The Phantom King (The Kings) (16 page)

Thanatos
, she mentally repeated
.
She’d heard it somewhere
before
,
hadn’t she?
She was so confused; her world was tilting. Nothing made sense any longer.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied
as her gaze slid from his teeth to his starlight eyes
. She knew
exactly
what he was talking about. He was looking for Steven’s ghost. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know how, but she understood that much plainly. “And I didn’t invite you into my home.
” Spoken like Buffy. “
You’re tres
passing,” she added, as if to smooth over the vampire reference.
“
Leave or
I swear
I’ll call the cops.”

She pulled her phone from the back pocket of her
cut-off jeans
. She’d taken it with her outside
on the off chance that
she would receive
calls while gardening. The str
anger – Thanatos
or Thane or whatever
–
might
have been magic incarnate, and with those teeth, the gods only knew what else he was
. A
nd maybe she couldn’t run from him
either
. But
as she dialed 9-1- and kept her finger poised over the final one, she placed a bet with the fates that he at least didn’t want an audience of blue and whites to show up and ruin his night.

At that, Thanatos
laughed. The chuckle was real, and deep, and the sound was intoxicating.

“Okay,” he said, “
you
g
o ahead and do that. Call the cops. Tell them that a stranger who is immune to warlock magic just broke into your house because he’s looking for the gh
ost of your dead
boyfriend.” He took another step.

Siobhan bumped into the wall behind her.

“In fact,” he said, glancing once more at the
darkening
house around them before settling his eyes on her again, “why don’t you save us both a lot of time and trouble and just call the good detective himself?”

“She doesn’t need to,” came a voice from behind him. Siobhan tore her eyes from his to crane her neck and peek around him.
The sun had gone
completely
down and a gloom had settled over the house,
deepening the shadows. Across the living room stood Steven Lazarus,
his tall, strong form
as re
al and solid as ever
. “
I’m here,” he said. “
You want me, Phantom King?
” His
blue eyes
were
now officially glowing.
“
Come
and
get me.”

Chapter Ten

The words had almost come pouring from his mouth.
“It’s you,” he said. And then he’d almost let everything spill then and there.

Thane had
known that there would be some kind of magic within the mansion. Whoever lived here was the driver of the Mustang that had broken every law of physics known to man. He’d been expecting some kind of force, and he’d even half expected it to be a woman once he put two and two together, realized that someone by the name of “Siobhan” was behind the rogue
Anime’s
escape from Purgatory, and recognized the power signature coming from the house’s façade.

So he’d thought himself prepared when he approached the house and knocked on the door.
The cat should have tipped him off. It was a rogue spirit, too, a cat long dead that had, for some unknown reason, returned to the Earthly plane and was now more solid than any ghost he had ever encountered
.

“Can I help you?” came a tentative voice, husky but wary
. He’d
put the beauty of its sound on a backburner, knowing he needed to focus
on finding the spirit and heading
back to do his job.

But then he’d stood up and turned to face the door – and everything
in the universe
changed
for him
then and there.

A mass of thick and wavy deep russet hair framed a face so fair, a delicate smattering of freckles decorated the bridge of a petite, upturned nose. A China doll chin, perfect, small ears, and a wide, sexy mouth entranced him. But most stunning of all were the eyes, a brown so pale they were amber, sparked by the golden highlights in her auburn hair.

Those eyes gazed out at him, wide and innocent, and
in the space of that short eternity and across the endless distance of the few inches that separated them, they captured his heart as nothing else ever had.

Siobhan
. He remembered her name. Steven Lazarus had spoken it.

It all hit him
at once, every last ounce of it
, flooring him emotionally and taking the wind from his lungs. He had no idea how long he remained there staring at her, unspeaking, unblinking,
and
unmoving.

It was a millennium before he found himself leaning forward, his hands gripping the sides of the door, his entire body, spirit and mind wanting nothing more than to touch her, to infilt
r
ate her, and to be enveloped by her all at once.

“It’s you,” he said, his voice sounding far off to his own ears. “You’re the one I’ve been…”

Dreaming of.

That’s what he’d almost said.

But some wariness in the depths of her magnetic eyes had pulled him up short, and he’d swallowed the last of the sentence, holding it within himself as if to save it for a later date.

Not yet
, his mind had whispered.
She’s not ready.
Not yet
.

In a heartbeat, he changed directions. “You were the one I sensed on the Anime. It’s your power keeping him here, isn’t it?” It was true, at least. Not only was she the woman he’d been dreaming of, he recognized the signature of the aura around her as the same that had surrounded Lazarus just before his d
isappearance. It was what had drawn him back to the house to begin with.
He just didn’t know what it meant.

Siobhan
told him to leave, but he ignored the command. It was weakly issued and he knew she didn’t mean it. Not really. At least, he
hoped
she didn’t.
Because there was no way in hell he could leave, especially not now.

He looked deeper
into her eyes
, pushed harder
past the barrier of her aura
,
and tried
to rea
d her with everything he had. As he did, he
realized
that she was a magic user. And not just any magic user
, but a
warlock
.

It was
unexpected and peculiar. There was an incorruption about her, a purity and stainlessness that was not normally found with regards to warlocks. It was as if she’d possessed the ability to do great harm from the moment she’d been old enough to walk – and yet had never used it.

The
sparkles
in the darkness
, he realized. That was what had made her dark power so beautiful
when it had surrounded Lazarus’
Anime.
It
glittered and shone
like pixie dust – because it was not yet evil. Only dark. And there was not anything inherently wrong with
that. After all, it was in purest
darkness that one w
as most able to see the stars
.

A warlock who did no harm. Such a thing was nearly unheard of. The strength it must have taken to come this far
astounded him.

But as he pondered this, as he took it all in, he felt the balance of life and death ripple
elsewhere in the world
. A car bomb had just taken twelve lives. Just like that, in the c
ourse of a mere fraction of moments
.

The human race had no idea how prec
ious life was. The very
improbability of existence w
as taken for granted, and yet a living creature
was so rare,
it was as
the astronomer Carl
Sagan had once spoken
:
“In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

And just like that, Thanatos was needed elsewhere. Once more, the tug of time was growing too strong and he knew that his moments on this plane were limited. He had a job to get back to.

“Please leave,” she repeated.

But he couldn’t do that
.
Not without you
, he thought.

No
, he
corrected
himself. His own mind was
going rogue now
it would seem.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said aloud.
Not without
Steven Lazarus
.

Two things occurred to Thane just then. One, if Lazarus had returned here in order to protect this woman, then probably the best way to draw the ghost out wa
s to threaten her in some manner
. And two, if Lazarus had returned here in order to protect
Siobhan
,
he must have
cared
for her. There were no rings on her fingers, and no shadow or dent that would have indicated she’d ever worn one. So
she’d never been married. Steven Lazarus must have been
a boyfriend.

Thanatos very sternly decided to let the second observation go in favor of
concentrating on
the first. He hadn’t the
time to deal with the anger the other
evoked.

Siobhan’s
reaction to his words should have been expected. She may have been innocent, but she was probably far from stupid. He was a grown man, a stranger, and she was a beautiful woman, otherwise alone.
His words and his presence were the unfortunate straw that broke the warlock’s resolve, and Thane experienced a stark sadness as he watched her magic pool into her hands, her natural response to the beckoning of the danger he presented.