Page 31 of Phantom
I had my trusted shadows install, or rewire, every camera on the Bordeaux side of New Orleans. Ben may be the legal protection for our people, but I’m responsible for the physical and that includes knowing every meticulous detail about my city.
Fuck, maybe Ben’s right. What if she is a distraction?
A chime dings from the security room down the cellar hallway and I spin on my heel to go check it.
“Sol, have you been listening—”
“I’ve heard you,” I snap right before I enter the darker room. A message blinks on a far computer and I pull it up on the screen.
She left. I couldn’t follow.
Alarm pounds in my chest, but I try to calm down as I search the security footage spanning the French Quarter, hoping she’s still on our side of the city.
The shadow would’ve told me where she’d gone if he knew, but I have a suspicion. My little muse has a sweet tooth like me and she’s also a beautiful creature of habit, which I’ve come to be thankful for.
Ben is wrong. Rand isn’t using her against us. I know everything about Scarlett Day, so I would know whether she was one of his pawns.
Wouldn’t I?
Refusing to dwell on questions I can’t answer, I switch the screens to my first guess and nearly smile when I see her wild, gorgeous black curls haphazardly piled on her head. A powdered sugar grin curves her pink lips. Someone is blocking the camera, but it looks like she’s just sat down with her white paper Café du Monde bag and hasn’t yet poured the remaining sugar into her chicory coffee. I tried the concoction last Halloween. It’s cloyingly sweet, just like her.
Except I’ve witnessed the dark side she possesses. It was only once, but that night changed everything, sparking my obsession. Ever since, I’ve craved to learn everything about my angel of music. I desperately need to know if her darkness matches mine.
Just when I’m about to sit down and appreciate watching Scarlett as she enjoys one of her favorite things, the person who’d been blocking the camera finally moves.
The warmth I’d been feeling turns to ice in my veins.
“What the fuck is she doing,” I grumble.
“Fuck, I knew it.” Ben appears in the room beside me. His muttered curse embodies everything I feel. “Do you still think he’s incapable of manipulating you, Sol?”
I don’t answer as my brain tries to drum up a plan to follow her. To hear what she’s saying to him. Is her smile for him, or the pillowy powdered donut that Rand Chatelain is currently wiping from her lips with hisfuckingthumb?
“Quit growling, you beast. Living underground has made you a goddamn animal,” Ben mumbles. I hadn’t even realized the rumble was coming from me. “She’s not yours, Sol. She’s not even one ofours, loyal to our family.We can’t afford her the same protections. You know the parameters of the truce. Only those loyal to our families are protected. Whether she knows it or not, her loyalties lie with Rand.”
I pull my fists into my lap to keep them from sending my keyboard flying. I want to get up, run to Café du Monde, and demand Rand’s seat. My face and shame burn in protest.
“What’re you going to do about it, Sol? Go get her?” He’s reading my mind again, mocking me.
But he’s also making a point. It’s broad daylight and not Halloween, Mardi Gras, or any other celebration that would warrant a mask. Going out and about in public—even with one of my more realistic prosthetics on—would be admitting defeat to the Chatelains in the eyes of those who believe the rumors. That Laurent did, in fact, scar me for life. That I made the Bordeauxs weak with one impulsive decision and that we can be taken down in one swift move.
“I can’t.” The whispered admission crawls out of me. I wonder if my defeat sounds as pathetic to Ben’s ears as it does mine.
“Then you have to let her go, Sol,” Ben answers back, his voice both soft and firm at the same time. “She could ruin us. And Rand knows it.”
Scene 8
CHICORY IN HER SUGAR
Scarlett
“Beignets from Café du Monde are everything good in this world and you can’t change my mind.” I take another sugary bite and moan before meeting Rand’s clear-blue eyes. His clear-bluehungryeyes.
My smile falters and I squirm in my seat. His gaze is different than the one Sol Bordeaux gave me at Masque last night and the one I imagined in my drug-induced dream. Sol’s intensity made my core throb, my breath freeze in my chest, and need overwhelm my skin in an explosion of goose bumps.
Rand’s feels… odd? I can’t quite explain it. It’s notunwelcomeI guess, but it’s certainly not giving me the same intoxicating desire that I felt last night. His elbows are propped on the wobbly white table, and his chin rests on thick, interlaced fingers. I study them, remembering featherlight touches by a completely different set of fingers from my dream, long and powerful—
“Do you still have a crush on me?” Rand asks, snapping me from my dirty imagination.
