Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) (2 page)

“Start talking,” Evan said. “And I’d better believe your answers.”

Jacob put his hand up as he coughed and gasped for breath. Evan gave him a minute to compose himself, but only a minute.

“Well?” Evan prompted.

“There was a bank robbery a few days back,” Jacob began.

Evan remembered the news reports he had half paid attention to, and gave a curt nod.

“The girl, she’s the one he got to. No one else knew, he just walked up to her and showed her the gun. Must have scared her half to death, ‘cause she pulsed.”

Evan started in surprise, but Scott didn’t even flinch. Either he had suspected the possibility, or he was better at hiding his feelings than Evan.

Pulsing wasn’t something a grown sorceress normally did. It was a symptom of the young, or possibly those who had been painfully repressed. Even sorcerers with no access to real training naturally learned to control the untamed magical impulses by the time they reached adulthood.

What made the idea even stranger to Evan was that completely untrained sorcerers in the Eagle Rock area were almost unheard of. The magical world wasn’t one big black hole for information. There were levels of knowledge and understanding from the widely known to the obscure. The most closely held secrets, such as alchemy, were guarded almost more strongly against other sorcerers than against lay people. On the other hand, the principles involved in meditation and grounding were widely available on the Internet to anyone with a mind to look.

And as if all that wasn’t strange enough, in the Eagle Rock area almost anyone with magic was related, even distantly, to someone willing to offer basic training. Family tended to be important to sorcerers. Evan’s father had been known to tutor cousins so distant that they barely clung to the family tree.

“Who else knows?” Scott asked.

“Don’t know. Didn’t stop to take a poll.”

Scott growled, low in his throat.

“It wasn’t strong,” Jacob said. “Unless there was someone else in the bank who could pick up on it, no one else knows. All the pulse did was send a breeze through the room, like someone opened the door, ‘cept it was closed. Guy might have backed up a step, too.”

“Think he’s telling the truth?” Evan asked.

“Probably,” Scott said, “but his clan knows.”

Which meant if they killed him without the support of the town, they would have to go up against the entire Travis clan.

“All right,” Evan said, “here’s what we’re going to do. You can go, but you deliver a message for me: If I even get a hint that you’re using blood magic, I’ll mobilize the entire town against you.”

“Weren’t using blood magic,” Jacob whined. “Just thought she was pretty.”

Scott grabbed one of his hands, twisted, and broke Jacob’s wrist. The man let out a howl of pain, and slumped to the ground, sobbing.

“Then consider her under my protection, too,” Evan said.

“Can’t...have...all...girls...” Jacob said.

“I can break your other wrist,” Scott said.

Jacob didn’t respond, except with more sobs.

Evan turned away, and headed in the direction Cassie had gone, letting the sobs and wails fall behind him. Scott followed a few feet back, remaining hidden, but of course the women were long gone. All that remained was to go to Cassie’s apartment and make sure they had made it back all right.

“You’ll get spread pretty thin if you try to defend every woman in town,” Scott said.

Evan just shrugged. Scott may have had a point, but he didn’t care. In fact, he realized when he stood in front of Cassie’s apartment and sensed her presence safely within, he felt good for the first time in weeks. There was a primitive satisfaction in protecting someone from a bad guy, especially one as black as Jacob Travis. And even if Jacob hadn’t been after Cassie, Evan had sent a clear message to anyone who would hurt her – or her friends.

It should buy him time. He only hoped it bought him enough.

I
T TURNS OUT, THERE’S A TIME
limit on feeling sorry for yourself.
Nobody mentioned it to me the day I moved into Kaitlin’s one-bedroom apartment, stowing boxes of clothes in one corner while making a makeshift bed out of blankets on the floor. I didn’t hear a word about it on Monday or Tuesday, when Kaitlin went to work and I flipped through endless channels of daytime TV, blocking out my own problems by getting angry with the men who cheated on their pregnant girlfriends.

Kaitlin almost mentioned something on Wednesday, after I complained about the endless stream of visitors I refused to let into the apartment that day. Most notably, my former father wanted to talk about something I didn’t catch, but which, from the tone of his voice, was clearly my fault. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d disowned me? Did I have to continue to listen to his lectures as well? No doubt he had some suspicions about me fraternizing with the Blackwoods, his long-time enemies, but I couldn’t handle it, not from a man who had rejected me. Besides, I had bigger problems with one Blackwood – Evan – than I cared to admit.

On Thursday, when Kaitlin and I took Madison to the movies to help get her mind off the bank robbery, I could have sworn Evan was following me. I’m sure it was nothing more than paranoia, but wasn’t I entitled to a few delusions about the man who had complete control of my life? Someone who could, on a whim, command me to do anything at all? I spent Thursday night, after the movie, coming up with more and more bizarre orders he could give me: Stand on your head. Circle your head and pat your tummy. Wink at the next ten strangers who walk by.

He would probably not ask me to do any of those things, but thinking about them helped me keep my mind off the more likely orders: Kiss me. Move in with me. Marry me.

He had already ordered me to do that last one, and though he had retracted the command, I didn’t doubt for a second that he was just biding his time. He wanted me, and Evan Blackwood tended to get what he wanted.

Then came Friday morning, which was, apparently, the deadline to stop moping. I was sitting at the breakfast table trying hard to wake up – due to Kaitlin’s snoring, I had barely slept – when she shoved a piece of paper in my face.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked.

I tried to push it away. “Not when it’s pressed against my nose.”

“How about this?” Kaitlin shoved another piece of paper at my face.

“What is this about?”

“My credit card bill is due in a few days, and the electric bill was due yesterday. This is a shut-off notice, if we don’t pay by Tuesday.”

