Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) (14 page)

“Oh.” Evan didn’t seem sure what to say to that at first, but after a minute or so he said, “You can have some of mine.”

* * *

Evan is not a mind mage, so he had no idea how to undo the subtle workings of the hopelessness potion. He called his father, who called in a favor from James Blair, who did know how to counteract the potion. He delivered a vial of yellow liquid just after midnight with only two words of instructions: Drink it. So I did.

I ended up staying in one of Evan’s guest rooms overnight because of the lateness of the hour, our desperate need for sleep, and our need to get a respectably early start the next morning. I’m not sure if the antidote worked immediately or took its time, since I fell asleep almost as soon as I drank it.

The next morning, I truly understood what it meant to die of embarrassment.

“Can we pretend yesterday never happened?” I asked when I joined him in the kitchen for breakfast.

He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he poured two steaming mugs of tea and handed one of them to me.

“I don’t think,” Evan said, “that we can ignore it.”

“Why not? It was just a potion.”

“Not entirely.” Evan sipped his tea, and did not look at me. “The hopelessness worked with your own thoughts and fears.”

I shrugged. Perhaps it had. Where Evan was concerned, it hadn’t had to dig too deeply, although it had made me act in ways I never would have done otherwise. Where the girls were concerned, on the other hand, it had done a number on me. I had never just abandoned family like that, no matter what personal issues I felt, and I was only glad most of that nonsense had stayed firmly inside my head.

“You do know what this means, though?” I said, partly in an attempt to change the subject, and partly because it desperately needed saying. “There’s a sorcerer involved in this.”

“Yes.”

“It could even mean the girls are still alive.” I tried not to feel too hopeful, though it was the first thought that had crossed my mind when I realized the truth. “Someone, or more likely, a group of people, could be masking them.”

“I know, which is why you’re not leaving my side today.”

I didn’t argue, not after what had happened the day before. At least he hadn’t forbidden me to continue with the investigation, which I had half feared.

“Who gave you the water?” Evan asked.

“One of the deputies – Jeff. I didn’t catch his last name. Of course, there’s no guarantee he’s the one who poisoned me. The mess hall was crowded and anyone could have nudged the tainted bottle in the right direction. Well, anyone with a magical talent and a bit of skill.”

“True, but we’ll definitely want to keep an eye on Jeff.”

The next logical question was, what would a sorcerer or group of sorcerers want with Laura and Regina? It was probably too much to hope that they didn’t have some magical talents, or perhaps gifts that had missed the untrained eyes of their parents. I hated coincidences, and it had bothered me from the first that both girls were distantly related to powerfully magical families. When I put that together with this new information, it was just one coincidence too many. Somehow, magic had reasserted itself in this generation, perhaps due to some recessive genes from both sides of the family. I didn’t know anything about Regina’s father, but her mother was a distant relative of mine, Laura’s father was distantly related to the Blackwoods, and Laura’s mother was a mild empath.

Not that a gift like empathy necessarily meant Tracy Webster had any magical ability in her family. A gift isn’t exactly the same as magical talent, though some seem that way, such as Evan’s gift for telekinesis. Magic is the ability to tap into and transform magical energies inherent in nature. Most gifts can be duplicated with a great deal of effort by using magic, but to the person who has the gift, it comes as effortlessly as breathing. It is said to be a part of the soul, whereas magic is a part of the blood.

Though gifts and magic could be inherited separately, with no connection to each other, it was more common to see gifts in magical families. So I could not discount Tracy’s empathy as a clue to her daughter’s potential.

Besides, if I could be born without a gift or a drop of magic to two powerful sorcerers, then a sorcerer could be born to two individuals with only a weak connection to magic. Life was terribly unfair like that sometimes.

We finished our breakfast in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, before heading to Evan’s car for the long drive back to camp.

“Tracy is a mild empath, did you know?” I asked as soon as we were on our way.

Evan didn’t look surprised, but he shook his head.

“Is there a way to find out for sure if either of the girls has a gift or magical talent?” I asked.

Again, Evan shook his head. “There are a few ways to find out if someone has magic, but they all either involve some degree of cooperation, or a blood sample. I could tell you if we find them, but that’s it. If there’s a way to detect a gift, though, I’ve never heard of it.”

“They could be alive, couldn’t they? I mean, whoever this is could be concealing them?”

Evan hesitated, and once again I found myself wondering exactly how powerful he was. At that point, if I had to guess, I would have said he could seriously challenge any individual sorcerer in town and many in twos or threes.

“You still think they’re dead, don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded, slowly. “It’s not that whoever this is couldn’t conceal the girls from me. I don’t know enough about whoever it is to say one way or another, it’s just that, well...”

I understood then, and the knowledge made me sick. “Blood sacrifice.”

“Yeah.”

All I knew about blood sacrifice was what my family knew – which was just enough to protect ourselves. Anyone with an ounce of magical talent could use blood sacrifice to make himself temporarily powerful, but at a terrible cost to the soul. Not that this fact mattered to those who practiced the rituals.

Basically, what I knew about blood magic was that the more blood a person drained, the more powerful the magic. Draining enough blood to kill was the most powerful act of all. Also, draining magical blood was more potent than non-magical blood, which put weak, untrained, and unprotected sorcerers at risk.

Like Laura and Regina.

