How had I not known about this particular gift, when Nicolas had? Despite his insinuation, I had paid attention, but I had also noticed over the years that my parents kept things back. Sometimes I thought they were trying to protect me and sometimes they were trying to protect themselves, but either way it kept me in ignorance about a lot of things that would be useful to know – such as the dangers men could pose to me.
Nicolas had found Madison by this time. She looked as if she were trying to escape. She searched the crowd for me, sending me a clear signal with her eyes, but before I had a chance to decide to rescue her, I caught sight of someone else out of the corner of my eye: Scott Lee. He seemed intent on going to her rescue as well.
I stood, scooping Christina into my arms, and pushed through the crowd. Kaitlin followed right on my heels. Scott was already there when I reached Madison’s side, about to square off with Nicolas and making Madison look, if possible, even more afraid. Ignoring the two of them, I put my free arm around my friend in a congratulatory hug. “You were fantastic, as usual.”
“Thanks. I love being on stage. It doesn’t even feel like me when I’m up there. I did concerts and musicals in college and now I’m not sure I can stop.”
“You should put together a show for the tourists,” Kaitlin said. “Every Friday and Saturday night – Madison Carter Live. I’ll be your manager.”
Madison laughed as if she thought Kaitlin were joking, but I’m not sure she was. “No one’s going to want to come to see me sing.”
“I would,” Nicolas and Scott said at the same time. Scott bared his teeth at Nicolas, who obviously had no idea why Scott Lee was suddenly in his face. It wasn’t as if the two had ever had much contact.
Unfortunately, I thought I knew, and I didn’t like the way things were shaping up for Madison.
“How’s your hand?” Nicolas asked.
“Great. That stuff worked... great.”
When Madison threw another “help me” glance in my direction, I wedged myself between her and her over-eager suitors. “Let’s get some ice cream to celebrate.”
17
THE DAY HAD BEEN BUSY AND distracting. There wasn’t a lot I could do to help identify Regina and Laura’s killers until someone started taking my calls, but I had at least planned to make some follow-up calls. One message, people can ignore. If you really want people to talk to you, sometimes you have to make it clear that you’re not giving up.
Before I had to decide between joining my friends for ice cream, however, and making those calls, someone called me. I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered with a brisk, “Hello, Cassie Scot.”
“Hello, Cassie, this is Mrs. Layne, Renee’s mother.”
I straightened, remembering the rumors that Renee had been seen fleeing the stables just before the fire. I had been very interested in talking to Regina and Laura’s camp counselor but she had eluded me, both at the camp and in the days since. “Hello, Mrs. Layne. I’ve been trying to get in touch with your daughter for days.”
“Really?” She didn’t sound happy to hear that. “I have no idea where she is. I assumed she would come home for the rest of the summer after the camp closed down, but she didn’t, and no one knows where she is. When I called Nora, she suggested I call you.”
That surprised me. I had been under the impression that the old hag hated me.
“When was the last time you spoke to her?” I asked.
“Thursday morning,” Mrs. Layne said. “She called to say the camp was closing and she’d probably be coming home this weekend. She was pretty torn up about her girls. I think she blames herself.”
I could understand that point of view, since she had been in charge of their safety and according to reports, she had not been in the cabin at the time of the disappearance. But I didn’t say any of that to her mother. “Have you spoken to anyone else at the camp? Who saw her last?”
“Nora saw her with someone named Mackenzie.”
Uh oh. “Does anyone know if she left camp?”
“Her stuff is still unpacked and in her cabin,” Mrs. Layne said. “Everyone else has gone.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said. “I promise I’m going to do everything I can and I’ll let you know the moment I hear anything.”
I called Evan as soon as I hung up with Mrs. Layne, both to give him the latest tidbit, and to find out how his search was going. It had been two days, and I felt impatient to hear some actual news.
“Hello, Cassie.” Evan’s voice made me long, fleetingly, for the rest of him.
“Where are you?”
“Kansas.”
“Kansas? You’ve been through Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and now Kansas?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you getting the impression that you’re on a wild goose chase?”
Evan hesitated. “Yeah, I am. I’ve been telling my dad that since yesterday evening, but the only alternative is...”
When he didn’t finish, I prodded him a bit. “Is what?”
“Is to admit that your father was correct in his approach, which was to lay some magical traps around the camp and at Mackenzie’s house.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the bedroom wall, banging it a couple of times. Men and their stubbornness would put pride above anything else. “If it helps, it was probably just as well that you tried it both ways.”
“Maybe. We’re probably going to head back to the camp soon. Why’d you call?”
“To tell you that Renee Layne has been missing since Thursday morning. Her mom called to say she never went home, and her stuff is still unpacked at the cabin.” Quickly, I related everything else I knew.
“All right,” Evan said. “I’m going to make my father head back to the camp now. If we can’t find Mackenzie, we’ll start looking for Renee. It can’t be a coincidence that she’s missing.”
“I agree.”
I started to hang up but Evan called, “Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry I couldn’t make the concert. How was it?”
