by Amanda Ashby
Cassidy was pretty sure that she wouldn’t get any part, based on her bad audition, but the idea of spending more time with her dad—not to mention Travis—was definitely appealing, and she nodded her head. “I’ll be taking you up on that. Anyway, I guess I’d better go, since I can’t put this homework off.”
“Words that every parent longs to hear.” He grinned as Cassidy gave him a grateful hug before racing to the front door. She stopped to yell a cursory good-bye to her mom and then scooted around the house to retrieve her sports bag.
The night air stung at her cheeks, and the sounds of the evening traffic and the low hum of voices from some joggers who were braving the cold weather hung in the air. She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her coat while she hurried the three blocks to Nash’s house.
He’d also changed out of his ripped clothing and was now wearing his favorite Smiths T-shirt under a black buttoned-up vest and some heavy gray surplus trousers. His parents weren’t home, so they went straight to his room. Cassidy had once dubbed it the Old Curiosity Shop because it looked like it had come straight out of a Dickens novel and was filled to overflowing with ancient books and paintings, as well as a giant floor-standing globe over by his bed and an equally giant telescope propped up next to his window. The antiquities were broken up by posters and ticket stubs of his favorite bands, which Nash had hung around the room to remind anyone that, despite his love of history, he still liked to rock out from time to time.
“Okay, so I think I’ve got everything. Though it’s a bit unclear how long I’m supposed to consecrate it all for.” Nash chewed his lip. “I wonder if Thomas would know?”
“Probably, but since he disappeared we can’t exactly ask him, can we?” Cassidy retorted.
“Look”—Nash put down the river stone he had been holding—“I know that you’re pissed off with him.”
“Pissed off with him?” Cassidy spluttered as she raised her eyebrows. “He almost let you die, Nash, just so I could burn a couple of demons. Demons that were already dead.”
“The cut wasn’t life-threatening, so he made a decision based on priorities,” Nash corrected her before relenting. “And I know he can seem a bit high-handed, but try looking at it from his point of view. He’s frustrated that he can’t be here fighting the demons himself. From what I can gather he’s been protecting the Black Rose almost single-handedly for the last three years, so the idea of his having to—”
“Trust a girl?” Cassidy retorted in a dark voice. “Because obviously he’s sexist. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like my dating, either, because did you see what he was like when he saw this necklace? It was like he knew it came from a guy.”
“Cass. I don’t think—”
“Stop trying to defend him,” she snapped as her fingers curled around the carnelian. “Besides, if he’s so concerned, then where is he now? This whole amulet thing would be a lot easier if he hadn’t deserted us.”
“It would also be a lot easier if you stopped moaning about him,” Nash retorted in a dry voice as he turned his attention back to the small mortar and pestle he had been using to grind up the ingredients that he had neatly lined up on his large oak desk.
Suddenly, Cassidy felt guilty. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make things worse. I’m going to forget about Thomas and his lack of social manners. So I guess you need the grimoire?”
“Yes, please.” He nodded, and Cassidy unzipped her sports bag and handed it over, trying not to notice that the cool leather was warm under her fingers despite the chilly weather. The more time she spent with the book, the creepier it got. However, Nash didn’t seem to notice as he carefully turned the pages until he reached the one he wanted, his head bent in concentration. Cassidy knew better than to try to interrupt him when he was working, so she silently sat on the floor until he eventually looked up and ran a distracted hand through his dark hair.
“I was thinking that instead of just doing an amulet that Celeste can wear, we could do a second one for her house. That way she’ll be safe when she’s there and it will save us a lot of time camping out in the car.”
“Anything that reduces the number of hours we have to be protecting her is fine by me,” Cassidy agreed as Nash got to work.
“Now, the parsley, rosemary, two strands of burned hair, and a cup of soil are all here, and I’ve ground them into a fine paste,” he said as he checked off his list. “We have river stones that have been cleansed with salt and two small cotton bags to put them in. One we can tie around her wrist and the other we’ll put by her house. Oh, and I’ve got a piece of paper and have used a consecrated pen to write out the words: No matter if demons shall touch, see, or smell the vessel. Keep her invisible to all of them.”
