Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) (29 page)

She wasn’t the only one setting out to make some money on that dreary, overcast Wednesday morning. At seven o’clock in the morning I was back at the sheriff’s department, once again wearing the drab, unflattering brown uniform of a deputy. I felt like I was dressed in mud, but for all that, the uniform had never been the problem with working for Sheriff Adams.

He set me to work just as he said he would, riding around town in a squad car equipped with digital cameras. All squad cars have a camera on the front to provide a record of routine traffic stops and other incidents, but this one also had cameras aimed off to the sides, out the back windows, where they had a fairly clear view of the sidewalks and shops.

After a dull morning of patrolling, I stopped by the hospital to see how my family was doing. I got a few odd looks when I came in wearing my uniform, but no one looked terribly surprised.

“Are Isaac and D-,” I paused and corrected myself, “Edward visiting?”

Nicolas shook his head. “Isaac ran away again. Dad’s looking for him. Mr. Wolf is in with Mom.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for Isaac this afternoon.” I looked at Nicolas for a while. Something about his presence was wrong, but it took me a while to figure it out. “Didn’t the chief say you were out if you didn’t show up today?”

Nicolas didn’t look at me. “I’m done. I, um, talked to Clark Eagle this morning and he says he’ll take me on as an apprentice. He and Dad just need to work out the financial arrangements.”

He didn’t say it and I didn’t ask, but I had a feeling that Evan had tipped the scale for him the night before. Edward had been on his case for months about getting an apprenticeship and at least putting off the whole firefighter thing until he had completed his magical studies, but it had to have hurt Nicolas’ confidence to have hurt Kaitlin.

I didn’t stay long. The atmosphere was still subdued, probably more so than usual because of Isaac’s absence. Besides, I didn’t want to take too long a lunch break on my first day back at work, so after only half an hour I went back to the car and hit the streets, looking at the video screens on the dashboard as often as I looked at the road in front of me.

It took me a minute to recognize the discrepancy. Up ahead was Lewis Brothers Jewelers, a nondescript red brick building set amidst a whole row of similar red brick buildings. With my eyes, I saw a young couple enter the store, the door getting stuck behind them for a moment before it closed.

Through the video camera, I saw a black-clad figure catch the door and sneak in behind them.

I pulled my car to a stop in front of the jewelry store and called for backup. Then, grabbing one of the hand-held video cameras, I positioned myself just outside the door to Lewis Brothers and let the camera catch the thief in the act.

Neither the man working behind the counter nor the young couple seemed aware of the black-clad figure, but the camera saw him perfectly. He wore a ski mask that covered his face, except the eyes and mouth. From a distance it was hard to guess his height, but he seemed quite a bit shorter than the man working the counter. He bent down, slid open one of the supposedly locked cases, withdrew a large diamond and emerald necklace, tucked it into his shirt, and started for the door.

I didn’t need the camera to see him anymore. Illusion is a sort of mind magic, which is why it doesn’t work on video cameras. The sorcerer can fool the mind into thinking it is seeing something that’s not there or, the more simplistic version, into thinking it’s not seeing something that is there (invisibility). Once the mind figures out the trick, however; it can often see through the illusion, especially in the case of a weaker spell caster. Good, strong, motivation on the part of the person trying to see through the illusion helps, too.

The thief paused at the door, probably waiting for the couple to leave so that he could once again go through the door without being detected, but just then the sound of sirens screamed through the air. My backup had arrived, and the figure on the other side of the door no longer seemed inclined to wait. He pushed open the door and fled down the street, away from me.

I tore off after him. I had the advantage of knowing that I could see him. He either didn’t see me or didn’t think I could see him, because he largely seemed to be running from the sirens.

He was just about to round a corner into an alley when I caught up to him. “Stop, police!” I ordered.

He shot a startled glance behind him but did not stop. He did, however, trip over something in the alley and stumble, falling to his knees. I took advantage of this stroke of luck and pinned him to the ground, twisting his arms behind his back.

“You’re under arrest,” I began. “You have the right to remain silent–”

“Stop! Please!” There was desperation in the voice, but that wasn’t what made me stop. I stopped because I knew the voice. I knew it very, very well.

“Isaac?”

“Just let me go and I swear I won’t do it again. Please!”

“Why would you–?” I stopped, trying to gather my thoughts. What in the world would possess Isaac to steal? Our parents were alchemists. They literally turned lead into gold for a living and there had never been any shortage of money.

The sirens, which had been drawing steadily closer, came to a stop at the mouth of the alleyway and two of my fellow deputies stepped out.

“Cassie,” Isaac said, “are you going to let them take me to jail?”

I didn’t see how I had much of a choice. “Why, Isaac? Why?”

“I wanted to buy a gift because I don’t have one.” He lifted his hand toward me to show me a gold locket, probably the one from McClellan’s – apparently he hadn’t stolen that, only the money to buy it. Thank God for small blessings, since I didn’t want our family to have to handle their wrath.

I took the locket from him, closing my fingers around it, still confused.

“It’s not a very good gift,” Isaac said. “It just protects against minor curses. I could probably do the same thing with my talent, so I wanted to buy a better one in case... in case Mom and Dad decided they don’t want me either.”

“Oh, Isaac.” I had no idea what to say. I knew he’d always had a bit of an inferiority complex for not having an active gift the way the others did, but he wasn’t like me. He did have the ability to control magical energies.

The deputies came upon us then and I backed away, allowing them to finish making the arrest even though Isaac kept looking at me with pleading in his eyes.

Damn you, Mom and Dad
, I thought.
This is all your fault.

