Phantom Kiss

by Chloe Neill

  Annabelle’s face lit with joy. “She’s good, Chuck. Thank you for asking.”

  My grandfather gave the CPAN folks a careful glance. “And what brings you to a cemetery in the middle of the night?”

  “A spirit, sir,” Robin said, and stuck out a hand. He shook with everyone while Roz watched warily and Matt, who’d pulled out a small video camera, recorded the action.

  “We’re glad to finally meet you,” Robin continued. “We’ve sent you some literature about our services, in case you have needs in that area.”

  “Of course,” my grandfather said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. They stayed flat and mildly curious, giving away nothing of what he thought of CPAN. Then he looked back at Annabelle. “What did you find?”

  “A disinterred body, minus one skull, and a lot of magic,” Annabelle said.

  “Someone disinterred a body?” Robin asked, and we ignored him.

  Catcher nodded. “You can feel it in the air. A spirit?”

  Annabelle nodded and gave the Ombuddies the rundown while Roz, Robin, and Matt watched and listened.

  “Have the wards been tripped?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” Catcher said, and the word loosened the concern that had tightened my chest.

  Those were the magical alarms set by the Order, the sorcerers’ union, which would warn us if Sorcha tried her magic here again. Even if we hadn’t believed she was the culprit here, it was good to get confirmation.

  “We think we saw the summoner,” Robin put in, hitching a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the cemetery behind him. “We chased him, but he got away.”

  “There’s a trail that tracks the fence around the back of the cemetery,” I said, glancing at my grandfather. “The fence has been cut. The summoner may have come in that way, probably left that way. There’s a scrap of fabric caught in the links,” I said, and pulled out my phone to send Catcher and Jeff the photo. “It looks like the same fabric from the grave.”

  “And the perp left in a sedan,” Matt added. “White, maybe one of those boxy models from the 1980s.”

  “Did you get a plate?” Catcher asked.

  “No, it’s pretty dark out here. No streetlights or anything.”

  My grandfather nodded. “We’ll go in and survey the scene. I’d like to do that before the CPD arrives.” He glanced at the humans. “And we’ll also want to talk to you, get your information. Catcher, if you could take care of that?”

  Catcher nodded, led the humans away. When they were out of earshot, my grandfather turned back to us, looked at me. “Are they telling the truth?”

  “I don’t have any reason to believe they’re lying,” I replied. “They said they were here because they were at the Malone mansion, felt the magic from there.”

  “Oh, one of Chicago’s ‘haunted’ bordellos,” Jeff said with an interested smile. “I forgot that’s up the street.”

  When we all looked at him, his cheeks flushed pink, visible even in the dark. “Who doesn’t love a good ghost story?”

  I, for one, wasn’t much of a fan.

  “The Chicago Paranormal Action Network does, apparently,” I said. “They were out of breath when they found me, said they’d followed magic through the cemetery, but the summoner got away from them.”

  My grandfather nodded, taking that in, and looked at Annabelle. “Thoughts?”

  She glanced over at the humans. Roz and Robin were chatting animatedly with Catcher while Matt took readings near the fence.

  “Necromancers’ goals don’t align with ghosthunters’ goals,” she said. “My mission is to help the deceased find peace and depart from this world. Theirs is to find the deceased who remain here and draw attention to them.”

  “That was diplomatically put,” my grandfather said.

  “I don’t have any particular reason to doubt these kids. But I don’t have any particular reason to trust them, either.”

  My grandfather nodded. “We appreciate your frankness. We’ll take a look and let you know what we find.”

  “I’d be grateful,” Annabelle said. “Especially about the magic. The deceased are my people—and often my clients. I want to know who’s doing this and how. And I want it stopped.”

  “On that,” my grandfather said, “we are much agreed.”

  Ethan and I said our good-byes and headed back to the car for the return trip to Cadogan House. We drove with the windows down, the night air warm and filled with the scents and sounds of the city. I tried to let my fears fly away, but the magic I’d wandered through left a heavy weight in my mind.

