When I finally reached the end of the book, I knew at once that something was wrong. “This ended six months ago.”
“Maybe she updates it yearly,” Evan suggested.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. She’s too meticulous.” I tapped the last page of the book, a profile of a wealthy man from Springfield. “I’ve heard tumors that she’s dating at least two people in Eagle Rock, but neither of them are mentioned here. I suppose she might also update the scrapbook after she breaks things off, but it doesn’t feel right. Where did you find this book, anyway?”
“It was sitting out.”
“That doesn’t seem likely, either,” I said. “She’s spent her life playing dangerous games with powerful people. Do you think she’d leave the evidence sitting right out here on her desk?”
“Everyone knew,” Evan said.
I flipped back to the beginning of the scrapbook, and pointed to the picture of Evan’s father. “Does everyone know this?” To emphasize the point, I flipped to the next page and pointed to the picture of my own father. “Or this?”
“Good point.”
“Did you search the rest of the study?” I asked, looking at the perfectly organized workspace.
“Not yet.”
I did the job, meticulously opening every drawer, looking through every notebook, and glancing at the titles of the books on her shelf, most of which contained potion recipes. My parents had similar books at home.
Finally, I shook my head. The motion caused the snapdragon behind my ear, which I’d nearly forgotten, to fall to the ground. Evan picked it up before I had a chance, whisking it into his hand with a tendril of magic.
“Expecting trouble?” he asked, a teasing note in his voice.
I appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood, but somehow a witty and lighthearted reply got stuck in my throat. All I could see was that snapdragon, pitiful protection though it was against anyone older than about twelve, and wonder if it would soon be all that stood between me and the world.
Now what had brought that on? Yes, my parents were having another baby, but that didn’t make me any less a part of the family. They would always stand between me and any real magical threats.
Yet my brain had real trouble convincing my heart of that fact. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen, something big.
Evan brushed my hair back so he could replace the flower behind my ear. “It’s a good idea. You can never be too careful.”
“Oh yeah, because this is going to help if I get into any real trouble. Tell me the truth, does it do anything for you?”
He smiled, playfully. “It brings out the blue of your eyes.”
“Ha!”
“Hey, what’s wrong? Last I checked, you weren’t exactly short on protection.”
I didn’t know how to explain my fears, so I shrugged them off. “Maybe I don’t want to have to be protected anymore.”
“I see.” But I could tell he knew that wasn’t it.
“Let’s go check the store,” I said.
* * *
Belinda’s collection of potions was extensive and many of her customers believed in the power of her brews. They were probably crap, especially those offering up money and wishes, because if she really could brew them, why would she need to sell them? Others, such as those offering weight loss or hair regrowth, might have been legitimate–I had no real way of knowing.
Then my eyes fell on a tiny vial with the word “MAGIC” on the label. I picked it up and turned it over to read the details: “Tap into magical energies you never knew were there. You’ll be able to cast spells and brew potions. Curse your neighbors and find true love. $15.95”
“Impossible,” I muttered. Surely, if such a thing could be, my parents would have fed it to me years ago.
“That stuff is crap,” Evan said.
I jumped. I had almost forgotten he was there. He stood by a bulletin board, where he had been staring at pictures of Belinda, her friends, and her family. “Belinda mostly knows how to brew love potions, and even then she keeps the strongest ones to herself...the ones that truly ensnare the mind and heart.”
I replaced the vial of MAGIC, with just a tiny twinge of regret, and moved on to Belinda’s love potions. She had one full shelf dedicated to love, decorated with pink hearts and red roses. A lot of these potions were in the form of perfumes, creams, shampoos, and most especially–chocolates. The bottom third of the shelf was dedicated to boxes of chocolate candy in different flavors and potencies.
While a strong love potion will ensnare the mind and the heart, most of the weaker love potions are what you might call suggestive magic. They could cause you to feel affection, adoration, or arousal, but they typically left the higher brain functions intact.
At random, I picked up a bottle of perfume from the top shelf and read: “Induces powerful lust. Spray on your intended and make sure you are the first person they see. Lasts about an hour.”
The thing you have to understand about any magic is that there are good ways to use it, and bad ways to use it. The concept of black magic is a hotly debated topic among sorcerers. Even death, in self defense, is a shade of gray. As I stood there, reading the functions of the various love potions, I thought of all the innocent and harmful ways they could be used. A couple in a committed relationship might have a lot of fun with a spray of lust. On the other hand, using it on an unwilling victim...
I shuddered as I replaced the bottle and accidentally knocked one of the neighboring bottles of perfume to the ground. It shattered, splashing perfume all over my open-toed sandals.
“Crap.”
“What happened?” Evan asked, his voice hard and alert. I could hear him moving closer.
“Stop! I don’t want to see you right now.”
“Which potion was that?” Evan asked, still in that hard-edged voice of command.
I pointed to the row of similar bottles on the top shelf. “Lust.”
One of the little bottles floated away from the shelf, but I did not turn around to see what Evan was doing with it. Instead, I started looking through my purse for a pack of tissues to clean the mess off my feet.
