Mind Games (9 page)

“Cassie, this is serious. You can’t trust him.”

“What do you think he’ll do? Use an intoxicating kiss and the honor of a debt to make me think I’m in love with him, and then slam the door in my face?”

Evan took another step backwards. It left me enough room to breathe, although my treacherous body missed his heat.

“Cassie, I-I’m sorry. I-thought. I was hoping… I went to your father because I didn’t want it to be about the debt. I had to know you loved me.”

I rarely saw Evan lose his composure. The sight should have thrilled me, all things considered, but it didn’t.

“Just go away,” I said. “You’ve done enough.”

“Matthew’s wanted you for a while, you know, because of what I told you before. Because you’ve got a powerful family, and will probably have powerful children, but have no power of your own.”

A chill ran down my spine at the reminder. I had forgotten. How had I forgotten?

“You’re beginning to see,” Evan said. “Fight it, Cassie.”

I shook my head.

“He thinks you’re burned out or repressed,” Evan continued.

“And you? What do you think?” I’d asked before, but I couldn’t remember his answer. “Or did you find someone better? A sure thing?”

“I’ll get you free from him,” Evan said, ignoring my question. It made me wonder if there really was someone else. Someone better.

“I don’t need your protection.”

“You’re getting it anyway.”

“Oh yeah? Who protects me from you?”

He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes full of tortured thoughts I couldn’t begin to understand. Then he groaned, and tugged me closer. “No one.” With that, his lips descended toward mine.

I didn’t meet him halfway, or even lean forward. But I didn’t turn away, either. In the instant before I felt his lips on mine, my heart jumped. I closed my eyes, ready for the mind-numbing sensation.

It didn’t disappoint. I think I moaned into his mouth as heat seared through my veins, running down arms and legs, and pooling somewhere low in my abdomen. There was a flutter, a moment of joyful pain, and then the explosion.

We fell to the sofa, him slightly on top, me too intoxicated to care. He continued to kiss me everywhere he could reach – ears, throat, hands, and even the inside of my elbows, which I found I liked quite a bit. He devoured me with hands as well, touching me as if his life depended upon it. Or as if he might never get the chance again.

Under the influence of the kiss, I allowed it. I would have allowed anything, though he stopped where my clothing began. More or less. After a while, he slowed, forcing himself to ease away by small degrees. Finally, the two of us simply lay together, my head on his chest, his heart pounding in my ear.

Sense returned, but to my dismay, the anger did not. Or at least, not to the same degree. I should have felt angrier with him after he took advantage of me like that, but I only felt a stinging sensation behind my eyes that I desperately tried to blink away.

“Why did you do that?” I shouldn’t have asked, not when I knew my defenses were down.

“You told me you were dating a mind mage. I hoped it might shock some sense into you.”

That’s what it had been about? And there I was, foolishly thinking that maybe he still wanted me.

“Get. Out.” I drew away from him, not letting him see my face, one finger aimed at the door. To my surprise, he actually listened.

With Evan gone I had no reason to hold back the tears, but I found I no longer needed to shed them. Instead, I reached for the phone, seeking out a friendly voice.

Matthew answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Can you read minds over the phone?” I asked.

He laughed. “No, but please don’t tell me that means you want to get to know one another that way.”

“No. I was just… Evan stopped by tonight.”

The laughter died. “What did he do?”

“Nothing, really. He just messed me up. I thought he was out of my life.”

“Cassie, that man is dangerous. I’ll try to protect you from him, but only if you tell me the truth.”

“He kissed me,” I said, in barely a whisper.

Matthew cursed. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No, not tonight. I just… wanted to hear your voice.”

“Of course. Anytime. Why don’t you tell me about your day?”

See
, I thought defiantly,
I could say no to him
. If anyone was trying to mess with my mind, it was Evan Blackwood.

A
NGIE MUELLER HADN’T SPOKEN TO ME
since June, when I’d killed her boyfriend. He was a vampire. Not that she believed me. She and I had always had an on again, off again friendship. She had been among my childhood tormentors, but transformed into a decent human being during high school. We both joined the cheerleading squad in the ninth grade, managing bare civility until the day of the infamous cheerleading bus incident in the tenth grade. I had handed out crosses and other symbols of protection to the entire squad that morning and somehow, we had all survived unscathed when a semi crossed the median and hit us head on at speeds upwards of sixty miles per hour.

The next day, Angie went out of her way to speak to me. “My parents are the ones who told me to stay away from you,” she confided. “I always thought you were nice.”

Warily, because I didn’t know how far to trust her, I asked about her church. “They seem pretty hateful.”

Angie frowned and quickly checked to make sure we couldn’t be overheard. “They told me to quit the squad. They blamed you for the bus wreck.”

My mouth fell open a fraction. “Really?”

“I told them about the crosses, but they wouldn’t listen. They’re afraid you and I are going to become friends unless I quit the squad and that I’ll become a witch.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even believe in magic.”

“Y-you don’t?” That took me by surprise. There were people in town who turned a blind eye to the supernatural, but I’d always thought of Angie as one of those who considered it demonic in nature.

“No, I don’t.” She said it with a finality that broached no argument. “You want to come to my place after practice tonight? I’m inviting over a few girls to watch chick flicks.”

Chick flicks had never really been my thing, but I knew that wasn’t the issue. She was giving me an opening, and I had to decide whether or not to take it. To this day, I’m not sure why I did. It’s not like I didn’t have enough friends, which made my situation different from what Elena was going through in school. I suppose I felt like Angie needed me. Maybe that was a self-important attitude, but I always did have a soft spot for people I thought needed me for something. Besides, a part of me that I rarely examined, not even within my own mind, wanted Angie and her friends to like me. Or at least, to not hate me.

