by ID Johnson
Who Wants to Be a Vampire Hunter?
The Chronicles of Cassidy Book 2
ID Johnson
Copyright © 2018 by ID Johnson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by The Graphics Shed
Created with Vellum
To Kay-Joe for all the awesome feedback.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
A Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Ah, December! The time of year when everything smells like mint or chocolate, sometimes both, you can’t get that annoying version of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” out of your head (and let’s face it, which version of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” isn’t annoying?), and everyone has a crazed look in their eyes like they’re trying to be happy despite the fact that you know if they remember that they’ve forgotten just one more person they needed to buy a present for, or one more social event they neglected to put on their calendar, they’re going to end up in an asylum somewhere muttering about “crack-nutters” and “rotten fruitcake” for the next few months until spring hits, and we can all escape from the doldrums. It really is the most wonderful time of the year isn’t it?
Actually, I’ve always liked Christmas for the most part. I’m only fifteen so I don’t have a lot of responsibility when it comes to planning or shopping. As long as I remember to buy a little something for my parents, sister, and grandma, I’m pretty good. This year was different, however. This year, I was on the verge of losing my mind myself, and it had nothing to do with an overweight elf potentially sneaking into my home late at night to eat desserts in exchange for a package or two.
No, this year, all of my mental instability had to do with my older sister, Cadence, and whether or not she was responsible for the deaths of two of her best friends. I say deaths—at this point, I’m not even really sure if her ex-boyfriend, Jack Cook, is dead or not. More on that in a bit. But ever since Cadence snuck off with her friends the night before Thanksgiving to attend an Eidolon Festival in the neighboring town of Villisca—where six people were murdered at the turn of the last century by an axe-murderer—everything has been freaking weird around here, and I was just about to the point where I had it all figured out, too, when the brainwashing began. And now I have no idea what’s real or what’s fake. For all I know, said obese elf might be real after all.
My mom, Liz Findley, is a Christmas junky. We always have two trees up in our house, one in the living room, and one in the game room upstairs. She’d put up more if my dad, Eli, would let her. But he says two is already one too many. Sitting around the house, listening to my mother’s Christmas music, smelling scents of gingerbread and other Christmas cookies baking in the kitchen, and watching the same plot with different actors over and over again on the Hallmark Channel Countdown to Christmas movies was wearing on me, and I was honestly wondering if things would be better once school started again in early January.
Christmas break had come a little early this year because of Jack’s death. Part of me was glad to have a break from school and from my friends, but hanging around the house with my mom was starting to get to me. I was used to Cadence being home, but she wasn’t. She had allegedly taken a job with some security company in Kansas City. I’d done my best to try and unravel exactly what was going on and had gotten so close when one of her new coworkers, Elliott, had put the kibosh on it. Actually, he was the one who had given me a last-minute reprieve and called off my own brainwashing, though my two best friends, Lucy and Emma, now have no idea that they spent the last month trying to help me figure out whether or not my sister is a vampire. The fact that I feel horrible for helping erase their memories is one of the main reasons why I haven’t called or visited either of them much this past week.
I was actually at Lucy’s house when we discovered a video on YouTube that seemed to show a team of people dressed in black, just like all of Cadence’s new colleagues usually dress, chasing what appeared to be a vampire in front of this lady’s house. She called herself Montana Mama, and not five minutes after we stumbled upon the video, not only was it gone, so were all of the social media accounts where she’d posted about what she saw. Then, one of Elliott’s associates, a woman by the name of Hannah who sounds like a shrink and looks like Connie Britton, showed up at Lucy’s house and made my friends shred all of their notes and delete everything we’d discussed since Thanksgiving. I would’ve done the exact same thing if Elliott hadn’t sent me a text warning me not to. Even though he doesn’t want me to know what’s going on exactly, it turns out he’s been watching over me for a very long time, like since I was a baby, and I guess he trusts me enough not to try to do something so detrimental as stripping my mind of so many memories.
Not that he hasn’t done it before. The night she and her friends went to the Eidolon Festival, Cadence’s friend Drew died. I started hearing weird noises on the roof and caught on to the fact that Cadence’s mysterious new boss, Aaron, was sneaking into her room late at night to talk about work-related problems. I grew more and more curious about what was going on when I saw Aaron easily leap from Cadence’s second-story window and take off like a blur across our front yard. What was even more alarming was when I saw my very own sister move that quickly. This is when I started to think she might be a vampire. Elliott showed up at our house and convinced me all of this was normal, that Drew had fallen while rock climbing and cut her neck, and that my sister was just going away to work at her new job for a little while. If it hadn’t been for my notes and Lucy’s persistence, I probably would’ve forgotten everything back then.
