Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot)

by Amsden, Christine

  Secrets and Lies

  a Cassie Scot novel

  by Christine Amsden

  Twilight Times Books

  Kingsport Tennessee

  Secrets and Lies: a Cassie Scot novel

  This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Christine Amsden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Twilight Times Books

  P O Box 3340

  Kingsport TN 37664

  http://twilighttimesbooks.com/

  First Edition, October 2013

  Cover art by Ural Akyuz

  Published in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Epilogue

  About the author

  Acknowledgments

  For my husband, Austin, who always believed in me.

  He’s all the magic I need.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to give special thanks to all those who struggled through early drafts of this book: Linda Amsden, Stephen Amsden, Leah Cypess, Crystal Layne Futrell, Austin Morgan and Kat Otis.

  Your insights helped bring Cassie to life.

  Prologue

  I SMELL TROUBLE.”

  Evan Blackwood had been staring blankly at a news report about a hunt for a man who had robbed a local bank earlier in the week. Now, he stared blankly at his best friend and cousin, Scott Lee. Evan had hoped Scott would help take his mind off the woman he loved – the woman who had flatly rejected him. Instead, Scott was making things worse with dire predictions... predictions Evan had no choice but to take seriously. Scott was, after all, a powerful intuitive, whose gift had only seemed to improve after his unfortunate run-in with a werewolf ten years earlier.

  “What do you expect me to do?” Evan asked. “Hit her over the head with a club and drag her by the hair back to my cave?”

  Scott snorted. “You never had to do any of that. You had her right here, in your cave, and you let her walk out. You could order her back, but you won’t.”

  Evan didn’t dignify the comment with a response. Scott’s instincts had always served him better when it came to physical threats rather than emotional ones, and Scott didn’t want to hear that Cassie would hate Evan for forcing her to stay with him. In Scott’s world, after she was safe, gratitude would soften her heart. Or if not that, then at least time. If Evan had ever thought anything of the sort, her reaction to his saving her life, and the life debt she now owed him, set him straight.

  He had to admit, his initial marriage proposal hadn’t been at all well done. Nerves he barely acknowledged had fumbled the question into a near-command, Marry me, and she had freaked out. Still, he had hoped she would want to marry him. Now, he wasn’t even sure how he could try to convince her without inadvertently coercing her. The life debt made it difficult for her to refuse anything she knew he wanted, and impossible for her to refuse anything he directly commanded.

  Scott wasn’t the first one to suggest he just claim her, either. Evan’s father, Victor Blackwood, had said much the same thing, adding: I want to see you steal that girl right out from under her father’s nose. At least Scott’s motives were better.

  “I spotted one of the Travises in town today,” Scott said.

  Evan nearly growled. “One of these days, we really need to run that family out of town.”

  “Hey, you know I’d help you with that if it came to it, but it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.”

  “They wouldn’t go after Cassie.”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

  He had a point, Evan grudgingly admitted. The Travises had always lived just outside of civilized behavior, and they seemed to make their own rules.

  “And I told you about the Blairs asking questions,” Scott added.

  “You also said they were probably just trying to stir up trouble.” The Blairs were mind mages, adept at manipulating people’s behaviors with a few well-chosen, well-timed words.

  “They may be succeeding.”

  “Or they may be hoping to goad me into acting too soon, pushing her away.”

  Scott didn’t have an answer to that. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t understand matters of the heart, since he was too dangerous by half, the beast within him prone to violence. Scott was, perhaps, the only man in town Evan didn’t know if he could beat in a fight. He only hoped he never had to find out for sure.

  “Come on.” Evan shut off the TV with a flicker of will, not even bothering with the remote, resting within easy arm’s reach on the end table next to him. “I can’t stay here anymore tonight. We’ll find her, make sure she’s safe, and if not, send a message to anyone stupid enough to try anything.”

  * * *

  Evan spotted Matthew Blair coming out of the tiny, four-screen movie theater with his father, James. The two noticed Evan, standing in the shadows of the park across the street, and smirked, but continued walking as if they had no fear of him at all.

  “I don’t like it,” Evan said in a hushed voice. “They look like they’re up to something.”

  “They look like they want you to think they’re up to something,” Scott corrected. The Blairs had not seen him. Almost no one could, if he didn’t want to be seen. His family knew more about the magic of illusion than anyone else in town.

  “There she is.” Evan straightened when he spotted Cassie, flanked by Kaitlin and Madison, straggling out of the theater. Kaitlin and Cassie spoke animatedly about something, while Madison hung behind a step or two, listening thoughtfully.

  “You can’t watch her constantly,” Scott said, significantly. Evan ignored the implications.

  Cassie and her friends turned left, away from the theater, and headed down a dark side street that would take them to Cassie and Kaitlin’s apartment, about half a mile away. Silently, Evan and Scott followed.

