by ID Johnson
“Cass, are you sure it’s Giovani? It’s not Charlie from Lost again, is it?” Cadence asked cautiously.
That was enough to make me want to throat punch her through the phone. She seemed to think that Dominic Monaghan joke was so stinking funny. “God, Cadence! No, it’s him. I told you; we even saw his girlfriend.”
“Okay, well, send me the footage, and I’ll look it over,” Cadence said. Her voice was calm, not at all like what I’d expected as I’d nervously called her.
I couldn’t help but let my frustration show. “Fine. But, why aren’t you more excited?” There was really only one explanation for her nonreaction. “You don’t believe us, do you?”
“I do!” Cadence assured us. “It’s just… we pretty much already knew he was over there. We just haven’t been able to find him. And while it’s great to have confirmation, it doesn’t really help… that much.”
“What?” Lucy screeched, jumping back into the shot. “We’ve been poring over this video footage for half of our lives, and you don’t think it helps? OMG!” I had to agree with my friend on this one. What in the world was wrong with Cadence that she would let us keep searching through this footage and not even tell us that she knew he was already over there? Not to mention saying visual confirmation meant nothing? The least she could do was pretend.
Cadence held the phone back from her face a bit, like she thought Lucy might climb through the screen and slug her. “I’m not saying it isn’t useful. I’m sorry--look I’m getting ready to go on a… job… thing, and I’m kind of thinking about that right now, so just send it over, and we’ll look at it. We appreciate your help.”
As Cadence tried to blow us off, Emma leaned back in front of my phone. “What if we could somehow use this footage in combination with other exterior shots of the airport, now that we have a timestamp, to see if we could track where he went after he arrived in Austria?”
“Now, that would be helpful,” Cadence agreed.
“You are infuriating,” Lucy muttered as she slid over on the bed away from the phone with her arms crossed. I was so glad my friend wasn’t too shy to tell my sister how she really felt as I was of the same opinion right now. Would we go to all the trouble to do what Emma had suggested just to find out that our work was unappreciated again.
Cadence sort of rolled her eyes again and shouted, “I love you, too, Luce. But Emma, I’m not sure what kind of footage we can access. I’ll get this over to Christian and have him check on that okay?”
“Fine,” I said again, speaking for all of us. If she was getting ready to go on a hunt, that explained her dismissive behavior, but I was still irritated. It didn’t explain the restaurant, though. Thinking about the danger she was in, I said, “Well, be careful….” But then I realized there was someone else in the shot and I froze. I couldn’t see him very well, but he had familiar looking green eyes and a crop of wavy dark hair. I could no longer speak as my mind tried to process what I was seeing.
My sister must have realized my confusion. “What’s wrong, Cass?” Cadence asked.
I didn’t know how to ask my question without being rude, because obviously, whoever this guy was, he could hear me. So… I asked anyway. “Who is that guy you’re with?”
My sister looked almost as perturbed as I had when I realized my friends were visible to her. She looked at the guy sitting next to her and sort of nudged him out of the way with her shoulder as she hesitantly said, “Oh, um, this is Brandon.”
Undeterred by my sister’s jab, he was back, his face pushing between Cadence’s and the screen. “Hi, Cassidy,” he said smiling. “How are you? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
There wasn’t a single part of my brain that wasn’t puzzled as I stammered, “Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you,” because that was the polite thing to say.
Lucy jumped back over into the screen. One look at Brandon, and her eyes narrowed as well. “Brandon? Wow, you look a lot like…”
“Elliott,” I whispered. The word came out before I could contain it. Who was this person? Why was he with my sister? And why was he wearing my dead best friend’s face?
“Yeah, that conversation is going to have to wait until another time, Sis,” Cadence replied, shoving Brandon away from her phone once more. “Aaron and I seriously have to go.”
I could tell she was about to hang up on me, and there was no way I could possibly process what she may have to tell me at that instant anyway, so I did the only thing my mind would let me do and muttered, “Okay.”
