Cassandra's Dilemma (29 page)

The bad pun startled a chuckle from her and Cassie shook her head. “Yes, I did get it back.”

“And they are
changed
.”

She blinked. Of course Helcyon would notice.

“Yes. Do you know why?”

“Cassie,” Jacob intervened before Helcyon could respond. “We’re still out in the open here. Get in. We’ll talk on the way.”

She wanted to argue, to stay and discuss it right there, but every other time she’d thought them safe, something had lurched out to slash at them. They were both with her now. It was better to give Jacob his due and do it his way.

“Okay.”

Her acquiescence must have startled them both, because she opened her own door to the SUV and climbed inside without argument. Instead of joining her, Jacob locked the door and turned to face Helcyon.

Cassie frowned.

“Not cool.” She scowled, but Jacob with his back toward her couldn’t see her disapproval, and Helcyon’s beautiful features were quiet, remote, and focused on the Wizard.

He wasn’t pleased with Jacob’s action, either.

“Dammit. You have to stop that, both of you.” Cassie tugged at the door handle, but it didn’t open.

“Oh, not you, too.”

She turned a baleful look at the dashboard.

“They’re arguing. Again. Last time it took something attacking us to get them to stop, and now they’ve got me stuck in here with you so I can’t stop it. Can you do anything?”

The Glashtyn remained silent. Not that Cassie expected it—
him
—to answer. The men moved away from the SUV now, circling and wholly focused on each other. “I wish I could read their lips. At least then I’d know what they were saying.”

The radio flipped on unexpectedly to a country singer wailing about friends and the places that they’ve been, and then it cut off.

Cassie blinked at the dashboard. The vehicle wasn’t even turned on. Jacob still had the keys.

“They’re talking about my friends?” She tried not to focus on the idea that she was talking to the Glashtyn, which still looked very much like a car.

The radio clicked on to the same singer wailing, “Talking about you, you, you,” before it snapped off.

Was the Glashtyn trying to communicate? Jacob said he liked her. Cassie glanced out the window to see the lines of tension around the men had shifted, becoming perceptibly harder. Violence was coming.

“Can you let me out, please? I don’t want them to hurt each other, and I think that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t stop them.” Sweat dotted her upper lip, and she twisted in the seat to look from the radio to the men and back.

The door handle still didn’t budge.

“Please, Domoir, I really don’t know what to do. I don’t know how much you understand of what’s going on. But if they start fighting, they could really hurt each other.” And she couldn’t risk that. The last thing she wanted was Jacob or Helcyon bleeding for this.

Enough blood had been spilled.

But it was too late. The violence hanging in the air bloomed. Jacob struck first, a fist flying for Helcyon’s face that the Elf simply evaded.

“No!”

The car horn blasted at the same time. The seat belt slid out of its holder and wrapped across her chest and snicked into place, like an arm wrapping around her and holding her firmly. Cassie’s shocked gaze met Helcyon’s and Jacob’s as they spun around.

The Glashtyn’s engine roared. It sounded like a beast of legend. Jacob and Helcyon raced toward her, but the SUV accelerated in reverse, spun, and gunned it out of the gas mart’s parking lot.

Chapter Eighteen

Domoir raced south on I-65, and Cassie stared at the landscape blurring past. The Glashtyn traveled much faster without Jacob at the wheel. Cassie worried about the highway patrol watching for such antics, but they’d blown past two without flashing lights. So maybe Domoir could glamour himself against such electronics.

Good to know.

“Thank you.” After thirty minutes with no signs of pursuit, her confidence ratcheted up a notch. Getting away from Jacob and Helcyon had been the right thing to do. Her stomach cramped as an image of the stark emotions on their faces floated across her memory. She shoved them away ruthlessly. She couldn’t focus on that pain right now.

The phone in the glove box rang.

Cassie looked at the box and then at the dashboard.

“Should I answer it?”

The radio crackled to life, steel guitar screaming along with a raucous singer’s warning about her body on the floor, a definite camera moment.

“Yeah, he’s probably pissed.” She didn’t really want to answer it. She didn’t want Jacob to yell at her. He would be right to be angry. She probably shouldn’t have abandoned them. But they brought that on themselves with their constant posturing, she reminded herself. She’d asked Jacob and Helcyon to stop, and had they?

No, they kept coming to blows.

It was better for all of them if she handled the rest of this without interference. The ringing ceased for a few seconds but started again almost immediately.

“Okay, coward’s way out it is. I don’t want to fight with them. They can yell at me later when this is over, if they even want to talk to me later.”

The steel guitar gave way to Air Supply, and Cassie burst out laughing.

“Making love out of nothing at all? That’s your advice?”

The car bumped, as though shrugging. The action rippled through the vehicle and rolled her stomach with it, startling another laugh from her.

