Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

  “Sherry went to Edward for sanctuary,” Victor went on, “and to beg for his help in rescuing her sister. Things were still tense between us, and–oh, I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to one-up me. I had done the same, and not just during our time with Belinda. Whatever his reasons, he took Sherry into his home, cared for her during her pregnancy and afterward, and he began a slow campaign to steal Sheila right out from under my nose.

  “I wanted her to be happy.” Victor’s eyes penetrated mine once again, as if imploring me to believe. “When Sheila asked if she could visit her sister, I let her, hoping it would bring her out of her funk. Time passed. A year, I think. Sheila did seem to be getting better every time she went to visit Sherry, and I was finally beginning to hope for a real marriage. We hadn’t had one since the very first night.”

  I leaned forward a bit, torn between a sense of TMI and one of avid curiosity.

  “It was 1987, just before Christmas. I’ll never forget it, because I asked Sheila what she wanted for Christmas, and she told me she wanted a divorce. Apparently, during all those visits to her sister, she was also spending time with Edward. And an empathic healer.

  “I’d have gotten her one myself, if I’d thought of it.” Victor stopped pacing and sat down before the fireplace once more, staring into the flames. “I didn’t think of it. No wonder she decided she was in love with Edward. I was so angry with her. With both of them. I felt betrayed. I, um, wasn’t nice to your mother when she asked for a divorce. Oh, I didn’t hurt her physically, but my first reaction was to scream and tell her there was no way in hell I’d give her a divorce.

  “It took me a couple of days to calm down. By then, I realized it didn’t matter if we divorced or not, I’d already lost her. Probably never had her to begin with. So I let her go. Besides, this way she and your father both owed me.”

  “Is that when you cursed me?” I asked.

  “Yes. I left town. I started driving. Somewhere. Anywhere. I ended up in Branson at a bar where this very okay country singer was performing. Got drunk enough to go to bed with her. The details are still fuzzy, including the part where I cursed your mother, but I think the singer asked why I was so down, and I told her, and she started talking about revenge ideas. Somewhere during that conversation, I hit on the irony of her first child having no magic.

  “The country singer helped me with the spell. We were up in her room above the bar, and she had these bath candles we used to mark the edges of the casting circle. She thought it was a great joke.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said.

  Victor shrugged, and in the look he gave me I realized he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. Whatever was haunting him now, it wasn’t the spell he’d cast all those years ago.

  “You came out all right,” Victor said, “and you have my son to protect you.”

  Evan squeezed my hand hard this time, and I yelped rather than say all the things I wanted to say in response to that loathsome statement.

  “I never saw that woman again,” Victor continued, “but our daughter looks a lot like her. Sings a thousand times better, though. Too bad the man who raised her was such an ass. Came to me for money four years ago, which was when I first knew she existed. I gave them both money, but he kept it all. Didn’t realize until a few months ago. Put a nasty curse on him to make all his investments fail, then made sure the right person got the money this time. I gave him the money in the first place to keep it quiet, so Laura wouldn’t know and because she’s my daughter. I’d never thought I would have another child.”

  This was what he regretted, I realized. Not having spent time with her. Not having watched her grow up.

  “Anyway,” Victor said, “I’m getting ahead of myself. Not that there’s much more to tell. The divorce took six months to finalize. Edward and Sheila planned to marry in the summer, as soon as they could, and I ended up doing the same. Planned my wedding for the day before theirs.”

  “Were you in love with mom?” Evan asked. I could tell the question meant a lot to him.

  “I am now,” Victor said.

  “But not then?” Evan asked.

  “I won her in a card game.”

  “What?” Evan and I both asked at the same time.

  Victor chuckled. “I didn’t know at the time, but she arranged for me to win her in a card game. Her mother, Abigail, suggested it. The old woman was right, too. I’d never have noticed Laura otherwise. Laura was six years younger than me and the biggest pest I knew, always following me around when I was younger and making moon eyes at me. She was twenty-one by then, but I hadn’t noticed she’d grown up. Been too busy, maybe.”

