Captivate Me (Book One: The Captivated Series) (29 page)

“So you’ve been following
them?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘follow’ per se. It’s
hard to follow someone you can’t really track.” His eyes went
distant. “Hard to track someone when they’re using an invisibility
spell.”

I nodded, noting how easily he
accepted spells and hybrids and gifted students. “How are you so
cool with all this?” I blurted out.

His eyes snapped back to mine.
“Cool?”

“You talk about everything as if it’s
common knowledge.”

He glanced at Principal Hughes with a
smile and reclined in his seat. “Graduates from here go on to all
sorts of jobs.”

I gaped. “You went here?”

He smiled wider. “That surprises
you?”

“No, I uh… well…”

He lifted his hand, tiny strings of
electricity zapping between his fingers. The fluorescent lights
above us flickered.

Whoa.

He steepled his hands over
his stomach. The lights calmed. “I’ve been devoting my life to
cases like this one – sacrifices, demonic rituals. When I heard
students had gone missing here, I asked to be assigned. Not only
because I used to go here, but because of the
way
they went missing – during the
dead of night. That’s the witches’ MO. Your kind are in high demand
with them.”

No kidding.

“Problem is, it’s hard to find you
before they do sometimes.”

I noted how he said “sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”

“The only way to tell if you are is by
your aura and blood. And there aren’t many of you… I’m guessing a
couple thousand in the US, maybe. That sounds like a lot, I know.
But considering there are roughly three hundred million people in
the States, it’s like finding needles in a hay stack.”

“Well apparently our school is a hot
spot.”

“I know that now. That was one thing I
wasn’t aware of – hybrids have a tendency to be gifted. If we’d
known, my assistant and I would have had an easier
time.”

“You never knew that?”

“No. My assistant reads auras. I’d
requested to work with an aura-reader because of what I’d learned
during my research. But she never went to a school for the gifted;
she was one the scouts had never found. Neither of us would have
known the connection. It’s not like the hybrids we’ve crossed ever
offered up the information to us, either.”

I smiled in understanding.
“We hide it pretty well.”
Unless you’re
late for class and close your locker door from down the
hallway.
A brief memory flickered through
my mind –students at my old school spray-painting “witch bitch” on
my car. How ironic.

Principal Hughes piped up for the
first time. “I hate to hear of an aura-reader going unnoticed by
our scouts. We like to hire them later to become scouts and find
other gifteds.”

“I’d offer her over,” Paul replied,
“but I don’t want to let her go.”

Principal Hughes chuckled.
“Understandable.”

“So you and your assistant have
located hybrids before the witches did?” I asked.

“A handful. And that was something
else I wanted to talk you to about - part of my work is to help
protect your kind.”

I shifted in my chair
again. “Protect us?”
How could they
protect us?
Hope swelled inside me –
something I never thought I’d feel again. There might be hope for
our kind after all.

“There’s a place,” he said, resting
his elbows on the desk, “a place I can send you to that’s safer
than anywhere else you could go. But I can’t send you there unless
you’re sure you want to spend the rest of your life
there.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you anything until you
agree to going there and never leaving.”

I hesitated. “Well how will I know I
want to live there until you tell me more about it?”

He nodded in understanding, as if he’d
been through this dialogue plenty times before. “I know how unfair
that sounds, but as you know, it’s for the safety of everyone that
lives there. You endanger their way of life if you leave with the
knowledge they hold. With witches, you and your thoughts are never
safe. We can’t risk this place being discovered. Not after what
happened at the last one.”

My memory re-visited my conversation
with Iris last night. “The last place wouldn’t have happened to be
a compound of hybrids with log cabins and wooden fences, would
it?”

His mouth fell open. “How did you know
about that?”

“Iris.”

“Yes. That was the last place. That
was where my work hunting witches began. This new place has taken
greater measures to stay undiscovered, so I’m sure you can
appreciate why it’s so crucial that I not tell you anything
further.”

“I get it,” I replied, absently
running my fingers through my damp ponytail. I had a good enough
picture – a protected compound in the wilderness somewhere. The
idea still appealed to me, although I didn’t like the fact I
couldn’t leave.

“You don’t have to give me
your answer today,” he said and slid a business card across the
desk.
Detective
Paul Trueblood
. The letters FBI had
been embossed across the top. “You can call me whenever you
like.”

“So I can’t leave? Even to visit
family?”

“If your family is still
alive, that’s something you need to consider. The people that run
the compound can make exceptions, but that’s only for your family
and friends to visit
you
. You aren’t allowed to
leave.”

“Even for a few days?”

He shook his head. “Sorry,
Kathrin.”

My hope deflated a little. I didn’t
like the idea of never going home. Being a bird in a gilded cage
had never appealed to me.

“Think of it this way – you can either
live a life in peace with others like you, or live a life
constantly looking over your shoulder that you and your loved ones
might be slaughtered.”

“So no witches have ever found this
new place?”

“In the twenty years since the
relocation, we haven’t had one problem.”

I sighed heavily, the weight of this
decision bearing heavily on my soul. There was so much to consider,
to think about.

“Like I said… think about it. You have
my number.”

“So say I agree. Then
what?”

“I’ll have an envelope delivered to
you with instructions.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

We sat in silence for a moment. “Okay.
I’m guessing I can just call you from Ireland?”