“Well, we’ll just cross those bridges when we come to them, provided there are no trolls underneath them waiting to eat me.” She paused on that thought. “Are trolls real?”

The Glashtyn answered with Great White’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” and Cassie laughed. “Fair enough.” In other words, don’t ask for more than she wanted to know right now.

She leaned her head back against the passenger seat, strangely comfortable with the SUV’s progress sans a driver. It should probably bother her, but the Glashtyn’s snug seat belt continued to hug her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.

“I have to figure this out. We’re running out of time to solve this. We still don’t know if someone is targeting the Fae or targeting me or both.” Cassie’s cracked nails drummed against her leg.

“Do you mind if I think out loud?” It seemed rude to not include the Glashtyn. After all, Domoir had taken the initiative for her and whisked her away.

He answered with Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot.”

“We know it was a bespelled bomb of some kind and that the spell was tied to Billy.” She ticked off the facts on her fingers. “We know that whoever did it had to have had access to Billy.”

Jacob hadn’t told her that. But the truth of it rang for her when she said it out loud.

“We know that whoever put that tracking-spell snake thing on me had to have access to me.” She rubbed a hand against her chest and shuddered at the memory of the pinky, thin serpent burrowed into her flesh. The spot over her heart ached in sympathy. Domoir’s engine growled. The noise was low and menacing.

“But I don’t remember it happening, so did it happen slowly over time or did they manage to glamour my memories? Jacob said I can break glamours, but have I always been able to, or is it just something new?”

So many questions. So few answers.

Then there was the Fae connection. Was the Danae really her great-great-grandmother? The Danae was a joyful being, ripe with possibilities and filled with sunshine and smiles. Cassie had taken to her immediately, embraced by the warmth of her personality.

“Domoir, am I really descended from the Danae?”

Did she want it to be true?

Did she want it to be a lie?

If it were true, and if her family had died as a result, those were more clues.

The Glashtyn remained silent for another mile before a man’s soft crooning voice sang, “If you’re not the one, then why does your heart return.” The lyric cut off, leaving her wrapped in silence with only the sound of her own breathing. It wasn’t a question. The Domoir’s confidence permeated the very oxygen she breathed.

Did that make her Fae royalty? Or was she the Changeling that so shocked Jacob earlier?

That thought pricked her consciousness. Would Jacob hate her if it was true? Didn’t he say he hated all the Fae?

Another question to save for later. But she would ask it.

She frowned. The questions kept coming, and Cassie didn’t have the answers needed. Cassie put her fingers to her temples. Theories like stinging wasps struck, leaving her head aching with the possibilities. Why would the Danae task her with this? Jacob was right. She wasn’t an investigator. She didn’t even know where to start.

Or did she?

Whoever cast the spell on Billy and me had to have access to us.

The thought echoed with truth. She’d learned a long time ago to trust her instincts. Access severely limited the pool of suspects. But who had she and Billy had regular contact with that could have performed that type of magic?

What do I really know about magic?
Prior to her first meeting with the Danae, she would have said that magic didn’t exist. That it couldn’t exist. But she couldn’t live in the land of denial now.
Who had access to us?

Helcyon.

The thought decimated in a heated blast of faith.

Not Helcyon. He would never do this to me.
Like all the other intuitive leaps Jacob credited to her heritage, Cassie knew this to be true. Helcyon may have been charged by the Danae to protect her, but that was not why Cassie trusted him.

Helcyon’s image burned brightly in her mind’s eye. He was the Danae’s Warrior. She’d met him during the Fae’s initial assessments. He’d attended every meeting, saying little but seeing everything. His green eyes were vibrant gems, dark and full of life. She knew that black, spiral tattoos decorated his chest and part of his arm. She knew that his aquiline features spoke of his noble heritage, but his compassion, trust, and confidence spoke of his nobility. Helcyon was not the enemy.

That left the Danae herself, a handful of her courtiers, and…

I’m not in San Diego. I’m in Chicago. I flew here the day of the explosion. I’ve been trying to track you down. I’m sorry about Billy.

I’m sorry about Billy.

I’m sorry about Billy.

Billy’s death wasn’t on the news. They’d kept his name out of it. Jacob mentioned it that first day in the hospital. The names of the victims were withheld.

Withheld.

How could Michael have known?

The sick realization crawled inside her, leaving a trail of ooze and despair. Michael. Her partner. Her mentor.

They’d worked together for five years. He’d dined at her home frequently.

He knew everything about her.

He knew her whole family.

Her whole family.

He was one of her oldest friends and most trusted advisors. But the last year, the new contract…Something had shifted in their relationship. Cassie thought it was natural to be more independent, to stretch beyond her limitations and tackle new clients.