“Such as?”
“What if you got pregnant?” Mom asked.
“I think that’s a long way off.” Actually, since Braden and I had never discussed children at all, I had no idea how far away such a thing might be. “Why would it be a big deal, anyway?”
“What if the baby ends up being a fire starter, or empath, or healer?”
The idea had honestly never occurred to me. The only thing I could think to say was, “That’s not likely, is it?”
Mom’s silence was answer enough.
“I can’t think about this right now.” Out of frustration, I flung the book to the floor. It fell open, revealing a spell to conceal oneself from magical scrying.
Dad glanced at it. “Were you trying to stop Juliana from looking in on you?”
I nodded, mutely.
“Even after what happened tonight?” he went on.
I glared at him. Yes, for one evening it had been convenient to have someone looking in on me. That did not mean I wanted Juliana to watch me every night of my life.
“Fine, we’ll talk later.” He stood, and after a moment’s hesitation, so did Mom.
“I love you,” Mom said.
They kept saying that, but as they left the room and closed the bedroom door behind them, I realized that they had never come right out and told me that I was and would always be a part of this family.
* * *
Mom and Dad had a fight as soon as they retreated to their own bedroom. It was one of those times when I desperately wished I could not hear them through the vents. Sometimes, it was better not to know what others said about you.
“You have to let go,” Mom said. “She’s a grown up.”
“She’s my little girl,” Dad said, “and she doesn’t know what’s best for her.”
“Do you?”
“I know she can’t take care of herself. You, of all people, should know what’s out there waiting for her. And, God, Evan Blackwood? I thought that nightmare was over. I guess ignoring it wasn’t the best strategy after all.”
“She is thinking of marrying someone else,” Mom said.
“She didn’t say yes, and besides, if Evan decides he wants her, how would she even resist?”
“We’ll always protect her.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I’m just not sure, and I’m not ready for this.”
Mom started sobbing then, and I couldn’t make out what she said through the tears. I didn’t want to hear it anyway, I decided. I grabbed my iPod, put headphones over my ears, and turned up the volume. For a long time, I lay there like that, willing sleep to come, despite the thrumming in my ears.
Yet sleep remained elusive. For some reason, I kept thinking about yellow eyes and razor sharp teeth. No sooner would I drift into my usual state of dreamless oblivion, then something would scare me back to reality. Finally, around one in the morning, I gave up, and made my way to the kitchen to find some way to take my mind off things.
It had been a while since I had brewed a wakefulness potion, but as soon as I entered the kitchen, it seemed like the thing to do. The potion primarily consists of ginseng, grapefruit juice, sea salt, and a few essential oils. It requires no special magical ability, only a recipe and a bit of heart, as my mom would say. I always enjoyed brewing those simple potions I could make without help; it made me feel some connection to the magic long denied me. Sometimes, I would even brew potions requiring magic at key points, but I always felt on shaky ground when I had to ask for help, so I didn’t do it often.
“Having trouble sleeping?”
I jumped and splattered some of the potion on the stove. I wiped it with a towel, and turned to see Nicolas, dressed in a black robe a lot like Dad’s. He looked like he was having trouble sleeping too, and in fact, the circles under his eyes made me wonder how long it had been since he had gotten a decent night’s sleep.
“What are you doing up?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, trying to figure out what to do with my life. That sort of thing. Did you make enough for two?”
“Sure.” I ladled out two cups of the potion, and turned off the stove.
Nicolas took a sip. “Perfect. Just like Mom makes it.”
I brushed off the compliment. “Did you find out about the firefighter thing yet?”
“I’ve got to take a bunch of tests. Strength, stamina, and a drug screening. Plus there’s a three-month training course.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. They said I could do it, but I just have this feeling that the chief is going to set me up to fail.”
“You’ll do great,” I said, not because I was certain, but because it was my job as his big sister to reassure him–also to tease him endlessly, but only at appropriate times.
“So what’s got you up at one in the morning?”
“Post traumatic stress?” I suggested. “I don’t know, for some reason I just keep thinking about this giant vampire. Can’t imagine why.”
He looked into his mug. “I wanted to go, but someone had to stay with the kids, and they thought Juliana’s gift might be more-”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Everyone doesn’t have to protect me all the time.”
“No reason to snap at me.”
He was right, but he had managed to say just the wrong thing when I was already beginning to feel less like a daughter/sister, and more like the family’s mascot.
Suddenly, I knew what I needed to do. The revelation came on me in a rush, and it half shocked me, half thrilled me.
I had to be the one to kill the vampire. I mean, I knew just where he would be the next night. He had told me to meet him back at the pool. I could go there, hide in the trees with my bow and arrow...he would never have to see me.
Of course, if anything went wrong, I would be dead before I could reload. I had exactly one shot, and I hadn’t practiced regularly in weeks. My dedication to the sport of archery came and went in spurts.
But I needed to do it. I needed to fight my own monster. How else could I look my family in the eyes again? How else could I prove myself?
I sat up straighter, staring past Nicolas at the art on the refrigerator door. There was a stick figure drawing of the entire family–nine figures, 5 with long curly hair and 4 with short hair. One of the curly haired figures had a smaller stick figure drawn across its stick tummy.
