Studying the line of white pine trees, Evan found his target. Felled just right, the giant evergreen would crush all three sorcerers if they didn’t get out of the way. And it wouldn’t even take an ounce of his weakening magical reserves. His gift of telekinesis required nothing but intent, which he used now to pull the massive tree down. It cracked ominously at the base of the trunk where the wood splintered. Then it crashed to the forest floor.
Two of the men leaped away in time.
Evan had never killed anyone before. He felt an odd pang of – not quite regret – but a sense that this moment would change him. He had little time to reflect on the feeling, though. Two sorcerers remained, and if anything they would be more intent upon killing him now.
The men started running in a move that could only be described as a charge. Carefully preparing his sleep spell, Evan aimed it at the nearer of the two men. He might have overcharged it. Without the enhanced power of three, the man fell asleep so abruptly that his forward momentum sent him into a sort of nose dive at the ground. He landed hard and probably not without injury, but Evan spared no sympathy for the fallen attacker. He rearmed himself and sought out his final enemy.
The last man standing seemed to know that Evan had him outclassed and outgunned. He skidded to a halt, then turned on his heels to retreat.
Not this time. These men would pay for what they had done in the past and for what they had tried to do to the young woman still hiding in the shadow of the dilapidated shack. With a cry of bottled up rage, Evan threw the sleep spell at the man’s retreating back. It hit its target in his cowardly backside, sending him sprawling to the ground.
Any last vestiges of fear had gone the moment Evan felled the last human. He felt powerful now. Victorious.
With adrenaline still fueling him, Evan turned his attention to Jason, locked in mortal combat with both vampires. The three were nothing but a blur of motion. Evan wanted to help, but the deadly trio of combatants moved too quickly for Evan to tell them apart, let alone intercede.
One of the blurs suddenly flew away from the other two. Evan thought he recognized Jason, arms flailing wildly as he tried to right himself. Using his gift, Evan slowed Jason’s progress so that the hunter landed softly on his feet. Then, when the vampires charged toward Jason, Evan froze one of them in place. He could only hold the creature for a few seconds with his gift, but if Jason could get moving it might be enough.
Jason didn’t miss a beat. With a stunning display of strength and speed, he thrust a wooden stake into the captured vampire’s chest. Then, with barely a blink, they repeated the exercise with the other vampire. Evan held it for the space of a second or two while Jason thrust a wooden stake directly into its heart.
Everything went eerily silent. For a few minutes both men stood, panting, surveying the aftermath of the battle. Would they face further attack?
The rescued woman apparently didn’t think so. She ran out of the shadows and threw herself around Evan’s neck, trying her best to kiss him. He managed to sidestep her, but barely.
“What are you going to do with them?” Jason nodded to the sleeping sorcerers.
“Call the locals,” Evan said. They would arrange to pick up and hold the survivors until Evan could get in touch with Alexander DuPris, who had put him on the trail of these men in the first place. Evan tried not to think about the dead one. Dead at his hands. It still didn’t seem real.
“Alexander has been looking for these guys for a while,” Evan continued. “I wouldn’t have found them if it hadn’t been for the smallest drop of blood they left behind at their last ritual.”
Jason shuddered. “What do you know about that guy?”
“Alexander?” Evan asked.
Jason nodded.
“Not much,” Evan admitted. “He’s trying to unify the country and put a stop to people like these.”
“Hm,” Jason said. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention my involvement tonight to him.”
“Am I supposed to tell anyone I saw you? People are going to wonder how I managed to handle all these sorcerers and vampires on my own. I’d think you’d want me to get the word out that you’re not actually a vampire.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
Evan tossed the cross back at Jason, who caught it, deftly.
Jason stared at the cross, then he smiled. A real smile this time. “If you tell anyone about this, they’ll think there’s something wrong with you. Not that I’m okay. Trust me, you don’t want to be associated with me. You’re going to hear more rumors about me… some of them may even be true.”