“Catchy,” Cassidy giggled before catching Nash’s stern glance. “Sorry. So what now?”
“Now I need your sword.”
“I thought we were making an amulet, so why do we need the sword?” Cassidy frowned as she carefully got it out of her bag and put it down on the desk for him while trying to shake the memory of her latest fight from her mind.
“The sword represents that protection,” he explained as he unsheathed it with almost as much reverence as he used when handling the grimoire. He let out a long breath as he studied the runes that ran down the pitted blade. “It’s extraordinary to think that these runes can give you so much extra power. The strength of the sword should never be underestimated. I mean, you should’ve seen the way you were slicing through those guys, and . . . hey, there’s something written on the quillon. ‘As above.’ I don’t suppose Thomas told you what that means?” he asked, his natural curiosity once again surfacing.
Actually, Cassidy didn’t even know what a quillon was until she followed the direction of Nash’s finger to where there was a tiny inscription that ran along the horizontal bar that stopped her hand from slipping down onto the blade. Then she realized Nash was waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, I don’t have a clue. Not that it’s really a surprise since, in my experience, Thomas isn’t the chattiest of people. He normally prefers to grunt and growl. All I know is that his father gave the sword to him and that it’s special, but I’ve got no idea what the inscription means.”
“Perhaps it’s a family motto?” Nash pondered for a moment, but before Cassidy could answer, her cell phone beeped and she gratefully reached for it, since talking about Thomas’s sword was the last thing she wanted to do. She was half expecting the text to be from her mom, but instead it was from a number she didn’t recognize. She clicked on the message.
Heard you auditioned. I wish I’d stayed 2 c it. Bet u were amazing ~ Travis.
Cassidy stared at the screen for a moment before it sank in that Travis was sending her a text message. Suddenly, the ugliness of the last few hours receded in her mind as she traced her finger over the screen. Travis Lenoir had taken the time to get her digits. She quickly saved his number into her contacts and then sent him a reply.
No I wasn’t but YOU were. I swear that Mrs. Davis fainted with excitement.
She grinned before realizing that Nash was staring at her expectantly. She flushed.
“Sorry, that was Travis. He heard that I auditioned,” she apologized, the smile never leaving her face. “So where were we?”
“We were just about to do the ritual to make the amulet. If that’s okay with Travis?”
“I’m sure he would be fine with it,” Cassidy assured Nash, choosing to ignore his sarcasm. She put her cell phone away and watched as he took the sword and beckoned for her to join him over at the desk.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and then he seemed to slip into a trance. Cassidy felt a shudder go racing up her arm as she watched. Without speaking, he lifted up the piece of paper that he had written on earlier, put it in the mortar, and set it on fire with his Zippo. When it had burned to ash, he used the pestle to grind it into the rest of the paste and carefully rubbed the stone in it before placing it in the small lunch box fille
d with dirt, explaining that it was important to keep the amulet grounded. The small pouches were tucked next to it, presumably to slip the stones into once they were ready. He then repeated the ritual with a smaller stone and picked up the sword.
Cassidy watched him stand up so that he could lower the blade and press it onto the tops of both the stones. Then he slipped a glove onto his hand and carefully put the stones into two separate pouches and then back into the dirt before shutting the lunch box. Finally, he looked up at her. “That should do it.”
“Thank you.” Cassidy’s fingers tightened around the necklace Travis had given her. Suddenly, she had the desire to laugh, as some of the weight that had been pressing down on her shoulders was lifted. Her dad was happy, Travis had sent her a text message, and they now had amulets to stop the demons from finding Celeste and possibly ripping her to shreds. Suddenly, she felt as if the glass was half full.
