Chapter 12

12

Phantoms and Spies

I grabbedmy sword and slipped out of my bedroom, creeping down the hallway. I paused in front of Father’s room. The door was open, the room empty, his bed made. He must have left early this morning. I moved toward the living room, following the trail of Phantom magic.

I found the intruder in my living room.

It wasn’t the Phantom. Or at least not that Phantom, the one who’d kidnapped Cameron. It was Silas Thorn—the Phantom known as Wrest, Ambrose Selpe’s former bodyguard.

Wrest was…well, large. He was bigger than Jason, bigger than the bronze-eyed Phantom. He was just big. He’d craned his neck forward so his spiky orange head didn’t bang against the ceiling. His resonance slid over me. Spice, leather, and metal—lots of metal—burned my nostrils. Goosebumps rippled across my arms.

I looked around. He’d obviously broken into the apartment, but there were no signs of a forced entry. No broken doors or shattered windows. No missing walls, even though my apartment’s flimsy walls were no match for a telekinetic blast. However he’d gotten inside, he’d done a clean job of it, especially for a Phantom.

“Nice job,” I said, bowing.

His white-blue eyes laughed at me. “Phantoms aren’t all broken windows and exploding furniture.”

I smirked at him. “That has not been my experience with Phantoms.”

“Ok, we’re mostly that, but we can be stealthy when we want to be.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Wrest?” I asked.

“Oh, no. You really must call me Silas, Princess.”

When most people called me ‘princess’ nowadays, it was with a lowercase p, a term of endearment. But when he called me Princess, it was with a big, fat, capital P—as though I’d never lost my title.

“Silas, you say?” My mouth quirked up. “I had no idea you liked me so much.”

“Well, you certainly like me.” He winked at me. “Or do you greet all your guests in your underwear?”

I set my sword down on the dining room table. “I thought you were an intruder.”

“Maybe I am.” He chuckled. “Maybe I came to kill you.”

“Can you wait until after breakfast?” I asked him, heading for the pantry. “I’m famished.”

“Sure thing, Princess.”

I grabbed a cereal box and a bowl. “Always the perfect gentleman.”

“Manners are in short supply nowadays.”

“Is it true that you’re over five hundred years old?”

Silas braided his fingers together. “Perhaps.”

I looked at his smooth face. There wasn’t a wrinkle on it. “Well, you don’t look a day over four hundred,” I declared.

Silas burst into laughter. “I’ve always liked you. You know just how to speak to a Phantom.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Indeed.”

I glanced out the window. The sun was just coming up. It was way too early, especially after that long day yesterday. The Varenese Phantom had hit me so hard, it still hurt to breathe.

“I hear you’re looking into a vampire conspiracy,” Silas said casually, as though he’d heard I’d just taken up yoga or basket-weaving.

“Where did you hear that?”

He just smiled. There were many kinds of Phantoms, each kind with their own unique powers. Silas was an Extractor, the kind of Phantom who could scrape images out of your head. That’s what Jason had done to Cameron last night. As the Elite Phantom, Jason could wield the powers of all the Phantom specialties.

“And you’re here to warn me about how dangerous it is to chase vampire conspiracies?” I asked Silas with a sly smile.

His grin widened. Phantoms embraced danger. They didn’t run from it.

“No. I’m here to help you,” he said. “I have some information you’ll want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“I interrogated Larix, Ambrose’s aide. I pulled images from his mind, images from the night of the assassination. The night all of Ambrose’s guards were gone, myself included.”

“What did you see?”

“Just hours before Ambrose’s death, Lady Isla summoned Larix to speak with her. She gave him a letter—supposedly from Ambrose but it was actually forged—that reassigned me for the evening.”

“You’re saying Lady Isla is Lady Cassandra’s accomplice?” I asked.

“No. Larix thought he was speaking to Lady Isla, but it was really her sister Melody impersonating her. Melody is notorious for playing practical jokes, but even so, she might know something.”

I made a mental note to arrange a face-to-face with Melody.

“Thank you, Silas.”

“Oh, you’re not getting rid of me so easily. I have something even more tantalizing to offer you.”

