“Sheriff’s department, this is Jane Conway.”
“Jane, it’s Cassie. You need to get out to Belinda Hewitt’s house right away. There’s been a murder.” I hung up before she could ask for more details.
Slowly, Evan rose to his feet and made his way back into the house with me. He had smeared the blood and left footprints on the floor, but somehow none of it had ended up on him. Or if it had, then he had some way of removing it.
“The police are on their way,” I said, not sure if he would be upset with me for calling. Probably not. He looked too shocked to care.
“Yeah.” He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes.
“You should call your uncle.”
“Can I borrow your phone?” Evan asked. “Master Wolf doesn’t believe in phones.”
“Sure.” I handed him the phone without analyzing his reasons for needing it, then I went out the front door to give him some privacy and wait for the sheriff. Brushing the fine layer of dust from the front steps–all that remained of the wilting plants–I sat down with my head in my hands.
Evan joined me a few minutes later, sat beside me without bothering about the dust, and silently handed me back my phone.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Not that I expected him to. Really, what was there to say?
“I want to know what happened to her,” Evan said. “Do you need a job?”
The request caught me off guard, and even though I wanted to take the job, for Evan and for the girl, I hesitated. I had a feeling this would become the type of paranormal investigation that had caused me to leave the sheriff’s department. Also, the kind that had made me want to work there in the first place.
“It looked like a vampire attack to me,” I said.
“It did, but some friends of Nancy told me they last saw her around noon yesterday, and that she had left to get some herbs before Belinda’s store closed at one. I don’t know why she would have stayed all afternoon, let alone after dark.”
He took one of my hands in his, the way he had done earlier. He used to do those sorts of things in high school. Oh, never to me, but to other girls, the ones he ended up dating. Most of the rumors surrounding him suggested he wove his love spells with those casual touches. I didn’t believe it, but I did yank my hand away, feeling as if it had been burned.
“Now that you mention it,” I said, “there’s another problem with the vampire idea. The porch should be within the threshold. A werewolf might have done something like that, but it’s not the full moon, and again, it was daytime.”
Evan stiffened. “Scott would have known if any of his wolves were hunting humans, anyway.”
I had almost forgotten that one of Evan’s best friends was a werewolf, yet another rebellious move, and obviously, one he had not outgrown.
In the distance, I heard the scream of approaching sirens.
“The sheriff will do everything he can to try to figure this out,” I said, still uncomfortable at the idea of taking on a supernatural case. “Why do you think you need me?”
“Because there are things the sheriff doesn’t know, and I can’t tell him. For example, if it was a vampire attack, it will be tough to tell because she was protected. She won’t turn.”
Secrets and lies, I thought. But he had a point, and as much as I hated the idea of getting involved with anything supernatural, I knew I couldn’t let a friend down, not even one as uncertain as Evan. Besides, a young girl had been murdered, and I couldn’t let that go. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the blood and the silent scream on her young face.
“All right, I’ll do it.”
He offered me his hand and I shook it, somewhat tentatively, though he didn’t hesitate. When he released my hand, the first car had arrived on the scene.
* * *
“So you’re saying he broke into the house?” Sheriff Adams asked me an hour or so later, after I had already gone over the story with two of his deputies. It was noon, which meant I would miss my usual lunch date with my friends, but given what I had seen that morning, I didn’t think I wanted to talk to any of them anyway.
“So did I,” I said. “Are you going to charge us with breaking and entering?”
“Would it do any good?” he asked.
There wasn’t a prison in the world that could hold Evan, but I didn’t say so. I just gave the sheriff a blank look, and noticed that he had more hair than the last time I had seen him. Strange, since his hairline hadn’t moved in the ten years he had been in town.
“If the girl was missing,” Sheriff Adams continued, “you should have told me. And you say Belinda hasn’t been home all morning?”
“That’s right. I was supposed to serve her a subpoena.” It was still in my car, but at this point I had serious doubts about my ability to deliver it. I didn’t see how Belinda fit into any of this, but the fact that she was missing and I’d found a dead body on her back porch made finding her my top priority.
“And what time did Evan show up?”
“Ten thirty. Look, I’ve already been over this with Jeff and Ryan. I know the drill – that asking the same question in different ways might shake loose an important detail–but is there any way we can finish tomorrow?” I already felt worn out, though the day was barely half over, and somehow I would have to find a way to sleep with images of Nancy Hastings haunting me. I had never handled a murder before. Small towns like Eagle Rock don’t have the kinds of murder rates the larger cities do.
The Sheriff sighed, slapped his notebook shut, and nodded. His face looked drawn and weary, and there was something a little off in his tone. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. “I want you in my office bright and early tomorrow, though, all right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Listen.” The sheriff lowered his voice. “Right now, I’m mostly worried about you. Do you trust him?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Evan, who maintained a mask of cool composure that I was sure hid a world of hurt and anger over his cousin’s fate. It reminded me of the day, in eighth grade, when he had explained his discovery that showing emotions was perceived as a weakness. I wanted to disagree with him, but I couldn’t argue with results. After that, he only opened up to me, and then, only sometimes.
