Cassandra's Dilemma (28 page)

“You saw through the glamour at the hospital.” It wasn’t an accusation.

“Yeah, I did. I saw the pictures from the scene. I saw how burned you were. I don’t think you realize how badly injured you were in that explosion. The only thing that could have healed you like that was a Brownie.”

Silence blanketed them for the next ten miles. Cassie stared out the window, mulling his words, his revelations. Her mother never spoke about her father. She’d told Cassie a few different stories while growing up. Originally, he died a few weeks after Cassie had been born. But the lack of photographic evidence in a house that was a shrine to family made Cassie question that eventually.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Jacob’s quiet voice intruded on her ruminations.

“The Danae wasn’t just using me. She wanted me. You said she wants to claim me. She doesn’t have any other children, but she would have raised the human child she took. I’ve met her. I know she must have loved that child. My great-grandmother and grandmother both passed within a year of each other. And my mom, it was a car accident, a few months before the Danae’s people contacted me.”

He waited silently. Her mind roiled, tugging at the possibilities and inserting all the information she’d learned in the last year, in the last three days.

“They were murdered, weren’t they? Murdered by the same person targeting me.”

“That’s a leap.” He put his hand on top of hers, catching the cold fingers in a warmer grip.

“Maybe.” The warmth of the sun outside the car and shining in the windows did little to warm the ice freezing her inside. “But the moment I thought it, I knew it was true.”

“That’s your Fae nature, the intuitive leaps.”

“I’m not ready to be that logical about it. They were my
family
, Book.” She needed the distance his last name provided as she tried to ignore the insistent warmth of his hand on hers.

“Cassie.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t give me your pity. Just tell me honestly, my mother’s car accident? Couldn’t it have been just an accident? And my grandmother and my great-grandmother, they were both old.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Your great-grandmother was most likely a target. I imagine your grandmother was collateral damage. Her age, the shock, less Fae blood. Your mother’s accident could have just been that, a car accident.”

“Bo—Jacob, they all died within the last three years.”

“I’m sorry, Cassie.”

“It isn’t a coincidence, is it?”

He sighed. “It would have to be one hell of a coincidence.”

“Jacob.”

“Yes?”

“I want to kill him.”

“I know.” Jacob squeezed her hand. Cassie turned her head to look out the window, clinging to him as the landscape rolled past. Tears rolled down her cheeks, one after another in silent mourning.

Chapter Seventeen

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Cassie groaned at the words whispered against her ear, husky, low, and inviting. She didn’t want to wake up. Her eyes burned with tiredness, and her neck was sore from the way she’d laid her head. The pillow beneath her cheek gave her a light bump, and she lifted her head, grumpy rolling through her.

“Time to wake up, sweetheart. Bathroom breaks and I’ll get us some coffee and food.” Jacob looked altogether cheerful despite a day’s growth of beard and the shadows around his eyes. It was his shoulder her head had rested on. A groan broke loose as she sat up. She didn’t even remember falling asleep.

“You okay?” Concern etched itself into the spaces between his words, but Cassie just waved him off. She wasn’t the most civil before coffee.

“Where are we?” The words stuck in her parched throat, leaving her voice scratchy and ill used.

“Small-town stop off the highway. Come on.” Jacob slid out the driver’s side and circled around to open her door. She half suspected it wouldn’t have opened for her if she’d tried it. He’d made it clear at their first bathroom stop that she wouldn’t leave the vehicle—the Glashtyn—without him hovering. He would leave her alone with Domoir, inside and secure, but not outside of the Glashtyn’s influence.

Jacob took her elbow and solicitously guided her across the cracked pavement. Her bladder interrupted her internal tirade, and she stretched her legs then her back as she walked. The area was too devoid of vitality to make it remarkable. Long fields of yellowed grass and weeds decorated the tracts next to the make-do truck stop. The truck stop itself was just a small market with gas tanks attached.

The sign for fresh bait in the window drew her up short.

They must be near some kind of water for fishing to boast such a sign. But she didn’t scent any water on the wind. Jacob tugged her arm, his eyes going quiet and watchful as he scanned the area.

“It’s okay.” She waved a hand. “I didn’t see anything. I was just a little disoriented.” Cassie didn’t want to confess that the bait sign made her long for the water. The water was her refuge, her respite from any trials or tumultuous times. She loved the water, and it seemed an eternity since the last time she just sat at the water’s edge.

An eternity.

Jacob tugged her again, and the jingling of the door jolted her back into the present. The inside of the little shop smelled like so many of them must, old linoleum, cleaning solvent, stale coffee, and cooking hot dogs. Her stomach rebelled at the overpowering combination burning her nostrils.

“Are you all right?” The hard tone conceded ground to concern, and Cassie flicked her gaze up to meet his.

“Just stinks in here.” She tried to keep her voice low. No sense in offending the poor people stuck working in the place.

