Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (8 page)

“James Bond with a two hundred IQ.” I hiccupped, and we cracked up again.

“A two hundred IQ—seriously?” Jared questioned when we got hold of our laughter again.

“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Did our parents tell you about him?”

“About Emery being a child prodigy and graduating from Wallingford University last spring?” Jared gave me a wry smile.

“Yeah, that.” I chuckled, feeling embarrassment creep in. “You probably think we’re all super strange.”

“Not strange—unreal.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know if I liked that.

“Don’t take that negatively. You’re still Cassidy Jones, the girl I’ve been in love with since I was, like, ten.”

“Ten?” I asked skeptically.

“Yeah, ten. The only difference is now you can beat me at arm wrestling.”

“Yeah, right. I’m no threat beyond that.” I regretted the words as soon as they came out. What was I doing? Did I
want
Jared to be scared of me?

Better safe than sorry.

“Don’t do that, Cass,” Jared said, tracing my hairline again. His touch sent what felt like a tingling electric current over the surface of my skin. “Don’t even think about trying to push me away. You are Cassidy to me, no matter what.”

“That’s a miracle in and of itself, considering what you saw.”

“I saw you save my life. If you hadn’t been there, I might not be here now.”

“Don’t say that.” I grabbed his precious face in my hands, fiercely. “I love you, too.”

“You do?” His eyes drank me in.

“Yeah, since I was
nine
.”

“You always have to one-up me.”

We grew sober then, fixed in one another’s gazes. I wanted to prove that I loved him, and knew exactly how. “I want to tell you something that I have never told anyone.”

I summarized the night Emery and I stormed King Pharmaceutical to rescue my dad and Serena. After describing the three ninjas and the weapons they wielded, I came to the part I had never confessed to another living soul. “The throwing-star ninja came at me in this jump-kick. My brain imprinted his kick, so I was able to counterattack with the same move. My heel rammed into his face, and I could feel cartilage snap, pushing his nose off to the side of his face. It was disgusting.”

Jared nodded, synapses firing behind his serious eyes.

“While all of that was going on, it gave the nunchuck ninja a chance to attack. He hit my head with nunchucks and shattered my skull. At least that’s how it felt. The pain was indescribable.”

Jared slid his hand over mine; his gaze intensified. “What happened then?”

“I died.”

He stared at me, as if having trouble packing the information into his grey matter. “You
died
?”

“Yeah, died—as in croaked, kicked the bucket, bought the farm.” I let out a nervous laugh. I was about to tread on sacred ground and reveal an experience I had vowed to keep to myself forever. “That isn’t what I wanted to tell you, though. I was just leading up to my secret. I had one of those
near-death
experiences—you know, when the person feels their spirit leave their body and sees a beckoning light?”

“You saw God?”

“Yes.” I fell silent.

Absently, I traced the graphic on his T-shirt with my forefinger as I assembled my emotions. Talking about this was more difficult than I’d anticipated. “I wanted to keep floating up. But I couldn’t. All at once, it felt like this force grabbed my inner core and yanked me downward, right back into my body. What scares me most—I’m going to cry.”

“It’s okay.” Jared’s fingertips caressed my cheekbone. “Cry.”

“No. There’s been enough crying for one day. What scares me most is an endless life, where I have to watch everyone I love die. There! I said it.”

Jared enveloped me in his arms, and I snuggled against his warm, solid chest, relishing his steady heartbeat thumping in my ear. I could have stayed like that forever.

“Don’t worry about what might or might not happen,” he encouraged thickly.

“Stop!” I protested. “You’re going to make me cry. They probably didn’t tell you about my emotions. Up and down, to extremes. It’s crazy!”

“Are you trying to say you being emotional is new?” he teased.

“Yes!” I nestled my chin on his chest so I could see his face. Much to my surprise, his eyes were moist with tears. “Look what I did to you! Your eyelashes look like wet flower petals.”

“Just what every guy wants to hear.”

“Well, they look beautiful. You’re beautiful, inside and out.”

“Thank you. And ditto.” He laughed at himself. “That was lame.” His fingers returned to the task of tucking hair behind my ear. “But in all seriousness, your secrets are
always
safe with me. And as far as you know, Mrs. Phillips could find a cure tomorrow.”