EIGHTEEN
The following day Cassidy was having second thoughts about her glass-half-full theory. Especially since her day wasn’t going as planned. She had woken up at five o’clock and jogged through the frosty predawn to meet Thomas in the woods for a training session, only to discover he wasn’t there. Her mood had improved slightly as she pictured him while she practiced her knife-throwing skills, and then she’d jogged home and showered before meeting Nash so that they could keep an eye on Celeste.
The good news was that they’d managed to hide an amulet in a rosebush at the front of Celeste’s house, and the moment they’d done so, the whole place took on a shimmering glow that Cassidy figured made it a demon-no-go zone. The bad news was that trying to slip the other amulet onto Celeste’s wrist was proving much more complicated, and despite following her to school, it was impossible to get within touching distance of her—let alone amulet-tying distance.
It had been the same all morning, which was why she was now standing outside the girls’ locker room clutching the lunch box Nash had put the amulet in. She turned to him.
“Do you really think it will work?”
“Of course it will.” Nash leaned against the wall and gave Cass an encouraging nod. “It’s a locker room, so there’s lots going on. I’m sure you can get the bracelet on without too much trouble. And according to everything that I’ve read in the grimoire, once it’s on, she won’t even be able to tell it’s there. Now, off you go.”
“Fine,” Cassidy muttered, though she was fairly sure that Nash was overestimating how easy it would be. And he had better be right about it being invisible once it was on, or they would all be in trouble. She grasped the lunch box that the amulet was in and walked inside, and was instantly greeted by the smell of hairspray and perfume. Cassidy resisted the urge to gag as she searched for Celeste. It didn’t take long since, thanks to the Black Rose, she was still glowing with a bright but terrible light.
If Thomas were here, he would probably stalk over in his brutal fashion and slap the amulet around Celeste’s wrist without saying a word before marching off. However, Thomas didn’t have to go to high school every day and Cassidy did, so she was going to need a bit more finesse.
Thankfully, Celeste’s sports locker was at the end of the row, and she was facing inward, having an animated conversation about some kind of hair-related crisis, which gave Cassidy the chance to slip behind her. She pressed her back into the side of the locker and hoped that her years of being invisible at high school would finally pay off.
She took the small pouch out of the lunch box and waited, her stomach churning with nerves. Celeste was still talking, and while she was waving one hand in the air, the other was resting down at her side.
This was her chance. She loosened the thin ties of the pouch and lowered herself down so that she was now at wrist level. Celeste still hadn’t noticed her, so Cassidy angled her hands as she tried to get the amulet around Celeste’s wrist without her knowing. As she worked, her finger brushed Celeste’s skin, and Cassidy immediately whipped her hand back as a wave of pain slammed into her chest and the smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils. Her throat tightened as an unwanted vision flashed through her mind.
Celeste lying limply in the dirt, her normal perma-tanned face leached of color. A large sword protruding from her chest was keeping her pinned down like a specimen in the biology lab, and blood was seeping down her chest and pooling on the dirt around her. Hovering over her was a demon, oblivious to everything but the curling plume of smoke that was rising up from Celeste’s crushed body in the shape of a rose—
“Seriously, you’ve got to be kidding me.” A voice dragged Cassidy out of the tangled scene in her mind, and she looked up to see Celeste’s disdainful glare. It was amplified by the white tendrils of the Black Rose, which were flickering around her head like Medusa. So much for being invisible.
“Um, hi.” Cassidy gulped as her fingers closed around the amulet, and she quickly stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans, praying that Celeste hadn’t noticed anything.
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare try to ‘hi’ me,” Celeste retorted. “Instead, you can answer me a question. Why is it that every time I turn around, there you are?”
“Because you’re lucky?” Cassidy tried to shake the last of the vision from her mind as she slowly got to her feet and smoothed down her jeans, as if it was totally normal for her to be there.
“Lucky to see you and your weird clothes every day?” Celeste gave an unladylike snort. “I don’t think so. In fact, if you ask me, I’d say that you were stalking me.”