“All right, I’ll come.”

* * *

I couldn’t help but think of Angie and our lost friendship as Wesley and I anticipated his trip to Gateway Christian Church on Wednesday night. I didn’t know if I regretted the loss of that friendship (again), but I did wonder about her and her life. And how much did she hate me, anyway?

It was safer than thinking about Evan’s kiss, though I couldn’t substitute one for the other. In fact, my mind drifted back to that encounter so often that I even considered calling him to ask the question I had put off that night: Why did you break up with me?

I resisted the impulse by keeping myself busy at work, and by dogging Madison at home to find out what she was hiding. Actually, that only worked for an hour or so, because she finally had enough and left. I couldn’t blame her. I would say that I had been indelicate, but that would understate the case. I’m not proud of that evening.

At work, I tried to get to know my new partner, but Wesley didn’t like to talk about himself. I had pegged him correctly that first day – he was a watcher and listener. I wouldn’t call him silent, because he had no problems sharing his opinions. He simply kept himself out of it. I envied him that skill. Some days I felt like the veritable open book, and everyone around me knew what was written inside.

I only wished I knew how Wesley felt about magic. If he didn’t believe, could he do the investigation right? I tried to ask him in a hundred subtle ways, but he wasn’t stupid, and he snapped Wednesday afternoon.

“I can handle this! It doesn’t matter if I believe in magic or not. They do. That makes them just like any other hate group.”

Maybe. I didn’t have a lot of experience with hate groups, but I bet he didn’t, either. So I asked. “Had a lot of experience with hate groups?”

“Some. Gay teen got beat to death just before I left St. Louis. The trouble is figuring out which ones are just spreading the hate, and which ones might actually do something.”

That was the trouble in a nutshell.

“You’re too close to this,” Wesley said. “Your family is apparently being threatened by this group.”

“My family can handle them. It’s others I’m not so sure about.” But yeah, it did piss me off that they wanted to hurt my family.

“Well, unless you can provide me with a mind reader, this is going to take some time and a lot of work. I won’t learn anything tonight.”

I bit my lip, thinking of Matthew. Was there any way I could convince him to go and take a peek around people’s thoughts? Maybe he could figure this thing out in one night.

“Do you know a mind reader?” Wesley asked.

“No,” I lied.

But I did know I couldn’t stay home and wait while Wesley did all the legwork. Maybe I could get Matthew to help me sometime, but for the moment, I had another plan.

* * *

There is more to a good disguise than changing your hair or eye color. You give a lot away by the way you walk and talk, and by telltale expressions on your face. Luckily, no one at the Gateway Christian Church knew me very well, except for Angie, and I hoped to avoid her. As for the rest, I hit on a brilliant idea late Wednesday afternoon while cruising by the hospital emergency room and spotting a man being wheeled to his car, his leg set in a new cast.

Crutches. If I walked on crutches, not only would it obscure the way I walked, but it would ensure that later, the only thing anyone would remember about me would be the temporary disability.

I didn’t tell anyone about my plans because I didn’t want them to talk me out of it. Besides, if Wesley didn’t recognize me, it would be a good sign.

When I arrived at the church at quarter to seven, I was transformed. Under the pretense of letting her practice simple cosmetic glamours on me, I let Juliana change my hair color to a subtle honey blonde that I then tied back into a French braid – something I almost never did. I have perfect vision (corrected by magic), but that night I donned a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that provided a drastic change to my face. I wore my makeup much heavier than usual, even applying dark eye makeup and mascara, which I usually skip altogether. To finish the disguise, I dove into Kaitlin’s closet and borrowed a subdued purple blouse to go with my one pair of often-ignored black slacks. I usually like more color; the purple and black made me feel like I was in mourning. Finally, I wrapped my left foot in ace bandages and grabbed a pair of crutches that Kaitlin still kept lying around from the time she had sprained her ankle.

Someone opened the double doors of the church for me when I hobbled up on the borrowed crutches. I immediately recognized the good Samaritan as Mr. Mueller, Angie’s father and the church’s youth pastor. Here was my first test. Would he recognize me?
“Hello there. Looks like you had a bad fall.”

“I did,” I said, making my voice softer and a little shier.

“I’m Pastor Mueller.”

He clearly expected me to introduce myself, so I gave him my predetermined name. “Katie Clark.”

“Welcome, Katie.” With a cheerful smile, he turned back to greeting the other parishioners as they arrived.

I didn’t expect to sift through a crowd of over two hundred people and find one who looked like a murderer. Mostly, I was curious about the tone of the church. How hateful were they? How serious were they?

In the fifteen minutes prior to the service, I thought they seemed pretty much like any large group of people. They had families, mortgages, concerns about sickness, and hopes for the future. They were pleasant. They all greeted me with warmth and nobody seemed to question my cover story – that I was in town for an extended vacation and looking for a temporary church home. They wished me peace, prayers, and blessings.

Wesley showed up a few minutes after I did and made his way around the room, mostly talking to the men. He didn’t seem to notice me. Or if he did, he had sense enough not to give me away by singling me out or even looking my way.

It wasn’t until the service was about to start that I caught sight of Angie Mueller, chatting with a group of women a few years older than us. She looked distracted, and every so often she would glance across the room to seek me out and stare at me.

Uh oh
. I’d been found out. Or had I? Maybe there was some other reason she kept staring at me.

The first hour of the service, the praise and worship music, went pretty much as I’d remembered. From my place in the back row, I joined in, singing along to the repetitive words once I caught the chorus. The band wasn’t quite as good as the youth group’s band had been five years ago, but they were lively and passionate.