“Trust Evan? I don’t know. I mean, it depends upon what you want to trust him with. He’ll do just about anything to protect his family.” We had that in common, as a matter of fact.
“There are rumors about him.”
“There are rumors about me, too.”
“Not the same kind.” Sheriff Adams studied my face. “I don’t pretend to understand the power game in this town, but by all accounts, he’s winning it. He acts like nothing can touch him. Practically dared me to try to lock him up, almost like he wanted to prove it wouldn’t work.”
That sounded like something Evan would do, and I suspected the sheriff had pegged his motives correctly. I didn’t say so, though. I just shrugged.
“He also said you’re going to look into this murder for him. Can I trust him with you?”
“Yes.” That much, I knew.
“All right. Listen, let me know what you find out and we’ll do the same. There’s no reason to duplicate one another’s efforts on this.”
“Okay.” We both knew I wasn’t being entirely truthful, but the sheriff had long-since accepted that I couldn’t tell him everything, and most of the time he allowed me to use my own discretion.
“What’s your dad going to think about you working for a Blackwood?” Sheriff Adams asked.
I didn’t have a good answer for him, but I thought about Evan as I drove back to town, not so much to work out my father’s feelings, which had more to do with Evan’s father, but to work out my own.
3
EVAN AND I BECAME BEST friends in the first grade. In elementary school he was a shy, uncertain boy who needed a friend, and I found myself drawn to that, as well as to his willingness
to listen to me. I could even talk to him about magic, and for a long time, he was the only person outside my family who knew about my deficiencies. I let the rest think what they would; there was a certain power in that.
I never felt like I had to compete with him, and even though I knew he had magic of his own, I never saw it except in minor ways, silly tricks that even I could do.
He didn’t use magic at school. That sort of public display was typically frowned upon, even in the Eagle Rock schools, where most of the students and teachers were aware of the rumors, speculation, and evidence not easily explained away. That’s not to say they knew much of anything for certain. Heck, the most powerful families kept enough secrets from one another that even they could not come to a consensus on exactly how or why magic worked. Sometimes, I didn’t know if warning kids away from using magic at school had more to do with keeping the information from the regular townsfolk, or from one another.
Whatever the reason for it, Evan took the admonishment to heart. Whereas my brother, Nicolas, showed off in ways that intentionally made him seem more like a clown or stage magician than anything else, Evan kept that aspect of himself shut up inside. He let people push him around for years, never striking back. I suppose it couldn’t have lasted forever, especially when he found himself faced with the surge in magic that often comes with adolescence.
We were in seventh grade when Paul Ellerson, backed by two cronies, found him on the playground at recess one fall day. He and I had been talking, but we stopped when we saw the threesome approach, instantly wary. They didn’t usually mess with me, except to offer insults I could more or less brush off. I won’t go so far as to say they didn’t affect me, but I always had friends and family to back me.
Evan had it much worse, partly because he took the insults more to heart, and partly because the boys sometimes got physical with him. Somehow, the teachers never saw.
“Look,” Paul said, “it’s the freak and his girlfriend.”
I rolled my eyes and started to move away, taking Evan’s hand to guide him with me.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Paul said. “They’re holding hands.”
I dropped his hand, but kept walking away, trusting Evan to follow. This tactic often worked, but not on that fateful day. Paul’s cronies blocked my escape, and when I turned around, Paul grabbed me by the hair and twisted, hard. It was the first time they had ever gotten physical with me, and it had me pretty scared, but I didn’t have time to work myself into a real panic.
There was no warning. If there had been, I couldn’t have been certain the attack was an accident, unplanned and instinctive. One second, Paul had me by the hair, and the next he was gone. I never even saw Paul’s dramatic flight through the air, but I heard the ominous crack as he hit the tree, and when I did look, I saw him slumped against the trunk, eyes closed, red-gold leaves fluttering around his head where a trickle of blood ran down his cheek.
I had seen magical accidents before, but they had never involved Evan, who I had somehow come to think of as safe. He may have talked about magic, but I didn’t see it, which gave me the illusion that he was like me. But he wasn’t like me, and at that moment, the fact hit me as hard as Paul had hit the tree.
I tore my eyes away from Paul, directing them instead at Evan, who looked different. It might simply have been the product of my shattered illusions, but I never forgot the remorseless expression on his face.
His eyes, colder than an ice storm, took in Paul’s accomplices, who stood with their mouths hanging open. Beyond us, a girl screamed, but I barely registered her reaction or the rush of teachers to the scene.
“Don’t mess with my friends,” Evan said. Then, as if to emphasize the point, Evan waved his hand, almost casually, and the two cronies toppled backwards.
They weren’t really hurt, but then again, Evan had been in control when he knocked them over. Paul ended up in a coma for two months, and I’m not sure he was ever the same. I know Evan wasn’t.