“Bye, Cassidy. It was nice to see you!” Brandon said, ducking back in front of the phone before Cadence pushed him away again.
I nodded, having no idea what to say to him, or to my sister for that matter.
“I’ll call you in the morning, okay?” Cadence assured me, and I got the impression she wasn’t just blowing me off this time.
“All right. Be careful,” I managed again before Cadence disconnected the call. I stared at my blank phone for a long while before I turned to my friends. “OMG,” I whispered.
“OMG indeed,” Lucy agreed.
We sat in silence for a long time before Emma muttered, “Interesting, and scooted away from me, back to where she’d been sitting most of the night, and picked up her laptop.
“What are you doing?” Lucy asked her.
“Seeing if Christian has already given us access to the cameras we need to try to find out where Giovani went when he left the airport,” she said with a shrug.
“Emma, you do realize that we just saw a dude our age who looks just like Elliott? Except not as old, no offense.” Lucy looked up at the ceiling with that last comment, like she was talking to him in heaven.
“Yeah, I saw him. His name is Brandon,” Emma said, still typing away. Her forehead crinkled. “It doesn’t look like it was part of the original install. I wonder if he could push it through email.”
I was too startled by Brandon’s existence to even think about who he might actually be, although I had an idea. Could Elliott have had a son and not told me about him? Why would he do that? Like Emma, I sort of wanted something else to think about, although it was getting late, and part of me just wanted to close my eyes and think about nothing for a while. Instead, I picked up my phone again. “I’ll text Jamie and see if he can send a message to Christian since I don’t have Christian’s number and Cadence obviously isn’t going to do it tonight.”
“Great,” Emma said, still searching. “Maybe it’s on your laptop, and I just didn’t know to search for it. Do you mind if I look?”
“Knock yourself out,” I replied, sliding it to her the best I could on the comforter as I sent a quick text to Jamie asking him to let Christian know we’d found Giovani in Austria and asking if there were external camera files he could share with us. I didn’t bother to try to keep it a secret now that my friends were helping. I think Cadence had figured out that they knew more than we were letting on, and while I wasn’t sure Aaron was with her at the restaurant, I got the impression he was, so he must know as well.
Jamie’s reaction was much different than my sister’s had been. Two seconds after I hit send, my phone was ringing. “Hello?” I answered cautiously.
“Cassidy! You found him! That’s awesome!”
I was suddenly so overwhelmingly proud of myself, I didn’t even know what to say, although I had a feeling Elliott’s reaction would’ve been similar had it been him on the other end of the phone. “Uh, thanks,” I stammered. “It was actually Emma who spotted him.”
“Still, solid group effort. Way to go. Have you told your sister yet?”
“I told her.”
“Oh, I can tell from your tone that she was not as excited as I am.”
“Let’s just say she didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal.” I hoped I didn’t sound whiny.
“Well, I think she’s getting ready to go on a hunt.”
“Right. That’s what she said.”
“I’m sure Christian will be excited, too.
I’ll let him know. He’s pretty busy right now, and I’m not sure what he can push out to you, but if he can send you what you need, I’m sure he’ll do it.”
“That would be awesome.” I was so glad my sister’s friends were nice and talked to me like I was a grownup, even when she didn’t seem to have much time for me.
“All right. Thanks for letting me know. Great job.”
“Thank you, Dr. Joplin,” I replied, smiling. I’d thrown in his formal title there just to remind myself this wasn’t a nobody who was giving me accolades. This was a certified medical doctor and the world’s best Healer. I hung up and leaned back against the wall.
“Jamie seemed proud of us,” Lucy said. She did not have her laptop open. She was staring across the room like she was still puzzled over Brandon.
“He was,” I agreed. “He said he’d let Christian know.”
“Are their apartments near each other?” Lucy asked.
“I have no idea. He can always use his IAC, which is instantaneous,” I reminded her. “I desperately want to go back there, though.” Even though I was at headquarters for the worst reason in the universe, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be there again.
