Kaitlin's Tale

by Christine Amsden

  The news went to a commercial break. Matthew took a deep breath, straightened his spine, and knocked, twice.

  Who on Earth...? Matthew watched, through Kaitlin’s eyes, as she looked at her watch, handed the car back to Jay, then went to answer the door. He experienced a brief moment of double vision before he was able to see through his own eyes again. She had changed out of her crisp green uniform and into a simple gray sweat suit that failed to detract from her beauty. Her long blonde hair was tied into a ponytail and her face was scrubbed free of makeup, leaving behind a natural, healthy glow. Or almost healthy. Matthew noticed something he had missed earlier – the scars of countless bite marks around her neck and throat. He didn’t let his eyes linger there, but instead took in the rest of her body from head to toe. The sweat suit did its best to disguise her beautiful, long legs, but beneath the hem he saw a glimpse of bare foot and neatly groomed but unadorned toenails.

  Matthew wasn’t the only one checking the other out. Kaitlin liked the look of him too, and while her face betrayed little of her feelings, her thoughts betrayed everything. She liked his sandy brown hair, his green eyes, his lean frame, his classy clothes, and his... aura of power? Now, that was something he could use. Maybe she wouldn’t be so tough to crack after all.

  Then her mind snapped back to what he had done to Cassie and she hardened both her heart and her mind. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “It was nice to see a friendly, familiar face,” Matthew said. “I just wanted to talk.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “That’s almost hard to believe,” Matthew said, giving her a smile and a wink.

  “Are you –” Kaitlin stopped suddenly, thinking, flirting with me? But in the end what she said was, “joking with me?”

  “Yes,” Matthew said, in answer to both questions. He was flirting with her. And why not? She was an attractive woman. He was an attractive man. They were both single, in need of companionship, and there was something between them, simmering beneath the surface. He didn’t know if it had always been there and he had missed it because he so often saw Kaitlin standing beside Cassie, but he felt it now, and it wasn’t just on his side.

  “What do you want, really?” Kaitlin asked. “Did Cassie send you here? I know I haven’t called but –”

  “Cassie didn’t send me,” Matthew replied. “She doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  “Why are you here?” Kaitlin asked again. “Not here at my door” – although I’d love to know that too – “but here with Alexander.”

  “Would you like to take a stroll outside?” Matthew asked, not wanting to have the conversation here where he was sure the walls had eyes and ears.

  Kaitlin shuddered. “I can’t.” In her mind she saw Jason, fangs extended, ready to bite.

  “Not outside the threshold of the compound, just outside. They have a running track and a garden. And a playground, if I’m not mistaken. When was the last time Jay went outside?”

  Out? Jay suddenly came up behind his mother and peeked out from between her legs, sizing up the intruder before him.

  Matthew suddenly knew exactly how to play this game. He dropped to his haunches so he could get more or less on eye level with the boy. It put him at eye level with those legs he admired so much too, but unlike Jay he wasn’t lucky enough to get to touch them.

  “Hi there,” Matthew said. “My name is Matthew James Blair. What’s yours?”

  Jay, the boy thought but didn’t say.

  “Oh,” Kaitlin said, and her mind started spinning with anxiety. “He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t even make sounds like he was supposed to have done at a few months old. I don’t know why. I mean, I talk to him like they say, and I don’t talk baby talk. Not that he’s using baby talk. He’s not talking at all. And yes, he’s running and jumping like a ten-year-old, so maybe his verbal skills are a little behind and I shouldn’t worry but I’m his mom so isn’t it my right to worry?” She said all of this in between breaths, and then had to fight for air.

  Matthew lowered his head so she couldn’t see his smile. There was still a spark of life in her after all. It hadn’t gone, as he had supposed earlier; it had simply transferred to her son. He could respect that. Now, if only he could convince her to start caring about herself again. That might be the trick with her, but he wasn’t done taking her temperature yet. They definitely needed to take that walk.