Now, I feel really horrible that Lucy and Emma are in the dark. I really want to remind them of everything that we’ve discovered, like that one of Cadence’s coworkers is almost a hundred and fifty years old, though he doesn’t look a day past twenty-five, and my new pal Elliott is seventy-five but looks twenty-seven. We had some solid proof that vampires are real, and I did manage to save a copy of that video from Montana Mama, but Elliott made me promise not to tell my girls, and I’m torn about it. I feel like I owe him since at least he didn’t erase my memory again. But how can I talk to Lucy and Emma and not let them know what’s up? It’s just an awful situation to be in, and I hate it.
I also hate that Jack’s dead—at least I assume he’s dead. My sister slipped up and mentioned that his body had been missing for a little while, and it made me wonder if he actually transformed into a vampire. But his parents spread his ashes on the pitcher’s mound where he used to play baseball at our school, so I’m pretty sure Jack’s really dead, which is devastating all by itself. Drew’s definitely passed on, and my sister is probably a bloodsucker. Really—life as a freshman at Shenandoah High School should not be this complicated.
My mom was hanging mistletoe over the doorway, humming a Christmas song along with the radio when my cell phone rang. I glanced down to see it was Lucy and thought about ignoring it. But I didn’t. “Hello?” I asked, hoping I could at
least pretend to be normal. My voice sounded weak, and I figured she’d ask what was wrong.
“Hey, Cassidy,” she said, her tone as chipper as always. There wasn’t much that could deter Lucy Burk’s exuberance. “What are you doing?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “Just watching some Christmas movie about some girl who’s too dumb to realize her fiancé is a jerk and that she should really be with the handsome stranger she just bumped into a few days before Christmas.”
“OMG! I think I’ve seen that one. Is it on the Hallmark Channel?”
“Lucy, that’s the plot of every Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel. The only difference is that sometimes the lady is in marketing, sometimes she owns an antique store, and once or twice she was a teacher.”
Apparently, Lucy could hear the frustration in my voice. “Why are you so mad at TV?” she asked. “Can’t you change the channel?”
I groaned, probably because I knew she was right. No one was forcing me to watch this. I flipped the TV off. “What are you doing?”
“My mom said she’d take us to the mall if you wanna go. Em said she’d rather skewer herself on a stake of holly, but I thought it might be fun.”
I was with Emma on this one. Going to the mall the day before Christmas Eve seemed like a bad idea to me, but I was so bored, I thought it would be better than nothing. Then I thought about the “stake” comment. It made me remember that I had thought my sister might be a vampire, one that could be staked through the heart…. Now, I wasn’t exactly sure what she was, and even though Elliott had pretty much convinced me they weren’t vampires, I had no idea where that left us.
“Cass?”
“Sorry.” I’d totally lost my train of thought again. “Let me ask my mom.”
“Kay.”
“I’ll call you back.” It was easier than trying to carry on a conversation with my mom while Lucy waited.
My mom was on the phone herself when I walked in. While she’d gone back into the kitchen to check on the cookies, her cell must’ve gone off. I waited in the doorway as she checked on the cookies she was baking and said, “Well, maybe you could come home as soon as your date is over.” I braced myself, realizing she had to be talking to my sister. “I understand that it’s important, honey, but so is Christmas. And your family. Or at least we used to be before all this.” She set the cookie sheet on top of the stove and slid off the oven mitt, pressing her hand to her forehead.
I felt like I needed to announce myself; I didn’t like eavesdropping, believe it or not, and I knew that she had to be talking to my sister. Something told me that Cadence wasn’t going out with anyone I’d want her to date anyhow. I cleared my throat, but my mom was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice.
“Okay, well call me back when you know for sure. I understand that you think you know for sure now, Cadence, but things around there can change on a dime, and I told you when you were here, I don’t exactly trust that boy.” I was across the room but could still hear my sister’s screech before my mom said, “Man. Right, man.” She had a tendency to refer to my sister’s new friends as if they were all her age when, as I knew, most of them were old enough to be my grandparents, or older. I didn’t know how old Aaron was, though, and I assumed that’s who my mom was talking about now.
“I know, sweetheart,” my mom continued. “I just thought, with all the changes, at least we’d get to have a normal Christmas. No, I do understand. I don’t think I am being unreasonable. Maybe he needs to think about someone else for a change and realize that your family comes first. At least I thought we did.”
My mom sure was putting the guilt trip on my sister. I needed to let her know I was there; listening to her make Cadence feel bad for not wanting to come home for Christmas, as much as I agreed with my mom, was torture. I backed out the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen and entered again, louder this time. I let the door hit the wall hard enough that she had to know I was there.
Apparently, my mom’s hearing is almost as bad as my dad’s. She started to turn her head in my direction, but stopped. “Fine, Cadence. Don’t come home. Do whatever you want.” Her tone was less sad and more angry now. “I know everything is about you right now. I’m not being overly-dramatic. I’m just stating a fact. You do what you want, and the rest of us will adjust our lives to meet your needs.”
