Mind Games (21 page)

How could my parents have allowed such a thing to happen? They were just as powerful as the Blackwoods, after all.

Yet somehow I’d gotten the impression that Evan outshone his father and indeed, every other practitioner in the area. By quite a bit.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Impossible.
Not possible. Not…

Victor had wanted my mother. He and my father had fought over her, doing any number of terrible things to one another in the process.

But this?

Distantly, as if from another world, I heard my cell phone ring.

There are things about him you don’t know…

The phone rang again.

Evan hadn’t said my father had paid him off, only that they had settled the debt.

Ring.

Isn’t there any way to repay it?
I’d once asked my brother.

You could give him all your magic.

This time, when the phone rang, I scrambled for it, catching it just before it went to voice mail.

“Cassandra,” Mom said, “I just wanted to know if you’re coming over for dinner tomorrow night.”

The words almost didn’t make sense to me, coming as they did through a fog of confusion and denial. When? How? Surely… surely my parents hadn’t sold my magic to settle some kind of debt? Not when they’d acted my entire life as if it had somehow been my fault. As if I’d been the disappointing one.

“Cassandra?” Mom said, sounding concerned. “Are you okay?”

“It’s impossible,” I whispered. But it wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t impossible, however improbable it might have been. Yes, my parents should have been able to protect me. But they hadn’t.

“What?” Mom said.

I licked my tear-moistened lips, tasting the salt. “I don’t have any magic because Evan has it all.”

Her startled gasp became the last piece in the puzzle. There was no backing away from the truth this time. My world and everything in it had just changed for good.

I wasn’t aware of the passage of time. Distantly, as if from another lifetime, I heard my cell phone ringing, but I felt too numb to care. I only returned to reality when I heard the house’s front door open, followed by the roar of two angry voices.

“I can’t move back in with you, even if I wanted to.” Madison was saying. “I’ve got responsibilities here. Cassie and Kaitlin count on me for a third of the costs.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said a vaguely familiar masculine voice. Her father? “I can cover it. I told you I’ve come into a sort of inheritance. A big one.”

“Good for you, but what does it have to do with me? You said I wasn’t your daughter.”

“I’ve raised you since you were a baby. Of course you’re my daughter.”
“Then why-?” Madison stopped short. She spotted me outside my bedroom door, leaning against the wall, and frowned. That’s when she took in the displaced furniture and sniffed the paint fumes in the air. “Cassie, are you okay?”

I laughed. I don’t know why, since nothing was funny. But since I didn’t think I could be less okay, the question struck me as positively hilarious. Or maybe it was the paint fumes.

I had to get out. I had to think. Without answering her questions, I dashed back into the heart of the fumes to throw on a pair of jogging shoes. Then, darting around Madison and Mr. Carter, I burst through the front door and set out to run in a random direction with the shadow of tormented anguish hot on my heels.

I
DON’T NORMALLY RUN QUICKLY. I TEND
to start out with a measured pace that I can maintain for several miles, but that night I ran full tilt, without a care to my health or even my direction. Maybe I thought if I ran far enough, I could outrun the ghost of unwanted knowledge. Maybe the world would suddenly right itself and I could go back to being Cassie Scot, normal detective, the ungifted daughter of two of the most powerful sorcerers in town.

By the time I reached the thick woods outside of town, I knew that I could never be that person again. I didn’t know who I was; certainly not Cassandra Morgan Ursula Margaret Scot, the long anticipated heir to a magical legacy going back generations, but not just Cassie, either. I couldn’t pretend anymore that there was now, nor had there ever been, anything normal about me.

Drained. Sucked dry. Through all those years and all my attempts to muster up enough magic to spit out a candle, I’d never had a chance. Worst of all, my parents had known and never told me. Maybe they really couldn’t have told me, but that part wasn’t my problem. For years they’d watched me hope, dream, pretend, and ultimately accept who I was, only to find out that even my acceptance had been a lie.

Overhead, clouds began to form in the sky, darkening the early September twilight. Rain started to fall, first in a light drizzle that under any other circumstance might have soothed my body’s rising heat but which, under the current circumstances, felt more like water torture. After another thirty minutes or so, the rain began to fall harder. The downpour grew closer and closer to matching my mood until at last, from somewhere southwest of town, lightning flashed.

Then it really began to rain. It fell in sheets, wave upon wave drenching me to the bone and still not managing to wash anything away or make anything feel better.

I couldn’t see and had no idea where I was, other than somewhere south of town, en route to the lake. Somewhere nearby, I thought, a road forked east to the strip of resorts and hotels, or west to the private homes of some of the wealthy – and in almost all cases magical – members of the community. Unless I’d already passed the fork, in which case I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I considered turning around, but I could no longer see and despite the warmth of the day, was beginning to feel chilled.

Reality finally set in then. What was I doing? I’d suffered a blow, yes, but I’d suffered blows before. Earlier in the summer my parents had attempted (unsuccessfully) to magically disown me. When they’d told me so…

When they told me so, I’d tried to go to Braden for support and had ended up in Evan’s arms.

Now where did I go? Kaitlin and Madison were probably the best support I had, considering that my parents had kept this from me for God only knew how long, but I’d never been able to talk to them about magic. Growing up, that’s what Evan had been for.

I could talk to Matthew. I stopped, trying to determine my location, aware that I’d gone out without so much as a cell phone, leaving me truly alone in the woods.

A car drove by, headlights reflecting off the rain. It passed me by, kicking up enough water to drench me if I hadn’t already been soaked, but it didn’t stop.