“And what is that?”

“A face-to-face with one of Lady Cassandra’s minions.”

“When?” I asked, jumping at the opportunity. I’d thought all of her minions were dead.

“Right away.” He arched a single eyebrow up at me. “But you might want to put some clothes on first.”

“Are all Phantoms such comedians?”

He flashed me a bright white grin. “No, I’m one of a kind.”

* * *

I traveledwith Silas to Earth, where he’d stashed his vampire spy. He led me to a lovely two-story brick house in a quiet town in New Jersey. I didn’t ask why he had a safe house on Earth. Knowing Silas, he probably had them on many worlds. It was easy to accumulate wealth in five hundred years, especially when your only hobby was your weapons collection.

The first thing I saw when we stepped into the house was the gigantic picture of a dragon hanging in the entrance hall. The scarlet-scaled beast was flying over a snowy mountaintop, its eyes burning with gold fire.

“Nice,” I commented.

“It was.”

I blinked and took a second look at the framed picture. It wasn’t an illustration. It was a photograph.

“You were there?” I gasped.

“Yes.”

He pointed at a tiny dot on the mountain. Upon closer examination, I recognized a streak of tangerine-orange hair on a man-shaped body. Silas.

“Cool,” I said in awe. “I’ve always wanted to see a dragon.”

He chuckled. “I’ll bring you along next time.”

Then he led the way up the stairs. The house’s upper floor consisted of a long hallway with four closed doors. Silas opened the second door on the right.

The bedroom was as large as my living room. An extravagant carpet woven from several shades of brilliant blue lay across a rustic hardwood floor. To the left of the door was a feather bed with lush multicolored blankets. To the right was a beige-toned wooden desk, two neat stacks of leather-bound books on it. The blue and green curtains had been drawn to either side of the window, allowing warm, golden light to filter inside. Under the window, a man with dark, neatly-combed hair sat on a red cushioned chair, a book in his hand. His brown eyes were not focused on its pages, however; he was looking straight at me.

He wore mahogany-brown leather boots over shimmery silver pants with a subtle blue undertone. The matching jacket was buttoned low to reveal a fitted blue-black shirt beneath. The stretchy shirt, which adjusted marvelously to his every movement, was high-collared, but he’d left the top button undone.

“A spy?” I said to Silas.

The spy met my eyes with an intimate smile and beckoned me forward. This was a trained flatterer.

“I’ve seen you before,” I said, holding my ground. I tried to place his face. “In Lear,” I remembered. “I’ve seen you in Lear.”

My work regularly brought me to the galaxy’s largest neutral city. I’d seen the spy at the Red Leaf Inn a few times. He’d always worn a nicely-fitted black suit, and women had dangled like tree ornaments from his silk sleeves.

The spy rose to his feet and gave me a practiced bow. “Leonidas Chase, former agent of the Selpe Intelligence Network, at your service.”

“Terra Cross.”

“Oh, I know all about you, Ms. Cross. And about your run-in with the Diamond Edges.”

“We’re not here to talk about me,” I said. “We’re here to talk about Lady Cassandra.”

Leonidas’s smile wilted. “I see.”

“What do you know about Ambrose Selpe’s death?”

“He was murdered a month ago, the same night his sons went missing. Lady Cassandra arranged for them to be exposed that night.”

“And how were you involved?” I asked.

“I wasn’t.”

I arched a brow at him.

“Not directly,” he added. “I was stationed in Lear at the time. The kidnappers had to bring the princes through the city so they could reach a portal that brought them back to the Avan Empire. It was my job to keep the Selpe soldiers in Lear distracted while they escaped.”

“You betrayed your own government?”

“Yes.” He looked like the answer pained him.

“Why?”

Leonidas glanced at Silas. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m a good listener,” I told him.

“The short version is Lady Cassandra’s people threatened to kill someone I care about if I didn’t help them.”

“And the long version?”

“Ask him.” He shot Silas a look of pure loathing.

My gaze flitted between Leonidas’s bitter face and Silas’s sardonic smile. “You extracted the information from his mind,” I realized.