“We have Monday off,” Emma reminded me, finally looking up from her laptop. “Parent teacher conferences.”
“I know.” I would be lying if I hadn’t been thinking about the possibility of begging Cadence to come and get me.
“Maybe you can use Brandon as leverage to make her feel bad,” Lucy said, raising and lowering her eyebrows rapidly. “If he really is Elliott’s son, and she hasn’t told you….”
“I can make her feel bad, and then she’ll be forced to come and get me?” I finished.
“Precisely.” Lucy folded her arms and nodded at me.
It was a good idea. I would have to go over it a bit in my mind to see if it might work. Before I could comment further, Emma’s cell phone rang, which was strange because Emma’s cell phone never rings unless it’s her parents or one of us, and I was sure her parents wouldn’t still be up.
“Hmmm,” she said, answering it. “Hello? Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh.” She clicked a few keys on her own laptop, having set mine aside. “Okay. Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay. Thanks.” She hung up, set her phone down, did a few more clicks, and then set her laptop down and picked up mine.
“Uh, Emma, who was that?” Lucy finally asked as she did the same few clicks on my laptop.
“Oh, that was Christian,” she said. She set my MacBook down. “Can I have your laptop, Lucy? And make sure your email is open.”
“You were just in my email?” I asked, still wondering how in the world Christian had gotten her cell phone number, although it shouldn’t have surprised me. CHENRY77 was everywhere.
“Yeah, to get the email Christian just sent us.” Lucy handed over her open laptop, and Emma clicked through it. “There. It’ll take a while to run, but he said everything he has access to will be there when it’s done. I doubt it’s really everything,” she clarified, “but it should be what we need.”
“You don’t think it’s weird that some Revolutionary War soldier just called your cell, Em?” Lucy asked. “Does he call you frequently?”
“No, he’s never called before, but he said he figured I’d be the one most likely to know how to run the install.” She shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it wasn’t. My sister was a Vampire Hunter after all. In comparison, how could anything else ever seem odd?
“Well, I’m not staying up for all that,” I said, yawning. “I say, we go to sleep, and we can work on that tomorrow. And if I can talk my sister into letting me go to KC tomorrow, then I’m doing it, and you two can fend for yourselves.”
“Like you were any help anyway,” Lucy teased, and I glared at her before she started giggling. “Okay, I agree. And I must say, I’m very proud of you for staying off of there without us the last few days as we agreed. And for staying away from the news headlines.”
“Thank you,” I said, getting up to grab my pajamas out of my dresser drawer. Emma had brought her sleeping bag and would crash on the floor, and while Lucy and I would both fit in the bed, I thought I might go sleep in Cadence’s room just because I kinda wanted some quiet, and Lucy had a tendency to talk until she passed out. “I have to say, though, this is truly killing me, you guys.” I turned and looked at them, and both of my friends wore sympathetic expressions. “I just… want to be part of it so bad.”
“I know,” Lucy nodded. “And you will be. Hopefully, we all will be, but if Jamie says we have to wait, I know you can trust that. He would know.”
“And… my parents still act like they have no idea any of this could be real even when I even slightly hint around at it,” Emma pointed out. She is not a subtle person, so I could only imagine what kind of clues she might be dropping. Maybe her parents didn’t even really know about the Clandestine Ternion.
“Well, all I know is, if they don’t let me do something more than look at security cameras soon, I’m gonna lose my mind,” I said, thinking that I might go stir crazy if Cadence didn’t take me to Kansas City the next day.
There wasn’t much for either of them to say, so they just nodded sympathetically again, and I headed down the hall to get ready for bed.
Later that night, I tossed and turned in Cadence’s room, thinking about how much my life had changed in the last ten months or so. I could imagine her friends from high school sitting in here that night, planning to go to the Eidolon Festival, Drew in the pink bean bag chair, no doubt. I thought about Aaron sneaking through the window later that night, one of my first clues that something weird was going on, and then the other times he’d snuck in. Elliott had come through that window, too. Who knows who else? My sister had slept here, dreaming of being a teacher, thinking Jack was dead, crying over Aaron. And now, here I was, wishing my life could be like hers.
