by L. J. Smith
Cassie made no reaction. She let her mother continue.
“But your father saved my friend. And we all escaped.”
“So he wasn’t all bad,” Cassie said.
Her mother tried to smile. “He was powerful. People were afraid of his intensity, but when he cared about something, he was fiercely loyal to it.”
Her voice quivered. “And he was charming. I couldn’t resist him, and I loved that I was all his, and he was all mine. I was special in his eyes. That’s how I got him to save my friend from the witch hunters. He did it all for me. He would have done anything for me.”
A single tear fled down her cheek like a winding river. She quickly wiped it away with the top of her finger. “Ultimately, he put his desires in front of everyone else’s, but there was a reason I was with him in the first place.”
This was a totally new side of Cassie’s father, a side she had never known, never even considered. And she suddenly realized something. Her mother had genuinely loved John Blake. Real love. The way Cassie loved Adam. The kind of love that doesn’t go away just because the person turns out to be different than you thought.
When Cassie reflected on this, she understood why it was so difficult for her mother to talk about him. It wasn’t that she was being distant or secretive; she was still hurting.
Cassie threw her arms around her mother and squeezed her too hard. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “About him.”
Cassie sat thinking, trying to process all she’d just learned. She tried to picture what her mother was like when she was happy and in love. And she imagined what it would be like now if her parents were still together. But in this mental picture her father was a regular man, a husband, and a father—not a force of evil. It was wishful thinking, in no way useful to Cassie now. Whether or not he was ever good, Cassie had to remind herself of what her father had done.
“I wish I knew more about the hunters that would be helpful,” her mother said.
Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and Cassie assumed their conversation was over. But then her mother said, “We can leave, you know, if you want to. We don’t have to stay in this town.”
“I can’t leave,” Cassie said, taken aback. “And you know that.”
“I thought that once, too,” her mother said. “But it isn’t true. You can always leave.”
Cassie moved carefully toward her mother. “You’re the one who brought me here, remember?”
“And I can be the one to take you away.” Her mother met her eyes sharply now.
“I won’t run away,” Cassie said, her voice cracking with emotion.
“You won’t run away because of Adam.” Her mother said it as a statement rather than a question. As if it were a weakness that she knew too well.
“I won’t run away because I took an oath,” Cassie said.
Her mother started crying again, not just one single tear this time but many, as if a dam had broken inside her.
“I never wanted this for you,” she said. “This is exactly what I’ve spent my entire life trying to protect you from.”
“I know.” Cassie strived to sound unafraid. “But the best way you can protect me now is to keep talking to me, keep telling me things I need to know from the past, even if they’re hard to talk about. Because I don’t have anyone else to tell me these things but you.”
Her mother opened her arms, and Cassie let herself be held.
“I promise you, Cassie,” her mother said. “All I want is for you to be safe.”
They cried together for a little while, holding each other. It felt to Cassie like they were in mourning, grieving a death, and perhaps in a way they were. The death of the protective silence between them, and of their secrets and lies. The death of normalcy. Her mother rubbed soft circles into her back and told her everything would be okay, that they were in this together. For the first time, Cassie felt like a daughter.
Later that night, Cassie went to Adam’s to tell him about the hunter’s attack on the beach. They rarely hung out at his house, and she was happy for the change of scenery. She loved being in his bedroom. Lying on his bed, she couldn’t help but imagine him sleeping there, wrapped in those same sheets, with his features softening innocently as he dreamed. She gazed around the room and observed his things, everyday items that would have no meaning to her if they didn’t belong to him—his schoolbooks stacked on his desk, his sneakers piled haphazardly in the closet, and a pair of jeans strewn on the floor. She could almost see him coming home from school, tossing the books down, kicking off his shoes, and stepping out of his jeans into something more comfortable. She felt an affection for the whole scene as she imagined it, and for every object he touched—by extension, it was all a part of him.
Adam returned to the room with some snacks and drinks in hand. He closed the door behind him.
“Sorry it’s a little messy in here,” he said. “I tried to clean it up, but . . .”
“It’s perfect just like this,” Cassie said.
He joined her on the bed, and she had the sudden urge to start rubbing his shoulders, to kiss his face and his neck—to forget all about the awful storm on the beach.
Adam’s breathing slowed, and Cassie could sense he was thinking the same thing. He swept his fingers suggestively across her thigh.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he said. “But I’ve been worried about you. What happened today?” His hand slid from her thigh up to her hipbone, which was his favorite place to touch her.
Cassie took a deep breath and sat up. “I went for a walk on the beach, and I ran into Nick,” she said. Cassie paused to read Adam’s expression, but his face remained neutral.
“And I was glad to see him,” she continued, “because you know I’ve been trying to repair my friendship with him any way I can. But we’d just got to talking when the sky turned black and this awful storm started. We knew immediately by the looks of it that it was something supernatural.”
“The hunters,” Adam said.
Cassie nodded. “We couldn’t get away fast enough. Lightning bolts were flying straight for us. One would have . . .”