“Yes.”

“He dangled me out of a window—twice.” Leonidas’s voice was a low growl. “Then he scraped the thoughts from my brain.”

Silas folded his arms across his chest, looking completely unapologetic.

“Is he a threat to us?” I asked him.

“I don’t believe so,” replied Silas. “He has served his purpose to Lady Cassandra. If anything, she’ll try to kill him. She’s already tied up her other loose ends. But I managed to get to him before her people did.”

“You saved his life. That’s why you’re keeping him here. So they don’t kill him.”

He shrugged. “What he did was wrong, but he’s a victim in all this too. I’m giving him a chance to redeem himself.”

“You know, you’re a pretty enlightened Phantom, Silas.”

“After you’ve lived a few centuries, you learn to see things with a bit more perspective.”

I turned to Leonidas. “Can you tell me anything about Lady Cassandra’s plans?”

“I never communicated with her. She sent someone in her stead.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I never saw his true face. I think…I think he was hiding behind some kind of high-tech mask. There was something strange about his face. It was too smooth, like a photo-retouched advertisement.”

“There aren’t many people who have that kind of tech,” Silas commented.

“No, there aren’t,” I agreed, pulling out my phone.

“Terra,” Marin answered. “What can I do for you?”

“Do you know of anyone who makes high-tech masks that give you a new face?”

“That’s Hellean tech,” she replied instantly. “They’re the only ones who can produce something that complicated.”

The Helleans were a people who lived not on a single world, but in many floating cities in space spread across the galaxy. I’d seen photographs of their cities. They were beautiful—in a cold, eerie sort of way. A vision piggybacked on my memory of those photographs. I saw a Hellean city. And then I saw Hayden and Ian Selpe. They were there. In a Hellean city.

This wasn’t the future I was seeing. It was the present. I could tell by how normal the images looked. My foresights were always unnaturally sharp, very high-contrast.

“What was that?” Silas asked me. He’d obviously caught a few images from my mind.

“Leftover magic from my connection with Jason.”

His brows drew together. “Synergy?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, then declared, “I’m going with you.”

“Going where?”

“To the Helleans when you sneak onto one of their cities.”

“I’m going too,” Marin said through my telephone. “You’ll need me to get through their defenses.”

“Aren’t you more of a behind-the-scenes sort of person?”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve competed in several sports tournaments, including the Solstice Games.”

The Solstice Games was a contest, usually done by military groups. The goal was to capture the opposing team, but players sometimes died in the Solstice Games. It was one of the toughest tournaments I knew.

I thought about it. Marin was a tech wiz. If we were going to visit floating cities in space, I would need her. Silas’s muscle and magic wouldn’t hurt either.

“Ok, Marin. Meet me at my office in half an hour.” Then I hung up.

Leonidas was staring at me with big eyes. “You were talking to Aquamarine Graunt.”

“You know her?”

“Yes.” The word hung in the air.

“She’s the one,” Silas told me.

“The one?”

“The reason he betrayed his government. To save her life.”

I glanced at Leonidas.

“Marin is going on your suicide mission to the Helleans,” the spy said.

“It’s not a suicide mission,” I insisted, hoping it was true.

Leonidas moved toward me. “I’m coming with you.”

“That will be difficult considering that you’re under house arrest.”

He looked at Silas. “Let me out.” There was no fear in his eyes this time.

Silas met his stare, then nodded.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked as Silas unlocked a case of weapons.

“He won’t betray us and risk the mission. That would put Marin’s life in danger.” He tossed Leonidas his gun.

“No, I won’t.” A smile curled the spy’s lips as his gaze panned across the two-hundred-and-fifty millimeters of sleek, silver metal.

“This is a really bad idea,” I said.

Silas flashed me a grin. “You worry too much, Princess.”

I knew what was coming next. “Don’t you dare.”

“What could possibly go wrong?”

“Great, now you’ve jinxed it,” I sighed.

Silas’s eyes lit up. “I’ll sacrifice a goat or something along the way to make up for it.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” And Silas’s face showed he was dead serious. “We’re going to get the princes back.”