“She could. But she won’t.” Before Jared could argue, I rushed on. “There’s something I need to show you. Come on.”

As I stood up, a mixture of disappointment and relief played over his face. It was good to know our intimacy hadn’t affected only me. My legs felt like gelatin.

I led him to the sofa and switched on the desk lamp.

“Have a seat.” I rummaged through the top drawer. “I want you to see why the bullet didn’t get past my skin.” I found what I had been searching for—sewing scissors.

When he saw the scissors in my hand, Jared’s curiosity became alarm. “What are you going to do?”

“I told you—show you why I’m bulletproof.” I sat next to him. “Don’t move. Don’t try to stop me,” I repeated the instructions Serena had given me when she performed the same test. “Do
not
stop me,” I reminded for safe measure and flattened my palm, aiming the scissor’s tip dead center.

“Whoa! Wait—” Jared grabbed my hand that held the scissors.

“That’s just what Emery did
after
Serena had told him not to.”

“You’ve done this before?” Jared stared at me like I was off my rocker.

“This is how I entertain myself when I’m bored,” I joked.

Jared didn’t think it was funny.

“It’ll be fine.” I smiled at his sweet, anxious face. “I won’t get hurt. But it won’t work if you stop me again. So just watch. Don’t move a muscle.”

He concentrated on the scissors targeting my palm, worry lines creasing his forehead. My smile expanded. Jared was too adorable.

I dropped my arm; the scissors plunged. Apparently due to Jared’s adorableness, my brain didn’t register
danger
. My skin didn’t harden like I’d planned. The scissors ripped into my flesh, activating pain receptors. I yelped. Blood gushed into the deep wound. Only then did my skin turn rigid, numbing the pain.

“No,” Jared gasped.

I blinked at the scissors sunk into my palm, blood welling around the blades, pooling in my palm. Jared reached for the handles to save me from myself, but before he could get hold of them, I yanked the blades loose.

“That wasn’t what I had intended at all,” I apologized, feeling a faint throbbing around the cut. Jared pressed the edge of his T-shirt into the gash.

“W-why?” He groped for words, completely rattled.

“Your cuteness distracted me. I feel like a
complete
idiot.”

“Your voice—” Jared assessed my face. “You don’t feel pain?”

“Of course not. Can’t you feel how hard my skin is? It’s like a rock, but won’t be for long. Hurry and look, before you miss it.”

“Look at what?”

“Where I stabbed myself.” I pried his hand from my palm. He stared at me in shock, experiencing my strength firsthand. “Look,” I urged.

He forced his eyes to the wound, or what remained of it.

“Dang. It’s nearly healed,” I observed, disappointed. The ravaged flesh had almost closed.

Jared gaped at my hand. “I can’t believe it,” he said. He took hold of my hand to examine it.

“My skin is normal again, too. Did you feel how hard it was?”

Not appearing to have heard me, he rubbed away blood, searching for the wound.

“You won’t even find a scratch. But if you touched my hand three seconds ago, it would have felt like a rock. We could do the test again. Just don’t distract me this time.”

“Stab you?” Jared asked, flabbergasted at the suggestion. “I don’t think so. Never again.”

“It’s no big deal—” I began, but switched gears when Jared’s expression told me it most certainly was a big deal. He just didn’t get it. “Well, at least you saw my rapid cell regeneration at work. Now you get why I’m hard to kill, with the exception of—” I retracted from broaching the subject of Raul Diaz, a.k.a., Silver Tooth.

Due to our similar genetic makeup, Diaz’s venom was my only mortal weakness, thus far. But Jared didn’t need to hear that right now. He had enough to sort through. What had happened on the
Enchantress
was a story for another day.

“With the exception of what?”

“I’ll tell you another time. Do you know what’s going on with your dad?”

“No.” His face betrayed his anger, embarrassment, and worry. “But my guess is he owes someone money for a gambling debt, or he pissed off one of his lowlife clients.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know his dad had a gambling problem.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Jared apologized.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Don’t think about what could have happened. Think about what
did
happen. I was there.”

Rage flashed in his eyes. “I can’t help but think—what if it had been my mom at home instead? What would they have done to her?”