  Suddenly, Scott stopped, holding up his hand. Evan stood completely still, allowing his friend’s superior senses to work, and then watched as Scott leaped forward. Scott didn’t have super speed, but he was in good shape and moved quickly. The man Scott had spotted hiding under the fog of invisibility never had a chance. In an instant, he was dangling by his throat against a brick wall.

  The noise must have startled the women, because they tore off down the street, disappearing around a corner. Evan was momentarily torn between whether to follow them or stay and help Scott, when he recognized the man who was rapidly turning blue: Jacob Travis.

  The Travises made up the heart of the parasitic underbelly of Eagle Rock. They were blood mages, though they would not openly admit it, feeding on pain and death. In the minds of many, including Evan, they were no better than vampires. In a rare, united move by the town’s most powerful sorcerers a decade or so
ago, the three worst blood mages had been put down.

  Not all blood was created equal, or so blood mages claimed. They liked the blood of sorcerers the best, and now here was one, trailing after the woman he loved. Many believed her to be drained or repressed, neither of which made her blood less valuable, though either hindered her ability to protect herself.

  Jacob Travis looked like the trash he was, complete with scraggly beard and unkempt hair. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt that had both seen better days, and he kicked futilely at the air with sneakers that had gone through the mud a few times.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Evan said to the loathsome creature. “Cassie is mine.”

  Jacob spluttered and gurgled until Scott relaxed his hold just enough to let him take a breath. He tried to speak, but his words came out croaky and garbled.

  “What was that?” Scott asked.

  “Not...Cassie...not...stupid.”

  Evan frowned. “You weren’t after Cassie?”

  “No!”

  Scott sniffed the air. “I smell blood.”

  Jacob’s face paled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Scott didn’t listen. He just looked over the man until he spotted something clasped in his right hand. Using a none-too-gentle pressure on Jacob’s wrist, Scott managed to pry something free: a tissue with a smear of blood.

  Since Cassie knew better than to leave something like that lying around, Evan had to admit that Jacob had probably been telling the truth about not going after her. On the other hand, Jacob was definitely after someone, and Evan intended to find out who.

  “Whose blood is this?” Scott asked.

  “Mine,” Jacob said.

  Scott snorted in disgust at the obvious lie. Then he lifted the tissue to his nose and gently sniffed. “It smells like one of the girls with Cassie tonight. The pretty one.”

  “Which one is that?” Evan asked. Though Evan had eyes only for Cassie, he could see an argument for calling both of her friends pretty. He only wished it had been someone else paying the compliment. By Scott’s own admission, a werewolf had no business getting romantically involved with humans. That didn’t mean he couldn’t look, but there was something in his voice that made Evan uneasy.

  “Brown hair, curvy,” Scott said.

  Madison. Evan didn’t speak her name, in case Jacob didn’t know it. For that matter, he wasn’t sure he wanted to clue Scott in to her identity.

  “How did you get her blood?” Evan asked.

  Jacob closed his mouth tightly, and cast Evan a belligerent look. Scott tightened his hold on his throat.

  “Okay! Call off the dog!”

  Scott tightened his grip even more. There was nothing he hated worse than being likened to a dog, especially one with a master. Scott had no master, not even within his pack.

  “Might not want to insult the man with his hand around your throat,” Evan said.

  Jacob couldn’t speak, though he fought for air.

  “You could try saying you’re sorry,” Evan suggested, “but I don’t know if it will work.”

  Jacob struggled, but still couldn’t speak.

  “Hey, Scott, he might have more luck apologizing if he can talk.”

  “Not sure I want him to talk,” Scott said. “So far, he’s only spouting lies.”

  An observer might have thought Scott was playing the role of bad cop in some scripted drama, but Evan knew better. A beast lay just beneath Scott’s civilized exterior, and if provoked, he would kill. Evan didn’t quite understand how Jacob Travis had provoked Scott to that level, but he saw the signs.

  “I’d be interested in hearing what he has to say,” Evan said. “I’m sure we can convince him to tell the truth.”

  “Torture doesn’t work. Give me a few minutes alone with him and I’ll have him confessing to the murder of JFK.”

  Jacob’s face was turning blue again.

  “Scott,” Evan said, “she’s not your mate.”

  Scott turned cold, gray eyes on Evan, freezing him for a moment. Then, just as Evan was beginning to think he would have to force his friend away with magic, Scott let Jacob go. The man fell to the ground in a graceless heap. Damn. Evan hoped his guess about Scott’s motives hadn’t been right.

  “Start talking,” Evan said. “And I’d better believe your answers.”

  Jacob put his hand up as he coughed and gasped for breath. Evan gave him a minute to compose himself, but only a minute.

  “Well?” Evan prompted.

  “There was a bank robbery a few days back,” Jacob began.

