Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective

by Amsden, Christine

  “Right around the time you started talking to me again.”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “Yeah. Of course, things were never quite the same after that, and I never told you. But I wanted you to understand what happened.”

  “I blamed myself.” Maybe that’s why I had been so reluctant to believe the rumors, even when someone as reliable as Madison confirmed them.

  “Sorry.” He frowned and tossed me a sideways glance. “I seem to be saying that a lot lately.”

  I smiled and tried to make light of the situation. “You better watch it, or people won’t be properly afraid of you anymore.”

  “You never were.” He lay his hand on top of mine, linking our hands in a simple touch that nevertheless awakened my senses.

  I pulled my hand away from his. It still tingled where he had touched me. Yes, I was definitely still under the influence of that kiss, and I needed to get away before I did something I would regret.

  “Anyway,” Evan said, “When Master Wolf found out about it, he told me no girls while I was apprenticed to him.”

  “Oh.” I put another couple of inches between us. “So does he know I’m here?”

  “No. Last night was the new moon. He was out doing a spell all night.”

  The thought that I might have gotten Evan in trouble because of my actions made me realize that I hadn’t apologized for my role in all this, and I cleared my throat to do so. “Evan, I’m sorry I threw myself at you yesterday. I hope I don’t get you in any trouble.”

  He reached out and took my hand again, pulling it and me closer to him. “I hope I don’t get in trouble, too, but if I do, it’ll be worth it.”

  A shiver ran down my spine, but whether of dread or anticipation, I had no idea. I couldn’t deny the attraction between us, but my reservations remained intact, especially since I suspected the attraction, at least in intensity, was the lingering result of the kiss. I also realized that he hadn’t really explained how it worked.

  “So, um, what, exactly, does that gift of yours do?” I asked.

  “It depends upon the intensity, and the girl.” He looked away as he spoke. “It’s mostly intensely arousing, and I think it kind of makes it hard to think. A full dose has been known to induce an instant climax.”

  I nodded, grateful he had been completely honest, even if the facts made me feel awkward. “How long do the affects of the kiss last?”

  “It depends. If I tone it down, only a few minutes. Never more than an hour.”

  I choked on a laugh. “There’s no way it only lasts an hour.”

  That was a mistake. I had to stop talking without thinking, especially around Evan, who was not at all slow on the uptake. He turned my face to look at him, and his eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “It really does,” he said. “I’m told it’s addictive, though.”

  With that, he leaned down and captured my mouth in a kiss that drove me, quite literally, senseless. It didn’t take me straight over the edge, the way it had the day before, but drove me crazy with wanting, with needing. Reason walked out the door, leaving behind raw pleasure that went on and on.

  Unlike the day before, he didn’t leave me aching and empty. He stayed to kiss and touch, torturing me with teasing caresses. He had one hand on my back, the other on my leg, moving slowly up to the hem of my shorts.

  At one point, I cried out. I wanted to touch every part of him I could reach–his back, his chest, his shoulders–but when my hand strayed lower, he captured it and drew it upward.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “We need to stop.”

  At that moment, I couldn’t imagine why we would want to do such a thing, but he took control, drawing me against his chest while he stroked my back in gentle, soothing circles.

  Suddenly, his bedroom door banged open, and Evan drew away from me as if I were on fire, jumping clear of the bed to stand by our intruder. Earlier, I must have cried out a little too loudly, because Henry Wolf stood framed in the doorway, not looking a day over sixty, though no one was fooled. I didn’t know how old he was, but something in his eyes said he’d seen things no one else had.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Wolf asked.

  Evan, who stood at least six feet two inches and towered over his smaller master, had the look of the boy I remembered from grade school. “Well, you see, Cassie’s in some trouble and she came to me for help–”

  “Cassie?” Mr Wolf interrupted. His eyes found me for the first time. “Cassandra Scot? Isn’t there enough bad blood between your families?”

  “Yes, but the thing is, she needed some help–”

  “And you thought she needed seducing?”

