“Were you just talking to Scott?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“Christina told me.”
“Did she? Finally learning to master farsight? You thought she had it for years – that or foresight.”
“Yeah. Looks like it. But she says someone’s being held in a cage in the back of McClellan’s store.”
Evan went silent for a moment. “I’ll look into that.”
“Thanks. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Christina was looking at me expectantly when I ended the call. “Well, Evan’s going to see about your friend at McClellan’s store.”
She frowned. “Evan?”
“Yeah, Evan. My husband.”
“Why him?”
“Well, he’s got lots and lots of magic.”
“I know. But he makes you cry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“At night, he makes you cry at night.”
I shook my head, but a horrible idea was forming.
“And this morning. He made you cry this morning. And scream.”
I felt my cheeks burn and I turned away slightly, unable to meet her innocent gaze any longer. Note to self: Look into blocking farsight. Preferably before scarring five-year-old for life. Or me, for that matter.
“I need to talk to Juliana now,” I said.
“Okay.” Christina went back to eating her cereal, but her eyes were once again unfocused and, I suspected, looking at something far away.
Juliana and Isaac were indeed in the kitchen, as were Elena and Adam. They glanced at me when I walked in, but none of them greeted me. Not even Adam, who had once wound himself around my legs every time I walked in the house. Of course, he was older now. Two years older physically and who knew how many years older emotionally?
“Why is Christina eating alone?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to worry her,” Juliana said. “She’s too young.”
I glanced at eight-year-old Adam, leaning against the counter and picking at a bagel.
“About what?” I asked.
“The lady who’s been watching the twins while we’re at school died over the weekend.”
“Why isn’t Mom watching them?” Then the full import of what she’d said sank in and I stared. “Nadine?”
“You know her?”
“You know her?” I shot back. Oh crap, I’d just stumbled upon the connection between Nadine and magic – and it was much, much closer to home than I ever could have guessed. The sheriff had even asked if a fire starter could have done it; he was wrong, Michael couldn’t have done it. I stood by what I said. Still …
“Cassie?” Juliana asked. “You don’t look okay.”
“Who else does she watch? We’ve been trying to find out, but it’s an unregistered, unlicensed daycare and nobody’s talking. Like they’re afraid she’s going to get in more trouble than dead if somebody finds out.”
“Um, well, she’s got six kids altogether. Or, she had.” Juliana looked at her watch. “We have to leave for school soon and nobody’s ready. Can we talk later?”
“Now.” I glanced at Isaac, Adam, and Elena in turn. “Get ready for school. I’ll take care of the twins today.”
“But don’t you have a job right now?”
“Yes, but Evan can watch them. Or his mom. They can play with Ana.”
Juliana shook her head and I stared at her, dumbfounded at her refusal of what seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution. No, the only solution. The others scattered.
“What’s going on?” I asked slowly. “Why don’t you call me for help more often? I’m over here twice a week but you never invite me. I always sort of barge in.”
“You’re always welcome.” Juliana shifted sideways, not meeting my eyes.
“That’s not the same thing and you know it. I didn’t know for sure Christina had farsight. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
She shrugged. “A lot’s going on, and we always sort of knew.”
“How long has Mom been so far gone she couldn’t watch the twins while you were at school?”
“A few months.” Juliana put her hands up defensively. “You can’t watch them regularly; you already leave Ana with your mother-in-law half the time. But never with Mom.”
No, I never left Ana with Mom. I didn’t trust her, and wasn’t that telling?
“Maybe I can’t watch the twins every day,” I said, shoving down my guilt, “but you could have asked me for help. It’s not like I don’t have my own baby to worry about. I’ve got resources.”
“Nadine needed the money.”
“This isn’t about Nadine. Not today. Who else are you going to call?”
“Uncle John?” Juliana asked.
I threw up my hands in disgust. Uncle John had tried to steal our family’s legacy after our father – his brother – had died. We didn’t have much to do with him anymore.
“Why didn’t you call me the moment you knew there was a problem?”
She wouldn’t look at me, and I was fighting a growing certainty that I wasn’t going to like her reason at all.
“Juliana!”
“Cassie!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t want that man watching the twins.”
I closed my eyes. This was what I’d feared, but clearly it was even worse than I’d imagined. “You mean my husband?”
“I mean that man. Look, I get it. You love him. Blah blah blah. And I haven’t said a word against him since you got married. It was too late anyway. But he’s not getting anywhere near Michael or Maya unless I’m there too.”
“I didn’t realize you hated him so much.”
Juliana glanced at her watch. “I really do have to get to school. I’m about to fail math. And maybe history too.”
“I’ll ask Kaitlin to watch the twins,” I said. She hadn’t gone back to work since returning to Eagle Rock. At the moment, she was living with Matthew Blair, which I thought should count more against her than Evan should count against me. I’d take her word for it that there was good in him, but old grudges die hard. And he had once tried to force me to marry him.
“That would be great,” Juliana said.
I hesitated. “And as soon as you get off school, you and I need to talk.”
She mumbled something under her breath.
