Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot)

by Amsden, Christine

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means no, Cassie. I don’t intend to let you go.”

  “Oh.” Well, I’d known that, hadn’t I? I’d certainly guessed at it, but hearing it, without restraint, the unvarnished truth, straight from his lips... it was different. Now, it was real. Now, it was inevitable. I had two options, as I saw them: A futile fight, or a graceful surrender.

  It wouldn’t be so bad, a traitorous part of me said. Look at him there, even off his peak, with those penetrating blue eyes boring into your soul.

  This wasn’t a stranger. This was a man who knew me almost as well as I knew myself. And I wanted him. I’d wanted him since I’d known what it meant to want a man, and especially since I knew what it meant to kiss this man.

  And a part of me had thrilled at his possessive words; I couldn’t deny it. What did free will matter in the face of all that?

  It did matter, though. It mattered a lot. It was just... hopeless.

  “Cassie?” Evan said.

  I shook off the fog of thought, and flashed him what I hoped was a convincing smile. “Thanks for being honest.”

  “That’s it?” He had the look of a man given a last-minute reprieve on a death sentence.

  “You’re well within your rights.”

  “Yes, but–”

  I didn’t let him finish. Sliding gracefully away from the recliner I had claimed, I crossed the distance to him in a few purposeful strides. Then I lowered myself into his lap, and wound my arms around his neck, giving him an excellent view down the front of my v-neck shirt.

  “Cassie,” Evan said, not looking at my face. “Maybe we still need to talk.”

  “There’s nothing more to say.”

  He licked his lips. Beneath me, I could feel his rising desire, even through two layers of clothing. I shifted slightly, to a more comfortable position.

  “Cassie.” His voice sounded hoarse, unsure. He looked into my eyes for a moment, his own gaze reflecting both longing and uncertainty. Seeking permission.

  “It’s okay,” I assured him.

  He lifted a hand, running it through my hair. Then the hand went to my cheek, dancing across it in a feather-light caress. His fingers brushed my lips. He didn’t kiss me, but an electric tingle sparked in the wake of his touch.

  His hand slipped lower, barely touching the swell of one breast through layers of cotton and lace. I couldn’t see into his eyes, but I felt the tension in his muscles and heard the slight hitch in his breathing.

  He wanted me. It was a heady feeling.

  “How does this feel?” he asked.

  It felt good. Amazing. Better than that. There really were no words. But nerves were getting in the way. This step seemed so final, and binding. I’d never done it before, because it had always seemed so serious to me. Not that I was a saint or anything, but where my body led, my heart would follow.

  “You could kiss me,” I suggested. Then I could forget my nerves. I could forget everything, except Evan.

  “Not right now. I need you to be able to tell me what you want.”

  “What I want?” I pulled away slightly. “I want whatever you want.”

  His hand froze over my breast. He didn’t move it, but he did look questioningly into my eyes. Then he shook his head, as if trying to cast off the remnants of a dream.

  “This isn’t right.” He withdrew his hand, reluctantly.

  “Of course it’s right.” I pushed myself closer to him. “It’ll be better this way. You won’t have to make up excuses for us to spend time together. It’ll all be out in the open.”

  “Excuses?”

  “Like going to the camp today.”

  With that, Evan pushed me firmly, but gently, off his lap. He took a few deep, steadying breaths before turning to look at me. “What makes you think going to camp was an excuse? There are two lives at stake, or did you forget? What did you find out, anyway?”

  I buried my face in my hands. Clearly, he wasn’t going to make this easy. “Just that it’s useless. What am I supposed to do, if magic can’t help? If a hundred volunteer searchers can’t help?”

  “Look at me.” It was an order, and I had to obey. He studied me, intently, even going so far as to pull my lower eyelid down. “It’s not a spell.”

  “What’s not a spell?”

  “This. The way you’re acting.”

  “How am I acting?” I asked.

  “Did you eat or drink anything today?”

  “Just the water.”

  “Where are the bottles now?”

  “There’s one on the counter. I threw the empty one in the recycle bin.”

  “Wait here.”

  Evan left me alone to wonder what in the world he thought had happened to me. Poison? A love potion, perhaps? Ridiculous.

  He was gone for a full half-hour, leaving me to wish desperately that he hadn’t ordered me so explicitly to stay put, especially since it meant I couldn’t even rise to use the bathroom. I’m sure he hadn’t meant it that way, but he would have to learn to stop throwing around careless phrases. Either that, or we would have to get married. Finally, just when I was considering testing my voice against the size of the house, Evan returned, carrying an empty water bottle.

  “Hopelessness,” Evan said.

  “It does seem that way. I have to do anything you tell me, after all, including sit here like an idiot when I desperately need to pee.”

  Evan grimaced. “Sorry. Go.”

  I sped away, returning a few minutes later to see Evan still studying the bottle. “Was there something in my water?”

  “Yes. Hopelessness.”

  9

  I MET EVAN ON THE FIRST day of first grade. I didn’t notice him right away because I was surrounded by friends and acquaintances I’d known since preschool. A few kids gave me dirty looks, but I never had any problem ignoring them. They usually had parents who hated mine or were very suspicious of magic. In a small town, no child is truly born with a clean slate in the minds of his peers, or even his teachers.