“They might not be dead, though.” The words felt like a plea. “I mean, sometimes they just drain a little blood at a time, right?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I don’t really know that much about blood magic, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. If that’s the kind of people we’re dealing with, then I just wouldn’t count on anything.”

“They didn’t try to kill me. They could have.”

“Death is messy. Most people don’t want to leave a trail of bodies lying around.”

He had a point there.

“Not that you should let your guard down,” he added.

No, of course not
. I shot him a dirty look. “What else could a sorcerer be after, if the girls have some magic in them?”

He hesitated, giving me a sideways glance. “Well, they could be after the magic itself.”

I nodded thoughtfully. It had been a while since I’d heard about how one sorcerer could drain magic from another, but I knew of the possibility. “Is that likely, though? I thought it hurt dreadfully, for both parties.”

This time, when he gave me a sideways look, it was coupled with wide eyes and a slack jaw. “It happens all the time.”

“It does?” Somehow, I had been led to believe it wasn’t all that common, especially compared to blood magic.

“Yeah, and then the drained sorcerers are either sold to blood mages or else...”

I waited for nearly a full minute for him to finish his sentence before urging him to go on. “Or else?”

“Drained women are often sold into marriage.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your parents never told you about this?” Evan asked.

“Obviously not.” I didn’t think it was possible, but I felt even angrier at my parents for leaving out what seemed to be an important bit of information.

Evan reached across the console and took one of my hands in his, squeezing slightly. “A drained woman still has the genetic potential for magic to pass on to her children. Some men like the idea that a woman can’t threaten them, but can still breed true.”

“That’s barbaric!” I stared out the passenger window, not looking at Evan, and certainly not allowing myself to wonder if any similar motivations were involved in his feelings for me. They couldn’t be. I didn’t have any magical potential, after all. I was a throwback. But Evan had said something like that was the reason men in town might want me.

“Cassie–” Evan began. But I didn’t want to go there, wherever there was.

“This is assuming the girls have magic,” I cut in. “Maybe they only have a gift. That’s more likely anyway, isn’t it?”

“If I didn’t know a practitioner was after them, I would say it was more likely that they have some kind of gift rather than true magic, because those are more common in the general population. The thing is, a gift can’t be stolen. It’s too deeply tied to the soul. Unless...”

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “I have heard rumors of people able to trap the soul in an object, giving that object the power of whatever gift that soul possessed.”

My head felt ready to explode. “Who would do that?”

“Master Wolf thought at least one of the McClellans had done it before,” Evan said.

“Trapped a soul?” As if I hadn’t already had enough reasons to dislike that particular family of sorcerers. I couldn’t even imagine the sort of evil it would take to permanently confine a soul. It wasn’t murder – it was worse. They weren’t just stealing a life, but an afterlife.

“There are some really dark things out there that people can do to one another. And in this case, all I know is that no one would even
try
to do it except in the case of a very rare and or very powerful gift. If either girl had possessed such a gift, her parents would probably have noticed.”

“Probably.” I still couldn’t get past the fact that it was even possible to do such a thing as steal a soul.

“And we still can’t assume they have magic of their own. The girls could have made this person mad, gone wandering and gotten caught in a ward, or gotten into a debt.”

Yeah, I knew about that last one. I clenched my fists, determinedly looking out the windshield. For a second, Evan turned his head to look at me, then he turned his attention back to the road. Neither of us said anything about the debt that existed between us. It wasn’t the time.

He cleared his throat. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that just because we know, or suspect, that a sorcerer is involved doesn’t mean we should jump to conclusions. You know perfectly well that we’re not all the same.” He paused, and I sensed that he had a dual purpose in pointing that out. “We don’t have one single-minded reason for doing something. There’s no guarantee that the girls have magical talents, either, so we shouldn’t even jump to that possibility. I mean, if that wasn’t on the table, but we suspected foul play, what motives would you say a normal person would have for kidnapping two teenage girls?”

The first answer that crossed my mind was the most perverted one, and I refused to voice it. “Ransom?” I suggested instead. “Revenge?”

“Exactly. And those are all still on the table.”

We fell into silence again, but not for long. Evan’s cell phone went off, and he answered with a quick, “Hello?” After a few seconds of listening, he handed the phone to me. “It’s for you.”

“Me?” I took the phone, thinking it must be Nicolas, but to my surprise, it was the sheriff.

“Your brother gave me this number,” he said by way of explanation. “I really need to talk to you.”

I remembered our conversation in his office the week before, and I admit, I had to fight down a bit of prideful satisfaction. I’d warned him. “I’m in the middle of a case right now.”

“A case?”

“Yeah, two missing girls in Arkansas. I’m on my way there now, so I’m not sure I can help you.”

He went silent for a while. “How long will you be working on this?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“There’s been a sudden opening here, and I’d like you to start back to work.”

“Might have to be next week.”

Another pause. “Maybe you could consult with me on something? You know, over the phone.”

“Hmm.” I deliberately drew it out, letting him feel the torment he had put me through, even though there was no way I wouldn’t help. Then I sighed heavily. “All right, what is it?”

“Yesterday afternoon, a ghost robbed the Eagle Rock Savings and Loan.”

I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a minute. When it started shouting, “Hello?” at me, I put it back to my ear.

“Sheriff,” I said. “Why would a ghost rob a bank?”

Evan started laughing. When I looked at him, he stared straight ahead at the road, obviously trying to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“That’s why I called you.”