“Well, she wasn’t. So don’t even go there. Everything happens for a reason. It wasn’t a mistake that I was with you, or that you saw what you saw. I’m glad you did. I don’t want to keep any secrets from you.”

“I’m glad, too.” He smiled, though his eyes simmered. His father had brought those creeps to their door. That was a lot to cope with.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall below us.

“My dad is coming,” I told Jared.

He listened and shook his head, not hearing my dad.

The attic door creaked open.

Jared grinned. “
Now
I hear him.”

“Cassidy,” Dad called as he climbed the steps.

“Yep. We’re here, and I didn’t traumatize Jared too much.”

Dad came into view. Surprise sprang onto his face. Eying the blood smeared at the bottom of Jared’s T-shirt, he offered him the phone handset. “Your mom,” he explained.

“Any word from my dad yet?” Jared asked.

Dad shook his head regretfully.

“He’ll call soon.” I gave Jared’s shoulder a reassuring pat. Of course, I didn’t believe he would. I couldn’t shake the image of Owen Wells wearing cement boots at the bottom of Lake Washington.

“Hi, Mom,” Jared said into the handset.

Eileen’s frantic voice flowed through the receiver.

“Mom, it’s okay—
I’m
okay
.
” Jared placed an elbow on his knee and cradled his forehead in his palm so we couldn’t see his face. “No one can find Dad. Do you know where he could be?”

My dad motioned for us to give Jared privacy. Then he spied the scissors on the floor. His mouth dipped with disapproval.

“A demonstration,” I whispered as he swiped them off the floor. A bit of my blood had stained the Berber carpet. Mom was going to have a fit.

Dad raised his hand for me to say no more. By the deepening of the lines on his forehead, I guessed he had a massive headache coming on.

The next morning, Eileen was flying somewhere over the continental US on her way home, and there still had been no word from Jared’s dad. Authorities had learned that his law partners and the staff at Cooperstein, Scolla and Wells hadn’t been in contact with him since Tuesday, due to his being on vacation. The vacation was news to Jared.

During breakfast, conversation was kept intentionally light, as we avoided the previous day’s events and speculations about Mr. Wells’s whereabouts. The phone rang as I forked the last spoonful of veggie scramble into my mouth. My dad’s scrambles were to die for.

Chazz jumped from his chair and bolted for the phone as though we were going to race him to it. No one moved a muscle. We all knew Chazz would get it.

“Hello!” Chazz’s head bobbed vigorously as he listened to the caller. He pulled the phone from his ear and ordered with an air of importance: “Cassidy, Serena wants your blood—
now
.”

I cracked a smile over Serena’s protest of the usage of “now.” That had been Chazz’s touch.

“Well, you heard him,” I said, rising to my feet. “I have to go
now
. Guess that means you’re doing the dishes, Nate.”

He chucked a wadded napkin at me, which I let nail my face. It was the least I could do.

“Want to come?” I invited Jared. “You might as well see what my housecleaning duties for Serena entail.”

~~~

“Let me guess,” Jared said as we crossed the street to the Phillips’s. “You don’t vacuum or mop floors.”

“Sometimes I do.” I waved at Cristiano. He smiled around the bottle of water he was chugging and waved back. “Wonder what’s made him so happy lately?” I mused in a lowered voice to Jared. “He never smiles.”

“The construction worker?” Jared inquired. He discreetly studied Cristiano, who was assisting a coworker named Briggs in removing a beam from the van. After yesterday, Jared had caught on that nothing was as it seemed, even the Phillips’s remodeling.

~~~

“Knock, knock,” I called from the front door threshold.

“Come on up,” Gavin called from upstairs.

Jared and I moved aside so Briggs and Cristiano could carry the beam inside the house. The four other workers must have been in the basement, shoveling dirt or something. Cristiano flashed us another smile as they walked by. If his breath hadn’t indicated differently, I would have suspected the bottle I’d seen him gulping from contained something other than water.

“Are you in love, Cristiano?” This was the next logical explanation.

Jared stifled a snicker.

Briggs and Cristiano hooted, their feet crunching along the plastic that was protecting the hallway floor.