Mind Games (22 page)

Before I could protest, Jim staggered back a step. Then, with a look of utter astonishment on his face, he flew backward hard, landing somewhere in the trees near the cabin.

“What the-?” I looked first at the car, which appeared, from the glow of the headlights, suspiciously like a metallic blue Prius. Evan’s car. When the driver’s side door opened and he stepped out, I knew for sure that once again, he had come to my rescue. Somehow, it made the whole thing that much more humiliating.

“Get in the car,” he said loudly enough to be heard over the rain. “I’ll take you home.”

I moved away from Jacob, toward the relative safety of Evan’s car, hoping that when he saw the dampness on my cheeks he would blame the driving rain.

Sliding into the passenger seat, I fumbled for the seat belt, but was unable to grasp it in my shaking hands. After a minute, the seat belt latched itself, almost at the same time that I became palpably aware of the man who had ruined my life sitting in the seat next to me.

“Madison got worried when it started raining and you didn’t come home,” Evan said, as if I’d asked for an explanation. I wondered, fleetingly, why she hadn’t called my brother instead, but I had more important concerns.

“So she called and you found me in two seconds flat?” Since one of my new wards prevented sorcerers from magically scrying for me, there was only one way he could have managed to find me so quickly. Somehow, he had a blood sample. Not that he hadn’t had plenty of opportunities to get one, especially when he had healed me from the vampire attack, but it still felt like a betrayal of trust.

Evan ignored the implication. “What possessed you to go running in a thunderstorm?”

He didn’t know I knew. For some reason, as we’d been talking, I had been sure he must have known or at least guessed that I’d figured it out. If for no other reason than because the shock, humiliation, and sense of betrayal shook me with such tangible force. If he had an ounce of intuition, he would have had to realize it, but that wasn’t his gift. He had two gifts – a rarity – but neither one allowed him to read my mind or guess that I’d made the connection.

“Cassie?” Evan repeated.

His eyes remained on the road, what little of it he could see. My eyes went to his face, set in its usual cast of determined arrogance. With two words, I could wipe that expression away, and I used them like a weapon. “I know.”

The color drained from his face. He fumbled the steering wheel as he entered a sharp bend in the road and ended up slamming his foot on the brake.

Evan reached forward to help me steady myself, but I slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

He withdrew his hand, but continued to stare at me with the same shell-shocked expression. “How-?”

“I’m a detective, remember? Sooner or later I was going to figure it out.” I should have figured it out much sooner, in fact. All the clues had been there, but how was I supposed to guess that somehow, someone had managed to steal my magic from under my parents’ noses? That sort of thing happened to weaker or less protected sorcerers, not to a Scot. I still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened, but Laura’s thinly veiled hints had helped me remember the most fundamental rule of investigation: When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.

Victor had wanted revenge and somehow he had made it happen.

“I should have told you.” Evan’s voice shook.

“That’s true.”

“I almost did.”

I turned my face away.

“Cassie, please don’t cry,” Evan reached out a hand to touch me, but stopped himself just in time.

“They’re not tears. My hair is wet.” I rubbed the water from my face, then prayed it remained dry.

“I didn’t know until I approached your father to see if he would buy your debt,” Evan said. “You have to believe that I had no idea. I’ve been trying to get up the courage to tell you for a while now, but I was out of town most of the summer and when Matthew started…”

“Oh, please, finish that thought. Even assuming that he has used mind magic on me, what has Matthew done to me that in any way compares to what you did?” The anger of my words tasted like bile, but I had to get them out. They were eating me up inside.

“Cassie, I didn’t do it. I never would have done it. My father did it.”

“Yes, but now you have the power and I-I apparently need you to rescue me all the time.” I swallowed, not sure how to release the pain. Anger didn’t help, though at that moment I hated Evan Blackwood more than I could say.

“I loved you enough to let you go,” Evan said.

Tears once again began to sting my eyes, but I blinked them back, furiously. “Love? Is that what you’re calling it? I don’t think you know what it means. Someone who loves me would have told me the truth.”

“When I found out, all I could remember was you telling me about what happened to your mom. You said you’d never forgive anyone who did that to you.”

“That’s not why you didn’t tell me,” I said, and I suddenly knew with startling clarity why he had been afraid to share the truth. “It’s not like we were going to be friends ever again anyway, the way you ended it.”

“Then enlighten me, if you know so much about me.”

“You didn’t tell me because you were afraid I’d ask for it back.”

Outside the car, the rain still came down in heavy sheets, but inside, silence hung thickly in the air. The chattering of my teeth finally broke it after who knew how many minutes had passed.

“You’re cold,” Evan said. “Let me help.”

I put up a hand. “Not that way. Not any way, for that matter. I need you to not rescue me again.”

“I can’t do that. Ask me anything else. Please, you can’t be angry at me about getting you away from that crazy clan? Alexander’s making them nervous and I think they’re trying to put together some blood for a powerful spell.”

“No, I’m not angry with you for that.” I felt shame, possibly, but not anger. “But speaking of powerful spells. How in the hell did your father pull this one off under my dad’s nose?”

The look that flashed across Evan’s face was one I recognized, that of a sorcerer teetering on the edge of revealing a secret. It wasn’t a question I should have asked. Common magical courtesy did not allow for me to ask, point-blank, what someone could do or how something could be done.

Screw courtesy. This time, I was going to find out the truth. “Don’t even think about holding back on me. Not this time.”

He nodded. “To be honest, he doesn’t remember the whole spell and isn’t sure he could repeat it. He was drunk at the time.”

“Terrific,” I muttered. “I hope he had a killer hangover.”

