Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective

by Amsden, Christine

  I felt an irrational stab of jealousy, though I should have felt flattered that he had remembered those words. If he set his mind to it, and I hoped he would, he really could help a lot of people. I only wished I could have done the same.

  Pushing down my feelings, I offered him an encouraging smile. “I’m glad I could inspire you. Although, if you didn’t try so hard to make people afraid of you, they’d know you already did some of that back in school.”

  “I wasn’t planning to advertise. The reputation works for me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tell that to Kaitlin. Who, by the way, I couldn’t console until I went down the street to buy a crystal from a tourist shop and gave it to her for protection.”

  “They don’t usually sell spelled crystals to the public.”

  “They sure don’t.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “But she’s not in any real danger.”

  “Not from me. I told you, I’ll make things right with her.”

  I nodded, deciding to drop the subject. He’d already promised, twice now–no point becoming a shrew about it.

  “You know, Cassie,” Evan said, slowly, “My reputation isn’t entirely undeserved.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not as nice as you think I am.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but luckily, the waiter chose that moment to deliver our food. I thought I had a balanced picture of Evan, but admittedly, I didn’t know him as well as I used to.

  Evan spent the next few minutes outlining some of his ideas, though he had not decided on a specific course of action. Mr. Wolf thought he should join the magical unification effort–a national movement attempting to bring order and oversight to the magical world–but Evan didn’t know how he felt about the concept, especially since so many attempts had failed in the past. Local governments were common, but not a wider network. Eagle Rock didn’t even have a local government, only some mutual understandings that everyone gets left alone as long as certain lines aren’t crossed. Murder is over the line. Revenge isn’t.

  Sheriff Adams didn’t arrive until nearly eight fifteen. He started for a lone table, but paused when he saw us, and headed our way instead.

  “I was supposed to meet Belinda here tonight,” he said without being prompted.

  I looked into his brown eyes, ringed with whites tinted pink. I had guessed as much since seeing the day planner, but hoped I would be proven wrong when I saw him. If Belinda had him under one of her spells, he would not be a reasonable investigator.

  “How long have you been seeing her?” I asked.

  “Just a couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to find her, of course. She’s not answering her cell and her family hasn’t seen her in days.”

  I wanted to mention the cabin by the lake, but didn’t want him to know I had returned to Belinda’s house, especially not now I knew she had him under her spell. At least I didn’t have to suppose he knew anything about her disappearance. If he did, he never would have shown up at the restaurant like a love-sick puppy.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” I said, “but I don’t think she’s coming.”

  He nodded, miserably. “I’m afraid she might be... that something might have happened to her.”

  I wished I could argue. “Why don’t you head home? If she arrives in the next forty-five minutes, we’ll call you.”

  “Thanks, Cassie. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And head hanging, he left the restaurant.

  “How long do you think the love potion will last?” I asked Evan.

  He watched the sheriff until the older man left. “It depends. A strong potion might last twenty-four to forty-eight hours, but if he keeps renewing it, then it could last longer. It would help if we knew how he’s taking the potion. It works orally or topically, so it could be in chocolates, shampoo, perfumes...”

  I thought about it for a minute, while Evan concentrated on his fish, but it didn’t take me long to arrive at the answer. “She mixed it in with a hair regrowth potion. I noticed his hair was thicker, and the last time I saw him, he hadn’t been with Belinda.”

  “Good thinking. I’ll see what I can do.”

  After that, we lapsed into silence. I tend to be uncomfortable with silence, so I cast about for something to say, but I found I only had one thing on my mind. Finally, I broached the painful subject.

  “How are your aunt and uncle holding up?”

  He shook his head. “I went over there before I returned to Belinda’s house. It’s not good. They’re out for blood.”

  I knew what that meant. No one would ever prosecute this case; the murderer wouldn’t live long enough. It probably should have upset me, but it didn’t, not as long as they found the right culprit before acting, and I would make sure of that.