  If any lingering affects of the kiss remained, they disappeared at that point. I sat up straight, red-faced, as the truth of his words sunk in. Of course, I wasn’t blameless, but Evan had lured me in with his casual touches and his air of vulnerability. I believed it was genuine, but perhaps, well played.

  “I’m sorry,” Evan said.

  “Don’t apologize to me,” Mr. Wolf said. “You do your apologizing to her parents.”

  “No,” I said, uncertainty disappearing. “Mr. Wolf, this was my fault. And I don’t have any parents.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?,” Mr. Wolf asked. “I’ve known your family for fifty years.”

  “Yes, and last night, they cast a spell to disown me.”

  The room went silent as Mr. Wolf let the news sink in. “Heh. I don’t know what the hell they think they’re doing, but you can’t break a bond of love. And your parents love you.”

  I wanted to argue, but you just don’t argue with someone like Henry Wolf. “Maybe, but they still disowned me, so there’s no point–”

  “I’ll decide if there’s a point,” Mr. Wolf said. “Evan, you make sure Cassie is settled somewhere safely, then you go talk to her parents like I said.”

  “Yes, sir,” Evan said.

  Henry Wolf shook his head and started muttering. “Damn young fools. I tell them to talk to me before they do something stupid and they don’t listen, so now I’m going to have to clean up their mess.” He left the room, but he continued to mutter to himself all the way to his own room.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  Evan shrugged. “Come on, let’s drive into town. Is there anyplace you can go?”

  “Kaitlin’s Diner,” I said. “I’m sure Kaitlin will let me stay with her.”

  27

  LEAVING EVAN’S HOUSE FELT LIKE coming out of a fog bank. I could no longer pretend like my problems did not exist, although it seemed more possible to manage them now that I’d had some time to get over the initial shock and turmoil.

  There were fifty-two messages on my phone when I left Evan’s place, most of them from Jason, Nicolas, and Juliana. Even Isaac had left me three messages, and I hadn’t even been sure he knew my number. I didn’t listen to any of them.

  The first thing to do, my rested, somewhat more rational mind decided, was find a place to stay. I could worry about vampires, my siblings, and finding a source of income better once I knew I had a threshold to return to that night. So I steered my car over to Kaitlin’s Diner, where I hoped to get a private word with Kaitlin.

  My timing was good. At ten o’clock in the morning there were only four customers in the diner, one of whom was about three month old and, apparently, not happy about it. Aside from the baby and his parents, the only other customer was a tall man in a business suit, sipping a cup of coffee at the bar.

  There was no sign of Kaitlin, so I strode up to the bar, where Mrs. Meyer was pouring coffee for the lone man seated there, flashing him a flirtatious smile highly reminiscent of Kaitlin’s.

  “Is Kaitlin here?” I asked.

  “Hi Cassie,” Mrs. Meyer said, tucking a strand of dyed blond hair behind her ear. Dark roots were showing at the top. She didn’t look much like Kaitlin, who seemed to favor her absent father in looks, but Kaitlin had learned how to sm
ile and flirt from her mother. “Good timing. I just sent Kaitlin on break. She’s just getting breakfast.”

  At the mention of breakfast, my stomach gave me a sharp reminder that I hadn’t eaten in a while. I grabbed a menu and ran a finger down the options. I was trying to decide between French toast and pancakes when I noticed something that I had never paid much attention to before–the prices. Setting the menu down, I opened my purse, took out my wallet, and checked the contents.

  I had never owned a credit card and, as far as I knew, neither had my parents. They had very superstitious ideas about getting into any sort of debt, even when backed by legal contracts and repayment agreements. They had at least half a dozen books on the topic of magical debt, which they tried to get me to read, but I never did. I asked Nicolas for a brief summary, which was enough to get me through several dinnertime quizzes, but not enough for me to really feel as if I understood my parents’ reluctance to so much as own a credit card.

  I did have a debit card, which tied me into an empty bank account. I had managed to save some money while working at the sheriff’s department, but I had blown through all of it and more during my attempt to start a business.