  Our teacher, Mrs. Chase, was an unknown quantity. When she walked in, looking ancient to a classroom full of six-year-olds (though she was probably only forty or fifty), she gave the class a friendly enough smile. She wasn’t what you would call attractive, but she looked pleasant. She had short, curly hair and a small frame that made her seem a little less intimidating to her short students.

  She gave us the usual, innocuous introduction and then started to take attendance. The third name she called was Evan Blackwood, but when she read it, her smile faltered.

  “Here,” called a small, timid looking boy on the other side of the classroom.

  “Are you Victor Blackwood’s son?” Mrs. Chase asked.

  “Yes,” he told her.

  Mrs. Chase’s frown deepened. “Your father was a holy terror. His family practiced black magic. Does he still?”

  I turned to look more fully at the boy, whose face shone with confusion and trepidation. “I-um, I’m not supposed to do magic at school.”

  The rest of the class laughed, but I didn’t. I could already tell that this teacher was going to be a problem, and while I knew I could handle it (I’d done it before when a preschool aide got nasty with me), my heart went out to this boy. It was his first day of school, and so far he had done nothing wrong. I decided then and there that we needed to stick together.

  Evan’s eyes shot around the class of laughing students until they finally found mine. I smiled at him and after a faltering moment, he managed to smile back. He’d manage, I decided.

  “Go sit at the back of the classroom,” Mrs. Chase told him, when the laughter had died down. Then she continued with the roll call.

  When she got to my name, I was quite prepared for her reaction. “Cassandra Scot?”

  “Here!” I called, throwing my hand into the air.

  “Lord, not another one. Please don’t tell me your father is Edward Scot.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” I said, smili
ng brightly. I winked at a couple of my friends. Most of the class chuckled appreciatively.

  “Don’t get smart with me, young lady,” Mrs. Chase said.

  I never did understand that figure of speech. “Do you want me to be dumb?”

  “Go sit at the back of the class with Evan,” Mrs. Chase said, almost ferociously. When I began to obey she added, “And I do hope your family has also instructed you not to use magic at school.”

  She couldn’t have given me a more perfect opening if I’d planned it for her. Giving her my brightest smile yet I said, quite deliberately, “No, they didn’t.”

  The class giggled, a less enthusiastic chorus than before.

  Back then, I didn’t tell people I had no magical powers whatsoever. Let them assume. Let them wonder. Sometimes letting people believe what they liked gave me a strange sort of power.

  When I sat down next to Evan, though, I decided I would need to be honest with him if we were really going to watch out for one another.

  “That was great,” Evan told me. “I guess I sounded kind of dumb.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I think everyone’s afraid of you.”

  We were certainly getting quite a few looks as we continued our whispered conversation at the back of the class.

  “Uh oh.” Evan looked concerned.

  “Have you been to school before?” I asked.

  He shook his head. Even then, I could tell he hadn’t spent much time with other kids. “Are they scared of you?”

  “Some,” I said. Then I hid my face behind my hand to make sure only he could hear the rest of what I had to say. “I let them be scared. They’re too scared to be mean to me. But I don’t have any magic.”

  “Oh.” Evan didn’t seem sure what to say to that at first, but after a minute or so he said, “You can have some of mine.”

  * * *

  Evan is not a mind mage, so he had no idea how to undo the subtle workings of the hopelessness potion. He called his father, who called in a favor from James Blair, who did know how to counteract the potion. He delivered a vial of yellow liquid just after midnight with only two words of instructions: Drink it. So I did.

  I ended up staying in one of Evan’s guest rooms overnight because of the lateness of the hour, our desperate need for sleep, and our need to get a respectably early start the next morning. I’m not sure if the antidote worked immediately or took its time, since I fell asleep almost as soon as I drank it.

  The next morning, I truly understood what it meant to die of embarrassment.

  “Can we pretend yesterday never happened?” I asked when I joined him in the kitchen for breakfast.

  He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he poured two steaming mugs of tea and handed one of them to me.

  “I don’t think,” Evan said, “that we can ignore it.”

  “Why not? It was just a potion.”

  “Not entirely.” Evan sipped his tea, and did not look at me. “The hopelessness worked with your own thoughts and fears.”

  I shrugged. Perhaps it had. Where Evan was concerned, it hadn’t had to dig too deeply, although it had made me act in ways I never would have done otherwise. Where the girls were concerned, on the other hand, it had done a number on me. I had never just abandoned family like that, no matter what personal issues I felt, and I was only glad most of that nonsense had stayed firmly inside my head.

  “You do know what this means, though?” I said, partly in an attempt to change the subject, and partly because it desperately needed saying. “There’s a sorcerer involved in this.”

  “Yes.”

  “It could even mean the girls are still alive.” I tried not to feel too hopeful, though it was the first thought that had crossed my mind when I realized the truth. “Someone, or more likely, a group of people, could be masking them.”

  “I know, which is why you’re not leaving my side today.”