I
DIDN’T RETURN TO THE STATION
with Isaac, despite the pleading look she cast me as the deputies slapped handcuffs on him and shoved him into the back of a squad car. He looked so small and fragile, only twelve years old, and in way over his head. If it occurred to him to use some kind of curse to try to free himself, he wisely set the idea aside. At this point, he could only make the situation worse for himself, not better.

When the shock wore off, I called my brother, Nicolas, who didn’t answer his phone. Without him as a buffer, I would have to confront my former father directly, so I drove the four blocks back to Eagle Rock Memorial Hospital.

It seemed like it took forever to find a parking spot, and an extra eternity for the elevator to arrive at the first floor lobby. Finally, I found a sign pointing to the stairs and took them two at a time in a mad dash for the waiting room where I’d last seen my family.

They were still there – all but Nicolas, who was in with his mom, and of course, Isaac. Even Edward was there, grilling Juliana about Isaac’s friends in case there were any he didn’t know to call.

He stopped as soon as he saw me. “What’s wrong?”

“Isaac’s in jail.”

Edward stared at me, blankly.

“He robbed a bank and a jewelry store that we know about,” I said, slowly, trying to make them understand when the entire situation was utterly perplexing to me.

I kept hearing Isaac’s frightened voice over and over again:
Are you going to let them put me in jail?

Edward frowned, but did not immediately move to action. “That doesn’t make sense, Cassandra. Why would Isaac rob anyone?”

That was between Isaac and them, I decided. From me, they would get only the facts. “You’ll have to ask him about that. All I know is that last week, the sheriff hired me to find the ‘ghost’ who robbed a bank. Well, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on when the ‘ghost’ disabled the security cameras, but I swear I didn’t know it was Isaac until the deputies arrested him just now. By then, there wasn’t anything I could do.”

I could see understanding beginning to transform Edward’s face from confusion to shock. “How did the deputies manage to find Isaac, if he was invisible?”

“I found him.” I didn’t meet his eyes, knowing that I had betrayed a secret. “Video camera.”

“I see.” His eyes were beginning to glow. “Did you share this information with the police?”

I took a step back, wondering how badly I had broken our time-honored code of secrets and lies.

“I, um–” I looked around. Juliana looked afraid. Most of the younger children just looked confused. Finally, I mustered my courage. “Your son was robbing people. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Edward closed his eyes tightly and rubbed them with his fingers. “I-I have to think.” With that, he hurried out of the room.

* * *

Sheriff Adams called me not five minutes later, wanting to know where the hell I was.

“I had to tell my family about Isaac.” I remembered his earlier reservations about hiring me, and wondered, fleetingly, if maybe he’d had a point. After all, with my family threatened, I hadn’t gone straight to the station, as I probably should have.

He cursed under his breath. “What are the chances I’m going to remember any of this tomorrow?”

A few weeks ago, Sheriff Adams had confided that he often wrote things like this down in a journal, in case he forgot about them later, so I figured the chances of him remembering were pretty good. I couldn’t say the same for anyone else.

The sheriff seemed to take my silence as answer enough. “That’s what I figured. Will he even be punished for this?”

“Yes.” I would make sure of that. I might not be able to do anything about the McClellans of the world, but Isaac Walter Nostradamus Edward Scot was another matter entirely.

There was a sound from the other end of the line like fingers drumming on a desktop. “I’ve got a copy of that video where no one’s likely to look for it. Now, I might be willing to keep it buried, given that Isaac’s a minor with no prior record and frankly, I think every one of you has issues right now, but I want your father to understand something.”

“What?” I asked, weakly.

“First, the stores that were robbed will be reimbursed. Second, Isaac will be under house arrest for the foreseeable future. I don’t want him going anywhere that’s not school.”

“My parents won’t like being dictated to,” I said.

“And finally,” Sheriff Adams said over my protest, “he owes me.”

That much, he would probably understand. “All right.”

* * *

As it turned out, the day wasn’t through with me yet. Edward returned to our cozy waiting room about three hours later, dragging a shell-shocked Isaac along with him. Nobody spoke to Isaac and he didn’t speak to anyone else; he simply went to an isolated corner and curled himself into a chair.

“What happened?” Nicolas asked. I’m glad he did, because I wouldn’t have dared.

Edward sighed, heavily. “The money is back and nobody remembers the ghost thief.”

He made the whole thing sound so simple, but I knew it wasn’t. My family didn’t know how to wield the kind of mind magic that would cause dozens of people to forget a series of robberies. They’d done something similar a few weeks before, when I’d been accused of murder, but that time they’d called in a favor. I doubted they had another one to call in.

“I’m hungry,” Christina whispered. It seemed even she had been afraid to speak, but I realized that it was the middle of the afternoon and no one had eaten lunch.

“Let’s all go down to the cafeteria,” Nicolas suggested.

“Not me,” Edward said. “I’m expecting someone. Go on.”

Nicolas began herding the younger children out. Isaac didn’t want to go with him, but Nicolas dragged him, possibly using magic to aid his cause. I trailed behind, but just as I was about to leave the room, Edward stopped me.

“I owe someone for this,” he told me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to have done.

“Unfortunately, I think you will be.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It means that I have a feeling I know what price I’m going to have to pay for this favor, and that you won’t like it at all.”

I studied him for a moment, not sure if he was threatening me or just making a statement of fact. Either way, he seemed to be blaming me. “You act like I did something terrible, but all I did was try to protect this town from people like you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “People like me?”

“Yeah, people like you. Your son robbed a bank and a jewelry store – probably a few others. That’s not some misdemeanor law he broke, that’s a felony. Multiple felonies. And you’re mad at me for what? For mentioning to a few people that there’s a way to see invisible people? You’ll have to excuse me, but for some of us, that’s all the advantage we have.”