Stolen Dreams

by Christine Amsden

“Cassie has a vested interest here,” Tyler said, neatly sidestepping the issue, “and so do you. I realize that none of this is fair to either of you, which is why we need to sit down–”

  “Did Cassie send you here?” Evan asked.

  “Alexander sent me here,” Tyler said, “although since they’re engaged–”

  “What did you say?” Evan had to steady himself against the door frame. But surely, he just hadn’t heard correctly.

  “You haven’t heard? It happened just a couple of days ago. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  Cassie, engaged? To Alexander DuPris? He couldn’t believe it. Not only was the man older than her father, but he was so slippery. He was a true politician. Cassie liked to take care of people; Alexander liked to use people. He would eat her alive. She had to know that.

  “I don’t believe it,” Evan said.

  “Suit yourself.” Tyler looked supremely unconcerned.

  Had she gotten over him already? Or was this her way of getting back at him? Or maybe….

  “He forced her,” Evan said.

  “Cassie isn’t the type of person to let herself be forced into anything,” Tyler said. “A number of men did try.”

  Including Matthew Blair, and if he couldn’t do it, Alexander certainly couldn’t. So what did that leave him with? Denial?

  You lost her a long time ago, he told himself firmly. But a part of him still hadn’t accepted her loss as irrevocable.

  “I don’t think we have anything to discuss.” With that, Evan closed the door in Tyler’s face.

  “What was that about?” Victor asked from the end of the hall. Only then did Evan realize that everyone in the living room had gone silent at the sound of the doorbell, obviously expecting news.

  “Nothing important,” Evan said. “Just go back to whatever you were doing.”

  Victor shot his son a dubious look, but he returned to the group. A minute later, the sounds of a large group of people all trying to be heard over one another filtered into the hallway, but Evan ignored it. He didn’t even move. He leaned his head against the front door and shut his eyes, as if he could shut the world out that way.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there like that, but he didn’t move until the doorbell rang once again, the sound so close to his ears that he jumped. A nearby table and lamp jumped alongside him, rattling when they landed. He hated losing control like that, but at least no one had seen.

  This time when he opened the door, he did see at least one person he expected. The woman accompanying Scott, on the other hand, was a complete surprise.

  “Madison?” Evan looked between his best friend and his one-time trainee. She wasn’t bound, but neither was she there of her own free will. The look in her eyes, and her quaking form, testified to that.

  “What are you doing?” Evan asked.

  Scott pushed Madison inside, nearly knocking her into Evan, who only just stepped aside in time. Scott followed her, closing the door behind him.

  “She’s not one of them,” Evan said.

  “She’s dating Nicolas Scot.” Scott said it in a way that made Evan wonder if he was establishing a connection, or accusing her of a crime.

  Evan knew his friend wanted Madison. Since Scott had saved her life–actually her soul–last summer, he could have her. Evan couldn’t help but remember a time when he had saved Cassie’s life, and Scott had proposed simply taking her. She’d get over it, he had said. He wasn’t taking his own advice when it came to Madison. Evan was glad of it, because by Scott’s own admission, he had no business being with a normal woman. The wolf in him might hurt her, might bite her.

  So why had he brought her here?

  “You said to look for an opportunity,” Scott said. “ This is an opportunity. She has to obey me.”

  Beside him, Madison whimpered.

  Murmuring from the end of the hall made Evan turn to find his assembled family all trying to see what was going on. Victor was in the lead, and his face was oddly pale.

  “What are you doing?” Victor asked, echoing his son’s earlier question. “She’s not one of them.”

  Scott was apparently disinclined to repeat himself, because he grabbed Madison by the arm and pushed her into the nearby den, which had only just recovered from his earlier violence. A crowd of either well-meaning or nosy relatives began to crowd their way down the hall, but Evan put up a hand, forestalling them with the gesture and the wall of air that accompanied it. “I’ll handle this. Go back to the living room.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they obeyed, he simply walked into the den and shut the door firmly behind him. He considered setting up a muffling spell so no one could overhear, but he didn’t have one handy, and starting from scratch would take too long.