  Earlier in the week, I’d had a couple hundred dollars in cash, but half of it had been destroyed, and I had blown through the rest replacing the contents of my purse. All that remained was five dollars and some change.

  Sighing, I placed the wallet back in my purse, and set the menu in its holder.

  “Can I get you something?” Mrs. Meyer asked.

  “I’m not hungry,” I lied. Not wanting to meet her eyes, I glanced at the patron seated three stools down. With a jolt of recognition, I saw that it was Frank Lloyd, and that he was studying me.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Morning.” I searched for something clever to add, but came up with nothing. Earlier in the week, when life had seemed so simple, he had hired me to do a job that should have been easy. I had never finished the job, and now life was far more complicated.

  “Don’t worry about Belinda,” Frank said. “That was hardly your fault.”

  “Thanks,” I managed, weakly.

  “If you’re available, I may have some more work for you,” he continued.

  I smiled. “Thanks. I’m working with Evan a bit this week, but I should still be able to take on more work.” I emphasized the work I now had, hoping that I sounded valuable and sought after, rather than too busy.

  Frank gave me a curt nod. Then he tossed a bill onto the counter and left the diner.

  Just then, Kaitlin came out of the kitchen, balancing a glass of orange juice and a plate of pancakes. When she saw me, she flashed me a brilliant smile, and nodded me over to a booth in the corner.

  “Sit, sit,” Kaitlin said. “I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday. What’s going on? Say, are you hungry? Can I have my mom get you something?” She said all this in a rush and it was hard to know what to answer first.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. My stomach growled loudly in protest, and Kaitlin arched an eyebrow at me.

  “What’s going on?” Kaitlin gave me a thorough appraisal, starting with my newly shortened hair, and working her way down to my dusty sandals. “You look like you slept in your clothes, and I’ve never seen your hair quite so frightening before.”

  Self consciously, I tried to smooth down the hair I hadn’t even had a chance to run a brush through. “It’s been a rough week.”

  Kaitlin didn’t answer. She just looked at me, expectantly.

  “First, there was a vampire,” I said. I started rattling off the details of my story with a more practiced fluidity to it, since I had already told Evan all about it the day before. I left out a couple of magical details when recounting it to Kaitlin, especially omitting the part about the anti-venom potion and the sorcerer-vampire, but she didn’t seem to notice. When I told her about my parents abandoning me, she stopped eating and stared at me in wide-eyed horror.

  “Oh God, Cassie! Why didn’t you come to me yesterday? Do you even have a place to stay? Or money?”

  “Things got confusing yesterday.” I decided not to get into the part with Braden and Evan, since I still hadn’t sorted it out in my mind. “My parents tried to give me some money, but I was too angry to take it.”

  “Could you take it today?” Kaitlin asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it and shook my head.

  “Figures. You don’t know how much money is even worth. How much do you have?”

  “Five dollars,” I said.

  Kaitlin turned around and called over her shoulder in a loud, carrying voice, “Hey Mom!”

  Mrs. Meyer walked over to the table. “What do you need?”

  “Cassie needs breakfast,” Kaitlin said.

  “Oh no, it’s fine-” I started to say.

  Mrs. Meyer shot me an odd look. “Absolutely. How do you like your eggs?”

  I started to refuse again, but Kaitlin cut me off. “Over easy.”

  Mrs. Meyer nodded and walked away, her hips swaying slightly as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “And you’re staying with me,” Kaitlin said. “I haven’t had a roommate since my last one slept with my boyfriend. I assume you won’t do that?”

  “Thanks, Kaitlin.”

  “You’d do the same for me.”

  “Yes.”

  There was an awkward silence for a minute or two before Kaitlin asked. “So where did you stay last night?”

  “Um...” I began, not sure how to tell her that part of the story.

  “Not with Braden?” Kaitlin’s eyes widened. “Oh, Cassie, I forgot to ask how your date went. He was in here yesterday with some girl who was in tears half the time. He seemed kind of annoyed with her, to tell you the truth.”