Cassie felt herself get choked up. She struggled to swallow down the knot that had formed in her throat. “Nick risked his life to save me, Adam. I would have been hit if he hadn’t acted so quickly to push me out of the way.”
Lines formed on Adam’s forehead, but he stared straight down at the bedspread.
“He proved himself a real friend in that moment,” Cassie said. “To both of us. Don’t you think?”
Adam continued looking down for a moment before raising his eyes to meet hers. “Yes, you’re right,” he said, and then shifted uncomfortably.
Cassie could see by the way he tightened his jaw that he was bothered it was Nick who had saved her, but he would never say that. “I wish I’d been there, but I’m glad you’re okay.” Adam took her hands and massaged them in his own. He brought them to his lips and kissed them. “I don’t know what I would have done if you’d been hurt.”
He kissed the inside of her wrist and up her forearm. Cassie knew where this was leading. As difficult as it was, she forced herself to remove her arm from his grasp.
“There’s more,” she said. “I talked to my mom. Really talked to her.”
Adam refocused his attention and sat up straight. “And?”
“She told me about my father. You know he wasn’t all bad, Adam. She really loved him.”
Adam seemed unsure of how to react. Black John was always a touchy subject between them.
“I know how that sounds,” Cassie said. “But try to imagine it. Being in love with someone the way we are, truly in love, and then losing that person to the dark side.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t want to imagine that.”
“Neither do I, so think about how awful it must have been for my poor mother.” Cassie could feel her emotions getting the best of her, and she fought the urge to start crying.
Adam reached fo
r her hands again. “I can hardly think of anything worse,” he said. “But it’s good that you can understand it now. I’m glad you had this breakthrough with your mom.”
Cassie let her eyes wander around Adam’s room. For some reason it was difficult to look at him just then. Instead, she focused on the poster taped to his wall, of some band she’d never heard of.
“I’m sure your father was easy to fall in love with,” Adam said. “He was a charismatic man, a natural leader. Your mother’s smart—she wouldn’t have been with him otherwise. It wasn’t her fault, what happened.”
Sometimes Adam knew just what to say. It was a subtle shift in Cassie’s mind, but all of a sudden she felt at ease. If Adam didn’t blame her mother, in a way that meant he didn’t blame Cassie either. She locked eyes with his and reached for him.
“The important thing is that you’re okay,” Adam said, allowing himself to be drawn in. “And that we’re together.”
Cassie lay back, and Adam curled up next to her, pulling her close. She loved him so much, it almost ached. She felt she could never get enough of him.
Adam kissed her passionately and then paused for a moment. “With everything going on,” he said. “I’m just relieved—”
Cassie put her fingers over his mouth to quiet him. “Enough talking,” she said, and pulled him closer.
Chapter 14
“Okay,” Diana said. “We don’t have much time. Who has something to report?”
The Circle was eating lunch in their new spot, a small patch of woods up one of the narrow paths on the edge of school grounds—a green grass hideaway beneath the cover of high birches and leafy apple blossoms. Adam suggested it as their new lunchtime turf for the warm-weather months.
All eyes turned to the Henderson brothers. They’d had a mission this morning: to set off a stink bomb in third-period math. The plan was to be sent to the new principal’s office together, where they could then tag team and look for evidence. The Circle was looking into anyone new in town, but the principal was number one on their list of potential hunters.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Faye?” Deborah asked as she unpacked her lunch.
“Lately all we do is wait for Faye,” Melanie said. “If she’s got better places to be, then we should go on without her.”
“I can hear you,” Faye called out from the top of the path. She made her way down slowly.
“As I was saying.” Diana raised her voice. “Chris, Doug, did you find anything?”
Faye made it down the path just in time to nudge Doug in the ribs with her pointy black boot. “Go ahead, say it. You came up with nothing.”
“We came up with nothing,” Chris said while Doug remained silent. “But not due to lack of trying. Mr. Boylan seems like a pretty straight-up guy.”
“I don’t buy it,” Nick said. “He comes into town, and everything blows up. It’s too much of a coincidence. We should question him, push the investigation further.”
Cassie noticed Nick was looking at her when he said it.
“There’s no need to be reckless,” Diana said.
Nick guffawed. “Yeah there is.”
Nick was immeasurably different from Adam, who was so righteous, always. Even his adventure-seeking was based in devotion; never for a moment was it a form of revolt.
As Cassie watched Adam now, she observed how he scrambled around the group, always the mediator, trying to keep the peace above all else. The unity of the Circle meant more to him than anything.
That was it. That was the thing rolling around in the back of her mind since they’d argued the other night, the thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on. But now that it occurred to her, it rang out with indisputable truth: Nothing came before the Circle to Adam. Not even her.
As if her discreet competition with Diana weren’t enough, Cassie realized she would also be eternally pitted against the Circle as if it were another woman—a woman with greater hold over Adam’s loyalty. How could she have not realized this sooner?
Diana, who’d barely touched her salad, glanced at Adam now, and then cleared her throat. “And has everyone been avoiding Outsiders, like we discussed?”
Cassie threw her peanut butter and jelly down onto her napkin. “You don’t have to be so vague, Diana, everyone knows which Outsiders you mean.”