  If there’s one thing you don’t do in Eagle Rock, it’s mess with a powerful family, and Nancy, while not the most powerful young practitioner in town, had dangerous connections. Which begged the question: Who in his right mind had hurt her? I had the feeling we were looking for someone or something not in its right mind.

  7

  IT WAS NEARLY NINE THIRTY by the time I got home, but I knew Mom would still be awake. She never went to bed before ten o’clock, not even when she was pregnant. In fact, she almost seemed more energetic during pregnancy. Maybe that’s why she had wanted to do it one more time.

  So it surprised me when Nicolas told me Mom had already gone to her bedroom. I headed up two flights of stairs, passed the younger kids’ bedrooms, and gently knocked on the master bedroom door.

  Dad opened the door a crack and peered around it at me. “Yes?”

  “Mom said she wanted to talk to me.”

  “Not now, she’s asleep.”

  “Oh.” I backed away, and Dad retreated into the bedroom, but I didn’t believe him.

  I went up one more flight of stairs to my fortress of solitude, tossed my purse and shoes near the door, then put my ear to the vent to find out why they had lied. To my surprise, I heard Mom sobbing. Dad’s words of comfort were too muffled for me to understand, but I felt bad about intruding.

  “Maybe,” I said to myself, “Mom’s whole world doesn’t revolve around me.”

  My bedroom door creaked open and Juliana’s black cat, Sphinx, wandered in. He sat on his haunches and stared at me with gold eyes.

  “If you want to talk to me, come on up,” I told the cat.

  It blinked and retreated. A minute later, my fifteen-year-old sister, Juliana, came in and flung herself across my bed, her dark brown hair spilling across the black sheets. She’s the only girl in the family who did not get Mom’s auburn tresses. She looks a lot like Dad, which is why many people who see us together aren’t sure if we’re sisters or not.

  “Mom’s upset,” Juliana said.

  “Yeah, I know.” I really didn’t want to talk about it.

  “You were rude at dinner.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You should apologize.”

  “I did, on the phone.”

  “Oh.” Juliana sat up. “I got a job. I was going to say something at dinner, but it was kind of chaotic.”

  “Congratulations,” I said, and eagerly latched onto the new topic. “Where?”

  “At the hospital, candy striping.”

  “Oh,” I said, without enthusiasm.

  It’s not that I wasn’t happy for her. In a way, the job was perfect. Juliana was a gifted healer, and for as long as I can remember, healing people was all she wanted to do, but since when was life ever that simple?

  Since true healers are rare and in high demand, her gift is one of the family’s greatest secrets. Even the Mrs. Marshes of the world tend to reserve judgment of people like Juliana, especially if they or someone they know has a life-threatening illness.

  The trouble is that Juliana isn’t an endlessly renewable resource. She’s more like a rechargeable battery. Healing drains her. Time and rest refresh her ability, but even a rechargeable battery has a finite lifetime. How finite? No one can
say, but we don’t like to take unnecessary chances.

  Juliana, on the other hand, was fifteen, and like most girls her age, thought she was immortal. There was no doubt in my mind that she wanted to volunteer at the hospital so she could use her gift to heal people. If she got caught, things could be bad. If she burned out, they would be worse.

  “Dad wasn’t too happy for me,” Juliana said. “I think he and Mom had a fight about it.”

  That explained why she hadn’t wanted to speak to me, and why she’d been crying. No, her world didn’t revolve around me.

  “You would need to be careful, of course,” I said. “If anyone found out...”

  “I’ve heard it a hundred times from Mom and Dad,” Juliana said with a scowl. “I don’t need it from you, too.”

  I put my hands up. “Sorry. Big sister instincts taking over.”

  “They want me to start this week, but Dad hasn’t said I can yet.”

  “Oh, well...” I hesitated, not sure what to say. The truth was, I didn’t think he would change his mind, and I didn’t even think he should, but I wasn’t the decision-maker here, I was the big sister. So I lied. “I’m sure he’ll come around.”