  “What does all this have to do with you killing my father?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Victor said. “I didn’t want him dead. That was never the point. After he learned what I’d done to you, he retaliated. I probably would have forgiven him if he hadn’t.”

  “How big of you,” I said.

  “Me?” Victor stood once more, and started walking toward me.

  I tried to push myself backward into the couch, but somehow ended up flush against Evan’s side with his arm around me.

  “What he did to me was far worse than anything I did to him–or you. He kept me from having any more children. At least you’re alive. I wanted him to admit that!” He took a deep, steadying breath, then repeated, more quietly. “I wanted him to admit it. But now he can’t.”

  Damn, he was convincing. Which wasn’t the same as saying I believed him. It was time to retreat, to analyze, and to evaluate.

  22

  CAN I HAVE A FEW MINUTES alone with my father?” Evan asked.

  Absently, I nodded. I needed a few minutes alone too, so I eagerly slipped onto the front porch, settling into the bench swing where Evan had once tenderly cared for my twisted ankle after one of Henry Wolf’s wards bucked my car off the road. Afterward, I had told him of my intention to kill a vampire, and he had tried to frighten me into changing my mind. It hadn’t worked; I had gone after the vampire in an attempt to prove my own worth, and that hadn’t worked either.

  I stared at the place where a giant oak tree had once stood, before Evan had shown me a glimpse of his power. I had known he was strong before that day, but I hadn’t known exactly how strong. Now I knew, and more to the point, I understood why.

  Leaning my head against the back of the swing, I considered Victor’s remorseless attitude. God how I hated the man, but still, I believed him. He hadn’t meant to kill my father, for all the difference his intentions made.

  I liked to think that I would always let cool logic prevail, but as I let one foot gently push me back and forth on the swing, I knew I had let emotion cloud my judgment. Whatever my last words to my father, I loved him, and I wanted someone to pay. No, I wanted Victor to pay. He was an easy villain, a man I already despised, and he had dealt the killing blow.

  I had told Evan I would look into this, but if I had truly believed in his father’s–well, not innocence–then I would have approached the matter differently. I was talking to the wrong people and asking the wrong questions. The first and most important question being, how had the killer done it?

  I knew of a potion that might have done it, disabling his ability to shield against physical attacks. It was the most likely solution, assuming someone could have slipped the potion into my father’s drink.

  I thought back to the night before his death. My father had stormed out of the castle shortly before I did, but after Abigail’s death, I had gone home. Where had my father gone? Back to the castle? I knew of one sure way to find out.

  Fumbling for my phone, I quickly dialed Nicolas’s number, catching him on the second ring.

  “Hi, Cassie,” Nicolas said. “Is everything all right? How’s Kaitlin doing?”

  “She’s fine. I called this morning. She and the baby will be going home tomorrow. Listen, I have a question for you about the night before Dad died.”

  “Oh?”

  “When did Dad co
me home, after he and I left?”

  “Seven or eight, I think. Why?”

  “Who was there?”

  “Why does it matter?” Nicolas asked.

  “Just humor me.”

  He sighed. “You know. Everyone. The family. Uncle John was there with his wife and kids. And Tyler Lake stopped by, saying Dad would have to be called to task for what he did.”

  “How long were they there?”

  “A few hours. What’s going on, Cassie? Mom convinced me to let you stay at your place, but I’d really rather you come back to the castle. It’s not safe out there. Evan tried to kidnap you once, and he’ll do it again.”

  “I can handle Evan,” I said.

  “You can? When did that happen?”

  I ignored him. “I’ll try to stop by this weekend so you won’t worry.”

  “He’s there with you, isn’t he?”

  “Come on, why would he be here with me?”

  “You’re hiding something.”

  “I’m hanging up. Bye, Nicolas.”

