Lies in the Dark

by Robert J. Crane

  Still, it burned that I couldn’t have the freedom it felt like I deserved. It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t tell Mom and Dad what was really going on. They didn’t understand. All of this—the punishments, the NSA-like monitoring, the relentless attempts to get me to ‘shape up and fly right’ (Dad’s words), was not going to stop me from lying.

  I had to lie. Had to. Before, in New York, it was a compulsion I indulged, one that I felt like I had no control over. There, I felt like I had to lie to protect myself.

  But here, in Florida … I had made the conscious decision to lie in order to protect them.

  Ever since Byron had showed up, I'd had to cover over almost everything in my personal life. Even after he had kidnapped my parents and I’d staked him through the heart with a piece of a broken chair, I’d still had to lie to them about what had happened. They had no idea that Byron was a vampire, or that vampires were even a real thing.

  Lucky them.

  I longed for the days before I’d found out the ugly truth about vampires in our world. They seemed like such simple times compared to what was going on now. The vampire lord of Tampa was still looking for me, after all. His servants had narrowly missed killing me in my hometown in New York.

  I tried to imagine Mom and Dad attempting to come to grips with the actual truth of things, the state of my life at present. It always seemed to end with their heads exploding.

  I rubbed my eyes with my palms, the little welts on my arms still stinging. My lie in this case? That I’d been attacked by fire ants just after getting off the bus. It was the best I could do. Mom had little sympathy, especially after Dad had pronounced them superficial and recommended irrigating and Band-Aids.

  I ran my fingers over the enflamed spots. They were healing, but there was a residual burning beneath the skin, like an itch that I couldn’t quite scratch.

  The lights that had swarmed around us like angry hornets had reminded me of Christmas lights, bright even in the middle of the day. Pale blue and mint green, gold and rosy pink. So non-threatening in appearance, but vicious in reality. Did they bite? Did they scratch?

  Whatever they’d done, they’d hurt a lot worse than fire ants.

  Lockwood had looked really worried, and it was obvious he didn’t want to answer my questions.

  Why? What did he know about these fae?

  Was Draven behind it? I blamed Draven for all my misfortunes these days. All Draven, all the time, that was the explanatory loop in my head. He’d been too quiet for too long.

  There was a knock on my door, and I closed my eyes, bracing myself.

  “Yes?” I called, sitting up.

  The door swung inward, and I was surprised to see Dad step inside.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said, a tight, short-lived smile vanishing as quickly as he’d appeared.

  “Hi.” I picked at a seam on my blanket. Didn’t want to look him in the eye. I hoped he’d interpret it as contrition, which it sorta was. I didn’t like lying to them, after all.

  “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” he said.

  My throat constricted. Lecture forthcoming, I figured, since he could have just shouted that up the stairs.

  “Okay,” I said, crossing my toes in my socks, wishing he would just leave.

  He nodded and turned to go but hesitated. Of course.

  Come on, Dad. You don’t want to say it, and I don’t want to hear it right now.

  “You know, Cass,” he started, turning back around to face me. “I know you’re probably numb to it by now, but … I really am disappointed.”

  I hung my head to avoid his gaze.

  His disappointment was worse than Mom’s rage. She tended to take the lead on discipline, and then Dad followed after her with pure, unfiltered disappointment. Like a surgical scalpel of quiet guilt to Mom’s cudgel of anger.

  Thanks, Mill, for teaching me about weapons. Because every Tampa high school girl should know a mace from a gladius.

  “Your mom and I are just at a loss,” he went on. “We just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”

  That made three of us.

  “These rules that we’ve set up for you aren’t that tough to follow, kiddo. We’re starting to think that there must be something deeper going on here.”

  Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

  He sighed, and his face softened. “Is there something going on that you want to tell us about? Are you having trouble with some friends? Your schoolwork?”

  I wished it was that easy. No, Dad, I’m just dealing with vampire attacks and now fae folk crashing my ride home. No big deal. I’m sure everyone goes through a ‘fae folk attacking their boyfriend’s limo phase.’

  “No,” I said. Too many things that happened weren’t my fault. I only wished that they could see that.

  Dad nodded, and looked at me, sadness radiating from his eyes. “We just feel like … we don’t know you anymore. It’s starting to feel like all we ever do is fight with you.”

  My blanket was super interesting. Way better than looking him in the eyes. “That’s about how I feel, too.”

  “We understand you love Uncle Mike, but I think we can all agree that you were way out of line going all the way to New York without telling us—”

  “I have already apologized about this. So many times.”

  “—we do understand, Cassie. We aren’t complete idiots. We know life’s been stressful since we moved to Florida. It makes sense to us that you’re having a hard time adjusting. But—”

  “I’m … I’m trying, Dad,” I said. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but … I’m trying.”

  “Are you?” He looked at me with sad eyes.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am. But if it’s not obvious, I mean … what’s the point?”

  “We don’t think you’re a bad kid, Cass,” my dad said, curiously frozen in front of my door. If he was feeling anything like I was, he probably wished he could just walk out of it rather than keep going with this terrible conversation. “We just want you to really pull yourself together and leave this part of your life behind.”

