Elliott folded his hands between his knees and thought for a moment, the posture he took when he had something important to say but hadn’t quite chosen the words yet. He blew out a deep breath, loudly, and then said, “I’m worried about you.”
“Me? Why?” That wasn’t at all what she had been expecting. Cassidy took a drink of her shake and then set the cup down on the table beside her next to a lamp.
“I’ve known you a really long time, since you were in diapers, and I can tell when you’re keepin’ somethin’ to yourself, even better than your sister can, I think.”
The blood seemed to be draining out of her face, but Cassidy tried to play it cool. “What do you mean?”
“What were you doing yesterday when Daunator got stuck in your head?”
“I was checking on these people.” She gestured at the papers spread all over the coffee table. “I found one of them. I was just about to go tell Cadence and Aaron—some of these missing people are those creatures Eliza fought. Daunator is keeping them underground and changing them somehow. I don’t know how he’s doing it exactly, but it seems to have something to do with when he bites them.”
Elliott was listening intently, and she hoped that was enough to get him off of her case. How he knew there was something going on that she wasn’t telling her sister was beyond Cassidy, but if he kept poking around, he’d find it, and she wasn’t ready to share that information with him, not yet anyway.
“That’s a breakthrough.” Elliott eyed the lists of names. “But it’s not all of them?”
“I know some of them are regular Vampires. A lot of them I still can’t find. I think, once they start to become more monster than person, I can’t reach them anymore. They no longer have their own thoughts or memories.”
“Tragic,” Elliott said, a word that would’ve seemed odd coming out of his mouth if Cassidy didn’t completely agree.
“Totally. So... I need to let them know.” Her sister was messaging her asking if she was on her way. Cassidy told her she’d be right there, that Elliott had dropped in on her, and Cadence said something had come up and to give her a half hour. Elliott didn’t need to know that.
“All right. That’s important.” He ran his hand through his hair, disheveling what was already unruly. “I should let you get to it.” But he didn’t stand.
Cassidy reached for her cup, thinking maybe if she got up, he would, too, but before she was on her feet, he spoke again.
“There’s just something that doesn’t make any sense to me, and the more I think about it, the more confused I become.”
Swallowing hard, Cassidy said. “Don’t feel bad about that. There’s a whole lotta shit that doesn’t make sense to me.” She took a drink, set her cup down, and turned back to see him still going over what he wanted to say.
“You hate Christian, don’tcha?”
“I am not a fan,” she replied, cursing that he’d brought up the one topic she wanted to stay off of. She’d rather go over how Brandon had broken up with her a hundred times than discuss Major Henry.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Elliott leaned back, picking up a throw pillow and running his fingers through the fringe. “So why would you be meeting him at the coffee house?”
He knew. How he knew, she wasn’t sure, but he’d figured it out. There wasn’t even any need to jump into his head to confirm it. Cassidy had a choice—deny, deny, deny, as Christian would have her do--or confess to everything. “He wanted to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For... the portal.”
“To you? Why not to those of us he trapped in there? He hasn’t said a damn word of remorse to me or Brandon, I can tell you that much. Just some stupid form letter Aaron made him send.”
“Yeah, well, he said, uh, he would talk to you later. Maybe. But for now, he just knew I was angry at him and he didn’t want to leave for his trip still having that out there. Between us.” She was making about as much sense as a screen door on a submarine.
Elliott nodded at her slowly. “He told you he was going on vacation before he told Hannah?”
“He mentioned it.”
“And... have you tried to find him since his IAC and cell aren’t working?”
“Did they ping his phone? Do you know if he took it with him?”
“It’s still here. In his apartment.”
Cassidy nodded. “I, uh, haven’t been asked to try to find him.”
“What if I’m asking you right now?”
How could she get around such a direct question? “You know, I really should be going. I don’t want to make Cadence wait.”