  Evan rounded on Scott, trying not to look at the quivering Madison seated on the sofa. “What has gotten into you?”

  “You said to bring back a hostage.” Scott’s nostrils flared. “In case you’ve forgotten, they still have my sister locked away somewhere.”

  “I haven’t forgotten a thing, but I wonder if you have.”

  “What do you mean?” Scott asked.

  “If you don’t want her seeing Nicolas then tell her to dump him, but don’t bring her into the middle of this. She’s not involved.”

  Madison’s head shot up, but again he tried not to look at her. If Scott might really order her to stop seeing Nicolas, Evan wouldn’t have suggested it, but he couldn’t stop to explain that to Madison.

  “That’s not why I brought her here,” Scott said. “They’re close. Nicolas might trade Amanda for her.”

  Madison shook her head.

  “You’re not close?” Evan asked, finally turning to look at her.

  Again, she shook her head.

  “Then why did he tell you about the secret tunnel leading out of the castle?” Scott asked.

  Evan’s eyes flew to Scott, then back to Madison, who was busily trying to hide herself in the folds of the leather sofa. “Secret tunnel? What else do you know?”

  “N-nothing.”

  “She’s there almost every night,” Scott said. “Isn’t that right?”

  She made a motion somewhere between a shake and a nod. Evan was beginning to feel like a brute, scaring her even more than she already was, but he had to agree with Scott–Nicolas wouldn’t have told her about a secret tunnel if they weren’t close.

  Perhaps Evan had jumped to hasty conclusions about Scott’s motives for bringing her here. Evan didn’t want to use her as a hostage, but he didn’t want to use anyone else either. He just wanted Amanda back, alive and in perfect health.

  “Have you seen Amanda?” Evan asked her.

  She nodded, jerkily.

  “Well?” Scott demanded. “How is she?”

  “F-fine. She’s in a guest room. They b-bound her magic.”

  “All of them?” Evan asked. “Is Cassie a part of this? Is she engaged to Alexander?”

  Scott’s eyes widened, but he didn’t interfere. In fact, when she didn’t look like she was going to answer, he prompted her with a terse, “Well?”

  “Yes.”

  Such a simple word, but one with such terrible implications. Evan tried to reach for the hope that Cassie wasn’t in her right mind, but how could he after she had successfully fought off Matthew Blair?

  Evan felt his last defenses crumbling, and he sank bonelessly into a nearby recliner. He wasn’t sure how long he remained there, but he barely registered the third chiming of the doorbell. When he wasn’t inclined to answer it, Scott went in his place, letting out a roar loud enough to shake the house when he saw his sister standing there.

  Amanda had escaped. Evan didn’t join in the celebration or pause to question their good luck. It wouldn’t last. The thread of civility that had kept two powerful families from unleashing their full might upon one another had broken. This was only the beginning.

  1

  I ESCAPED FROM ALEXANDER DUPRIS THE TUESDAY before Thanksgiving, only
to be told by my family that I was being melodramatic. And this right on the heels of informing me that we had a hostage in the guest bedroom.

  A hostage, you say? Surely now I’m being melodramatic! But no, Juliana used her healing gift to knock Amanda Lee unconscious, then shoved her in a supply closet until Dad picked her up from school, at which point the two of them moved the body into the backseat of his car.

  “Are you crazy?” I asked. I looked from face to face, trying to find a trace of sanity, but they were all doing their normal after-dinner things exactly as if nothing were wrong. Mom, hugely pregnant with twins, crocheted an afghan, Nicolas was out with Madison, Juliana looked entirely too pleased with herself, Isaac played a video game, Elena hid behind a book, and Adam and Christina played in their rooms. It could have been any normal Tuesday evening, except for the hostage upstairs.