  “I think Jay knows exactly what I’m saying,” Matthew said to both mother and child. “Don’t you?”

  Out? Jay thought, his eyes going wide with hope and excitement. He had his mother’s eyes, without the infinite sadness. Was this how she’d looked when she was young? He tried to remember her from before her pregnancy, the few times he’d glimpsed her in town, usually at the diner. Come to think of it, there had always been a sadness there, but he’d never paid close attention to it because she’d always covered it with light flirtation.

  “I haven’t taken him outside since we got here,” Kaitlin confessed. “That probably makes me a terrible mother.”

  Matthew hesitated, because when she’d said terrible, she’d been thinking terrified, and for a moment he wasn’t sure which she’d actually said. That happened sometimes, moments he had to find a way to cover until he knew how to respond. But even when he identified the dichotomy, he still didn’t know how to respond. This was one of those times when he might try something to see what happened, reserving the right for a do-over (memory wipe) if necessary. But he didn’t have the kind of reserves it took to play that game right now.

  “Jay loves you,” Matthew said instead.

  “How do you know? Are you an empath?”

  “No,” Matthew said honestly. “But it’s obvious.”

  Kaitlin reached down to sweep the boy out from between her legs, holding and trying to cuddle the boy she loved. He wanted none of it at the moment, though. He twisted and writhed, trying to get down and out.

  “You hurt my friend,” Kaitlin said. “I should slam the door in your face.”

  “So why haven’t you?”

  She bit her lip, unsure of the answer. Matthew, caught up in her thoughts, couldn’t quite pinpoint it either but maybe it was... loneliness. She had no friends here, and the ones she had once known were lost to her forever.

  Matthew knew loneliness too. He had no friends, only allies.

  Now where had that self-pitying thought come from? His father would call it a sign of weakness and he’d be right. Matthew didn’t need friends, but he could use Kaitlin right now, just as he had used so many in the past.

  “Come on, just a bit of fresh air. You can push Jay on the swings, and if you tell me to go away, I will.”

  “I–” shouldn’t do this. God, Kaitlin, don’t you know how to pick ‘em. What would Cassie do? “I just need a few minutes to change,” she said finally.

  “All right. I’ll meet you upstairs at the entrance.”

  * * *

  Matthew swung by the dining room on his way to the front doors, still a little hungry from his interrupted dinner and thinking it would be nice to have some snacks for both mother and child while he was at it. He added some chocolates from his own stash, not entirely trusting the kitchen past bananas and granola bars.

  Kaitlin waited for him near the front doors when he arrived, literally radiant with the soft glow of the evening sunlight behind her. For a second he could think of nothing except her, not even the reason he had chosen to seek her out in the first place. She looked like an angel standing there, beautiful and vulnerable.

  He suddenly remembered the first time he had ever seen her, in The Main Street Cafe when she’d been sixteen and he’d been twenty-one. He had noticed her right away; she was exactly his type – long, long legs and full of sass. He’d been staring at her for a moment when his grandmother, Grace Blair, powerful loc
al seer, cleared her throat.

  “Hm?” he’d asked.

  “That’s the woman you’re going to marry one day,” Grace had told him.

  For a single moment, an instant almost frozen in time, he’d thought she meant Kaitlin. Then he saw Cassandra Scot seated at the booth Kaitlin was servicing, along with a few other high school kids he couldn’t recall.

  “You’ve got my wife all picked out for me?” Matthew had asked. He loved his grandmother, he really did, but he had no illusions about her. She was a fierce advocate for and protector of her family, but her idea of the right path didn’t always mesh with his.

  “Not for a few years yet,” Grace said.

  “And why would I marry her?” Matthew asked as they found a seat at a nearby booth.

  “Because an alliance with the Scots makes all kinds of sense and you know it.”

  “So this isn’t a prophecy?” Matthew asked.