  3

  If Cadogan House had been a woman, she’d have been a 1940s pinup. Solid and beautiful, glowing with life, curves in all the right places. Three aboveground stories of stone in the middle of Hyde Park, with lush lawns surrounding it. I loved everything about the House, including the Master who’d brought me there.

  We walked in from the basement parking area, then carried the bounty of our last errand to the first floor, where European antiques mingled with priceless art and beings of the vampire persuasion. We walked past the grand oak staircase and down the main hallway, then past Ethan’s office to the next door on the left.

  Malik sat at his desk, pale green eyes narrowed at his computer. Dark skin, shaved head, white button-down shirt open at the collar, the Cadogan medal at his throat.

  His eyes lifted, met ours when we stepped into the doorway. Hope flared in his eyes, fizzled at the obvious lack of cake, and blossomed again when he saw the Portillo’s cups in our hands.

  “No cake,” Ethan said with a smile, entering the tidy, well-appointed office. “But a consolation prize.”

  Malik accepted the shake and glanced at me, brow lifted. “Was the party so bad you needed a consolation prize?”

  “Let’s go sit and enjoy our beverages,” Ethan said. “And she can tell you all about it.”

  • • •

  We reconvened in the sitting area of Ethan’s office. It was a room I’d once been intimidated by, with its imposing desk, enormous conference table, and powerful Master. But over the last year I’d spent a lot of time in this spot, where a leather sofa and club chairs had been cozily arranged, a coffee table between them. It had become our living room, where we listened and entertained, reviewed and discussed. And occasionally drank ice cream blended with chocolate cake. As one did.

  We told Malik what we’d found at the cemetery, then moved on to the details of the party.

  “I don’t get it,” Malik said, one leg crossed comfortably over the other, the long fingers of his free hand draped on the wide arm of the leather chair. “It was beet-flavored gelatin?”

  “It didn’t taste strongly of beets,” Ethan said contemplatively. “Although there was a certain . . . earthiness.”

  Malik’s lip curled. “And why not a simple cake?”

  “Because my mother doesn’t do simple.” I gestured at the stack of folders on the coffee table, all neatly tabbed and organized. They were copies of my mother’s wedding “dossiers,” one folder for each vendor she’d hired.

  “To his her own, I suppose,” Malik said, then held up his up. “If Aaliyah asks, I didn’t drink this.”

  Ethan grinned. Aaliyah was Malik’s lovely and typically sequestered wife. She was a writer and introvert, and didn’t appear often in the halls of Cadogan House.

  “She talked to Catcher the last time he and Mallory stayed in the House,” Malik explained. “He’s on a health food kick, and he’s dragged her into the gutter with him.”

  “You poor bastard,” Ethan said, and there was nothing but pity in his eyes.

  The sound of hurried footsteps echoed down the hall. Ethan was on his feet before Luc appeared in the doorway. “What’s happened?”

  “We aren’t entirely sure,” Luc said. “But you should come see.”

&nbs
p; We followed him down the hallway, found vampires gathered in the foyer that had been empty only a few minutes ago. The buzz of concerned magic peppered the air.

  They parted as we walked past them to the staircase. Margot sat on the second step from the top, her right eye swollen and going a miserable purple-black. She still wore her party dress, but she’d added a white Cadogan House apron and exchanged her heels for the clogs chefs seemed to favor.

  Lindsey sat beside her, pressing an ice pack to Margot’s forehead.

  “What happened?” Ethan asked.

  “Nothing,” Margot said. “Just a little bump. I tripped.”

  “You didn’t trip,” Lindsey said, then looked back at us. “She didn’t trip. Someone shoved her down in Tunnel Three.”

  Cadogan House was an old building, and there were several brick passages beneath the House, part of the extensive system that ran beneath Chicago. Being a careful Master, Ethan had shored them up in case we needed to make a quick and unseen exit. I’d been in Tunnels One and Two but not Tunnel Three. It was the longest of the three, running north a full quarter mile from the House’s basement.