“Cadence is busy right now. We both know that. Cassidy, why won’t you just tell me what’s going on? What the hell did you see in that asshole’s head that’s making you protect him? We’re all aware of where he’s at—more or less. Why are you lying to me? To your sister? To yourself?”
“Elliott, I’m not lying to myself.” She couldn’t say she wasn’t lying to him or Cadence. That much was true. “Look, it’s really complicated, okay?” She ran a hand through her hair and slumped down on the couch.
“It’s really not that complicated. All you have to do is say, ‘Elliott, Christian went to Hungary to try to find Daunator on his own.’ See? That was easy.”
Looking at him out of the side of her eye, she asked, “If you already know that, why do you need me to tell you anything?”
Once again, he let out a sigh loud enough to disrupt the papers. “I guess I was just hoping you were still my girl. That you hadn’t changed so much in the last year that you wouldn’t be straight up honest with me.” He banged his hands down on his legs before he pulled himself up and stood in front of the couch for a long moment, unmoving. “Guess I was wrong.”
“Elliott, come on. Don’t be like that. Look, I’d tell you what I know if I could. But... I made a promise.”
He turned his head to look at her, and Cassidy wanted to melt into the couch. “If you’d rather keep a promise to someone you hate then tell the truth to the people you love—or at least the people I thought you did—then somethin’s not right, Cass. Maybe it was that second shot, or maybe you’ve seen too much of the evil in the world recently, but you’re not the same person you used to be. I’m not tryin’ to be mean. I’m just concerned about you. I hope you’ll think about what I’m tellin’ you because I think you’re probably the only one who can change any of it.” A half-hearted smile pulled up the corners of his mouth only slightly, and then he turned and headed for the door.
Cassidy opened it for him, using her powers, but she didn’t say anything in response because she wasn’t sure what to say. In her mind, she could justify every decision she’d made recently. She wanted to shout at him and tell him he was wrong, that he just didn’t understand, that maybe he was the one who wasn’t himself. He’d died, after all, and then gotten trapped in a portal. Was there a chance he was the one who was acting like a jerk? Maybe that’s what Blood Moon Portals did to people, and everyone who’d been stuck there was a jackass now.
Except she knew that wasn’t true. Even if Elliott was being uncharacteristically stern with her, he wasn’t being unkind. And none of the others seemed to have been changed by going through the portal either. No, he was right. The problem was with her.
She’d noticed it after that second dose of serum. There was a stirring in her blood unlike anything she’d ever encountered before. Ignoring it seemed like the best thing to do, but that didn’t make it go away. Whenever she fought with her mom, or Brandon, or Christian, or anyone else, she felt it come to life. Whether it was some super strain of Vampire DNA or just an inner demon, she didn’t know. But Elliott was right; she needed to get a grip on it.
That had nothing to do with what was happening with Christian, though. In fact, if she’d been following that part of her mind, she would’ve told on him immediately. Keeping his mission to herself had been a form of compassion Cassidy couldn’t quite explain to anyone who hadn’t been in Christian’s brain. The fact that Elliott was mad at her because she was hiding a secret for Christian was a bit of irony even a half-Vampire, half-Hunter was having trouble wrapping her mind around.
Thinking about Christian had her jumping back in to check on him. “Christian? Dude, they’re on to us. Elliott knows.”
“Knows what?”
At least he wasn’t singing anymore. “That you went to Europe. They don’t know about the giant hole in the ground. But they do know I’m covering for you.”
“Bullshit. Sanderson figured that out? No way. No way.”
He sounded more than a little loopy, like he was starting to lose it. She couldn’t blame him if that was the case. He had been in the pitch black for a few days now. “Okay, well I just thought you should know.”
“Get out of my head, Findley. I’m fine.”
She blew a hot breath up into the air, stirring the tiny hairs that might’ve been bangs if she had any. “Fine. No more Daunator sightings then?”
“No! Out! Out! Everybody out!”
Cassidy did as she was told. Suddenly, it was becoming a lot easier to remember why she disliked that man.