  “Not... exactly.” Grace rarely hedged where prophecies were concerned, but lately she had been acting less and less certain about long-range predictions. It wasn’t at all difficult to know why; seers couldn’t see past their own death. But Matthew didn’t want to think about it, and no one in the family would talk about it directly, least of all Grace herself.

  “What is it exactly?” Matthew asked.

  “I’ve seen a number of scenarios that bring you together, and I know she’ll make you happy.”

  “I’ll think about it. In a few years.”

  But he had thought about that day often over the past seven years. Not about Kaitlin – he had nearly forgotten that part – but about Cassie, and the promise of happiness offered to him by a gifted seer. It had all gone terribly wrong, and he still didn’t understand why.

  “Hi,” Kaitlin said when he drew to within earshot. A moment later he was also within telepathic range. She was nervous. Uncertain. Emotions she didn’t show in her flirtatious, slightly lopsided smile.

  “Hi, yourself,” Matthew replied. “You should see yourself standing there, with the sunlight all around. You’re an angel.”

  Wow. What a line. Takes “beautiful” to a whole new level. Too bad it’s not true. “Thank you. You’re not half bad yourself.” Good. Nice and confident. Put him off-guard, maybe.

  Matthew wished he could wipe the uncertainty clean out of her mind, but such deeply ingrained patterns of thought took more time and skill to finesse away. Perhaps tomorrow, but in the meantime he decided to use another whisper of power. He breathed the possibility into her mind that maybe, just maybe, he thinks I’m beautiful.

  Matthew paused, expecting a slight echo effect, but nothing happened. Apparently, Kaitlin’s self-doubts were more firmly entrenched than he’d believed.

  “Jay’s trying to pull my arm off,” Kaitlin said.

  Matthew looked down at the tiny but astonishingly sturdy toddler, whose mind was fixated on the sunlight he could clearly see through the front doors. He wanted out, and he almost looked strong enough to tug his mom out with him. No wonder the vampire hunters had welcomed both him and his mom – magic or no magic, Kaitlin brought something special to this compound.

  “Let’s go, then.” Matthew eased himself around Kaitlin so he could open the door for her, giving her a bright smile as she passed.

  She faltered for a moment, her thoughts sort of hitching, but her attention quickly turned to keeping up with her son, who had finally succeeded in breaking free of her grip and run out onto the lawns.

  “Jay, wait for Mommy!”

  Matthew followed a few feet behind, not at all concerned that Jay would run out of sight. The boy knew where mommy was, and he wouldn’t wander far from her orbit. Not now. He was at the age where children felt free to learn and explore, just as long as they knew where their caregivers were. Jay quickly found the running path and, checking to make sure mommy was right behind, tore off down it until he found the playground. Kaitlin, panting, caught up with him a few seconds later, but he had already climbed the ladder to the top of the slide. When he saw her watching, he pushed himself down, laughing with glee.

  Jay had felt shut in for a very long time. Matthew suspected that it had begun before he’d come here.

  “He’s having fun,” Matthew said, taking a seat on a nearby bench. He set the bag of snacks down beside him. “Sit down. Relax.”

  Kaitlin clearly wasn’t sure if she should. She kept hovering over Jay, thinking she should be by his side in case he fell off some of the playground equipment, even if he did have super-strength.

  “I have lots of cousins,” Matthew added. “I spent most of my teenage years baby-sitting them.”

  “I never baby-sat for anyone,” Kaitlin said. “It was always just mom and me. She had a sister but her family disowned her after she got pregnant.” And we don’t talk about the anonymous sperm donor who was my dad. “I made money at my mom’s diner, technically before I was old enough to work there.”

  “You’re doing just fine with Jay,” Matthew said, meaning it.

  Kaitlin laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Oh yeah, I ran away with the most wanted vampires in the country a few weeks after he was born. I don’t know why someone hasn’t nominated me for mom of the year!”

  “I hear you nearly died getting him away. So there’s a balance.”