I hesitated, but decided it couldn’t hurt to tell him. “Interesting. Have you ever heard of a songbird?”
“Sure, why?”
Apparently, I was the only one who had missed this tidbit about the magical world. “Well, Nicolas said Madison is a songbird.”
“Really?” Evan sounded more interested than I would have guessed.
“I’ve heard her sing before and knew she was good, but it never occurred to me that she had a real gift before.”
“Hmm.”
“Evan, I was wondering... do you think maybe Madison might be in danger? I mean, now that people know about her gift. They might even suspect she has some magic talent. Is that nuts?”
Evan took in a deep breath. “No, you’re not nuts at all.”
“Also, your friend Scott was there and he... well, I know you trust him even though he’s a werewolf, and I’m trying to keep an open mind, but I don’t like the possessive way he treated Madison.”
“Damn. All right. I’ll talk to him. And her. I’ll probably be back in town tomorrow.”
I hesitated, thinking back to my encounter with the two of them at Kaitlin’s Diner earlier in the week. I hadn’t pushed, but Evan hadn’t volunteered any information. “Is something going on with her? I mean, the other day at the diner–”
“Are you jealous?”
“No.” Then, more emphatically. “No!’
“All right, then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
18
MADISON CALLED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AND I could tell she was trying hard not to fall apart. She didn’t want to talk over the phone, but I invited her over for lunch and a three-way sympathy powwow. I didn’t know what was going on in Madison’s life, but between the three of us, I made sure we had plenty of chocolate.
An hour later Kaitlin, Madison, and I sat on the living room floor, surrounded by pizza boxes. A batch of brownies was baking in the oven, and there was vanill
a ice cream in the freezer that I planned to turn into root beer floats. All we needed were French fries, but nobody would deliver them.
Kaitlin went first, confiding in Madison as she had confided in me that not only was she pregnant, but she didn’t even know who the father was. Madison’s face grew paler and paler as Kaitlin spoke, until I feared she would faint.
“What’s wrong, Madison?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s nothing as bad as Kaitlin.”
I passed her another slice of pizza, dripping with grease, and shrugged. “It’s not a contest.”
“What’s up with you and Evan, then?” Madison asked.
I hesitated. I had actually wanted to ask her that same question, but she had gone there first. When I looked to Kaitlin for help, I saw that she, too, wanted to know the truth I had been hiding for weeks. Since they had believed me dead.
“He saved your life,” Madison continued.
I nodded. “That’s the trouble, actually. Now, I owe him a life debt.”
When they still looked at me with confusion, I did something I rarely did: I explained, in great detail, a truth about magic. Why not? The knowledge could protect them one day.
“I really stuck my foot in the other day, didn’t I?” Madison said when I had finished. “When I told your brother off for being mad at Evan. I had no idea.”
“Most people don’t,” I said. “I’m sure I’m not supposed to tell you, but I stopped caring as much when my parents kicked me out.”
“Good for you,” Kaitlin said. “But what are you going to do about him?”
I shrugged. “I’m working on it.” When she continued to give me her helpless look I added, “Really, Kaitlin. I’ll be okay. He’s not as bad as you think he is.”
“Are we talking about the same person?” Kaitlin asked. “Do you remember poor Mrs. Bertrim?”
“Yes.” She had been a short, sweet-faced history teacher in high school, well past the age of retirement, though nobody thought she would stop teaching until she died. She quit at the end of our freshman year.
“He had her in tears when she tried to pop a quiz he wasn’t ready for. She didn’t try another pop quiz the rest of the year, and then she retired.”
I hadn’t heard that story, or if I had, I had chalked it up to just so much myth and rumor. There were so many stories, many untrue.
“I was there,” Kaitlin said, as if sensing my doubts. “I don’t know why, but that’s always what I remember when I think of him – the look on her face.”
“He does tend to get what he wants,” Madison added. “But he saved your life.”
“Yes, he did.” And he had been young when the worst stories had circulated about him, including the one Kaitlin brought up. He had been fourteen at the time, still a child. Now, at twenty-one, he was hot on the trail of a murderer, trying to bring justice to two teenage girls. And still trying to protect me.
“So,” I said, eager to change the subject. “Madison, what’s going on with you?”
She only hesitated a second or two before taking a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start. I’ve been overwhelmed since yesterday, after the concert. Nicolas keeps calling me, and I don’t understand any of it.”
“Do you want me to tell him to back off?” I asked gently.
“I don’t know. He’s the least of it. My father’s been mad since he saw the article about the concert last week. I told him I wasn’t going to sing. I thought I wasn’t, but the kids talked me into it. He went crazy, and that was before he found out I planned to student teach music in the fall. I knew I couldn’t keep it from him forever, but when he found out...”
“What?” I had a bad feeling. I knew her father didn’t approve of her singing, and that she had defied him in college, partly at my urging, but I never understood why. Maybe I did now. Did her father know about her gift, and did he have some kind of problem with it?
“He told me I had to the end of the month to move out,” Madison said.
“At least he gave you notice,” Kaitlin said, looking significantly at me.
“I suppose,” she mumbled.