Evan had no idea what to believe, so he said nothing. He would have to sort through all of this later to decide who to trust, and how far.
“So,” Jason said, running a hand casually through his hair, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Cassie’s friend, Kaitlin, lately?”
Evan paused, trying to figure out how personal he wanted to get. But, he reasoned, Jason had broached the subject. “Yeah, I’ve seen her. I was the one who performed the binding after her baby’s wild magic nearly pulled a building down on top of her and everyone around her.”
Jason flinched. “I figured my aunt and uncle would take care of her.”
“Yeah, now.” Evan tried to feel charitable toward the man who had just saved his life, but the way Jason was abandoning Kaitlin, pregnant with Jason’s baby, made Evan feel unaccountably angry.
“She’s better off not knowing me right now,” Jason said. “Look, be careful who you trust.”
“Why?” Evan asked.
“Jason!” came an unfamiliar masculine voice from the trees.
“Who’s that?” Evan asked, the tension and battle-readiness returning to his body so fast it might never have gone at all.
“One of the reasons Kaitlin’s better off not knowing me.” With that, Jason sped away in a blur of motion too rapid for Evan to follow. For a long time, he just stared after the blur, barely aware of the young woman pressing herself against him in a blatantly seductive manner.
“I’m Evelyn,” the woman said.
“Evan,” he replied, trying his best to sound uninterested in her overt offer. He wasn’t dead, but he really wasn’t interested. Only one woman interested him right now. Cassie.
If there had ever been a chance between them, even in light of what he now knew, he had done a great job of messing it up last month. His only defense, which sounded weaker by the hour, was that she would have hated him if he had told her the whole truth.
She hated him anyway. And his attempts to make up for it by rescuing other women didn’t make him feel any better.
Tell her, his grandmother had urged. She was a seer; if anyone would know, she would, but still he hesitated. Strange that he could rush headlong into battle without blinking an eye, but talking to Cassie made him so nervous. Probably because in the end, she could hurt him worse than any enemy combatant could.
Evan pushed Evelyn away, as gently as he could. “I’m not free.”
For a second he thought she would argue, but she simply nodded and hugged herself.
He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his local contact number. When he told them what he had done, they agreed to send half a dozen men to help him clean up the mess. Then he called Alexander DuPris’s headquarters in rural Pennsylvania.
“We’ve been trying to take down that group for a year,” the man on the other end of the line said in an excited, squeaky little voice. “How long can you stay? I’m sure Alexander himself would like to talk to you.”
Evan had already been gone for three weeks, and Alexander might keep him occupied for a few weeks more. He wanted to go straight home to talk to Cassie now that he had bolstered up a little nerve. But, he reasoned, if he still had important work to do here then it could wait. Besides, this was his chance to actually meet the renowned Alexander DuPris face to face.
1
THE ONLY PERSON I HATED MORE than Evan Blackwood, I deci
ded the night he slammed his door in my face, was my father. Or perhaps, I decided a few days later after dismissing the idea that Evan had fallen victim to some sort of spell, the only person I hated more than my father was Evan Blackwood. After all, though misguided, my father had had my best interests at heart when he meddled in our relationship. As for Evan…
Evan…
Hearts literally break. I guess I knew that because the same thing happened when my parents disowned me, but the phrase “broken heart” is unfairly synonymous with the end of a romantic relationship. Trust me, hearts break for many reasons. So my heart had already felt tender from scabbed-over wounds by the time Evan dealt his blow. After the new damage, I didn’t think I would ever be heart whole again.
I railed at my father, demanding time and again to know what he had said or done to Evan to make him leave. Dad flatly denied putting a spell on Evan and called him a coward for not telling me the whole truth. I called him a coward for the same reason but he claimed his hands were tied by some kind of debt.
I knew firsthand how the restrictions of magical debt felt. I had just lived through the experience of having my life and fortune irrevocably tied to another, subject to his every whim. Which didn’t mean I forgave my father for his silence, not when he had clearly said something to Evan to chase him off.