“Now, who else did Nadine babysit?”
Chapter 9
NONE OF THE OTHER KIDS ON Juliana’s list came from magical families. That struck me as ominous, somehow, but I set to work with determination and an open mind. I still had no idea what had happened, or how, which meant asking questions until something finally clicked into place.
Sheriff Adams insisted on accompanying me when we went to interview the families of the children in care. He looked strange when we met at the sheriff’s department. Different. There wasn’t anything I could put my finger on, exactly. No one had suddenly slipped him a hair regrowth potion. He hadn’t suddenly lost weight, or gained it.
Was he standing straighter, perhaps? Or was it something in his eyes?
“Ready to go?” he asked crisply.
“Sure. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Behind him, seated at the reception desk, Janie snorted.
“You know something?” I asked.
“I just said the same thing to him when he came in. I think he got laid, but he won’t admit it.”
“Really?” I thought back to the day before, then frowned. “Not Jessica Turner?”
The sheriff’s cheeks went a little pink, which I took as confirmation. I wasn’t sure what to say. If it had been anyone else, congratulations might have been in order, but Jessica …
“You didn’t get slipped another love potion, did you?” I asked.
“I am not having this discussion. You said you have names. Where are we going?”
&
nbsp; Janie snickered. I took out my cell phone and called up the note I’d taken earlier.
“Four kids, two families. That’s three kids from one family and one from the other. The one with three kids is the Pruitts – Mark and Kathy. They’ve got a four-year-old son, a two-year-old son, and a six-month-old daughter. The other family is the Bakers. They’ve just got a three-year-old daughter.”
“Pruitts first?” Sheriff headed toward the door without waiting for my response, suggesting it hadn’t really been a question.
I followed him to his squad car, once again getting in the passenger seat and letting someone else drive. I’m not sure why I suddenly resented that position, especially since we were on official police business, it made sense to go in a police car, and it wasn’t my car. But something was eating at me, and it was more than riding shotgun.
I hadn’t seen my mom that morning. In the end, I’d simply collected the twins and dropped them at Matthew and Kaitlin’s place without looking in on Mom at all.
“How’s your mom?” Sheriff Adams asked, not for the first time making me think he was a mind reader. He wasn’t, but I was as sure as I could be that he possessed strong intuition.
“She has good days. She has bad days.” Although lately, she’d only had bad days. I couldn’t remember a time in the last six months when she’d had a good day.
“Do you ever think maybe …”
I waited for the sheriff to finish, but when a full minute passed without him saying anything, I prompted him, “Do I ever think maybe what?”
“So vampires feed off blood. But I’ve read books, and sometimes in books that’s not the only thing they feed off of. Some feed off emotions.”
“I’ve never heard of something like that in real life. People are creative. They make up all kinds of things. Just this morning, my sister was telling me about a trapped fairy.”
“Now see, that’s a good point too. There are fairy stories, myths and legends. Maybe some of them are real.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but I played along. “Scott Lee thinks anything is possible through magic, and that it’s ultimately all a product of our will to believe in it. If that’s the case, anything could be true.”
“But you disagree?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I just … I don’t like the idea that there isn’t at least some sense in the world. How can we do what we do, try to figure out what happened to two people frozen to death in their homes, if there aren’t some rules to govern it all?”
“Maybe there are rules, but we don’t understand them yet.”
“Maybe. As for myths and legends … talking to Mr. Wolf yesterday made me think that more things were possible once upon a time, and we lost touch with it all.”
“Like vampires who feed on emotions?”
“I suppose. What’s your point?” I turned fully to face him, though he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead of him. In profile, his features looked sharper, and his nose was a bit crooked from this angle.
“I told you the other day that I thought people were just more depressed than they used to be. It’s not just your mom, although she’s one of the worst. I’ve gotten calls on three suicides and seven attempted suicides in the last six months alone. That’s insane. I’ve never seen the like, not around here. We got the attempted suicides taken to the county hospital and I talked to the nurses there, who said they’re overwhelmed with patients. They don’t have room for them all. They’re having to release them before they’re ready to go.”
“I didn’t realize …” I must have been living in my own little world not to have noticed something like that. But if my mom were being attacked, wouldn’t I have noticed? It wasn’t like she hadn’t been depressed pretty much since Dad died. She’d checked out longer than six months ago.
But she had been getting better. Not as quickly or as dramatically as some of us would have liked, but she had come to my birthday party back in May and even managed a smile. Once.
“We kept it quiet,” the sheriff said, interrupting my train of thought. “The three suicides made the papers, but the attempts didn’t need the whole town knowing what they’d done – or almost done. And I didn’t think it had anything to do with magic.”
“But now you do?”
“Now I’m reevaluating. It’s not right to blame everything on magic, but just because these people weren’t frozen in blocks of ice doesn’t mean something magical isn’t going on.”
We finished the drive in silence, me mulling over what the sheriff had just said. He had good instincts, and I needed to trust them. Which had me thinking it was time to call a White Guard meeting. If something was stirring in the magical world, they’d be the first to know.