  I didn’t argue, not after what had happened the day before. At least he hadn’t forbidden me to continue with the investigation, which I had half feared.

  “Who gave you the water?” Evan asked.

  “One of the deputies – Jeff. I didn’t catch his last name. Of course, there’s no guarantee he’s the one who poisoned me. The mess hall was crowded and anyone could have nudged the tainted bottle in the right direction. Well, anyone with a magical talent and a bit of skill.”

  “True, but we’ll definitely want to keep an eye on Jeff.”

  The next logical question was, what would a sorcerer or group of sorcerers want with Laura and Regina? It was probably too much to hope that they didn’t have some magical talents, or perhaps gifts that had missed the untrained eyes of their parents. I hated coincidences, and it had bothered me from the first that both girls were distantly related to powerfully magical families. When I put that together with this new information, it was just one coincidence too many. Somehow, magic had reasserted itself in this generation, perhaps due to some recessive genes from both sides of the family. I didn’t know anything about Regina’s father, but her mother was a distant relative of mine, Laura’s father was distantly related to the Blackwoods, and Laura’s mother was a mild empath.

  Not that a gift like empathy necessarily meant Tracy Webster had any magical ability in her family. A gift isn’t exactly the same as magical talent, though some seem that way, such as Evan’s gift for telekinesis. Magic is the ability to tap into and transform magical energies inherent in nature. Most gifts can be duplicated with a great deal of effort by using magic, but to the person who has the gift, it comes as effortlessly as breathing. It is said to be a part of the soul, whereas magic is a part of the blood.

  Though gifts and magic could be inherited separately, with no connection to each other, it was more common to see gifts in magical families. So I could not discount Tracy’s empathy as a clue to her daughter’s potential.

  Besides, if I could be born without a gift or a drop of magic to two powerful sorcerers, then a sorcerer could be born to two individuals with only a weak connection to magic. Life was terribly unfair like that sometimes.

  We finished our breakfast in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, before heading to Evan’s car for the long drive back to camp.

  “Tracy is a mild empath, did you know?” I asked as soon as we were on our way.

  Evan didn’t look surprised, but he shook his head.

  “Is there a way to find out for sure if either of the girls has a gift or magical talent?” I asked.

  Again, Evan shook his head. “There are a few ways to find out if someone has magic, but they all either involve some degree of cooperation, or a blood sample. I could tell you if we find them, but that’s it. If there’s a way to detect a gift, though, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “They could be alive, couldn’t they? I mean, whoever this is could be concealing them?”

  Evan hesitated, and once again I found myself wondering exactly how powerful he was. At that point, if I had to guess, I would have said he could seriously challenge any individual sorcerer in town and many in twos or threes.

  “You still think they’re dead, don’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded, slowly. “It’s not that whoever this is couldn’t conceal the girls from me. I don’t know enough about whoever it is to say one way or another, it’s just that, well...”

  I understood then, and the knowledge made me sick. “Blood sacrifice.”

  “Yeah.”

  All I knew about blood sacrifice was what my family knew – which was just enough to protect ourselves. Anyone with an ounce of magical talent could use blood sacrifice to make himself temporarily powerful, but at a terrible cost to the soul. Not that this fact mattered to those who practiced the rituals.

  Basically, what I knew about blood magic was that the more blood a person drained, the more powerful the magic. Draining enough blood to kill was the most powerful act of all. Also, draining magical blood was more potent than non-magical blood, which put weak, untrained, and unpro
tected sorcerers at risk.

  Like Laura and Regina.

  “They might not be dead, though.” The words felt like a plea. “I mean, sometimes they just drain a little blood at a time, right?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “I don’t really know that much about blood magic, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. If that’s the kind of people we’re dealing with, then I just wouldn’t count on anything.”

  “They didn’t try to kill me. They could have.”

  “Death is messy. Most people don’t want to leave a trail of bodies lying around.”

  He had a point there.

  “Not that you should let your guard down,” he added.

  No, of course not. I shot him a dirty look. “What else could a sorcerer be after, if the girls have some magic in them?”

  He hesitated, giving me a sideways glance. “Well, they could be after the magic itself.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. It had been a while since I’d heard about how one sorcerer could drain magic from another, but I knew of the possibility. “Is that likely, though? I thought it hurt dreadfully, for both parties.”

  This time, when he gave me a sideways look, it was coupled with wide eyes and a slack jaw. “It happens all the time.”

  “It does?” Somehow, I had been led to believe it wasn’t all that common, especially compared to blood magic.

  “Yeah, and then the drained sorcerers are either sold to blood mages or else...”

  I waited for nearly a full minute for him to finish his sentence before urging him to go on. “Or else?”

  “Drained women are often sold into marriage.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your parents never told you about this?” Evan asked.

  “Obviously not.” I didn’t think it was possible, but I felt even angrier at my parents for leaving out what seemed to be an important bit of information.

  Evan reached across the console and took one of my hands in his, squeezing slightly. “A drained woman still has the genetic potential for magic to pass on to her children. Some men like the idea that a woman can’t threaten them, but can still breed true.”