Melanie and Laurel looked down at their lunches. Cassie’s sudden and uncharacteristic insolence obviously made them uncomfortable. Suzan and Sean glanced at each other with widened eyes, and Deborah’s face tightened. But Nick, Cassie noticed, was grinning, amused by her outburst.
“Catfight,” Faye called out, rubbing her palms together. “Now remember, ladies, no hair pulling.”
But Diana remained poised as always and revealed no defensiveness in her reply. “That rule applies to all Outsiders equally, Cassie. It’s not just about you being friends with Scarlett.”
Cassie felt her cheeks redden and her neck heat up. “You have to believe me,” she said with a shaky voice. “There’s nothing sketchy about Scarlett. Just because she’s an Outsider doesn’t make her against us.”
“It doesn’t?” Faye said sardonically.
“You can’t say that for sure,” Diana insisted. “We barely know anything about Scarlett.”
“Yes, I can.” Cassie was yelling now. “I know what I see when I look at her. And I trust my sight.”
It was a low blow for Cassie to mention her sight—a reminder to Diana that it was Cassie alone who had the gift of psychic visions.
“Look out,” Faye said. “Cassie’s bringing out the big guns.”
“Your sight may be clouded,” Diana said rigidly.
But Cassie shot right back. “Clouded by what?”
“By the fact that you’ve been obsessed with her since the second you met.” Diana snapped at last, losing her cool.
“Aha.” Faye clapped her hands together. “Finally the truth comes out. Diana’s jealous Cassie found a new best friend!”
A round of snickering passed through the group. Suzan and Deborah both nodded approvingly.
“A fault in the flawless marble that is our precious Diana,” Faye said. “I love it.”
“I’m not jealous.” Diana settled her green eyes directly on Cassie.
“Yes, you are,” Cassie said.
Diana was rendered speechless by this final attack, but she refused to take her eyes away from Cassie’s. Cassie wouldn’t look away either. All the frustration and confusion and anger she’d felt over Diana’s rejection of Scarlett and her going to Adam behind her back seemed to be flowing out of her now. And right back at her came Diana’s disappointment and outrage over Cassie’s audacity to defy her and the group. It was a standoff of wills. Was this what they had resorted to? This petty face-off? Nobody moved or said a word, and for a second Cassie thought it could go on forever.
But then, of course, Adam got between them. “Let’s move on,” he said. “We don’t have much time and we still have lots to discuss. Diana, Deborah, tell us what happened when you followed Max.”
At the mention of Max’s name, Faye lashed out, immediately furious. “You did what?”
Diana had a new argument to deal with now, so she reharnessed all of her energy toward Faye. “We haven’t even accused Max of anything yet. No need to overreact.”
“I have every reason to overreact. You went behind my back.”
“He’s an Outsider, and he’s new in town,” Deborah said. “You knew he was on our list.”
“And we followed him straight to your house,” Diana said as calmly as still water.
Shock broke through the surface of the group, cracking them apart into a fissured hysteria. This meeting was turning out to be much more volatile than anyone anticipated.
“He was at your house?” Melanie’s gray eyes flared.
“So that makes two people who’ve been breaking the no-Outsider rule,” Laurel said with a tinge of antagonism in her usually peaceful voice.
Suzan blurted out with he
r mouth half full of Twinkie, “But Max wanted nothing to do with Faye. He’s been avoiding her for weeks.”
Deborah shook her head, disbelieving, “Well, something changed. He’s into her now. He dropped his whole I’m too good for everyone thing and was pawing after Faye like a needy puppy. He even ditched lacrosse practice to be with her. It was almost like he was under a spell . . .”
As soon as Deborah uttered the word spell it dawned on her and everyone.
Adam wielded his electric-blue eyes at Faye. “You didn’t,” he said. “Tell me you didn’t.”
But they all knew. That’s what Faye had been up to all this time, making her late to meetings and secretive about plans. Faye did a love spell to get her crush.
“You swore,” Adam said. “We all swore not to practice any magic.”
Faye waved Adam off with her long red nails as if to wipe him away from her sight. “It was nothing. A simple love spell is hardly magic at all.”
Melanie went to Adam’s side. She was angrier than Cassie had ever seen her. “They’ll find us now, you know. The hunters.”
“Relax.” Faye laughed. “They’re not cupid hunters. No one noticed. And no one will.”
“But any slip could mean we’re outed,” Nick said. His hands were balled into fists, and his breathing was heavy. “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”
Faye whipped around and rushed at Nick. “Why don’t you tell that to Cassie?”
“Cassie hasn’t done anything wrong. You have.” Nick squeezed his fists tighter.
“Are you sure?” Faye shoved Nick forcefully in the chest.
“That’s enough,” Diana screamed out. “This discussion is getting us nowhere, and we all have to get back to class. We’ll pick this up later.”
But how? Cassie thought. How could they possibly pick up all these broken pieces? Everyone gathered their trash slowly and began making their way back to the school building, but Faye stayed put. “Seriously? You’re all leaving? The fun was just getting started.”