  I didn’t wait for his good-bye, because I wasn’t convinced it would come. After I hung up, I considered what Nicolas had told me. Uncle John was one of my suspects and it seemed he’d had the opportunity to slip a potion to my father that would have killed him. The idea didn’t sit well though, and it took me a minute to sort through the reasons.

  Whoever had done this had latched onto a brilliant opportunity. After what my father had done to Abigail, the chances of retribution were high, so a unique opportunity to ensure his death without attracting the shadow of suspicion had presented itself. Who would believe a third party had been involved? I nearly hadn’t.

  It might not have worked. Even had the potion succeeded in weakening my father, he might have found other ways to defend himself. Or there may not have been a fight at all. Whoever had done it was willing to take a chance that it might not succeed, and maybe try again later. Maybe, I thought with a shudder, he had already tried and failed before.

  That wasn’t my Uncle John. As his brazen threats had proven, he wasn’t subtle, and he wasn’t all that clever.

  Evan and Matthew had so wanted to believe Alexander was the guilty party. I reconsidered the possibility with my eyes wide open this time. While I didn’t know if Alexander was a killer or not, I knew he wouldn’t show his hand. He would be subtle. And clever. And maybe order one of his underlings to do the dirty work for him.

  Tyler Lake had been there that night. A kind, fair-minded man who was, after all, an empath. Empaths don’t kill, as a rule, because they can feel their victims’ dying moments right alongside them. Then again, Tyler hadn’t been present for my father’s dying moments.

  I sat up straighter, stopping the rocking of the porch swing. I didn’t have any proof, but the idea fit all the facts. Tyler Lake, though? Something in me rebelled at the idea, maybe because he had been kind to me, and maybe because he still had to endure all the empathic noise of a large grieving family. He would have known that.

  I slumped back into the porch swing, trying to come up with a different angle, when the earth beneath me trembled and bucked. The swing began moving again, without my prompting, and I scrambled to hold onto the arm rest so as not to fall off. I recognized that earthquake. I had lived through it once before, when I had been driving my long-lost Jaguar to see Evan and discuss the finer points of hunting vampires. My car had slid off the road and been totaled, and later I’d learned that someone had tripped one of Henry Wolf’s wards.

  No sooner had the ground stopped bucking then Evan was out the front door, his father fast on his heels. “Stay here,” Evan said. “We’re going to check it out.”

  But who would have trespassed onto Mr. Wolf’s lands? The locals wouldn’t dare. Alexander, on the other hand….

  “Evan, wait!” I called, wanting to warn him about my suspicions, but he didn’t hear me. He moved so quickly that he was barely a blur of motion caught up on the wind. I hadn’t realized he could fly, and I was temporarily shocked into silence by the sight of him leaping into midair, as casually as if he had done it many times before.

  I still didn’t know all of his secrets. What else didn’t I know?

  Victor wasn’t nearly so fast. He started after his son but paused when he heard me, his cool eyes assessing me in their usual unflattering way.

  “I need to warn him,” I said, “I think Alexander might have been the one to have, um, helped kill my father.”

  “How do you know Alexander or his men tripped the wards?” Victor asked.

  “I don’t know, it just makes sense, doesn’t it? They probably followed me here. I did….” I winced, remembering. “I did accidentally tell Tyler Lake what I was investigating.”

  I remembered the crystal Evan had given me and, reaching into my pocket, drew it out, wondering if he would sense my call in the middle of his hunt.

  “I told Evan he shouldn’t trust you,” Victor said.

  I suddenly found myself unable to move, my body locked in a binding tighter and more painful than anything Evan had ever used. My teeth slammed shut, biting into my lip and drawing blood. My arms squeezed my torso, and my lungs felt so constricted I had trouble breathing. Somehow, I managed to hold onto the crystal, but only barely. Maybe he didn’t know I had it.

  I fell over sideways onto the porch swing, my eyes fixed on the path leading away from the house. I couldn’t move my eyes. Couldn’t blink my eyelids. My eyes started to sting with the need to blink away the dust until I could barely see the path or the despised man walking away from me, apparently content to leave me in that state.