The headlights did reveal a flicker of something – or maybe it only existed in my imagination. Then a flash of lightning illuminated the area anew and I saw it again, a few yards into the woods – it might have been a cabin or merely a shed, but either way it had a roof on it and would keep me out of the rain until the deluge passed.

With renewed vigor, I ran toward the structure, which turned out to be a small abandoned cabin with a leaky roof. At least the leak was contained to one corner of the one-room dwelling. The rest of the room, including the fireplace, remained dry, albeit filthy and neglected. Not seeing a stick of furniture, I found the driest spot on the floor and sat, leaning against the stones of the old fireplace.

My mind began to wander, going over everything that had happened to me since June, when I’d somehow managed to get myself in Evan’s debt. Only I never had been. And he’d known it for weeks.

Which hurt more, I wondered, discovering that I’d been drained of my birthright or discovering that Evan had been the one to do it? I didn’t know how to separate the two.

But he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known until my father had told him, and then he had been too much of a coward to tell me.

My teeth chattered and I wondered if it would help to remove my clothing. Probably not, since I didn’t have a way to dry myself and would then have to sit, naked, on the dirty floor. The cabin was fairly dark, but the occasional flash of lightning would offer clues to its layout and features. There were wooden beams everywhere, a hard wooden floor, and the stone fireplace. A single door led out, in the direction of the woods, and a single window looked out in the same direction.

The lightning flashed again and for a second, I thought I saw a name carved into a wooden beam. Even though I couldn’t read it, the barest sight of the letters made my skin crawl, as if my subconscious knew something I did not. Rising slowly to my feet, I felt my way over to the beam and traced the carved wooden letters with my fingers: T-R-A-V-I-S

Crap. I must have run farther than I thought if I’d managed to stumble onto Travis property. Not that it mattered. I had to get out of there. The Travises were the most secretive, most secluded family of practitioners in the county, almost more a self-contained clan than a functioning part of the community. I’d never met any of them, not even the kids, since they were all home-schooled. They were loners who hated people, technology and, most especially, intruders. They were thieves, but for the most part people overlooked that one. Rumor also had it that they sometimes kidnapped brides. They had definitely dabbled in blood magic until a decade or so ago when Henry Wolf had led the community in a rescue mission that had put an end to that practice. Now, a tenuous balance existed between the Travis Clan and everyone else: Don’t bother us and we won’t bother you.

Shacking up in one of their cabins, even if it was abandoned, would probably count as bothering them.

Spinning on my heels, I raced for the exit, preferring the downpour to whatever would happen to me when they realized someone had intruded on their property. And they would; no doubt I had tripped a ward. Any normal family would have positioned first-degree wards as warnings that their property line had been breached, but the Travises were not normal.

The doorknob felt cool in my hands as I twisted it. I pried open the door and stared up… up… up into the dark, sinister eyes of a thirtyish man with a thick growth of beard. He had to be nearly seven feet tall.

“I-I was just leaving,” I said.

He pushed his way into the cabin, blocking the door with his bulk and causing me to take a few steps back. Then another man stepped into the cabin, one almost as big as the first, and with far more menacing eyes.

They both looked around, as if they hadn’t seen the place in ages. They probably hadn’t. “Ain’t no one been here in a while. No one with sense. Cain’t you read?”

“Not when it’s dark,” I pointed out.

The second man grinned, an ominous look. “Ain’t that your bad luck?”

“I-I’m really sorry I stopped here. It was just raining and I-well, I couldn’t read the sign. But I’ll get going.” When they didn’t look moved, I added, “I can pay you for, er, renting this place.”
For five minutes
, I thought.

The second man’s grin grew wider. “Now, that’s a fine idea.” Striding forward, he pinned me against the wall, pressing his unwashed body far too close to mine. “Sister said the storm would reel in a fine prize.”

I blinked. “You made the storm?” I hadn’t known there were any weather mages around. But of course, the Travises were very secretive. It didn’t bode well that he’d eluded to that particular secret. Mustering up my courage, I hit them with the best weapon in my arsenal. “My parents are Edward and Sheila Scot.”

The first man grabbed the second one away from me. “Shit, Jim, we got the wrong one.”

Jim frowned. “But, Jacob, how we know she ain’t lying?”

“I seen her before,” Jacob said. “She ain’t lying.”

“But we can’t let her go, she knows too much.”

“We can’t kill her. You want the whole town to turn on us?”

Jim scratched his beard. “All right, then we’ll just borrow her for a few days, till we finish the spell.” He grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me out of the shack.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

“Main house.”

The door opened before us and he dragged me into the downpour. I had to get away from him; I couldn’t let him take me to that house. So, for a few yards, I went docile, until the moment I felt his grip slacken. Then, in a swift defensive move, I broke his grip on my arm and landed a knee in his groin. While he doubled over, I bolted for the scant protection of the road. At least then I wouldn’t be on his property or in his territory anymore, but I had no idea what kind of magic he could unleash against me. I had a few protective wards, but they could only do so much.

A force from behind knocked my legs out from under me just as I reached the edge of the road. I careened forward, landing on hands and knees on the rough pavement, tearing my skin in several places.

To make matters worse, a car was coming. Far from hoping for rescue, I expected the driver not to be able to see me in the rain. And I wasn’t sure I could scurry away from the fast-approaching wheels.

Scrambling to my feet, I tried to leap out of the way, but I would never have made it if not for the screech of brakes. Miraculously, the car stopped, though it shouldn’t have been able to do so in such a short space.

Jim Travis marched across the road and grabbed me by the upper arm. He shook me, hard. “That was stupid.”