  I threw myself onto my bed, next to Juliana, and propped my head against a pillow.

  “Can you talk to him for me?”

  “Talk to him?” Maybe I shouldn’t have lied. “What makes you think he’d listen to me? You said he’s not even listening to Mom.”

  “Well, Mom may not be entirely on my side. She has this idea that I’m going to go around healing everyone until I burn out. Hey! Your toe is bleeding.”

  I looked down, and saw that she was right. One of the glass shards from the bottle of love potion had wedged itself in my big toe. I bent over and tried to pull it out, but it was too small and had worked its way in too far. I could feel it beneath the skin, just out of reach. “I’ll have to get the tweezers. I’ll be right back.”

  Before I had a chance to move, Juliana touched a finger to my toe. There was a warm, tingling sensation, and then my toe looked as if it had never been damaged at all. Even the blood and the shard of glass were wiped clean.

  I sighed. “Juliana, you can’t go around doing things like that or Dad will never see things your way. It was just a little piece of glass.”

  Juliana shrugged. “Exactly, it was just a little piece of glass. No big deal. I’m not even tired.”

  “It is a big deal. If you don’t understand that, then I won’t talk to Dad for you.”

  I expected her to argue, but she didn’t. Instead, she went very quiet for nearly a minute, and then changed the subject completely. “I’m learning crystal gazing.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say about it. “Okay?”

  “I was practicing after dinner. Saw you at Belinda’s house with Evan.”

  The color drained from my face.

  “I know why you had the glass in your foot.”

  Great. Just great. “Uh huh.”

  “So, you’ll talk to Dad for me?” Juliana said. “It might make it easier for me not to mention to him that you were with Evan tonight. Or, you know, mention to your boyfriend that you dropped a love potion on your foot, and thought you’d die if you couldn’t have Evan.”

  “Get out of my room.” I pushed her until she rolled off the bed.

  She laughed. I’m glad one of us found the situation funny. Just then, her laugh sounded to me like a cackle. “You’ll talk to Dad though?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Or, more precisely, I’d think of a way to keep her from following through on her blackmail.

  “Better not think too long.” Juliana stood up and headed for the door. “Dad’s still up.”

  With no time to think, I had to weigh my potential humiliation against Juliana’s ability to control herself when surrounded by hundreds of sick people, some of whom might die without her help. It wasn’t a hard choice, really. I’d survive. I couldn’t be as certain about Juliana, especially when she was prone to such rash behavior.

  “Good night,” I said.

  Juliana stood in the doorway and gave me a look of utter astonishment. “Seriously? You’re just going to let me leave?”

  “Don’t spy on me anymore,” I added.

  “Stop me!” Juliana left, slamming the door behind her.

  I stared at the door for a long time after she left. In truth, her threats didn’t have me that bothered. Given Dad’s hatred of Evan, it could be awkward, but he was bound to find out about my taking a job for him sooner or later. Dad had never gone to extreme measures to keep us from being friends before, possibly as a form of reverse psychology, and I didn’t see that changing now that I’d grown up. Braden could be a problem, depending upon how Juliana spun it, but we weren’t exclusive, so he didn’t have the right to get jealous. Not that I’d mind if he did.

  No, the thing that really bothered me was the fact that Juliana might continue spying on me, and as far as I knew, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her.

  Or maybe not. We did have a large library full of books on magic that might provide me with a better answer, such as the snapdragon to throw off a curse. At times, knowledge could be power.

  I sighed and reached for a housecoat. It was going to be a long night.

  8

  I MIGHT AS WELL HAVE GONE straight to bed, because four hours and dozens of books later, I had come up with nothing. There were plenty of ways to conceal oneself from magical spying, but they all involved magic–powerful magic. In fact, most of the sources I found made it out to be a base power struggle, in which the person with access to the most magic won. The most effective spells involved a full coven, and access to a node, such as the one under Table Rock Lake.