  “Cassandra,” my father said, “you haven’t been around. You don’t understand.”

  Of course I didn’t understand. No one had told me that things were getting this bad. It was as if I’d been on the moon for the past two months instead of in Pennsylvania, calling home three times a week. But oh, everything is fine at home. Just fine. Don’t worry about us. How are you doing? When will you be home?

  I had never left home before, and I hadn’t realized how separate it would make me feel. I had needed the time away, and despite everything that had happened in Pennsylvania, I didn’t regret going. Eagle Rock had begun to feel too suffocating as so many people tried to live my life for me. It only got worse after I learned the truth about myself, and about what had happened to my magic. I had needed some space from my life, from my family, and most especially, from Evan. I hoped I never had to see him again, but I didn’t count on it.

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” Mom said, not looking up from her afghan. “There really wasn’t anything going on until last week, anyway, when Evan blew up Robert’s car.”

  “Evan? Really?” Setting aside my feelings for the man, I still had trouble believing he would do something like that without serious provocation.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said, misinterpreting my question, “we have it under control.”

  “I wonder what Amanda thinks about that.”

  “She’s one of them,” Juliana said.

  “Just now, I wish I weren’t one of you. What else have you done?” I knew about the wanted posters; I had seen them here and there across the country in my travels with Alexander, but I didn’t bring them up yet. I intended to do that later, when I didn’t have a more pressing concern.

  “We’re doing this for you,” Dad said. “Don’t you want your magic back?”

  I froze, torn between painful truths. On the one hand: Yes! I wanted it back. I’d always wanted it, and had always felt a gaping hole where it should have been. It reminded me of the day I had put up the sign for my short-lived “Normal Detective Agency,” and how I had smiled while my heart broke at the ultimate admission. There had been rumors for years, but it had been time to stop hiding behind them and start being who I really was, instead of who I wanted to be.

  Except, that wasn’t who I really was either.

  But on the other hand, I didn’t want to go to war for it. No one was talking about killing anyone, and maybe they thought they could avoid that eventuality; but when I thought of Amanda Lee being held prisoner, I knew we had already crossed a line. Someone would die, and it was a higher price than I was willing to pay.

  “No,” I told my father finally, because sometimes short answers are better than long ones. If I gave him my extended reasoning, he would poke holes in it.

  He didn’t believe me but he didn’t say so in words, he only stared at the potion belt riding low around my hips, filled with some of the magical concoctions I’d developed over the past few months. The ones strapped neatly into my belt were only a small part of my stash, but they were the ones I thought might be most useful to have on hand: Strength, speed, and painful boils, among others. Two water guns strapped in holsters to either side contained electric shock and fire.

  I couldn’t argue with his visual assessment of my desire to have magic at my disposal, so I retreated home–to the rental house I shared with Kaitlin and Madison–to regroup and think.

  I stayed up most of the night brewing a potion. Early the next afternoon, I duped Nicolas into providing the magical energy needed to complete it, and then I took advantage of a distraction to slip it into Amanda’s lunch, undoing the spell that bound her powers.

  She escaped of course, and I was proud of myself for my role in it, at least until we realized Madison was missing. When she returned home late that evening, suffering from serious gaps in her memory, she told me she would never make the mistake of thinking Evan was safe, or a nice guy, ever again. It seemed I had a new ally in my hatred of Evan Blackwood, one whose loyalties had been torn, for good reason, up until then. My family also had a new ally, firmly entrenched on its side.

  The war was on, and I had no idea how to stop it.

  * * *

  A week or so later, I crossed over enemy lines. I had to. No one would listen to me when I asked them to put an end to this fight, leaving me with no choice but to believe that the feud had little, if anything, to do with me. That was a difficult idea to get my mind around, especially when every other day I heard my name being used to justify terrible acts.