“S-stalking you? That’s crazy. Why would I do that?” Cassidy stammered, while letting out an inward groan, since pissing Celeste off wasn’t part of the plan. Why did this have to be so hard?
“Please, I can read girls like you in my sleep. It’s because you’re secretly in love with Nash, and you’re jealous at the obvious animal magnetism that we share. So now you’re doing everything to keep us apart. Like at lunch yesterday, when he was desperate to sit with me and you kept dragging him away. And as for all of that rambling about a snake at Cade’s party, that was just embarrassing. Why can’t you just accept that Nash has feelings for me?”
Because it’s not true, Cassidy longed to scream at her, but she stopped when the image of Celeste lying on the ground, a sword piercing her chest, flashed into her mind. Regardless of how much she detested Celeste, there was no way she wanted to see her dead. Which meant that she had to figure out a way to get the amulet onto her.
“Look, Celeste, I’m sorry if you think that I don’t like you, because I do,” Cassidy tried again, but it was no good, and instead of warming up, Celeste just narrowed her eyes.
“Of course you do, because I’m awesome. However, that doesn’t mean that I like you, so if you know what’s good for you, you will keep your distance,” Celeste informed her before she marched away, her friends all falling in line behind her.
Cassidy groaned as she watched them leave before she slowly made her way out to where Nash was waiting for her.
“So?” Nash pounced on her. “How did it go? Did you manage it?”
“Not exactly,” Cassidy confessed as she transferred the amulet back into the lunch box, burying it deep into the dirt. “I almost had it, but the moment I touched her wrist I had a vision.”
Nash’s face went pale. “What was it about?”
“It basically involved Celeste and a lot of blood. It was pretty horrible.” She shook her head as the smell of burned skin and blood flared in her nose, causing the panic once again to rise in her chest. “What are we going to do? How are we going to protect her? I mean, I don’t like her. At all. But it was bad enough seeing her die in my mind. I don’t want to see it happen for real.”
“Cass, it’s going to be okay,” Nash said, but she just shook her head.
“You’re only saying that because you want it to be true. It doesn’t mean that it will be true. And after what happened in the locker room, I doubt I’ll be able to get within ten feet of her. Oh, and by the way, the reas
on she dislikes me so much is because she thinks that I’m jealous of the obvious animal magnetism that you both share.”
“What?” Nash looked at her in horror. “Please tell me that she didn’t say those exact words.”
“Verbatim,” Cassidy assured him before sighing. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re going to have to do it.”
“What? No, no, no. That’s a bad idea. A very bad idea.”
“I know it’s not ideal,” she said as she pressed the lunch box into his hands. “But you know it makes sense. Plus, I heard her say she’s going to be in the library all lunchtime, which is loads better than having to go into the cafeteria.”
“Can you at least come with me?” He reluctantly took the lunch box.
“I would,” Cassidy assured him, “but she’ll be in a lot better mood if she doesn’t see me again today. I think she’s about a second away from taking out a restraining order against me. I’ll just go and get my lunch and then wait nearby with the grimoire to make sure that there are no demons around.”
“Fine.” He let out a pained sigh as he slumped his shoulders and turned in the direction of the library. “But you owe me for this. Big-time.”
“Just get the amulet on her,” Cassidy said as he disappeared around the corner. She headed for her locker to grab her brown-bagged lunch, but decided to leave the sword in the locker, because even looking at it made her shudder and the blisters on her palms prickle. Besides, hopefully Nash would get the amulet on and she wouldn’t have to fight any more demons and—
“Hey,” a soft voice suddenly said in her ear, and she turned around to see Travis leaning against the locker next to hers. Today his dark hair was falling into his eyes, and Cassidy longed to reach up and push it to one side.
“Travis.” Cassidy suddenly forgot about her aching muscles and the problems associated with trying to slip the amulet onto Celeste’s skinny wrist as she basked in his gorgeousness.