So I hated my father. And I hated Evan. And I hated myself for hating when it didn’t even help. It made things worse. And I knew, deep down, that I could only hate both men so much if in reality, I loved them.
Over the next few weeks everyone shared his or her advice for repairing my broken heart. (The part caused by Evan, not by my parents.) Some said it would take time, while others said I should start dating other men. Kaitlin said I should swear off men entirely as she had done, but I wasn’t the type to irrationally blame an entire gender for the actions of one or two of its members.
While I accepted the well-meaning advice of friends and family, I knew what I needed to repair both parts of my broken heart. I needed closure. I needed the truth. But my father couldn’t talk, and Evan had left town for the summer.
Life doesn’t always supply us with answers but it doesn’t change our need to live it. Truth is often subjective anyway. Time and bitterness eventually made me wonder if I should stop caring about the truth. For a while I did just that. Stopped caring. Right around the time I met a very special man who ended up claiming the tattered remains of my heart: Matthew Blair.
The Blairs and the Scots were what some people might call friends or friendly acquaintances, though I called them allies. The relationship only worked as long as each family needed something from the other. I’ve known friendships that worked the same way, but usually with a warmer regard to mask the underlying truth.
I didn’t really know Matthew, probably because we had never had the need or opportunity. At twenty-six he was five years my senior, so we had not attended school together. Rumor had it that he had also skipped a couple of grades, separating our academic ages even more. I did know that he was a state senator. I had even voted for him in the last election based on family recommendations and his stated beliefs. But my knowledge stopped there.
Then one day he slid into my life almost as if he had been there all along.
It was my fifth week back at the Barry County Sheriff’s Department, a blistery hot August day that had everyone moving too slowly to break the law. Or so it seemed from my excessively dull morning. I had one open murder case, but with no leads I spent the morning on patrol with my partner, Rick, who didn’t like me. Rick, a balding middle-aged man who liked to wear mirrored sunglasses so no one could see his eyes, was one of those who didn’t believe in magic. Either that, or he despised it, I couldn’t be sure which. He seemed to go back and forth from day to day at the flip of a switch. If I could have found the switch I would have toggled it to disbelief over hatred, but nothing I said seemed to make much difference. He was always worst on Mondays and Thursdays because his church’s pastor spent Sundays and Wednesday evenings preaching hellfire and damnation.
That particular Monday morning had been no different. By lunchtime all I wanted was a few minutes away from him, but it’s hard to shake a man when he’s driving. I did, at least, talk him into swinging by Kaitlin’s Diner so I could see a friendly face or two.
Rick was still on some tirade about the heat, possibly trying to blame an August heatwave on sorcery, or perhaps the wrath of God, when I got the oddest sense of foreboding. It was a tingle, one of those things that is easily dismissed in the moment but, in retrospect, makes you think, I had a feeling…
Upon entering the diner my impression of danger strengthened, though it took me a minute to pinpoint the source of the threat. I noticed two things at once: First, Mrs. Meyer’s oddly shifty gaze as she worked the cash register, and second, the nervous expression of the stooped, middle-aged man standing opposite her.
The tinkle of bells startled the man in front of the register more than it should have. He turned slightly, took a good look at Rick and me in our deputy’s uniforms, and let out a cry of alarm. The next thing I knew he held a pistol in his shaking hands. “Don’t move!”
I froze. In that microcosm of time between instants, I gathered that Rick and I had interrupted a robbery and the man probably thought someone had called the cops. There was a sense of desperation about the man that made him seem wild and unpredictable – a dangerous combination, especially for a man holding a deadly weapon.
When time resumed, everyone in the diner began to panic. More than a few people screamed. Dishes fell and broke. Everyone scrambled for cover, most sheltering under tables.
In the midst of the chaos, the man’s shaking hand jerked upward and fired a shot into the ceiling, showering plaster and debris all over a quaking Mrs. Meyer.