I didn’t think the notice provided much comfort, especially when it seemed her father was casting her out, much as my parents had done. I felt as if the entire town must have drank the same poisoned punch.
“He also said,” Madison continued, “that he’s not paying my tuition this fall, and that he wants me to pay him back for the rest of college, since I lied to him about my degree.”
“He can’t do that,” I said, outraged on her behalf. “You don’t have to give him a thing.”
“Yeah,” Kaitlin said, “he might not give you the money for next semester, but you definitely don’t have to pay him back.”
Madison nodded in a way that told me financial worries were the least of her problems. I quieted down, and waited for the last bomb to drop.
“My father also told me he adopted me. Apparently, mom was already pregnant when he met her, doing some headline show in Branson.”
And channeling your gift, I thought. Or maybe, her mother had the gift all along. These things often ran in families. I wondered if that had anything to do with her father’s problems. Her mother had died when she was six or seven, possibly breaking a spell she’d had on her husband for years. Not that any of that mattered to Madison, now that the man who had raised her as his own all this time didn’t want her anymore. I thought that was much more relevant than the adoption part, which was just an excuse. The surge of resentment I felt for Mr. Carter contained all the hatred I felt for my own parents.
“What’s his problem with you singing?” Kaitlin asked. “It’s not like you’re singing in bars, hoping to get noticed. You’re going to teach.”
Madison bit her lip. “I don’t know, exactly. He’s never really made sense about that. He says mom bewitched him with her voice, and he won’t let me do the same thing.”
“You sing really well,” Kaitlin said. “It’s pretty moving.”
“Thanks, but I’m not a witch.” She darted a quick glance my way. “No offense.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t taken offense. If anything, I had felt a twinge of jealousy, because from a certain point of view, she might be. Odds were good she didn’t have any talent, since gifts were far more common in the general population than the ability to manipulate magical energies, but with such a strong gift, it hardly mattered.
I pushed aside the feelings. “I’m so sorry, Madison. I have no idea what to say. Guess we need to form a support group for people who have been abandoned by their parents.”
“He hasn’t abandoned me,” Madison said quickly. “I mean, I guess I can see why you would think so, but it’s all about the money. He says he refuses to fund me singing, and he said if I changed my mind, and decided to teach math, I could stay home.”
She turned her face away. I scrambled to get a box of tissues from the bathroom, handing them wordlessly to her. Kaitlin took a few of her own.
The oven timer sounded, so I went to take the brownies out of the oven.
“I don’t know why he picked now to tell me about the adoption,” Madison said, after she had composed herself a little. “I think he was angry. He apologized for telling me this way, but now it’s all mixed together in my head.”
“Do you know who your biological father is?” Kaitlin asked.
“I didn’t ask,” Madison said. “I don’t even care. Well, maybe a little, but it’s all too much right now. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And now, I think we should eat the brownies before they’re too cool to burn the roofs of our mouths.”
As I served up the brownies, Kaitlin asked the question I had been dying to know the answer to. “What were you doing with Evan the other day?”
Madison glanced at me, looking guilty. “I’m not entirely sure. You and your brother showed up before he could say much, although he told me I was in danger.”
“From what?” I a
sked.
“He said the Travises were following me, and that they’re killers.”
“They are.” He had also told me they were following me. Perhaps he hadn’t been sure who they were following?
We ate in silence for a minute or so, before Kaitlin put a weepy chick flick in the DVD player, and we all cried at somebody else’s pain for a while. I didn’t pay much attention to the movie, because I kept trying to decide if I should tell Madison she had a gift. She deserved to know, but I wondered if, right then, it might be one burden too many.
About halfway through the movie, Kaitlin retreated to her bedroom, saying she had a killer headache. A few minutes later, I heard retching coming from the bathroom. When Madison asked if she should leave, I shook my head.
Madison and I had nearly finished the movie when my phone rang. It was my brother, Nicolas, and he had even more bad news. I knew it from his tone, and maybe that sixth sense you get when someone calls with troublesome tidings.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Mom’s in the hospital.”
I nearly dropped the phone. You have to understand that my family doesn’t do hospitals. Or any mundane medical care, for that matter. Even if we hadn’t had Juliana in our midst, we had centuries of magical wisdom passed down through the generations, all designed to keep us healthy and heal injuries.
“Why?” I managed to ask.
“She won’t wake up, and we’re out of magical options.”
“Oh. I–” I had no idea what to say.
“Will you come?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, finally. “I–just–keep me posted, all right?”
19
IMAGES OF MY MOTHER HAUNTED ME during the night, almost as if she were calling me to her. Which was why, when Nicolas called early Monday morning to report no change, I already knew.
“Please come,” Nicolas said. “I know you’re mad at Mom and Dad, but the rest of us need you here.”
“I-I’ll think about it.”
After that, I focused on getting ready for the day. Kaitlin wasn’t up when I got into the shower, so for once I managed to grab a few minutes of hot water. When I finished dressing and made my way into the kitchen for breakfast, Kaitlin was still in her bathrobe, staring intently at a can of peaches.
Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) Page 18