Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) (4 page)

“Maybe not, but I did offer my protection, and all I’d like in return is a few minutes of your time.”

I turned to face him fully, and I could feel my face reddening. “Are you suggesting that stunt you pulled back there constitutes some kind of debt?”

He frowned. “Maybe not, but isn’t it at least a friendly overture?”

“So, now you’re my friend?”

“Why not?” Victor asked. “Apparently, you no longer have familial ties to my enemy.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I took a bite of my muffin.

“You really shouldn’t work here,” Victor said.

“You sound like my brother. Let me guess – it will make people think I’m unprotected.”

“David seemed to be thinking along those lines.”

I shrugged, trying to look completely unmoved, though in truth, the incident had made me feel uneasy. The town I had lived in and loved my entire life had seemed to grow a hundred pairs of tiny, blinking eyes, all focused on me.

“Look, Mr. Blackwood, this is my life, and it’s really no one’s business where I decide to work. So why don’t you get to the real point of this conversation? I assume you want to warn me away from your son.”

Victor laughed. “Why would you think that?”

Images of my own father warning me away from the Blackwoods flashed through my mind. “What do you want, then?”

“I actually came here to tell you to do the smart thing. Marry him.”

I froze, thinking back to Evan’s nightmarish proposal.
So, marry me.
And I hadn’t been able to say no, despite wanting to; despite wanting nothing to do with magic any longer. Evan, too, had offered me protection.
I can take care of you
, he had said. As if I were a puppy instead of a woman.

“Wait,” I said, “why would you want me to? I thought you hated my family.”

“Oh, I do.”

My insides twisted. “So this is some kind of sick revenge?”

“I’d call it fate.” He smiled, but the expression didn’t make it to his eyes. “It’s really for your own good, you know. You need protection, and when you started working here, you basically confirmed all the rumors going around that your parents cast you out.”

“Why should anyone care?” I’d asked Evan the same question, but never received an answer. Suddenly, getting those answers became a much higher priority. Unfortunately, Victor didn’t seem inclined to share.

“I’ve tried to talk sense into my son, but he won’t listen. He could force you, you know.”

I shivered, but didn’t otherwise respond.

“So, now I’m trying to talk sense into you.”

The door opened with a jingle, and something in the air told me my day had just gone from bad to worse.

“Edward,” Victor said, as if greeting an old friend.

I faced my former father for the first time since he had announced his intention to disown me. He looked just as he always had, with straight dark hair, brown eyes, a long, angular face, and a wide, curving mouth – curving downward into a frown, that is.

If Victor was the last person I had expected to see in the diner that morning, then my former father was the last person I wanted to see. Even now, with Victor explaining my part in his unusual scheme for revenge, I didn’t want my former father nearby. I didn’t want his help. I only hoped Nicolas and Juliana hadn’t broken their promise and told him about the life debt, or I would never hear the end of it.

The air crackled with visible tension. Sparks of shimmering red fire danced around my father’s head. Behind the counter, Mrs. Meyers twisted her hands together anxiously, as if afraid her diner might burn down. Her fears were not unjustified.

I stepped boldly between them, facing my father. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk,” he said.

“I have nothing to say to you. You disowned me, remember?”

The color seemed to drain from his face as he stared past me, at his oldest enemy.

Victor raised his water glass in a mock toast. “I’ve known for some time. If it makes you feel any worse, so does everyone else in town who hasn’t been asleep for a week. Or at least, they guess.”

“I don’t care what you think you know. Stay away from my daughter.” With that, he grabbed my arm with a hand hot enough to leave a reddened imprint on my skin, and dragged me through the kitchen to the employee room at the back. Only then did he release my injured forearm.

“Ouch.” I rubbed at the red mark, though it didn’t hurt nearly as much as my roiling insides. I just wanted him to know he had caused me real, measurable pain.

If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. He closed the door, and then spent a minute releasing a spell from an amulet that would cloak the room in silence, keeping anyone from eavesdropping.

When he finished, he rounded on me. “What were you thinking, announcing our private business to the entire town?”

Indignation welled within me. “What’s this
our
of which you speak?”

“Cassandra Morgan Ursula Margaret Scot!”

I blinked a few times in surprise. I hadn’t gotten the triple middle name since middle school.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I couldn’t believe it when I found out you ran straight to Evan Blackwood, of all people!” His hands rose and fell with his words, barely contained sparks dancing from the fingertips. “But there he was, the very next day, full of arrogance and false apologies.”

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Was it possible he had intended to pretend to everyone that nothing had changed? Thinking back to the conversation we’d had before I had run out of my childhood home forever, it seemed possible. Beneath all his assurances that they would always love and protect me, had this been his intention? To use a veil of secrecy?

“And now, Evan is telling everyone you’re under his protection.”

“Did you think no one would find out?” I asked. “How were you going to explain the fact that I never called or visited, that I wasn’t taking money from you, and that I had to take a waitressing job to make ends meet?”

“I didn’t expect any of that to happen. I told you, we’d still protect you and take care of you. What did you think I meant?”

“I think you want it both ways, and you can’t have it.”

He closed his eyes tightly. “I’m just trying to keep my family safe, the best way I can.”

I shook my head. “What’s the danger?”

“The Blackwoods.”

“Oh, please!” I threw up my hands in disgust.

“This isn’t just me. Grace Blair saw it, too.”

Grace Blair, the mayor’s mother, was a powerful seer. I had never trusted her, or her prophecies. They often struck me as being manipulative, and this one was no different.