“Cassie, I have some bad news for you.”
“Worse, you mean?”
“This potion doesn’t take affect until you actually look at someone. Your hour starts then.”
“Crap. I don’t suppose there’s an antidote?”
“Sure,, but it will take me about three days to brew, once the moon is full.”
“Okay.” I considered my options as I wiped the mess off my foot and started gathering the tiny shards of glass. “Well, I guess I could-” I stopped, I had nothing to put at the end of that sentence. I kind of hoped Evan would have a suggestion, but to my surprise, he started laughing at me. “This isn’t funny.”
“Come on, it is a little funny.”
Maybe it would be funny in a few days, if I didn’t die of embarrassment first. “I suppose I could call my boyfriend.” I didn’t want to explain any of this to him, and though I trusted him, I didn’t really want him to become the object of my uncontrolled lust for an hour. I just didn’t know what else to do.
“Who are you seeing?” Evan asked, all traces of amusement gone.
“Braden,” I said.
“Who?”
“Braden Walker. He was a year ahead of us in school. He was on the football team.”
“Oh. I think I remember him.” Evan paused for a long moment. “You know you could do better, right?”
“It’s none of your business.” I had to fight the urge to glare at him when I said that. He barely knew Braden, so what made him think he could make any judgments? Besides, I didn’t know why he thought I could do better, when I had done very little dating in high school. I hadn’t known if my family name scared people off, or if there was something fundamentally wrong with me, but Braden had at least restored my confidence that the latter was not true.
“Listen,” Evan said.
“I need to do another spell. It’ll just be a few minutes. We’ll figure something out after, just don’t look at me until I’m done.”
“I get that.” I sounded more annoyed at the admonition than I should have, because his quip about Braden still stung.
Within seconds, I smelled candles and incense, and heard Evan muttering under his breath. I found a trash can by a nearby desk, and tossed the damp tissues inside. Then I spotted a black day planner on top of the desk. It was the sort of thing that ancient relatives used to buy me for school, but I never used. Belinda seemed to have liked it, though. Nearly every page through the end of July was covered in notes and reminders.
Over the weekend, she wrote, she had rented a cabin in the woods by the lake. She should have been back, though, because in about half an hour, she had a dinner date at Hodge Mill with Sheriff Adams. I blinked and re-read the name several times to be sure I had seen it correctly, but unfortunately, I had. My old boss and friend had been acting a little strangely that afternoon, but I hadn’t guessed he might be under the influence of a love spell.
“Finished,” Evan said. I heard him gathering up his supplies. “This isn’t good. I suspected it this afternoon, but now I’m sure–there’s no threshold on this home. Which either means Belinda has permanently moved, or else she’s dead.”
“Do you think she had something to do with your cousin’s murder?” I asked.
“I don’t know what to think. I can’t come up with a reason she’d do it, but then again, where is she?”
“I found her day planner,” I said, holding it up over my shoulder so Evan could see. “She was supposed to go to the lake this weekend, and she’s got a date tonight at Hodge Mill. You’ll never guess who it’s with.”
“Who?”
“The sheriff.”
“Huh.”
“I know it’s a long shot, but I figure we should go to Hodge Mill and see if she shows up–or if the sheriff does. After that--”
“Cassie,” Evan interrupted.
“Yeah?”
“How much do you trust me?”
“Er-Why?”
“Turn around,” he said.
“Did you figure something out?” I said, my heart beating a little faster. “Some way to stop the potion?”
“Yes.”
“But you said-” I never got a chance to finish, because just then, Evan moved into my field of vision and I turned to stare at him properly.
In all the years I had known him, I had somehow missed the fact that Evan has the most incredible blue eyes. They sparkle like diamonds when he laughs, and darken like the sea when he’s angry. At that moment, I thought I could swim in those eyes. I had never spent much time looking at his lips before, but I suddenly became aware of just how kissable they were. I started towards him, my focus set on those beautiful, kissable lips.
I couldn’t move. Something was forcing my body absolutely still.
“Sorry about that,” Evan said, not sounding sorry at all. He swung a satchel over his shoulder and started out the door. I found myself following behind him, but I wasn’t the one moving my legs. “Nothing to do but let it run its course. If you want to hate me in an hour, I’ll understand.”
Part of my brain worked out what was happening to me. That part was either shocked or angry or afraid, possibly all three at once. It pushed at the rest of my brain, the part that wanted Evan Blackwood in an entirely inappropriate way.
“Let me go,” I said. “I can handle it.”
I felt my legs loosen and I thought I had control of them again, but they didn’t take me to my own car. Instead, they followed Evan to his.
I didn’t get all the way there before my body froze again. Frustration warred with sense as I tried to free myself from both the full body lock and the mind-altering affects of the potion. “Oh, come on, would one kiss hurt?”
Evan laughed. I didn’t get what was so funny.
“Cassie, I can’t leave you here like this, not when there’s a killer out there somewhere. Going to Hodge Mill is a good idea, and the worst of the potion’s effects should wear off by the time we get there. Do you think you can follow me in your car?”