“Apparently, he and your mom were lovers.”

I winced. “More information than I needed to know.”

“I’m afraid not. You actually need even more. Not only were they lovers, but he was your mom’s first. There is old magic that forms a link between a woman and her first lover, a link that he followed with that spell. He claims he only meant to cast a spell cursing her first child to be born without magic. It suited his sense of irony, since drained women were supposed to be able to produce magical children. I’m not sure he gave the spell much thought after that, because he met my mom and for a time, got over his anger. What he didn’t realize was that your magic had to go somewhere, and when I was conceived right around the same time you were, that’s where it went.”

I closed my eyes, letting the information sink in. “Is there still a link between your dad and-?”

“No,” Evan hastened to say. “It would have begun to weaken when you were conceived and been destroyed before you were born.”

“Small favor.”

“Is there anything else you want to know? I’ll tell you anything.” He sounded almost desperate to please, but I couldn’t give him the one thing he really wanted – forgiveness. The wounds were too fresh, the emotions too hot.

“How about if I take you home?” Evan said, putting the car back in gear. “You have a lot to deal with right now.”

We drove in silence until he pulled into the driveway of my rented house, behind Kaitlin’s car. I reached for the handle, but before opening the door, I turned back to Evan, hating him for making me ask when he should have been the one to offer. “Just one more thing before I walk out of your life forever.”

He winced. “What?”

“Will you give it back?”

There was a long moment of charged tension between us while we stared into each other’s eyes. I’m not sure what he saw in mine, but in his I saw a great deal of fear and uncertainty. Whether he feared the pain of transference or the loss of power, I had no idea. When he finally answered, it was with a firm, decisive. “No.”

K
AITLIN AND MADISON SAT IN THE
living room among the haphazardly rearranged bedroom furniture when I returned home. I can’t even imagine what I looked like to them, soaked to the bone in filthy clothes, hair hanging in limp tendrils about my face. The horrified looks they gave me outshone even the ones they’d given me when I’d turned up half burned from an accidental fire.

“What happened?” Kaitlin demanded.

I stared over my shoulder, out the partially open front door, watching Evan’s car. It hadn’t moved. Giving him one last evil glare, which I hoped he could see despite the dark and the rain, I slammed the door shut.

“Cassie?” Kaitlin’s voice rose. “What’s wrong? Is it Evan?”

“Why would you assume it was Evan?” I asked.

Kaitlin and Madison looked at one another as if sharing their thoughts, but Kaitlin answered. “You’re still hung up on him.”

I laughed and shook my head. It was perhaps the one good thing to come out of the day’s revelations, but I felt, firmly and forever, that I no longer loved Evan Blackwood. Sometimes love fades away, but other times it just dies. Hard.

Ignoring my roommates’ protests, I grabbed fresh clothes from the dresser in the middle of the living room and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later I emerged to find Madison and Kaitlin still waiting expectantly, but as much as I appreciated their friendship, they weren’t the people I needed.

The person I needed, the only one I could even think to seek out for comfort, answered his front door in jogging shorts and an old t-shirt. Somewhere in the distance, the TV blasted a rerun of
Law & Order
, but Matthew’s attention was focused squarely on me.

My mind went blank as I looked at him and saw the concern radiating from his green-gray eyes. Powerful, well-muscled arms reached forward to draw me to him, out of the rain.

For the first time, I appreciated the usefulness of dating a telepath. There were no awkward questions, no halting attempts to explain, only warm arms and the lingering scent of his aftershave surrounding me as tears began to slide down my face.

“That’s right,” Matthew said in a hushed voice. “Let it out.”

He ran his hand up and down my arm, warming and soothing my body, but he didn’t put an end to the tears. He could have ended the sadness with magic, but he didn’t.

“You need to cry,” Matthew said. “There’s nothing I could do to spare you from this pain short of making you forget, and you don’t want to forget.”

Didn’t I? For twenty-one years I’d gone around thinking of myself as nothing more than a disappointing failure or a weak link, to use my father’s own words. Now I knew it hadn’t been my fault, but I felt more helpless than ever. My world had changed, but whether for better or worse, I had no idea.

Somehow, we ended up on the sofa, the TV turned to a soft rock music channel. Matthew still had his arms around me and my head rested perfectly against his shoulder, as if it belonged there.

“Did you know?” I asked suddenly. My parents had known and hadn’t been able to tell me. Who else, though? Who had known and who had guessed? Matthew could read minds, so perhaps…

“No,” Matthew said. “I can’t read Evan’s mind. Or your parents’, for that matter. Even Nicolas has almost figured out the trick to shielding me. It took him some effort, but he nearly had me blocked at the picnic last week.”

“I feel like I should have known or guessed, somehow,” I said. “It wasn’t just that we were in a relationship. He was my friend, you know? My best friend for so long. My father told me I didn’t know everything about him, but I just never guessed.”

“Stop blaming yourself.” Matthew brushed his lips across the top of my head. “Nothing about this is your fault.”

“I thought I loved him.”

“You probably did.”

“Isn’t love supposed to last forever?” I asked.

“Only if it has help. You have to work at it.”

For a long time we sat like that, him supporting me while I cried into his shoulder, mourning once and for all the loss of the magic that I had never even had. Its absence had been a critical part of my life, but at least now I understood it. At least now, I could find some closure.

After a long time, my tears subsided, but I didn’t move. I clung to Matthew as if he were my lifeline.

“Cassie,” Matthew said after a while. “I hate to bring this up when you’re so upset, but who knows about this?”

The question surprised me. “I-don’t know. My parents, but they aren’t allowed to say. Evan. His parents. I’m not sure who they would have told. Why?”