“Can you say, ‘self-fulfilling prophecy?’”

“Cassandra, stay away from Evan Blackwood.”

I shook my head. Not that I had any choices where it came to Evan, but it felt good to defy my father on this.

“What is between you?” Dad asked. “Were you with him the week you were missing? What happened after Kaitlin’s apartment burned down and Jason killed that vampire?”

Clamping my mouth shut, I turned slightly away from him, refusing to answer.

“Did you bargain with him for protection?” Dad went on. “Or is he forcing you?”

“That’s between me and Evan.”

“He told me about the love spell. The next day, during his false apology. I know all about it.”

My face reddened as I remembered my response to Evan’s magical kiss. The memory of it still made me shudder. It wasn’t exactly a love spell – more of a potent lust spell – but it was definitely not something I wanted to discuss with my father.

“Cassandra, please look at me.” The agitation in his voice made me glance his way. To my surprise, he looked more frightened than angry now, his face oddly pale.

“Evan hasn’t forced me to do anything.”
Yet
, I added, silently.

“You can’t work here anymore.”

“Go away.”

He was silent for a long time, but finally, I heard him slip out the door. Even then, I didn’t move for a long time, so I’m not sure how much time passed before Mrs. Meyers joined me. I didn’t notice her at first, and she didn’t announce her presence.

“Is it time for me to go back to work?” I asked, when I finally noticed her.

“No,” she said, a note of resignation in her voice. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to fire you.”

It took a minute for her meaning to register. When it did, I shot away from the wall as if it had burned me, and raised my voice at the anxious woman. “What the hell for?”

She wrung her hands. “The diner is okay, today. I don’t know about tomorrow. No one in this town would be crazy enough to get between something your father or Mr. Blackwood wanted. And the fact is, they both want you to stop working here. So I don’t really have a choice. This might be the first thing they’ve agreed on in twenty years.”

I wanted to continue to rage at her, but I couldn’t – she didn’t deserve it. She had tried to help me. It wasn’t her fault if forces beyond her control had gotten in the way.

“I’m really sorry,” Mrs. Meyers said. “I’ll help you in any way I can until you get back on your feet. You can eat here for free, or I’ll send food home with Kaitlin.”

“I don’t want charity.” After a moment, I added, “Thank you, anyway.”

I grabbed my purse from the peg by the door and fled the restaurant. Luckily, both Victor and my former father were gone, giving me a clear path out. I could probably have found a ride home, but the long walk did me good and gave me time to think about what to do next.

I fumbled through my purse, looking for a stick of gum, but instead I found something that shouldn’t have been there – an envelope. I knew what would be inside before I drew it out. I had to keep myself from screaming in frustration. Had Nicolas or my former father slipped me the money? Not that it mattered. I would not take charity. One way or another, I would do this on my own.

Spotting the local Catholic Church a block or so away, I smiled to myself. There would be a nice surprise in the poor box when next they checked it.

K
AITLIN REFUSED TO SPEAK TO ME
Sunday night, capping off my perfect day with a perfect, tension-filled evening. She wouldn’t even tell me why she was mad at me, saying only, “I’m not mad,” in that tone people only use when they are.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t as if it were my fault I no longer had a job. But somehow, I didn’t think she was in the mood for reason at the moment. In truth, neither was I.

The next morning, I canceled my cell phone. I did this shortly after calling to get the bill transferred to my new address, and then discovering it cost almost a hundred dollars each month. If I didn’t have a job, I couldn’t pay the bill, and I refused to let my former parents pay it for me.

There was still the land-line, and the Internet. I used the latter all morning in hopes of finding a new job, something that wouldn’t attract the notice of certain powerful people in town. I was entertaining the possibility of some kind of work-from-home venture when the visitor I’d been expecting – and dreading – for a week finally showed up.

Somehow, I knew it was Evan as soon as his fist hit the door. But unlike my father, I couldn’t put him off because he’d set the wards. This meant he could go through them. Even if he hadn’t, he could have commanded me to let him in.

Framed by the doorway, he looked impossibly large, though he was only half a foot or so taller than me, probably 6’1” or 6’2”. He had a lean, well-muscled frame, usually garbed in fitted, designer jeans and t-shirts. Today, the t-shirt was in his favorite shade of forest green, with a plea for people to recycle on the front. He wore his hair long, to just past his shoulders, making it longer than mine at the moment. (I had recently lost a lot of my hair to a fire.) Somehow, it heightened his masculinity, framing his hard face, and highlighting his blue eyes.

He looked good. He always looked good, only now the sight of him caused an odd fluttering in my stomach. Twice I had felt his lips on mine, and the result had been... intense. I was ashamed to realize that part of me wanted to feel them again.

Dangerous.
I summed him up with that single word. Most of the town would agree, although until recently, I had never thought of him that way. He had been my friend, even my best friend at times, but now, thanks to a magical debt, he was my owner.

He was also the last thing standing between me and a completely normal, magic-free existence: A powerful, handsome roadblock who could make me forget my resolve with a kiss. I had wondered how long he would stay away before returning with all his considerable charm. He was a man who got what he wanted. Now, he wanted me.

“May I come in?” he asked, making me wonder how long I had stood there gawking.

“Um, yeah. Come in.”

He stepped inside, his gaze flickering around the room at the mismatched beanbags as if looking for a place to sit. After a while, he turned to me, opting to stand.

“How are you? Do you need anything?” The sideways look he gave to my beanbags made me feel certain he included furniture in the list of “anything.”