  What I wouldn’t give to leave the vampires behind.

  With a flare of unease, though, I thought of Mill, and Iona, and Lockwood. Would I really be better off without them in my life, even with the other nasties that came along with them?

  “We just don’t know how much more of this we can take,” Dad said. “You need to understand that your choices don’t just affect you. Everyone in your life has to deal with the consequences.”

  He didn’t even understand the half of it.

  “Your mom is worried sick about you all the time. She’s terrified that something has happened to you that you aren’t telling us.” He took a long, slow breath. “She lies awake at night wondering if this is all her fault somehow.”

  A little, ghostly smile tugged at the corners of my lips. “She would make this about herself.”

  “I’m serious,” Dad said. “Your mom is worried about you. We’re worried about you.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. So very many lies. Why even try to keep from lying when the truth was the bitterest pill of all?

  By old, New York standards … I was not fine.

  I had not been fine for a very, very long time.

  I didn’t even know what fine was anymore.

  By new, Tampa standards? With a vampire boyfriend? With the truth utterly out of reach?

  Pfft. All was normal in the Sunshine State.

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Dad said. “We do love you, Cass. I love you. You know that, right? That the only reason we’re doing this is because of how much we care?” He kept his distance.

  “I love you too.” What else was there to say?

  At least that wasn’t a lie.

  “All right. Dinner in five minutes.” He closed the door behind him.

  I exhaled heavily and sank back against my blankets.

  Could you drown in lies? Because that was how I should ha
ve felt. Buried in them, over my head. A liar in her element, I supposed, but …

  If I was a liar … why did they still feel so …

  Cold. They felt cold to me. I shivered and mussed up the blanket pulling it over me. Didn’t help.

  A tap at the window jolted me a second later, and I sat up, my gaze darting toward the door. The last thing I needed right now was to be caught with my vampire boyfriend at the window, hanging out on the roof in the new-fallen night. I came up with a story, just in case my dad had heard, and I darted to my feet, ready to tell Mill that he needed to go, to get out of here, that I was in sooo much trouble already.

  The explanation went out the window a second later as I looked at who had tapped on my glass.

  It wasn’t Mill staring at me through the glass.

  A pair of bright green eyes waited there instead.

  Lockwood.

  Chapter 5

  Well, that was unexpected.

  I quickly unlocked the window and pushed it open. The warm evening air rushed in, along with the familiar clean, citrusy scent that seemed to hang around Lockwood.

  “Lockwood!” I said. “This is a surprise. I don’t think you’ve ever made a house call to me before.”

  He had changed since the accident. He now wore a grey suit with a red pocket square. There was no evidence that he had been in a scuffle. I brushed at my bare arms, the marks from the fae attack still glaring brightly on them.

  “I haven’t,” Lockwood replied, crouching on the roof just outside. He made it look effortless. “I am a firm believer in people’s privacy. Especially yours, Miss Cassandra. I am so sorry to be disturbing you in what I am sure is a dire hour.”

  “It’s only dire if my parents hear you,” I said, listening. Dad was already down the stairs. “Come on in.” I moved aside. “Is everything all right?”

  Lockwood slid in as gracefully as Mill or Iona would have, then straightened his suit. “It was me,” he pronounced, cheeks flushed, his eyes wide.

  “What … was you?”

  “The fae,” he said.

  I looked him up and down. “You don’t look a tiny nuclear bumblebee.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean they were after me.”

  I stared at him, my brow wrinkling. “Oh,” I said. That was interesting. “I was so sure it was Draven.”

  Lockwood shook his head. “I truly am sorry for not being more … forthcoming this afternoon. I was in a state of shock. Not to mention worried about being discovered.” He looked at me, concern all over his face, his green eyes searching me. “Are you certain you’re quite all right? I feel simply terrible about all this.”

  “I’m fine, Lockwood.”

  He hadn’t waited for my answer, instead taking my hand in his, running his fingers up and down the welts the lights had left. “I was concerned that these would be getting worse.”

  “Worse?” I asked. “Worse how?”

  “Faerie bites are … different.”

  “Bites?”

  He reached into his lapel pocket and pulled out a small blue bottle. “This salve will help,” he said, offering it to me. “Go on.”

  I unscrewed the tiny metal top, and found a white lotion that smelled like amaretto. I shook a small amount on my palm before rubbing it on one of the spots.

  Instant relief. I sighed, my shoulders sagging, tension I didn’t even know I’d been holding in gone just like that. I shook more onto my palm, taken in by the sweet scent and the relief it brought.

  “You were home late today, weren’t you?” Lockwood asked as he looked around my room.

  “I was.”

  “I am sorry.”

  I shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m grounded for pretty much forever.” I rubbed lotion into the last small welt on my arm. “Thank you for this.”

  “I’m glad I got that to you before the oozing began.”

  “Oozing … ?”

  “It … is blue,” Lockwood said. “And shimmering.”

  That would have been hard to explain. I stared at him. “Would those bites have killed me?”

  Lockwood seemed surprised. “Certainly not. But you would have been very uncomfortable for a few weeks. Especially during the uncontrollable urination phase, I think.”