  Around two in the morning, Nicolas wandered in to ask if he could help, and I called it quits for the night. The trouble was, sleep didn’t come easily or well. I still couldn’t get the image of Nancy Hastings out of my mind, and when I did slide into exhausted slumber, I kept waking myself up in fits of panic, imagining a tiny fireball taking my place in the family. Apparently, I hadn’t managed to convince my subconscious that everything would be all right. I really needed to talk to Mom, but by the time I woke, she was already juggling three kids and two potions.

  My morning meeting with the sheriff only lasted about fifteen minutes, and we spent most of that time sharing ideas and planning the next steps of the investigation. The sheriff, not wanting to believe anything bad of his precious Belinda, was sure the woman had been hurt by the same person who killed Nancy Hastings. I, on the other hand, had Belinda Hewitt’s name at the top of my suspect list. If she remained alive and unhurt, then the reason we hadn’t found her was because she knew better than to stick around.

  The sheriff, therefore, had plans to talk to Nancy’s family and friends to discover if she had any enemies. I decided to talk to Belinda’s family and friends, but I also had a hunch about visiting the lakeside cabin where she had spent the weekend, probably with a lover. I didn’t tell the sheriff about that part.

  Experience told me it was best to bring protection when talking to Jasmine Hewitt, Belinda’s mom, so I stopped by a small, local herbalist on the way to my office. I went with stinging nettle, which my Aunt Sherry had suggested the previous evening, because of its reflective property. To keep the poisonous plant from hurting me, it required some Queen Anne’s Lace, which I also found at the shop. I made them into a little corsage that I tied to my ankle.

  I had planned to contact Mrs. Hewitt by phone, thinking it would be safer than a face to face confrontation, but as ill-luck would have it, I spotted her coming out of McClellan’s Antique Shop on the walk back to my office. She was an old woman, stooped and gray-haired, who had not aged well. Her skin looked like leather and her hair like a bird’s nest, but her biggest problem was a perpetual scowl. Maybe she only wore it for me, but I doubted it.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hewitt,” I said, politely.

  “I don’t think it is
,” she replied, right on form.

  I ignored her rudeness. “It’s a good thing I ran into you, actually. I was hoping you could help me get in touch with your daughter, Belinda.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  I decided not to mention the dead body found in her daughter’s home. “Because yesterday, I spent all afternoon outside her shop, hoping for a word, and she never showed up. I’m worried about her.”

  “Like hell you are. You think she killed that girl, but she didn’t. She’s not that stupid.” It didn’t escape my attention that Jasmine Hewitt had touted her daughter’s intelligence as a defense, rather than any sort of kindness.

  “I don’t think she killed her, either,” I said, only half lying. “But it’s strange, and she’s missing.”

  “Stay away from her, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Mrs, Hewitt,” I said, leaving politeness behind, “you don’t really want a repeat of the last time you tried to hurt me, do you?”

  Something flashed in her eyes, probably remembering the incident that had nearly led to the fiery destruction of her house. “I really don’t care. My daughter hasn’t returned my calls in days, and right now I’m spoiling for a fight.”

  Since she had told me what I wanted to know, I returned to my polite approach, plastering a fake smile to my face. “Thank you, Mrs. Hewitt.”

  I stepped past her, but before I had walked another block, the nettle bound to my ankle began to vibrate, a sign that it had been activated. At the same time, I heard a howl of pain and rage from somewhere behind me, indicating that Mrs. Hewitt had gotten her curse right back. Not wanting to tempt fate, I broke into a run until I reached my office.

  I couldn’t believe the old witch had actually tried to curse me. Given what my parents would do if they found out, I had a feeling that behind her scowls, she was more worried about her daughter than she let on.

  I only stayed in my office long enough to catch my breath and look up an address online. If Belinda’s mother didn’t know where she was, I didn’t think I would get much more information out of more distant relatives or friends, so I headed to Brooks Lakeside Rentals, where Belinda had supposedly spent the weekend.