Bills. She was talking about bills?

“You can’t just sit here feeling sorry for yourself. You have to get a job.”

Oh. Real life. She was talking about real life. My parents had sheltered me from that for most of my life. Er, my former parents. They would willingly shove money down my throat if I let them, but I was too proud for that. If I wanted to prove my own worth and independence, then I needed to get a job.

Which was why, Friday morning, I walked into the sheriff’s department and asked to speak to Sheriff Adams.

Jane, the dispatcher, looked happy to see me. She smiled and gave me a tight hug when I told her I wanted my old job back. Not all the others were quite as friendly, but then again, I had always been something of an outsider at the department. Part of it was my youth. I was three years younger than the next youngest deputy, and most of the others realized – or suspected – a sizable financial donation from my parents had gotten me the job in the first place.

That’s not why I had kept the job, and it certainly wasn’t why the sheriff had spent six months practically begging me to go back to work after I quit. I knew things. Things that made some nervous. Things that left others in awe. Only a few had ever tried to befriend me.

It was as if I didn’t quite belong in either the magical world, or the normal one.

Sheriff Adams strode out of his private office. His eyes searched my face, though I noticed that otherwise his face remained oddly impassive. Hadn’t he begged me, multiple times, to return to work for him? Well, here I was, so what was that look about?

“Why don’t you step inside my office?”

I did, waving to Jane and to a few of the other, friendlier faces, before closing the door behind me and taking a seat.

“I suppose you know I’m here to ask for my old job back,” I said.

He nodded. “I figured. I’m just not sure if we have any openings right now.”

My jaw dropped. “What?”

“The budget is tight. We ended up putting in some overtime hours because of the recent vampire attacks, and the county trustees are stingy when it comes to paying for overtime. They’re telling me to make cuts.”

I had no doubt that what he said was true. His job as sheriff involved at least as much politics as policing, maybe more. But it was still just an excuse.

“I’m not saying something won’t come up, sooner or later,” the sheriff went on, “but right now, things are tight.”

“Are you doing this because you’re mad at me?” I asked. “Isn’t it good enough that I survived three vampire attacks?”

“Three?” He frowned. “I only heard about two.”

Belatedly, I remembered that the final attack, the one that had nearly killed me and which had left me impossibly indebted to Evan Blackwood, was not common knowledge. Most thought my cousin, Jason, the vampire hunter had killed Frank Lloyd. “Whatever. Isn’t it enough?”

“You also resisted arrest. Don’t forget the part where you resisted arrest.”

So that was it. “I had no choice. My family wouldn’t let me out the door.”

“It still makes me nervous. You’re unpredictable.”

“It’s not like they’ll be a problem anymore. They disowned me.”

Sheriff Adams leaned forward and met my eyes for the first time. “I heard something about that. Care to tell me what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did they do it?”

Since I didn’t know how to answer that question for myself, I couldn’t answer it for him. “It’s complicated.”

“It always is with you.” He shook his head. “Look, I just need some time to think about this.”

“And I need a job. What am I supposed to do while I wait for you to make up your mind?”

“Don’t tell me you never saved anything.”

A flush crept across my face, but I didn’t say anything. It had simply never occurred to me that I might need to put anything away for a rainy day. In retrospect, it seemed incredibly foolish and short-sighted. But it probably wouldn’t occur to you, either, if your parents could turn lead into gold.

“Look, Sheriff.” I bolstered my confidence. “You can think about it all you like, but one day soon, you’re going to beg me for help and I won’t be available.”

He gave me the sort of skeptical look clearly meant to remind me precisely how many jobs I’d had in the past six months, but I didn’t back down. I looked him straight in the eyes, and believed the words at him.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

* * *

The next day, Saturday, I filled out an application for a job at Kaitlin’s Diner. All right, all right! It’s the Main Street Cafe, but I’d thought of it as Kaitlin’s Diner since my best friend, Kaitlin, started working there at the age of sixteen. Her mother owned the place, and to her credit, didn’t hesitate when I asked for a job. She just told me to go into the back to find a uniform in my size.

“Doesn’t this come in any color other than black?” I asked Kaitlin as I tried on my new shackles of independence – a waitress uniform.

Not only was it all black, but the skirt didn’t quite reach my knees. That made me feel incredibly exposed because my legs are not my best feature. Since I had been to the diner for years, I knew the uniforms were black, but somehow it had never looked so bad before. Then again, Kaitlin looked good in black and had great legs.

“It looks fine,” Kaitlin said.

“Maybe I could add some ribbons or buttons or something?”

“Afraid not.”

“What about shoes?” I mentally cataloged my wardrobe. “I’ve got some red pumps that might help.”

“Black loafers.”

“I don’t own any black loafers.” I looked down at my multi-colored strappy sandals. “Will these work?”

“Only for today. I’ve got a pair I can loan you tomorrow. Trust me, you’ll want more comfortable shoes by the end of an eight-hour shift.”

“How much do I get paid, anyway?” Anyone else would probably have asked before accepting the job, but for me, the realities of making money and earning a living had not quite sunk in yet.

“Three fifteen an hour, plus tips.”

I paused, doing some quick mental calculations which included the cost of a bottle of shampoo. “Wait, isn’t minimum wage six something?”

She gave me an apologetic smile and a shrug. “Welcome to my world.”

I started learning my new trade during the lull between lunch and dinner. The first thing I realized was that Kaitlin hadn’t lied about the shoes. Three hours into my first shift, I tried to take my sandals off my tortured feet and walk barefoot, but Mrs. Meyers told me that constituted some kind of health hazard.