  “I’m that notorious, am I?” Kaitlin asked.

  No, her thoughts were that transparent, but Matthew had gambled that it was a widespread story.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Kaitlin asked, turning toward him. “Not with me.” Well, maybe a little bit. “But with Alexander. I haven’t been here for very long and even I know you two aren’t friends. I don’t really care about the politics, personally. I’m just looking for a place to be safe. But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure spending time with you is going to make me friends here.”

  “Probably not,” Matthew agreed. “If you like, I can pretend that I approached you and you told me to go to hell.”

  “I should. I haven’t forgotten what happened the last time I saw you. You know, when you kidnapped my best friend and did something to my head to prevent me from helping.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “Cassie’s working with you.” Kaitlin frowned, confused. “I don’t know why. I don’t trust you, but I’m listening to you. Of course, you could be messing with my mind right now.”

  “I’m not.”

  “How do I know?”

  “I don’t know.” Matthew considered trying some subtle reassurance, but he was low on power and in any case, he thought maybe honesty would work here. “I don’t know how you know, and I don’t know how I know. I’m not even sure why I came to see you. There was a moment, before I came, when I wondered if Alexander was using some kind of compulsion on me to convince me to approach you.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Matthew had been wondering that himself, but as he looked through Kaitlin’s eyes and into her thoughts, he had a possible answer. Alexander seemed to want him here, for whatever reason. And he wanted her. Matthew was unwilling and Kaitlin was frankly frightened. It was a bit of a stretch perhaps, but he had accused Alexander of far worse over the years. And some would say with far less evidence.

  Maybe they were right about Mad Matt.

  Deciding not to alarm her with his suspicions at the moment, he went with a partial truth. “I may be here for a while. I can’t tell you why yet; it might put you in danger if I did.”

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  He knew she meant it, but he shook his head. “This place is swimming in empaths.” And odds were good that another telepath lurked in the shadows somewhere. Telepaths were extremely rare, but Alexander had thousands of sorcerers on his side.

  “I know.” She shivered, and in her mind the ghost of an imag
e presented itself for a moment – just a moment – and then was gone before he had a chance to see it fully. “They’ve been after me since I first arrived.”

  “They can help. There are several empathic healers in my family. It’s what we do – other than politics.”

  “Two things I never would have thought went hand in hand,” Kaitlin mused aloud. But she didn’t have the typical distasteful feeling towards all politicians; she was truly indifferent – largely because she didn’t feel like she had any power to make a difference. He’d have to convince her otherwise. Or at least convince her that she was beautiful.

  Kaitlin noticed him staring at her then, but he didn’t look away. He kept his gaze fixed on her, daring her to look away. He didn’t think she would; it wasn’t her style, but her mind was racing with uncertainty.

  When was the last time a man flirted with me? When was the last time I flirted? Do I remember how?

  Yes, he wanted to tell her. Maintaining eye contact was a winning move every time.

  “You still haven’t explained why you’re here with me,” Kaitlin said. Remember what he is. A mind mage. For all you know, he’s making you feel this way.

  “Would you believe I just longed to see a familiar face while I was here?” Matthew asked.

  I wish. “Not really, no.”

  Matthew couldn’t help it. He reached out one long hand, just brushing a silken strand of hair that she had missed when she’d done her earlier hair flip. Her breath caught, and so did his. Her heart was pounding, echoing within his own chest.

  Kaitlin licked her lips, her thoughts racing, but not entirely in words. He won’t kiss me, she thought, it’s too soon. And I don’t want him to, do I? Talk about being attracted to a bad boy! Cassie always said I had terrible taste in men, and doesn’t this just prove it? And it’s not just me I have to worry about now, it’s Jay. But oh, her body loved the idea. It’s been so long, and I almost thought that part of me was dead. It isn’t. It so, so isn’t. She practically tingled. Like a teenager with my first crush.