Paul looked to Principal Hughes. “We
might be keeping the school open now that all of the students have
been recovered,” Principal Hughes said. “We haven’t made a final
decision, though. We’ll communicate more tomorrow. If we do and you
decide to stay, we’ll ramp up our security until
graduation.”

“How so?” I asked, although I wasn’t
entirely sure I even wanted to stay. I didn’t know if I’d feel safe
here after everything that had happened. But then again, where
would I ever feel safe? Maybe at the compound.

“Since witches apparently have a knack
for sneaking in undetected, we’ve discussed putting in infrared
cameras and having twenty-four hour K-9 units on the property. Of
course this all has to be cleared through higher-ups.”

Infrared cameras.
Pretty clever,
I
thought.

“So you could stay here until
graduation, if you chose to,” Paul interjected. “And then decide
what you want to do from there. No life decisions have to be made
this week. And Kai will be locked away for a long, long time. You
won’t have to worry about him coming back, either.”

Good.
“Okay,” I said, giving Paul’s card one last glance before
stuffing it inside my pocket.

“And one more thing,” Principal Hughes
said. “We called your parents not long ago when the phones lines
were repaired. You might want to get in touch with them so they can
hear your voice.”

I leapt to my feet as
though I were spring-loaded. “You did
what?
” My mom was probably on a
plane over here now, if she hadn’t already had a heart
attack.

“We had to. You’re a minor and were
involved in a pretty serious incident.”

“What did you say?”

“Just that. They know nothing about
your immortality. We’ll leave that with you.”

Well
thanks
, I thought bitterly and started for
the door.

“Oh, and Kat?”

I forced a respectful tone.
“Sir?”

“You might want to visit Sarah. She
took what we had to tell her pretty hard.”

You think?
“I’m guessing she knows everything?”

“Everything.”

Great. Any other messes I
need to clean up?
I thought and headed out
the door.

* * *

“How’d it go?” Levi asked as I shut
the door behind me.

“Okay, I guess. I’ll tell you more
later. I need to call my parents.”

Levi escorted me to my room, hugged me
and pecked me on the cheek, and I took a deep breath before
entering. This conversation wouldn’t go well.

Anna was waiting by the door to greet
me, a strange look on her face. “You have a, um…
visitor.”

She moved out of the way,
and my heart leapt from my chest.
Gabe.
I wasn’t ready for this yet.
He sat on the edge of my desk looking like a shell of a man who’d
just lost everything. The wound on his arm had been stitched closed
with zigzags of black thread.

“I’ll be in Sarah and Ivy’s room,”
Anna said and left to give us privacy.

I snapped out of the shock and went to
hug him hello, but it felt stiff and cold. I settled on the bed,
facing him. “You’re already out?” I asked.

“You say that as if you’re not happy
about it,” he noted.

“Oh, no,” I insisted. “I’m just
surprised. I thought you would be there longer.”

“We heal fast, remember?”

“Oh yeah.”

Silence.

“We’re not okay, are we?” he
asked.

I sighed. I guess I wasn’t a very good
actress. The fact that I hadn’t objected immediately seemed to
deliver a blow to his stomach. He rubbed the tension from the back
of his neck. “All of this was too much, wasn’t it?”

“You should go back to your tent and
rest. We can talk about all of this later.”

“I’m fine. I couldn’t rest until we
talked about this anyway.”

I closed my eyes to find the courage.
How would I even broach the subject? When I opened them, he’d
clasped on to the edge of the desk, his head hanging while he
awaited the next blows.

“Gabe, I…”
Just say it, Kat.
“Iris
said something to me last night that… upset me.”

He met my eyes, his brow furrowed.
“Upset you?” he repeated. “And wait… when did she talk to you
alone?”

“I woke up during the
ceremony.”

Abject horror seeped into his
expression. “I’m so sorry.”

“The ‘something’ she said alluded to
you going along with a plan to make sure I joined your
family.”

Dread replaced his look of horror.
“What?”

I swallowed over the lump
in my throat. The fact that
he
didn’t immediately object this time had told me
everything. Pain clenched deep inside my soul. “She said you’d
wooed me at her request to help me make up my mind.”

Blood drained from his
face.

“Please tell me that’s not true,” I
breathed, pleading, on the verge of tears.

“It didn’t go exactly like that. I…”
He hesitated, regret and sorrow etching deep lines on his
forehead.

I planted my face in my hands to hide
my tears. I didn’t know it was possible to actually feel my heart
breaking. But I did, as it crumbled into a million jagged little
pieces.

“She asked me to pursue you, and I
agreed, but-”

“Enough.” I choked from
behind my veil. There was nothing else he could say to make this
hurt any less, and quite frankly, I didn’t care what his excuses
were. He agreed. He
agreed
to lure me in for her.

He reached for my arm, and I recoiled.
“Kat, please.”

“No,” I said, pointing to the door,
surprisingly calm. “You need to go now.” I should have been mad,
furious. But all I felt right now was brokenness, a deep, consuming
brokenness.

He opened his mouth to protest, but
only stood, giving me one last pleading look. I held
firm.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he trudged to
the door. Before going through, he paused to glance back at me and
I turned my head away from him, tears streaming.