“Cassie, what are you thinking?” Nicolas asked. “Whatever it is, I don’t think you should do it.”
“Not now.” I looked down at the wakefulness potion, which I hadn’t sipped at all. I didn’t need it any longer, so I tossed the contents in the sink. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good night?” Nicolas made it a question.
“Good night.”
Upstairs, in my fortress of solitude, I gathered the pieces of my plan around me. There were a number of flaws in it, including the fact that my parents and sister were actively spying on me, but I was sure I could find a way to work around that. I just needed a good night’s sleep and a chance to think. Now that I had a plan, I thought I might even manage it.
18
I’M NOT COMPLETELY STUPID. YES, I had a moment when I briefly envisioned killing the vampire single-handedly, but by morning, I knew it couldn’t quite work like that, not if I wanted to live–and I did. I just couldn’t ask for help from anyone in my family, because they probably wouldn’t allow me my shot at the vampire, and because I wanted to prove my independence.
Luckily, there was someone I could go to for help, someone who also had a vested interest in killing this vampire. I just had to find some way to talk Evan into letting me join the hunt.
I didn’t have much time, which meant I couldn’t wait for Evan to show up in my office sometime in the uncertain future. I would have to go to him.
I dressed quickly, opting for more sensible jeans and tennis shoes over my usual businesslike attire. Heels and tight shirts only helped heroines fighting vampires on camera; the rest of us needed to make more sensible ch
oices.
The real trick was acting as if everything was perfectly normal, so that no one would think to take out a crystal ball as I left the house. Whether or not my parents were remotely fooled, I’ll never know, but they did back off, perhaps feeling we needed a cool down after the previous night’s discussion. As long as they left me alone, that suited me perfectly.
I only stopped in the kitchen for a piece of toast and glass of orange juice before stowing a book and a few supplies in an old backpack and heading out the door.
Despite my certainty that talking to Evan was the right thing to do, I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. For one thing, I also needed him to work a concealment spell for me, so my family wouldn’t know what I was up to. In fifteen years, I had never once asked Evan to do magic for me, and I wasn’t entirely sure he would, even for a friend–or whatever I was to him. My parents had sometimes traded favors with the other magical families for spells and potions, but if it came to that, I wasn’t sure what I had to offer that Evan didn’t already have.
I had also never been to Henry Wolf’s house, though my parents had invited him to our home many times over the years. My GPS didn’t know how to get to his place, and of course, he didn’t have a phone. The only thing I knew for sure was that he lived west, and that his house was directly on the lake.
Table Rock is a man-made lake that stretches through southern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas. The lake is narrow, winding through the hilly landscape like a many-headed snake. At most points along the 745 miles of coast, the opposite shore is clearly visible.
The lake is also the reason that there are so many magical families in such a small area. It is not at all normal to find such a large concentration of practitioners, because sheer numbers get you noticed, something most prefer to avoid. Yet here, and in a few similar places around the world, sorcerers willingly trade a bit of notoriety for the power of a node, a concentration of energies that sorcerers can tap into and use in their magical workings.
That’s from a textbook. I have never experienced the tiniest twinge of magical ability, so I really don’t understand what it means. All I know is that somewhere beneath the westernmost tendril of Table Rock Lake lies a node, and practitioners thrive on it.
Henry Wolf lived as close to that node as he could without growing gills and living underwater. Since Evan was still his apprentice, he lived with him, so that’s where I needed to go.
I sped along the lakeside roads, which turned into the forest and back out toward the lake in harmony with the curves of the land. I had a vague sense that it wasn’t terribly far away, so I kept my eyes peeled, especially when the road turned to give me a view of the lake. The only thing I knew for sure was that he lived right by the water.
I had just turned into a deep patch of forest, trees sloping up to my left, and down into a deep gulf to my right, when the ground slipped from beneath me.
That’s the only way I can describe it. My heart lurched with the road as I slammed my foot on the brake, but then the pavement bucked upward, smacking my car dangerously to the right.
White knuckled, I twisted the steering wheel hard to the left, but the wheels didn’t seem to respond. The ground began bucking and shifting with dangerous malice, alternately tossing the car into the air and then batting it back down. My feet flew from gas to brake, my hands gripped the steering wheel for dear life, but nothing I did seemed to make the slightest difference.
When the car’s back wheels went over the edge, I screamed. It’s a useless, girly thing to do when you’re in the middle of the woods, your voice being drowned out by the roar of an earthquake, and no one could have heard you even without the ground shifting, but it felt good. After holding it in the night before for so long, giving in to the scream at that moment felt like the perfect release of tension.
Except it didn’t really release anything. It made my heart pound faster and I began to see spots.
Then my front wheels followed my back wheels into the ditch.
The car rolled down the sloping sides of the ditch for a few feet, before landing, hard, against a giant oak tree. The car crunched, the windshield cracked, and I felt a sharp pain in my right foot.
At some point during my slide, the ground must have stopped shaking, because all was still as I sat there in the wreckage of my powder blue Jaguar, trying to work out what to do next.
