Chapter Twenty-Six: The Phantom

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Phantom

Andy barged through the Lord’s Mansion with Catherine at his side, utterly ignoring the bewildered guards. From start to finish, not a single soul dared stand in his way.

Unfortunately, his search yielded no trace of Viscount Colin. The hope of avenging Old Brown and the Phillips couple by cutting down that villain came to nothing. All he could do was console himself by ransacking the mansion with unrestrained vigor.

He found a fair number of gold, silver, jewels, and antiques, but precious little in the way of resources for sorcery cultivation. Not until he discovered a cache of magic stones in a secret room off the Viscount’s new study did a grin break across Andy’s face. “Well, seems the old fox never learns—doesn’t he know better than to always hide his magic stones in the same place?”

Had Viscount Colin known Andy’s thoughts, he would have wept with despair; those stones were meant to patch the hole in his finances, and who could have guessed Andy would pay the place a second visit?

After gleefully divvying up the magic stones with Catherine, Andy made his way to the Viscount’s bedroom. There, he successfully cornered a noblewoman, who’d been hastily stuffing gold and silver into a bag in hopes of fleeing.

The moment Andy entered, the lady shrieked in terror and, without a word, fainted dead away—making Catherine, who’d followed him in, regard him with a peculiar look.

Andy gave a theatrical cough and spread his hands. “I didn’t do a thing,” he protested. Catherine simply turned away with a disdainful sniff. With a sigh, Andy fetched some rope and, recalling a method he’d seen in a film, neatly bound the lady.

“Ahem, I suppose this must be Lady Colin. I imagine we can get some information out of her,” Andy said as he set about reviving the noblewoman. She came to, but when she saw the strange way she’d been tied, her eyes rolled back and she fainted once more.

“Well, if old Colin fled without her, she probably meant little to him,” Andy remarked to Catherine as he surveyed the Viscount’s bedroom. “We likely won’t learn much from her.” His gaze fell on the large bed, and a wave of dizziness swept over him.

Since his coming-of-age ceremony, Andy had scarcely had a decent night’s sleep. Though he managed to joke and banter with Catherine, the past days had kept his nerves taut—if he wasn’t focused on strengthening his powers, he was plotting to avoid capture or scheming his revenge.

Now, though the Viscount remained at large, Andy had already dealt with most of the Lord’s armed forces. Feeling secure at last, his body relaxed—and exhaustion crashed down upon him like a tidal wave.

With a final thump to the noblewoman’s head to ensure she stayed unconscious, Andy turned to Catherine. “Keep an eye on things—I’m going to nap for a bit.” He collapsed onto the bed without even removing his shoes, and within moments, his snores filled the room.

Catherine stared at Andy in amazement for a long while before hopping onto the bed and circling him. At last, she nestled into a comfortable spot in the crook of his arm, curling herself up and half-closing her eyes, hovering between wakefulness and sleep.

Ever since she’d become a cat, her senses had grown far sharper than they’d ever been as a human. She believed that even a sorcery apprentice employing the “Listening Spell” would be no more alert than she was. So, though she dozed, no stir or sound could escape her notice.

Suddenly, she sprang wide awake, leapt to the table, and fixed her gaze on the curtains at the far end of the room.

“Come out!” Catherine demanded, using her mimicry spell. “I can see you.”

The curtains fluttered though there was no breeze, and from behind them emerged no living person, but a drifting human shape. Catherine’s expression grew complicated—she hadn’t expected she’d still be able to see spirits after turning into a cat.

Everyone had always assumed Catherine was an orphan adopted by Stein. But Catherine knew that wasn’t so; she still remembered where her parents lived and had even gone back to see them in secret. She wasn’t orphaned—she had been abandoned. It happened when she was five, and the memory was as vivid as ever.

All because of her eyes. Even as a small child she could see things others couldn’t. When she eagerly told her parents, she received not praise, but coldness and rejection.

They treated her as a monster or a bringer of misfortune. A local soothsayer even advised burning her alive to purify the evil. Only her mother’s soft heart saved her; she secretly brought Catherine to Dallas City, then quietly returned home, leaving five-year-old Catherine alone on a bustling street.

For a little girl, Dallas was a labyrinth with no exit. She wandered, sobbing for her mother, until she ended up among the wares of human traffickers. What happened afterward was a blur; her last memory was peering shyly from a cage at an old man and a boy outside. The old man was Old Brown, who was looking to buy a maid for Andy Charles, who was then just a child.

When they discovered Catherine’s talent for sorcery, they sent her to Stein’s wizard tower. After that, no one ever mentioned her role as a servant, but Catherine never forgot. Later, as Stein’s apprentice, she always tried to get close to Andy, but he was consumed with ambitions of becoming a sorcery apprentice and paid her little mind. Gradually, her temperament became odd, and as a sorcery apprentice herself, she took to amusing herself by teasing Andy.

Now, transformed into a cat, Catherine’s appearance radiated no threat, but the spirit emerging from behind the curtains trembled in her presence. This time, seeing the spirit felt different—she was filled with a hunger to devour it, just as she hungered for fish since becoming a cat.

Catherine realized this was because, upon becoming an advanced sorcery apprentice, her soul affinity had evolved, granting her a new spell: Level Two Sorcery—Catherine’s Soul Devour. She had named the spell herself; by consuming spirits, she could strengthen and empower herself. She was now the nemesis of spirits, and they could sense it.

She hadn’t found any mention of her soul affinity in Stein’s library, but she deduced her talent must be connected to the soul. That explained her soul’s ability to leave her body and possess animals, as well as her ability to perceive ghosts.

Moreover, after becoming a cat, both her mental and soul talents had grown considerably. Otherwise, given her previous level of development, she would never have been able to create a new spell. Yet here she was, with Soul Devour at her command.

“Meow!” she called to the spirit, knowing it would understand.

Catherine had specifically researched spirits in Stein’s collection. She knew that spirits were formed when the soul of the dead encountered an intense magnetic field. Such fluctuations could arise from particular environments, but most often were the product of powerful emotions at death—resentment, hatred, or an unfulfilled obsession. Some wizards even theorized that spirits were, at their core, a kind of wave.

Catherine didn’t subscribe to the wave theory, but she knew that spirits could receive the mental vibrations in her call. She’d just asked the spirit about its origins.

The spirit, understanding her, confessed: she had once been a maid at the Lord’s Mansion, and after becoming intimate with Viscount Colin, Lady Colin seized her while the Viscount was away and tortured her to death.

Having only recently become a spirit, she had no power to affect the living world, but she lingered here, day and night, watching over Lady Colin, determined to witness her ruin with her own eyes.

Catherine filtered out the hatred and resentment from the ghost’s words. After assuring her that answering questions would spare her from being devoured, Catherine set to interrogating her about the inner workings of the mansion. As Viscount Colin’s maid and lover, the ghost knew a great deal.

Pleased by her willingness to talk, Catherine decided not to use her new spell after all; instead, she rewarded the spirit with a magic stone—after all, it was only loot. Magic stones were highly beneficial to spirits as well. After eagerly absorbing the energy, the ghost still couldn’t affect the living world, but she could now manifest in a form visible to ordinary people.

The spirit, delighted, experimented with her new ability to “appear.” Just then, Lady Colin began to stir, slowly opening her eyes. Andy hadn’t been too rough, so she awoke sooner than expected.

She looked up—and saw, standing before her, the very maid she’d tortured to death, staring straight at her with unblinking eyes.

Without a sound, Lady Colin fainted away once more.