  “Uncontrollable … what?”

  “No need to worry, the salve will attend to it.” He wandered over to my dresser, examining my collection of perfumes, makeup, and a few knick knacks from when I was a kid. “Your room is a very accurate representation of you,” he said, peering at a stack of books. “I thought you might be interested in mysteries.”

  “Oh, Nancy Drew? I read those when I was a kid. They are some of my favorites, though,” I said.

  He nodded. “I assumed as much.” His face tightened.

  “What do you mean that my room represents me?”

  “It’s … friendly. Warm. Unique.”

  “You know, unique is a word people use to describe weirdos. Losers. Just more polite.”

  Lockwood shook his head. “It has personality. Your personality. Your love of the color blue. Your favorite scent, lavender and vanilla. Everything I look at, I know it belongs to you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and pursed my lips. “Lockwood, what’s going on? I appreciate the salve and all, but … you didn’t just come here to deliver that, did you?”

  He picked up a small figurine of a unicorn. The very same one that Byron had picked up when he was skulking around my room. Lockwood turned the small ceramic creature over in his hands.

  “I know that your life has taken a rather dramatic turn these last few months,” Lockwood said, rubbing a thumb over the unicorn’s golden mane. “And you have taken everything that we have said, everything that has happened, in stride. You have trusted us. You have trusted me.”

  He replaced the unicorn where he had found it, in exactly the same position. Even the dust appeared undisturbed.

  “I … I find myself in a most curious position, Lady Cassandra.” He met my gaze with those striking green eyes. “I must ask you to trust me again.”

  My heart fluttered uneasily. “With what?”

  “Perhaps you should sit down,” he said, gesturing to my bed.

  It was strange being asked to sit down in my own room, but I obliged.

  “I am an exile from my homeland. That was the genesis of this afternoon’s troubles.” He kept a reasonable distance from me, speaking across the room in quiet tones. “My difficulties have … followed me over from Faerie.”

  I stared up at him. It was obvious how uncomfortable he was even talking about it. In all the time I had known Lockwood, I hadn’t heard him talk about himself hardly at all. Dodged it handily, in fact, when asked before.

  “So … what are you going to do about it?” I asked.

  “I have run from it for some time,” he said, “but … it seems like that this will be only the first attempt to bring me back to my home. I expect things will escalate should I remain here. Yet …” He turned away again, his shoulders slumping under his exquisite suit. “I don’t know that I can face this difficulty … alone.”

  Oh, no.

  No, no, no, no.

  Not again. Not this time.

  “Who … would you need to help you there?” I asked.

  I wasn’t an idiot. I was fully aware that by asking that question, I was tiptoeing into trouble. I was opening a door that was going to be incredibly difficult to close.

  And I needed more trouble in my life like I needed more vampires.

  “I need your help,” he said, all too serious, turning to face me once more. It was clear by the look on his face that this was the reason he’d come. “And only yours. You are the only one who can help me, Lady Cassandra.”

  Chapter 6

  Of course. Cassie Howell, the human, to the rescue of the paranormal types again. How was it that after all this time, after all the danger I had put myself into, I still managed to find myself in these situations?
>
  I mean, it wasn’t like I was competent. On the contrary, how I had managed to escape these scrapes with my life so many times was beyond me. Or rather, it was because I had made friends with two vampires and a faerie, apparently. They were the reason I was alive. It was nothing I did.

  “How can I possibly help you?” I asked. “I’m human. Not as strong as a vampire, not as … whatever … as you fae folk are. What good could I possibly do for you?”

  Here, he hesitated again. “You sell yourself short, I’m afraid. You possess a very specific skill that I need. One powerful enough to deal with fae.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

  “That is the truth,” Lockwood said.

  I stared at him. “I’m still having a hard time believing this whole faerie world stuff. I mean, I knew you weren’t human. But faeries? Magic? Is it wrong that ‘angry, radioactive bees’ still seems a more reasonable explanation to me?”

  Lockwood nodded. “Would it help if I told you a little more about Faerie?”

  I threw my hands in the air. “Sure, whatever. Have at it.”

  Lockwood assumed a very professor-like pose and cleared his throat. “The world of the fae is a mystical place. It is very much like your world, yet at the same time, entirely different.”

  “That … clears up almost nothing.”

  Lockwood smiled. “Almost anything that you’ve heard a tale about exists somewhere in the world of Faerie. It is a place beyond belief. Glowing trees. Singing flowers. Creatures of magic that you’ve heard tell of in bedtime stories—”

  “Unicorns?” I interrupted, indicating the tiny little ceramic figure on the dresser.

  Lockwood glanced at it. “Absolutely. Though real unicorns are very different than your representation there. Much more majestic and lovely.”

  I looked at him eagerly. “Really? How?”

  He smiled slyly. “Hooves made of crystal, and a hide that shimmers like millions of tiny diamonds?”

  The seven-year-old in my squealed with delight. Teenage liar Cassandra managed to keep that buttoned up, though. Because I had dignity, dammit.

  Also, I’d seen vampires and the depths of their depravity. Something as light hearted and perfect as faeries and unicorns just didn’t seem possible.