  Whether it had anything to do with me or not, however; I would have to be the one to put an end to it for the simple reason that no one else would. I briefly considered going to Evan, but I couldn’t face him. He had the power to return my magic and put an end to this feud, but he had not done so, a fact that told me more about him than the words “I love you” ever had.

  Thinking about him hurt me deep down inside, in a place sunshine had once touched. It was the place where fifteen years of childish friendship had gradually matured into something more, and then abruptly turned to ash. I hated him now, an ugly feeling that festered within my heart and made my father wonder why I wanted to put an end to the fighting.

  It wasn’t for him; it was for the family I still did love, despite the taint of hatred. I feared death on the horizon, which left me with one obvious choice to approach for help.

  Abigail Hastings lived in a two-story “mother-in-law cottage” nestled deep within the woods behind her eldest son’s lakefront home. Kevin Hastings owned acres of property that he used as little more than a buffer between him and his next closest neighbor, which meant his mother had a fair share of privacy in her home.

  The woman was a seer, possessed of arguably the most powerful gift. So powerful, she had once confided to me, that there was no such thing as a seer-sorcerer. It was as if some higher power had believed in a degree of fairness–a chance for the rest of us.

  I had not spent much time with seers in my lifetime. Grace Blair had once prophesied that Evan would break my heart and soul, which he had done. Grace had frightened me and I confess that if I had felt anything at the news of her death (shortly after I joined Alexander in Pennsylvania), it was relief.

  Abigail, on the other hand, infuriated me. In another lifetime, perhaps, that would have been reason enough to stay away from her, but in this lifetime it was something I could live with.

  When I pulled into her driveway and parked the car, I began by taking several deep breaths. I could do this. She was just a woman, one who had even admitted to having no magical talent.

  A gift is not the same thing as magical talent. A person can have one without the other, and in the strictest sense of the word, a gift isn’t magical. It just seems that way. A gift is something that a person can do effortlessly, something that is a part of their soul and does not require tapping into currents of magical energy. Gifts come in all shapes and sizes, and some seem more magical than others. My mother’s eidetic memory is often not taken seriously, but it is as amazing in its way as Evan’s telekinetic ability.

  A magical talent, on the other hand, is the ability to detect
and manipulate magical energies. It flows primarily from within, a part of the blood, but certain places in the world contain nodes, which can amplify those abilities. A powerful node was what had attracted so many sorcerers to Eagle Rock in the first place.

  Abigail possessed arguably the most powerful gift, but however manipulative she could be, she couldn’t zap me with raw magic, curse me, or otherwise threaten me in any way. So I walked up the front path and prepared to ring the bell, only to stop short when I saw a note taped to the door.

  Come on in, Cassie. It’s unlocked.

  Abigail

  Okay, so she knew I was coming. No big deal. I pushed my way inside, offering a tentative, “Hello?”

  “In here, dear,” Abigail called from a formal living room down the hall. She spoke in a loud whisper, and she coughed from the exertion of raising her voice even that much.

  Abigail was in her late eighties, white-haired, frail, and wheelchair-bound. Her eyes, on the other hand, remained alert and cunning. They were a clear, crystalline blue, just like her daughter’s. Like Evan’s.

  She sat near French doors overlooking the dead winter landscape. Someone had set up a table nearby, making me think she wheeled her chair to that particular spot often. Today, the table was set with tea for two.

  “Would you mind pouring, dear?” Abigail asked.

  “Sure.” I found a nearby folding chair and set it up across the table from Abigail, ignoring the plush green sofas nearby.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” Abigail said while I poured. “I was serious about that apprenticeship offer I made a few months back, but I didn’t think you would take me up on it. I’m glad you’ve changed your mind.”

  I splashed tea onto the table, then had to grab for some napkins to clean it up.

  “I haven’t come about the apprenticeship,” I said, although I had given it more serious consideration than anyone might have guessed. “I came to ask you how I could put an end to this feuding before someone gets killed.”

  “I see.” She closed her eyes and rested her chin on her chest. “People are going to die, you know.”