  “‘Someone’?” Ethan carefully asked, a threat in the word. “One of my vampires?”

  “No,” Margot said.

  Ethan raised an eyebrow. “Someone broke into the House?”

  “No,” Margot said, and gave Lindsey an arch look. “Lindsey’s making more of this than there was. We’re all just on edge because of Sorcha.”

  I didn’t disagree that we were on edge, but Lindsey wasn’t one to exaggerate, at least not about something related to House security. The look in Ethan’s eyes said he didn’t think so, either.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Margot said with what sounded like warring fear and frustration.

  “It is a big deal,” Lindsey said.

  The buzz of magic grew into a tingle of alarm. Ethan glanced back at his Novitiates.

  “I’ll ask you all to go about your business so we can determine what’s happened and help Margot heal. Please,” he added with an indulgent smile that had them smiling in response, shuffling upstairs past us or down the main hallway.

  When they were gone and quiet fell across the foyer again, Ethan turned back to Margot. “What happened?”

  Margot sighed heavily, shoulders sagging with the effort. “After the shower, I had this idea for something I could try for the wedding.” She looked up at me. “A kind of mini beef Bourguignon slider. But I needed more Pinot Noir. We keep the good reds in Tunnel Three.”

  Tunnel Three apparently moonlighted as a wine cellar.

  “I went down there, was perusing the Pinots—” She smiled at Ethan. “We need to open a bottle of the Romanée-Conti I found hiding down there.”

  “Then we will,” he said, his voice soothing and encouraging at the same time.

  Margot nodded. “I was looking through the wine, and this really cold breeze blew through the room. It does that sometimes, because the tunnels are so cold. But this felt different.”

  “How?” Ethan asked, the word carefully and precisely spoken.

  Margot frowned. “I don’t know. It was a different kind of cold. Not just temperature cold, but sensation cold. Like there was something—I don’t know—thick in the air.”

  I didn’t need to see Ethan’s face to know what emotions marked it: alarm and concern at the similarity between what Margot was telling us now and what we’d felt earlier tonight.

  “I didn’t like it,” Margot said, “so I hurried a little faster. And then . . .” She paused, obviously struggling with what to say. “I found the bottle I wanted, had just turned around to head back out. And I felt a push.” She half turned, showing her back. “Right in the middle of my shoulder blades. I’d have sworn I felt a cold hand in the middle of my back, like heaving me forward. But that’s impossible, right?”

  She looked up at us, and I wasn’t sure if she wanted us to say yes or no. Margot was as steady and reliable as they came; whatever had happened down there had clearly left her shaken.

  “You didn’t see anyone?” Ethan asked. “Or hear anyone?”

  “I was alone down there. Or I thought I was. I fell, hit my head on one of the shelves. When I got up and didn’t see anything, I felt a little crazy.”

  “Someone pushed you down in Tunnel Three.” Ethan’s recitation was matter-of-fact, but I knew emotion bristled behind the words. Confusion, anger, surprise.

  One of the vampires on Margot’s staff brought over a steaming mug scented with honey and bergamot.

  “Thought you could use this,” the vampire said, then nodded at the rest of us.

  “Thanks,” Margot said, and wrapped her fingers around the mug. “I’m all right,” she said. “Go on back to work.”

  “A good idea for everyone,” said a voice behind us.

  Delia, the House’s physician, stepped forward. She wore pink scrubs and tennis shoes beneath a white doctor’s jacket, and must have just come in from the hospital. “It’s doctor-patient time.”

  “She’s the real boss,” Ethan said, and bent down to press his lips to the top of Margot’s head. “We’ll just be down the hall. Call if you need us.”

  “Ditto that,” I said, and squeezed her hand. She nodded gratefully, then let Delia get to work, the doctor’s dark hands moving carefully across Margot’s face, checking for injuries.

  Luc, Lindsey, Malik, and I followed Ethan back to his office.