Wow—my mom was being particularly harsh. I was relieved when my phone rang, and that she heard. Mom turned and looked at me. “I’ve got to go. Have a nice time.” She disconnected the call and let out a deep breath. “How long have you been standing there, Cassidy?”
I didn’t answer my phone because it was Lucy, probably wondering if I died while she was waiting for me to call her back. In light of what had been happening around town recently, you might think that’s a little harsh, but it’s true. Lucy would’ve asked that. “Long enough,” I admitted. “I tried to let you know I was here, but you seemed busy.”
Mom let out a sigh. “Your sister isn’t planning on coming home for Christmas.”
I know my eyebrows shot up so high they probably ended up on the back of my head. “Not at all?”
Her shoulders hunched. “I don’t know. I think at first she was just saying not for Christmas Eve, but the more we talked, the more she made it sound like she wasn’t coming at all.”
“Do you think that might be because you were giving her such a hard time?” I knew that sounded a little rude, but I wanted my mom to take a little responsibility for her part in all of this. Whatever Cadence was going through, it couldn’t be easy.
Once again, my mom looked shocked. “I don’t think you heard the entire conversation.”
“Maybe not,” I admitted shrugging, thinking my voice sounded tempered. My mom took a few steps over to where I was standing, leaning against a chair in the little breakfast nook area of the kitchen. “But it sounded to me like she has a date tomorrow night, probably with Aaron, whom I think she really likes, and you wanted her to blow him off and come home.”
“Well, Cassidy, in fairness, I think your sister could probably pay a little bit more attention to what is going on with her family. Ever since she joined LIGHTS, she hasn’t given you the time of day, and she’s hardly been home at all.”
I didn’t think my mom meant to say the name of Cadence’s organization. Every time I’d asked where she worked, both my mom and dad pretended like they didn’t know what it was called. It was clear to me that my mom was frustrated, and I wasn’t going to be able to say or do anything to calm her down. I disagreed about Cadence not paying attention to me. She hadn’t been home much, but when she was here, she spent time with me. Maybe not as much as she used to, but her world had been tipped upside down recently, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to build a new life for herself, away from Shenandoah. She was an adult now, after all, whether my mom liked it or not. And even though I didn’t quite get Aaron the way Cadence seemed to, I could understand why she’d want to go out with him. He was totally hot.
I wondered what the chances were that she’d actually let me go to the mall with Luce after all that. But I thought this was different since I would be back. “Do you care if I go to the mall for a couple of hours with Mrs. Burk and Lucy? I have one more person to buy a present for.”
My mother’s lips pursed and her head tipped to the side. “I guess not,” she finally said, which meant she guessed she didn’t care. “Just please be home before dinner.”
“I think we will be,” I replied, pulling my phone out to call Lucy back, though I had no idea. Lucy’s family was pretty well-off, and sometimes when her mom, Annie, got to shopping, there was no reining her in. Before I clicked on Lucy’s name to call her back, I wrapped my arms around my mom’s neck and said, “Thanks, Mom.” She looked startled but kissed me on the cheek. I supposed I hadn’t been hugging her enough lately, now that I seemed to think I was a sophisticated high schooler, and she still needed me to be that little girl with the pigtails fr
om time to time.
I let her go and headed off to get my jacket and some money. I don’t know why I suddenly felt compelled to buy another gift, especially now that I knew that my sister, and likely none of her associates, would be home for Christmas, but the thought had entered my head, so I decided I may as well follow through. “Hey,” I said, walking through my bedroom door and approaching my stash, “Mom said yes.”
“OMG—I thought you’d died,” Lucy said, tact flying out the window. “Okay. We’ll be there in a few.”
“I’ll be ready.” I crammed a chunk of the allowance I’d saved up into a crossbody and slipped my phone inside, checking myself in the mirror. I looked okay but I decided to run a brush through my long brown hair and put on some lip gloss, just in case. You never knew who might be at the mall right before Christmas. Thoughts of Liam White’s sparkling green eyes crossed my mind and I felt my knees go a little weak. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t blame my sister for wanting to go out with Aaron instead of spending Christmas Eve with us. If I had to choose between Liam and my mom’s Christmas music, I’m pretty sure I knew what I’d pick, too.
Satisfied that I looked decent, I headed off down the stairs to put on my coat and await the arrival of the Burks, hopeful that I’d find the perfect present and maybe see the cute guy from my algebra class as well. For now, I’d push all thoughts of vampires aside and try to return to my not-so-normal life.
Chapter 2
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was a force to be reckoned with. It followed me in from Lucy’s mom’s SUV, and now it was making my orange chicken taste a little sour. Lucy didn’t seem to mind, though, as her head bopped back and forth to the tune, and she manipulated her chopsticks like she’d been using them her whole life. I preferred a fork, and right now, I was contemplating shoving it into my eye. This song needed to stop.