“I said don’t move!” He brought the gun back down and aimed it at me. “Drop your weapon.”
With painstaking slowness, I moved my fingers toward my sidearm. To my right and just behind me Rick stood stock still, not going for his weapon at all.
“Don’t try anything!” the gunman warned. He waved the gun at Rick. “Drop your weapon, I said!”
“It’s okay,” I tried to make my voice sound soothing. “You don’t want to hurt anyone. If you put the gun down, we can work something out.”
My gun was halfway to the floor when Rick suddenly withdrew his weapon and aimed it at the gunman, pairing the two of them off in a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff. “Drop your weapon!” Rick shouted.
For a second, I truly believed I would die. The gunman looked crazy and desperate enough to start shooting at a moment’s provocation. I even thought I saw his finger tighten around the trigger.
The gunman opened his mouth as if to speak, but then something rather odd happened. The only physical signs were his eyes, which took on a sudden vacant expression, and his fingers, which went limp. His gun clattered to the floor.
Not sure what had just happened, but not about to let the opportunity pass me by, I rushed up to the man, kicked the gun away, and twisted his hands behind his back. He didn’t even resist as I forced him to the ground, slapped cuffs on him, and patted him down in search of other weapons.
Rick came up beside me. “You shouldn’t have lowered your weapon. I had it under control.”
I doubted it. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but Rick’s move might have gotten me killed. It wasn’t the right time to discuss it, though, so with one knee on the gunman’s back to make sure he didn’t move, I radioed the station for backup. After that, I scanned the crowd for signs of injury. Everyone seemed fine, if rattled, but one face in a nearby booth caught my attention.
Matthew Blair, state senator, son of the mayor, and powerful mind mage, winked at me. Casually, he unfolded his wallet, slid a couple of bills onto the table, and walked outside. But he left me in no doubt that he had used his talents on the gunman to force him into docility.
On a positive note, Rick left the department that
afternoon. I’m not clear if he quit or if the sheriff fired him, but he decided to head up private security for his church. I couldn’t feel too surprised when I’d never had a partner last much longer than a month anyway.
* * *
The last weekend in August, Mom talked me into attending the family’s annual back-to-school picnic even though Dad would be there. I knew Mom felt caught in the middle where we were concerned, and at a time when she and I had only begun to heal our own fractured relationship, but I didn’t know how to change things. She had begun calling me whenever Dad left the house to give me a chance to spend time with her and the kids without him around. I appreciated that, although I knew avoiding Dad couldn’t be a long-term solution.
Which was why I drove to my parents’ private lakefront pavilion that weekend, where my extended family had already amassed for the celebration. Dad and his brother, John, had hamburgers cooking on the grill while Mom guarded the dessert table from tiny fingers. John’s wife, Leslie, spoke animatedly to my mother, while her three teenage children played Frisbee golf with Juliana and Isaac. Dad’s elderly uncle sat with his son and son-in-law, playing a card game, while his daughter and daughter-in-law filled balloons with water and stored them in an ice chest. They had five children between them, from two to nine, adding to the cacophony. When the whole family got together, a state of advanced chaos joined in, so it was a while before I noticed the new additions to the group.
Grace Blair managed to look regal even seated on the wooden plank bench of a picnic table. The white-haired seer had predicted:
Beware your heart and soul, for before he is done, Evan will have broken them both.
I had stubbornly refused to believe it at the time. Now I believed, but did not understand, particularly when it came to the part about Evan breaking my soul.
Grace’s daughter-in-law, Caroline, sat across from her, daintily nibbling on a carrot stick. James Blair, the town mayor, stood next to the grill with my father, sipping a Coke. His two sons, Robert and Matthew, sat with my brother, Nicolas, who looked less than thrilled with the seating arrangements. He had an odd, strained expression on his face, as if he were deep in concentration. Or perhaps in the middle of casting a spell.
Mind Games Page 2