I was ready. I knew it in my heart. I know Jamie had said more than once that the Transformation serum wouldn’t take until I was seventeen, but I could feel it in my bones. Not only would it take, I could be just as great as Cadence if only they’d give me a chance. When I thought about all the adventures she was having, all the people she was meeting, the places she’d visited, I couldn’t imagine staying in this tiny Podunk town for another year, not even for another minute. I could take some sort of accelerated courses and finish high school early, or get my GED, whatever I needed to get out of here.
Of course, my parents would never allow it. I wondered how old Brandon was, if he was actually going on that hunt tonight, if he was thinking of Transforming, or if he had already done so. Where did he grow up? How well did he know his dad? Why hadn’t Elliott even mentioned him to me? It was that last question that bothered me most of all. It wouldn’t be the first time someone shocked the crap out of me, but despite the fact that Elliott had mentioned he didn’t have a very good relationship with his grown children, I couldn’t see him walking away from Brandon. It just didn’t make sense. And I fell asleep thinking of the two of them together.
It was homecoming. I could tell by the lights and decorations. Everything looked the same as it had a few months ago when Elliott had chaperoned our spring dance. There he was, standing across the way, wearing a three-piece suit, a broad smile on his face. I saw a few of my friends, but it wasn’t Milo’s or Wes’s hand I reached for. It was Brandon’s. He had his hair slicked back, unlike his father, whose curls went whichever way they wished, and he, too, was dressed to impress in a pinstripe gray suit.
We twirled around the dance floor, not to a popular song but to some sort of waltz, and no matter how fast we spun or how high he lifted me up off the ground, I felt perfectly safe and calm, the way I always did when his dad was nearby, though I knew this feeling of protection wasn’t coming from Elliott. It was Brandon who made me feel like nothing could ever harm me.
That’s why, when I saw Giovani and Zabrina spinning across the dance floor, coming closer and closer, I didn’t pa
nic. Not only was I certain Brandon would keep me safe, I felt perfectly confident in my own abilities as a Vampire Hunter. As Giovani’s maniacal smile filled my vision, I reached down and plucked a dagger off of my calf, ready to plunge it into his heartless chest.
I sat upright in Cadence’s bed, sweat pouring down my face, despite the fact that it was rather cold in her room. The sun was just poking through the slats on her blinds, and a quick glance at her nightstand told me it wasn’t quite 7:00 yet. I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself it was just a dream. I realized I wasn’t sweating or breathing hard because I had been afraid of the Vampires. I was feeling this way because I hadn’t gotten a chance to dispatch them the way I wanted to. I fell backward on to the pillows and tried to slow my pulse. Whatever it was inside my blood that was supposed to wait until I was seventeen to activate was clearly unaware of this stipulation. I was ready to Transform, and I felt like every fiber of my being was begging for the change. I had no idea how I could possibly last another year.
Chapter 10
My friends were still sleeping, and so were my parents, so I decided to take my phone and go hang out in the kitchen, waiting for my sister to call. Normally, it would be pancake day, but I wasn’t sure if my dad would go to all that trouble with my friends here. Sometimes he did; sometimes he didn’t. Either way, it didn’t stop me from having a bowl of Cheerios while I stared at my phone.
When my phone finally did ring, I answered it on the first ring. “Cadence?” I hoped I sounded happy to hear from her and not like someone who has been staring at her phone forever.
“Hey, Cass. You sound wide awake. How’s it going?” my sister asked, and I thought I heard the sound of springs groaning like she was still in bed.
It kind of bothered me that she hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet when she knew I was waiting to hear about Brandon. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me for, like, an hour,” I replied, trying to stay calm, though I was having trouble with it, clearly. I guess this wasn’t as important to her as it was to me. Like most things these days.
