butt out the window and folded his arms, cocking his head to the side.

“I signed a document forbidding me from cussing. I can’t say any of the words I want to use now, doll.”

I huffed with relief. He still wanted to talk to me after this. That was a good sign.

“Well, say what you want when it’s just me,” I offered. “I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” he said, throwing his head back until his skull hit the wall with a thud. “Because you just told me the most fucked up shit I’ve ever heard and I’ll fucking explode if I can’t name it for what it is. Crazy psycho fuckery, that’s what. Your mother is a fucking loon.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, looking away uncomfortably. “Maybe. I mean… There is a certain logic to what she does. My father’s career…”

“Is not a good excuse to fucking threaten you,” he interrupted, red flashing in his eyes. “Fuck, doll. If you knew what I’m thinking right now, you would run. But I’m begging you to stay here, because if you’re gone, I’ll lose it. I will go to your mother’s bedroom and suffocate her with a pillow.”

I drew back, gasping at the ferocity in his voice. Phantom growled low in his throat, grabbed an ornamental paperweight from the desk, and flung it into the garden. It hit a tree with a deep thud.

When he turned back to me, his eyes glowed red.

“Stay here,” he said in a low, husky voice. “Promise me, doll.”

Chapter 13

Phantom

She was scared. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me, her body folded into a tight ball, shrinking into the armchair and away from me. Anger swirled in my eyes, flooding my vision with red, and my skin itched under my armor. I craved only one thing right now—to retract the plates so I could kill her mother with my bare hands.

The fierceness of my reaction shocked me, but that shock was tucked away somewhere deep in my psyche, the fury and need to kill overwhelming everything else.

“You really look murderous,” Barbara said in a small voice. She didn’t blink, watching me like prey staring into the gaping maw of a predator.

And it was perverse, but I loved the sight of it. How she trembled, sitting practically at my feet. She’d look even better on the floor, shivering and…

And what the fuck was wrong with me?

“Don’t go anywhere,” I growled, my voice sounding alien to my ears.

She nodded frantically, not taking her eyes off me. I got my phone from my pocket and called my shrink, walking into the bathroom. I was about to bare my fucking soul, and if she heard any of it, I’d die of embarrassment.

“This better be an emergency,” came my doctor’s grumpy greeting when he picked up after the fourth ring.

“I’m about to kill the girl’s mother because she is a bitch,” I growled, my voice still having that predatory rumble. “Talk me off the ledge.”

He yawned, evidently unimpressed. I squeezed the edge of the sink until my hand hurt, the pain grounding me.

“What did the mother do?” Natharan asked, stifling another yawn.

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