  “She wouldn’t let me call you,” Lindsey said when Ethan closed the door. “She’s really trying to downplay it.”

  “Why do you think that is?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. You know Margot’s solid,” she said. “She knows how to take care of herself, and she doesn’t scare easily. But this has her twisted, maybe because of how it felt, maybe because she didn’t see anything afterward. No one wants to look foolish or cowardly, especially in front of a Master and Sentinel.”

  That made me feel worse.

  Ethan looked at Luc. “The security footage?”

  “We haven’t checked it yet. We don’t keep the tunnels on the main monitors, but the cameras have motion sensors. They’d have been triggered when she went down there.” He looked at us, eyes narrowed. “You know something here, hoss?”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said. “Let’s see what the video has to say first.”

  • • •

  We moved downstairs to the House’s basement Ops Room, where Luc pulled up the surveillance video. It was in color, and clear enough for us to see Margot step inside Tunnel Three.

  The space looked bigger than the others, which were just passages into darkness. This tunnel opened into a large, round chamber before narrowing at the other end.

  “It’s big,” I quietly said.

  “We believe it was a trunk for the municipal tunnels,” Ethan said without taking his gaze off the wall screen. “Possibly where coal delivery trains could be turned around.”

  Margot walked to a set of dark wood shelves, presumably the wine storage, and ran her fingers across the ends of the bottles. Then she stopped moving, fingers still extended like a dancer perfecting a position. She glanced over her shoulder, the motion slow and careful, as if afraid she’d alert whatever had startled her.

  But there was nothing there. Nothing but tunnel, Margot, and shelves.

  She looked behind her for a moment longer, then turned back to the wine, shaking her head and smiling sheepishly, embarrassed she’d been afraid. And when she exhaled, her breath came out in a cold fog.

  “The temperature dropped,” Luc said, and fear knotted in my gut.

  That was only the beginning.

  “Jesus,” Ethan murmured as something smoky and gray and sinewy snaked across the floor toward his Novitiate. The power of his concern, the buzz of his magic, filled the air around us.

>   While Margot picked through bottles—turning some to view the labels, checking what I guessed was an inventory list on the end of each row—the thing moved closer to her, the fog coalescing into something that looked almost solid and was nearly, but not quite, the shape of a man . . .

  Margot selected a bottle, turned for the door.

  The man, or the ghostly approximation, rushed toward her, hand extended, and shoved her forward. The bottle flew from her hand, smashing on the concrete a few feet away and throwing up a spray of wine as she fell, striking her head on the edge of a shelf.

  She stayed there for a moment, obviously stunned, before gathering up the nerve to look. By the time she did, the man had dissipated into haze and disappeared again.

  Margot rose to her feet unsteadily, pressed a hand to her head, stumbled a bit as she took a step. Pity burned my throat at the sight of her, of the confusion and fear and pain in her eyes. But she seemed to steel herself, took a breath, and headed for the door. She didn’t glance back again.

  The video went dark, and silence fell in the Ops Room.

  “Did we cause this?” I asked into the quiet, thinking of cold and viscous magic, of a spirit summoned into our world.

  Luc frowned. “How could you have caused this?”

  Ethan rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “Annabelle found a disturbed grave at Almshouse Cemetery—Cook County’s potter’s field—asked us to take a look. The grave had been opened, the skull taken. She believed the spirit had been summoned.”

  Luc’s brows lifted. “By who?”

  “She didn’t know, but likely someone who’d been there not long before she arrived. The wards weren’t tripped. So it wasn’t Sorcha.”

  “We could feel the magic at the cemetery,” I said. “The same kind of energy Margot described.”

  “Did you see anything?” Luc asked, and we shook our heads.

  “No,” Ethan said, “but there’s no question something was summoned. The magic was evident, and Annabelle believed it was more than just a disturbed ghost.”

  Luc frowned again. “So what are you saying? That the ghost someone called up at Almshouse Cemetery is now haunting Cadogan House? That’s impossible.”