The Pruitts lived in a comfortable two-story house near the resort they managed. Mrs. Pruitt was home when we arrived; she answered the door with a baby in her arms and a child on each leg.
She smiled when she saw the sheriff, but the expression faded the instant she set eyes on me. I was used to the reaction, but it still hurt.
“Mrs. Pruitt,” Sheriff Adams began, “we’re here to talk to you about Nadine. I understand she watched your kids?”
Mrs. Pruitt nodded, stiffly, clearly avoiding looking at me. Now what was that about?
“Was she watching them on Saturday?” he asked.
“No. My husband’s off on weekends. I’m off Sunday and Monday. She only watches ours four days a week.”
“So the last time you saw her was …?” Sheriff Adams prompted.
“Friday, at five thirty. She was happy. Said she had a great day with the kids and we chatted some about her wedding plans. She was planning a May wedding. Asked me to save the date.”
“Do you know if she watched anyone on Saturday?”
Mrs. Pruitt shrugged and glanced quickly at me before looking away again. “I didn’t keep up with everyone she watched.”
“Mrs. Pruitt,” I cut in, thinking I understood the problem. “Michael and Maya weren’t there on Saturday either. They were at my house, celebrating their second birthday.”
“Oh.” She didn’t look at me. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I? But I’m hearing strange rumors, and the Bakers aren’t, well … they’re not …”
“Witches?” I supplied.
Her face reddened slightly. “Neither are we. I did tell Nadine not to watch the twins. I worried what might happen to my kids. But … well, I understand she needed the money and your family paid twice as much as usual.”
“Michael and Maya’s powers are bound. Something like this, if it was an accident, is more likely to happen in a family without the knowledge or ability to do a binding.” I don’t know why I felt the need to defend myself or my family, but Juliana’s words from Saturday kept haunting me: Michael’s gift keeps slipping its binding; it used to be every few months, but lately it’s just about weekly. I’m terrified the house is going to burn down around us.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
The sheriff asked Mrs. Pruitt a few more questions, but I mostly tuned the conversation out. Instead, I studied the two boys hanging on her legs, one of whom was staring at me intently. The older one, I thought. At least, the one who was bigger and taller. The younger one mostly seemed to be mimicking his brother’s actions.
They could be tested for magic. But would their mother allow something like that? Especially after she’d said her kids weren’t at Nadine’s on Saturday? We would check with the resort, but actually, I believed her. It was too easy for us to verify her work schedule.
When we left, we drove straight to the Bakers’ home, which was just down the street from Nadine and Jared’s. Unfortunately, no one was home when we rang the bell. Some inquiries with the neighbors suggested that Mr. and Mrs. Baker were probably taking some tourists out on their fishing boat, so we headed to the marina.
The morning was half gone, but somehow the perpetual mist seemed to grow thicker as we
drove along Lakeshore Drive towards the marina. The sheriff switched on his fog lights and drove on for a while, but finally the fog grew so thick that neither of us could see through it. Or pretend it was normal.
Sheriff Adams pulled to the side of the road and parked, probably half a mile from the marina. I lifted my hand, checking whether I could see it in front of my face. I could. Barely.
“Sheriff? I’m coming around the car toward you. Don’t move.”
“I’m right here by the driver’s side door.”
I edged along the side of the car toward the back, keeping one hand on the vehicle to guide me. Off in the distance, I heard a car engine and wondered if the driver was insane enough to try to navigate this fog or if it was a very localized effect.
“We’re on Lakeshore Drive,” Sheriff Adams was saying as I rounded the back of the vehicle, and I realized he was on the phone, probably talking to Janie back at the station. “Fog’s thicker than I’ve ever seen it. Can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
I checked my view of my hand, gliding along the back of the SUV, but I couldn’t quite make it out. The brown and white SUV was there, murky in the gray fog, but the detail of the hand resting atop it was lost to me.
“No, don’t send anyone. I’m safe. We’re not going anywhere.” There was a pause before the sheriff added. “Okay, bye.”
I had nearly reached him now, judging by the sound of his voice and the fact that I’d rounded the back corner of the vehicle.
“I’m not sure we should even walk in this stuff,” I said. When I’d first begun moving, I’d thought we might finish our trip to the marina on foot, but now I wished I’d stayed in the car.
Sheriff Adams didn’t answer. Apparently, he’d decided to make another call. “You told me to let you know if I thought there was danger.”
I sighed. He was calling Evan, just as he’d promised to do. And maybe he was right to do so, but I couldn’t help feeling annoyed. I could handle fog, even if I couldn’t see through it.
“We’re fine right now,” Sheriff Adams was saying. “Fog rolled in so thick I can’t see my nose. We’ve parked, but I’ve got an uneasy feeling.”
I stopped moving and tried to look at my nose. It was hard to judge how well I was seeing it, since I didn’t normally spend a lot of time looking at it, but the SUV I could feel with my hand was invisible to my eyes.
Frozen: a ParaNormal Mystery (Cassie Scot Book 7) Page 8