Since the alternative apparently involved immobility, I planned to try. “I can do it.”
“All right.” But he didn’t exactly release me. Instead, I felt a force at my back, urging me toward my car until I opened the door and slid behind the wheel. At about the same time, I heard his car door slam shut and the engine roar to life.
I still itched to go to him, to kiss him, and to touch him, but futility weighed heavily on my heart. He didn’t want me. Not that it came as much of a surprise when he had dated nearly every girl in high school except me. We hadn’t even managed to remain close friends past the ninth grade. I wished now that I had gone to more effort, even if he had been the one to put a lot of that distance between us. What had he said when I asked him about the love spells? You’re just like everyone else, accusing me of stuff because of my name. I thought you knew me.
Did I know him? After that day, I was never sure again.
With regret weighing heavily on my heart, dampening my need, I put my car into gear and followed Evan into town.
6
I KISSED EVAN BLACKWOOD ONCE, WHEN we were both eight years old. It was the third grade, and that year we had one of the worst teachers ever, Mrs. Marsh. She sat us together, at the back of the classroom where we “wouldn’t be a bad influence on the rest of the children.”
That wasn’t exactly new. In fact, we had met in first grade under similar circumstances. There were those in the community who feared and hated the old sorcery families, which may explain why some go out of their way to keep a low profile. Mrs. Marsh took it to the next level.
“I have bad news,” she said one day. “Our class frog died last night. I’ll give you two guesses who did it.”
The rest of the class looked in our direction, while Evan and I looked at one another, utterly perplexed.
Another time, it was a haircut. One of the girls had apparently had a bad run-in with a pair of scissors, because it was jagged and cut to the length of a boy. She tried to wear a hat to cover it, but Mrs. Marsh would not allow it. When Mrs. Marsh saw the haircut she tsked and said, “Did you notice? Cassie’s hair looks more beautiful than ever today.” She let the implications hang.
I could go on, but I typically try to forget the third grade. It’s safer that way. Mrs. Marsh quit teaching three years later, when Nicolas was in her class, and he set her hair on fire. When I think of Mrs. Marsh, the image I treasure is the one of her running down the hall, hair ablaze, screaming that she’d had enough.
One day, Mrs. Marsh read the students some classic fairy tale in which the prince and princess kissed at the end. Of course, I was expected to think it was gross, and I did, but I was also intrigued that so many grown ups did it, including my parents. At recess that day, I told Evan how gross I thought it was, and he agreed.
“So,” I said, “you want to try it?”
“What?”
“Kissing? You know, just to see what it’s like?”
Evan shrugged. “‘kay.”
We pursed our lips and pushed them forward until they brushed against one another. Then we hastily withdrew. It felt wet.
“Yuck,” we said at the exact same time, wiping our mouths with the backs of our hands.
Most unfortunately, Mrs. Marsh saw us. “You’ll be pregnant by the time you graduate high school. Mark my words.”
Luckily, she’s not a seer. She did call my parents, though, which resulted in a heated lecture and a demand that I cease any and all contact with Evan immediately. They even had the school switch me to a different class, ostensibly to get me away from Mrs. Marsh, but really to get me away from Evan. I never told them Evan’s parents switched him to the same class.
* * *
I didn’t hate Evan at the end of an hour, but I did wish I never had to see him again. Alas, there would be no such rep
rieve, since we had already agreed to meet at Hodge Mill, the nicest restaurant in town. They have linen tablecloths and napkins, and serve the freshest seafood you can get in a small town nowhere near a major highway in the middle of a landlocked state. It’s surprisingly good. I don’t know where they found their head chef, but he knows how to do amazing things with sauces and glazes that compensate for the quality of the fish.
When I pulled into the parking lot, Evan was leaning against his car, eying me warily, probably ready to manhandle me with more magic. I forestalled him by putting up a hand.
“Don’t ever mention that again,” I said.
“Mention what?” He gave me a look of such wide-eyed innocence that it put me instantly at ease.
“Is the sheriff here?” I glanced at my watch, surprised at the lateness of the hour. It was already almost eight o’clock. According to the day planner, Belinda and Sheriff Adams had agreed to meet at eight.
“Not yet, but we can get a table and wait for them.”
“I already had dinner,” I said.
“Then have some dessert.”
I followed him inside, where the head waiter showed us to a table for two along the back wall, giving us a good view of the mostly empty dining room. I ordered the chocolate mousse, while Evan ordered the salmon, and then both of our eyes drifted to the door.
“My apprenticeship is almost over,” Evan said, breaking the silence. “Master Wolf doesn’t mess with mundane things like calendars, but he’s hinting that there’s not much left to teach me.”
“Congratulations,” I said, “So what are you going to do next?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” He looked me straight in the eyes, and I had trouble looking away. “I have some ideas.”
I shivered, and managed to tear my eyes from his.
“Do you remember telling me about why you wanted to become a cop?” Evan asked.
“Not really, no.” I searched my memories, but came up blank.
“You said you wanted to protect people who can’t protect themselves. I always liked that idea.”
Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective Page 5