  “He-he did?” I said, feeling confused. I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to Braden yesterday, but a wave of guilt washed over me as I considered how it must have looked to him, me kissing Evan and then tearing off after him like a madwoman.

  “Yeah,” Kaitlin said. “I wanted to ask him how things went with you but with her there...So, what happened?”

  “Well, he asked me to go to Chicago with him in the fall,” I said.

  “He asked you to marry him?” Kaitlin’s face brightened. “I knew it. So what did you tell him?”

  I hated to disappoint her, but there was no getting around it. “I said maybe.”

  “What? Are you crazy? He’s perfect for you.”

  I didn’t think he was. In fact, I hadn’t given his proposal much thought, which told me a lot. Granted, I had been busy, but if he was what I really wanted in life, wouldn’t my heart have said something by then?

  “And then,” I said, “yesterday, when I came to talk to him about what happened, he was in here with Charlotte.”

  “Oh, no,” Kaitlin said. “Did you break up?”

  “I don’t know. We never really said.”

  Mrs. Meyer approached with a plate of pancakes, eggs, and a glass of orange juice. She set them down in front of me with a small smile and walked away.

  I ate in silence for a minute, trying to organize my jumbled thoughts and emotions.

  “So, Cassie, who were you with last night?”

  I nearly choked on my orange juice.

  Kaitlin observed me with bemused interest while I coughed. When I finished, she repeated, mercilessly. “Who was it?”

  I remembered the way she had been flirting with Evan the other day, and tried to work out how she would react to the news that I had slept with Evan the night before. Not that we had slept together, although it had been disconcerting to wake up in his arms, even fully clothed. The truth was, it hadn’t been entirely innocent, either. There had been the kiss. And then the other one.

  “Evan was there when I got angry with Braden, and I ended up going with him.”

  Kaitlin’s eyebrows flew up.

  “Nothing happened,” I lied.

  “Right,” Kai
tlin said. “I saw the way he was looking at you the other day.”

  “You did?” I managed not to ask her how she had noticed when she was so busy flirting with him.

  “Madison, Angie, and I all saw it,” Kaitlin said with a sigh. “Did he kiss you?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s put a love spell on you, hasn’t he? Everyone said he does that, but you never believed them.”

  “He doesn’t,” I protested, although far more weakly than I would usually have done.

  “In that case, are you going to make up with Braden?”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  She groaned. “Cassie, you have to see what’s happening here.”

  I didn’t. Sure, I could still feel his lips on mine if I thought about it, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d admitted it was a powerful gift, and I’d gone and given myself a full jolt of it–twice.

  “You were supposed to get together with Braden,” Kaitlin whined. “I had my bridesmaid dress all picked out!”

  I laughed. “I know you want to live vicariously through my fairy tale romance, but I’m afraid it’s not working out very well right now.”

  “Yeah, well, you know who Evan is in that fairy tale, right?” Kaitlin asked.

  I shook my head.

  “The evil sorcerer.”

  * * *

  A bouquet of red roses waited for me outside my office door, and I felt a moment of shame for what I had done to Braden. Apparently, I had even led him to believe the fault lay with him and that girl he’d been with, but I knew better. Maybe if he’d had a moment to spare for me, things would have gone differently, but they hadn’t, and now I needed to face up to what I had done.

  As I brought the roses into my office, I found the attached note, short and to the point: I’m sorry. But the signature wasn’t Braden’s, it was Evan’s.

  I nearly stumbled into my desk, hurrying to set the roses down as if they were on fire. From Braden, the roses would have been sweet, if not entirely deserved, but from Evan, they meant something else entirely.

  The magical world is full of symbols, many of them culturally conceived, but powerful nonetheless. Colors had meanings. Each type of flower had meanings. Together, the red and the roses meant passion, romantic love, and even fertility. The note may have read I’m sorry, but the roses said, oh, and by the way, I’m interested in sex and babies.