  Evan remembered the news reports he had half paid attention to, and gave a curt nod.

  “The girl, she’s the one he got to. No one else knew, he just walked up to her and showed her the gun. Must have scared her half to death, ‘cause she pulsed.”

  Evan started in surprise, but Scott didn’t even flinch. Either he had suspected the possibility, or he was better at hiding his feelings than Evan.

  Pulsing wasn’t something a grown sorceress normally did. It was a symptom of the young, or possibly those who had been painfully repressed. Even sorcerers with no access to real training naturally learned to control the untamed magical impulses by the time they reached adulthood.

  What made the idea even stranger to Evan was that completely untrained sorcerers in the Eagle Rock area were almost unheard of. The magical world wasn’t one big black hole for information. There were levels of knowledge and understanding from the widely known to the obscure. The most closely held secrets, such as alchemy, were guarded almost more strongly against other sorcerers than against lay people. On the other hand, the principles involved in meditation and grounding were widely available on the Internet to anyone with a mind to look.

  And as if all that wasn’t strange enough, in the Eagle Rock area almost anyone with magic was related, even distantly, to someone willing to offer basic training. Family tended to be important to sorcerers. Evan’s father had been known to tutor cousins so distant that they barely clung to the family tree.

  “Who else knows?” Scott asked.

  “Don’t know. Didn’t stop to take a poll.”

  Scott growled, low in his throat.

  “It wasn’t strong,” Jacob said. “Unless there was someone else in the bank who could pick up on it, no one else knows. All the pulse did was send a breeze through the room, like someone opened the door, ‘cept it was closed. Guy might have backed up a step, too.”

  “Think he’s telling the truth?” Evan asked.

  “Probably,” Scott said, “but his clan knows.”

  Which meant if they killed him without the support of the town, they would have to go up against the entire Travis clan.

  “All right,” Evan said, “here’s what we’re going to do. You can go, but you deliver a message for me: If I even get a hint that you’re using blood magic, I’ll mobilize the entire town against you.”

  “Weren’t using blood magic,” Jacob whined. “Just thought she was pretty.”

  Scott grabbed one of his hands, twisted, and broke Jacob’s wrist. The man let out a howl of pain, and slumped to the ground, sobbing.

  “Then consider her under my protection, too,” Evan said.

  “Can’t...have...all...girls...” Jacob said.

  “I can break your other wrist,” Scott said.

  Jacob didn’t respond, except with more sobs.

  Evan turned away, and headed in the direction Cassie had gone, letting the sobs and wails fall behind him. Scott followed a few feet back, remaining hidden, but of course the women were long gone. All that remained was to go to Cassie’s apartment and make sure they had made it back all right.

  “You’ll get spread pretty thin if you try to defend every woman in town,” Scott said.

  Evan just shrugged. Scott may have had a point, but he didn’t care. In fact, he realized when he stood in front of Cassie’s apartment and sensed her presence safely within, he felt good for the first time in we
eks. There was a primitive satisfaction in protecting someone from a bad guy, especially one as black as Jacob Travis. And even if Jacob hadn’t been after Cassie, Evan had sent a clear message to anyone who would hurt her – or her friends.

  It should buy him time. He only hoped it bought him enough.

  1

  IT TURNS OUT, THERE’S A TIME limit on feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody mentioned it to me the day I moved into Kaitlin’s one-bedroom apartment, stowing boxes of clothes in one corner while making a makeshift bed out of blankets on the floor. I didn’t hear a word about it on Monday or Tuesday, when Kaitlin went to work and I flipped through endless channels of daytime TV, blocking out my own problems by getting angry with the men who cheated on their pregnant girlfriends.

  Kaitlin almost mentioned something on Wednesday, after I complained about the endless stream of visitors I refused to let into the apartment that day. Most notably, my former father wanted to talk about something I didn’t catch, but which, from the tone of his voice, was clearly my fault. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d disowned me? Did I have to continue to listen to his lectures as well? No doubt he had some suspicions about me fraternizing with the Blackwoods, his long-time enemies, but I couldn’t handle it, not from a man who had rejected me. Besides, I had bigger problems with one Blackwood – Evan – than I cared to admit.

  On Thursday, when Kaitlin and I took Madison to the movies to help get her mind off the bank robbery, I could have sworn Evan was following me. I’m sure it was nothing more than paranoia, but wasn’t I entitled to a few delusions about the man who had complete control of my life? Someone who could, on a whim, command me to do anything at all? I spent Thursday night, after the movie, coming up with more and more bizarre orders he could give me: Stand on your head. Circle your head and pat your tummy. Wink at the next ten strangers who walk by.

  He would probably not ask me to do any of those things, but thinking about them helped me keep my mind off the more likely orders: Kiss me. Move in with me. Marry me.