Above me, the sun ducked its head behind some clouds. Nearby, a bird started to sing, and a few seconds later, others joined its song.
Experimentally, I lifted my right foot, which had gotten wedged under the gas pedal. It protested loudly, but I didn’t think it was broken–just sprained. Sometimes, you have to thank God for small blessings.
My car had come to rest at a sharply upturned angle, and there was no way I was going to be able to drive it out, so with monumental effort, I wrestled the door open. Gravity worked against me, but I managed to prevail. Grabbing my backpack from the passenger seat, and bracing myself for the pain I knew would accompany the motion, I rolled out.
The ground beneath me was a mass of giant roots that made it hard to get any kind of footing, not that my right foot was of much use anyway. Every time I moved it, there was renewed pain, but I couldn’t stay in the ditch, so, slinging the pack onto my back, I prepared to climb.
All things considered, it didn’t take long, but it felt much longer. The road was only a few feet above me, but every step hurt. I used large roots and small trees for leverage as I made my way up to the smooth, unblemished surface of the road.
Smooth and unblemished? I checked again. There was no sign that an earthquake had just bucked me off this section of road a few minutes ago.
I heard a car approaching, and scrambled out of the way, ready to flag it down for help. I had my cell phone in my pack, but I wasn’t ready to call my parents yet. This was a significant hiccup, but I would not yet concede defeat.
The car was a green Ford Focus. I recognized it only because I had run into it once, five years earlier, just before its owner had cursed me blind. Jasmine Hewitt passed at top speed, paying me no notice as she raced to whatever errand awaited her.
Odd, I thought, she lives a pretty good distance from here.
Now what? I couldn’t walk far on my damaged leg, but there was no telling how long it would be before another car drove by. Once again, I thought about the cell phone in my backpack, but did not immediately reach for it.
It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before I heard another car approach. This one was traveling much slower, and as it rounded the nearest curve, I recognized Evan’s metallic blue Prius.
I waved, but he had already seen me. He pulled the car to a stop directly beside me, and the passenger door swung open, of its own accord, inviting me in. Without hesitation, I accepted the invitation.
“What are you doing out here?” Evan asked. “I told you, I’d meet you in town. It’s dangerous out here.”
I tried to decide if he was angry or worried, but couldn’t work it out. “I noticed. My car’s in a ditch over there. What was that?”
“A ward,” Evan said, confirming my suspicion.
“I was on a public road. Mr. Wolf’s wards are too sensitive.”
“You didn’t trip it, Jasmine Hewitt did. You just got caught in the backlash.”
“Is that old woman crazy?” I asked, remembering her hurrying away as if the hounds of hell were after her. If she had done something to provoke Evan or Mr. Wolf, maybe they were.
“Are you hurt?” Evan asked, taking inventory of my body from head to toe. He ran his hands along my arms and legs, checking for breaks or sprains, but the contact unsettled me.
“I’ll be okay,”
He didn’t seem to believe me. His hand was in my hair, searching–for what, I had no idea. Then his eyes traveled down the length of my body to my right foot. “You are hurt.”
I almost asked if he had x-ray vision or something, but thought better of it. If I wanted
his help, the last thing I needed to do was start prying.
“It’s just a sprain,” I said. Juliana would be able to fix it in about two seconds, if I went to her.
“Which means the answer is yes, you are hurt. Have you called for a tow truck yet?”
Now that he said it, that seemed like the obvious thing to have done. “I, um, didn’t think of it,” I admitted.
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?” Evan reached his hand toward me again, but I intercepted it. He had a rather intense look in his eye that reminded me of what Madison had said the day before.
Despite my uncertainty about Braden, and my attraction to Evan, I wasn’t ready for Evan to take Braden’s place in my life. Assuming he wanted to, of course. I might have been reading the signals all wrong, and part of me hoped so, because I had a feeling Evan would be relentless when he set his mind to something.
He did seem to be taking every chance he got to touch me, but no, there wasn’t anything implied there. It was just... he was just checking to make sure I was all right.
“It was just shock.” I pushed his hand away, and rifled through my backpack for the phone. Evan waited patiently as I dialed information, got the number for a tow truck, and told them where to find the car.
While I was on the phone, Evan put the car in park and stepped out, walking over to the ditch to survey the damage to my car. After a few minutes, he shook his head and slid back into the driver’s seat. By then, I had finished my call.
“I’ll get you a rental for now,” Evan said.
“Thank you.”
He put the car into drive and started forward. “I’m going to take you back to Master Wolf’s house so I can fix that foot.”
I nodded and again said, “Thanks.”
“Now, what was so important it couldn’t wait a few hours?”
Here it was, the moment of truth. I glanced around at the quiet road, shaded by tall trees. “I have a favor to ask you. Actually, two favors.”
“Okay.” He sounded dubious. “You need to be careful with that. You don’t want to be in my debt.”
“I know that,” I snapped. Then, more calmly. “I thought we could make a trade. Maybe I could finish this investigation for you for free or something.” I didn’t know if that would work or not, since Evan had as much difficulty making money as my parents–which was none at all–but it was all I had.
Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective Page 14