* * *
Despite my earlier resolve that I didn’t want to talk to any of my friends, I found myself steering my car back into town, toward Kaitlin’s Diner. Technically it was the Main Street Cafe, but my best friend, Kaitlin, had been working there since she was sixteen, and would probably inherit the place from her mom someday. I even thought Kaitlin’s Diner had a better ring to it, but nobody agreed, least of all Kaitlin, who desperately wanted to find a way out of waitressing. Trouble was, she kept waiting around for a fairy tale.
Kaitlin and I used to be on the cheerleading squad together in high school, back in the days when anything seemed possible in love and life. We spent glorious afternoons pretending to be something special as a way to cover our own inadequacies. At least, that’s what Kaitlin said once. I’m sure she wasn’t talking about me.
Since small town gossip travels faster than the speed of sound, Kaitlin already knew about the murder by the time I arrived. So, apparently, did the other dozen or so customers milling around on a Monday afternoon, because they didn’t even try to hide their attempts to overhear our conversation when Kaitlin sat down in a booth across from me and asked for details.
“Don’t you have to work?” I asked.
“I’m on break. Lunch rush is over.” She tucked a stray lock of red-gold hair behind her ear and leaned forward. “So come on, spill.”
“I can’t say much.”
“You never can.” Kaitlin was one of those in town who eagerly, almost desperately, believed in magic, but living on the outside, she didn’t know much about it. It wasn’t as if the fact of my family’s sorcery was a secret, the obscurity was all in the details. How powerful? What, exactly, could they do? And how does the magic work? Therein lay the secrets.
As someone who lived between the two worlds, it was always a bit odd to me to see the range of disbelief in a town where so many practitioners dwelt. Some refused to believe at all, using faith in God or science like a shield. Others, like Kaitlin, eagerly believed any rumor, true or not. Most, though, lived somewhere in the middle, acknowledging the strangeness, but from a distance, as if it couldn’t touch them if they didn’t try to meet it head on. For the most part, they were right.
“What are people saying?” I asked.
“That Belinda Hewitt killed Nancy Hastings.”
I cringed. “We don’t know who killed her.”
“But it was magic, wasn’t it? People are also saying Evan Blackwood was there, swearing vengeance.”
“She was his cousin.”
“And Belinda is missing?” Kaitlin tried to make this sound very significant. “I wonder if he’s torturing her.”
Before I had a chance to defend Evan, the diner bell jingled and the man himself strode inside, angling straight for me. Kaitlin, sitting with her back to the door, didn’t notice.
“Where do you think he’s been all these years, anyway?” Kaitlin rushed on. “People are saying he learned black magic, and now that he’s back, he’ll take over the town.”
Evan paused, no more than a couple feet from our booth, an odd expression that looked like a cross between a laugh and a grimace on his face. A few nearby customers hurriedly dropped money on the table and left the diner.
“I suppose I could,” Evan said, deliberately drawing out the words, “but what would I do with it?”
Kaitlin’s face went pale, but she did not turn to look.
“You shouldn’t listen to rumors so much,” I said. Not that she’d listen. I’d said so before.
“I’m sorry,” Kaitlin whispered.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” I said, motioning for Evan to sit beside me. “And he couldn’t take over the town if he wanted to. He was teasing.”
He arched an eyebrow and shrugged, but accepted the invitation to sit beside me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Looking for you.” He turned to Kaitlin, who was studiously avoiding his eyes. “Can I have a minute with Cassie?”
“Sure.” S
he scurried out of the booth and practically ran for the double doors leading into the kitchen.
“You could have been nicer,” I said, watching the doors swing shut.
“Me? I just walked in to discover my role in a dastardly plot to take over the town.”
“She’s just repeating what she’s heard, and besides, you’ve never exactly denied any of the rumors. What did you expect to happen?”
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I’ll make things right with your friend.”
“Don’t do it for me.”
“I need to be with my family this afternoon,” Evan said, in clear dismissal of the subject, “but I wanted to talk to you first.”
I nodded. “We need to find Belinda.”
“That’s what I thought, too. Can you meet me at her place tonight after dinner, maybe around seven?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Great.” He gave my hand a little squeeze before sliding back out of the booth and leaving the diner. My hand tingled where he had touched it, and as I stared at the spot, I remembered the love spell rumors, despite my best efforts to avoid the irksome thoughts. Hadn’t I just told Kaitlin not to listen to rumors?
I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t particularly close to dinner time, but since I might be up late, I decided to head home anyway. After I talked to Kaitlin.
4
MY PARENTS LIVE IN A modern-day castle. It looks like a cliché, complete with four towers and a drawbridge that swings out like a door. My dad often jokes about putting in a moat and getting a moat monster, but all that is just his personal flair. I assure you that the castle-home gets hot and cold running water, telephone, and electricity. No cable, but only because the phone company offered them a better deal on DSL and a satellite dish.
Inside, my mom’s sense of style takes over, at least on the ground floor. She likes a more modern feel. The living room is furnished in black leather, the walls painted some shade of morning sunshine. She went with black and white for the kitchen, a sort of checkered pattern with occasional splashes of bright red.
Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective Page 3