The deeper into the store they went, the more competitive the scents grew. Stale bread and old bait competed with pine-scented fresheners and tobacco. Her stomach rolled, and Jacob barely had the bathroom door open before she lurched forward, ready to empty the meager contents of her stomach.

The rancid scent of her own illness set her off again, but a cool hand and damp towels on her face helped quiet some of the misery. Jacob flushed away the worst of it, finger combing her hair away from her sweaty face. The harsh light of the single overhead bulb cast everything in pallor. She avoided the mirror, rinsing her mouth and spitting out the bottled water, barely aware that Jacob brought it to her.

She refused to breathe through her nose, shallow mouth breaths stymieing her body’s need to revolt. “I’m okay,” she breathed. “Well, not okay, okay, but better.”

“Are you sure? Any other symptoms? Dizziness? Anxiety? Confusion?”

“Symptoms?” Cassie quirked a tired eyebrow at him. He needed to paint a clearer picture for her fuzzy brain.

“Shock. You’ve been through a lot.” Bless him for the patience in his tone despite the flicker of irritation that raced across his face.

“Um. No.”

“You’re sweating, though.”

Cassie wrinkled her nose. She was aware of her need for a shower, and she didn’t need him to point it out for her. “I’m a little uncomfortable, but I think that was the being sick all over the place. I’ll be fine. Let me go to the bathroom, and then you can pack me back into the truck while you take care of your needs.” She regretted the waspish note, particularly when the concern in his gaze shuttered behind the stiffness waxing over his features.

“Very well. I’ll be right outside the door. You have five minutes.” He shut the door before she could apologize.

Cassie sagged. She’d apologize. Her embarrassment over being sick and his having to hold her hair were hardly an excuse for bitchiness, even if he was being a high-handed bastard about what she could and couldn’t do.

He’s trying to help you.

The reminder didn’t quiet the restlessness pushing through her. She made quick work of emptying her bladder and washing her hands, all the while avoiding the mirror. She didn’t want to look at her gold eyes, and she certainly didn’t want to know if they were glowing. They had been during one of their first stops earlier in the day.

The words “I’m sorry” hovered on her tongue as she opened the door, but Helcyon’s scent snaked around Jacob to fill her lungs with pure vanilla, sweet orchids, and honey laced with a darker, richer scent that reminded her of a finely decanted bottle of wine.

“Hels!”

The Elf’s gaze slid past Jacob to lock with hers. She saw her own relief mirrored in his eyes, and if Jacob hadn’t been standing like a brick wall, she would have thrown her arms around him. Her momentary illness forgotten, she searched him for signs of injury.

“Cassandra.” He summed up her whole existence, and he seemed to be looking her over as eagerly as she was him. But where he looked fit, whole, and healthy, she did not. Censure filled his gaze, and he glared at Jacob. “Why is she ill, Wizard?”

“Stop.” Cassie pressed a hand to Jacob’s back, hoping he would listen. “Let’s not do this here.”

Behind the counter near the door, the teenage clerk leaned against the cigarette wall, watching them with bored interest. They were the only patrons in the little gas mart.

“Cassie’s correct. I’ll put her in the SUV, and
we
can talk.” Jacob pivoted, shouldering Helcyon to the side and scooping an arm around Cassie, all but dragging her to the door and outside.

The fresher air slapped at her face, but she barely had time to savor it for Jacob’s rushed hustle to get her in the truck. At the passenger door, Cassie dug her heels in. She twisted away from Jacob to face Helcyon, who’d followed on their heels.

Reaching out a hand, she caught his fingers in her own and then threw herself into an embrace. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” His arms wrapped around her, buffeting her against the harsh disapproval that radiated off Jacob. But she ignored it. Their issues with each other were so monumentally beyond just her that she couldn’t focus on it.

Helcyon had stayed behind. He’d been left to fight while they fled. She was just glad he was okay. The scent of him filled her pores, blotting out all other scents, and Cassie relaxed against the familiar thud of his heartbeat. Helcyon’s arms tightened around her, squeezing her. His hands stroked her back, and she knew he was as much checking for injuries as caressing her. The feel of him was the balm her exhaustion needed.

“Of course I am all right, Cassandra. I would have found you last night, but the Wizard shielded you from me.” To her his words were gentle, but the last statement filled with reproach for Jacob.

“Did he?” Cassie twisted in Helcyon’s embrace to look at Jacob’s shuttered expression. “He had a good reason.”

Her words startled a brief smile from Jacob and a relaxation of Helcyon’s embrace. She looked back into Hels’s deep-green eyes. He studied her upturned face but seemed satisfied, if curious, by what he found there. “Then I am glad he protected you.”

Cassie smiled. If only all their disputes were so easily settled. “You are all right, aren’t you? I hated leaving you…”

Helcyon silenced her with a finger to her lips. “Shh. The Wizard was right to take you and go. You are the priority, and your safety was hampered even further by your loss of sight.” His smile grew sly then. “But I
see
that’s returned.”