  I let out a silent howl of rage at my helplessness. I hadn’t even registered the man as a threat, let alone been able to get to any of the defenses now hanging uselessly from a potion belt I couldn’t reach. How could I have let myself trust that man for even a second? Never again.

  The crystal felt warm in my hands, and I thought about Evan, willing him to come release me, but he didn’t return. At least not right away. And as the seconds turned into minutes, I began to wonder if he ever would.

  23

  THE GROUND BENEATH ME BUCKED AGAIN, bouncing me off the swing and onto the hard wooden planks of the porch. But still my body didn’t move. I couldn’t see the path, and no longer even tried. I was more concerned about getting my eyes to close. Had that been a flicker? A twitch of a muscle? I worked it, ignoring everything around me as I struggled to free my eyelids from the body bind.

  Damn Victor Blackwood. What was he trying to accomplish, anyway? Did he think he needed one more black mark against him to ensure my everlasting hatred of his name? Because he didn’t.

  My eyelids jerked shut, finally responding to my plea. I let them stay closed for a long minute, giving my eyes precious protection from the elements, and reveling in so much freedom of movement. It wasn’t much, but it was hope. Besides, Victor Blackwood’s telekinetic range couldn’t be as far as Evan’s. Soon or later, he would move too far away to hold me, especially if something distracted him along the way.

  “Cassie, are you okay?”

  I caught my breath at the sound of the familiar voice. Tyler Lake crouched by my side, and I hadn’t even heard him step onto the porch. I had been too busy trying to free my eyes.

  “Can you talk?” he asked.

  I blinked. Twice. Wasn’t it supposed to be twice for no?

  “Alexander was worried about something like this. That’s why he had me following you.”

  In other words, Alexander was still in town. He hadn’t left as he had so passively claimed he would do. Or if he had, he had left behind his lackeys.

  “Victor’s going to be arrested but in the meantime, let me see if I can help you out of this bind.”

  And then what? The previous morning I had told Tyler Lake all about my investigation, and the possibility that Victor hadn’t intentionally killed my father. Knowing that, would he feel secure that no evidence would convict him of the crime, or would I become a casualty
of a cover up?

  He would know of my suspicions, of course. He was an empath. He could probably taste my fear.

  “Although….” Tyler ducked away from my line of sight and I could feel him fumbling with my potion belt. Before I had a chance to wonder what he was doing, he withdrew both water guns.

  Once again, I struggled against my restraints. I had never felt so helpless before in my life. Never. If I died here today, and I began to think it was a real possibility, I would come back to haunt Victor. Screw his intentions; if I died, I was blaming him. Tyler Lake was just a tool.

  Tyler stood, firing first one, and then the other water gun at the wooden planks of the porch. The fire potion worked like a charm of course. My family was, after all, very gifted with fire, which was undoubtedly why it had tried to kill me three times in the past year.

  Please, don’t let the third time be the charm.

  ¨Sorry, Cassie,” Tyler said. “I actually liked you. But if you haven’t figured out the truth by now, I know you will soon.”

  A silent scream rumbled through my chest, but though I strained with every ounce of my willpower, I could not fight the invisible ties that bound me.

  Tyler squirted the fire potion directly at me, but my runes kept it from catching me on fire. Small mercy, when he sprayed the rest of it on the swing behind me, the railing in front, and the floor all around. I even had a fire resistance potion in my belt. I could reach it if I moved, but so far I hadn’t gotten past the eyelids.

  Tyler began to walk away. I couldn’t do anything, or even say anything, but I did throw a burst of fear and pain at him, in hopes it would make a dent. From my position on the floor though, he might not have noticed at all. I heard the opening and closing of a car door over the crackle of the fire, and then he was speeding away.

  Evan! I felt the now hot crystal in my palm, willing him to come, even though he had not come before. He’d said it registered distress. Well, I was in distress now.

  I squeezed my hand around the crystal, letting the jagged rock cut into my palm. Maybe more pain would help speed along the message.