Until she crawled under the bedsheets at far too early a time to sleep. And caught just a hint of Seth on the pillow next to hers. She saw his face in her mind’s eye—the moment when he’d turned and looked at her after they’d had sex. That strong sense that he was going to say he wanted to stay, before she’d told him he should probably go.
And it hit her like a lightning bolt.
They didn’t circumvent your magic. They used magic against you. They made you see what they knew you’re still unsure about, no matter how much you believe you are brilliant and bright and the best: that he doesn’t. That deep down, he bought into their bullshit. And it was only a matter of time before he let the truth slip or played a trick or tried to make you feel like high school all over again.
Even though high school is over now.
Though she still had no idea what to do once those electric thoughts were there. She raced downstairs in such a fury that Pod peeped his head out of his cupboard.What do,he chittered.What happen?While she rifled through the guidebook for an answer.
Something like how to see through an illusion, she thought. But there was nothing, there was nothing—as if illusions like that didn’t exist. There was no magical amulet the Jerks could have used, no all-powerful staff that made you see things that weren’t real. It was useless, utterly useless, and to the point where she set everything aside. She put her face in her hands, suddenly unsure of the reason she had believed this was anything but him betraying her.
And that was when she felt Pod’s little hand on hers.
He tapped her gently. Then pointed at the page the guidebook had fallen open to.
Dad good,he said.Good good good.
So she looked, and there it was.
Seth’s handwriting, under a bunch of words about how long it took to master flying.
OMG,he’d written.It only took you a day. You are AMAZING.
And suddenly her eyes were full of tears, and her heart was running away with her, and all she could think wasyou believed because he spent every second of the last month making all your fears unfounded, all your terror of hoping seem so sad, all your worries that something is wrong turn out so wonderfully that you’ve forgotten what wrong even is. He has tipped the scales back to it being okay to trust in something, singlehandedly.
And he did without even thinking you would ever see.
Then suddenly she knew exactly how to figure this out. As if it had only been uncertainty that held her back. But now that was gone, and the answer was so clear she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her bike from the hall, pedaled into town, and burst into Nancy’s shop like a woman possessed. And she barely even paused when Nancy asked why she was in her pajamas and what on earth had happened and, “Oh gosh, should I call the police?”
She just showed Nancy the image on her phone screen. “Tell me what you see here,” she demanded. Heart in her mouth, breath held.
And Nancy answered the only way Cassie knew she could: “I see those three jerkholes from high school with their arms around a department store mannequin for some inexplicable reason I probably don’t want to know about.” Puzzled, she looked at Cassie and smiled. “Does that help?”
But Cassie couldn’t tell her how much it did. She was already furiously pedaling home.
To make some fucking werewolves pay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Her first instinct was to create some kind of death ray that she could point at them from space. Maybe while laughing maniacally. But because it had been three days of them doing god knows what to Seth, she thought it was more important to be fast.
So she settled for doing the bare minimum.
First, she needed to figure out exactly how they had taken Seth. Mainly so she could confirm they hadn’t circumvented her magic.You don’t want to run in all guns blazing if they have a blazing-gun nullifier, she told herself as she used an enchanted magnifying glass to go over the Forget Me that hung around Seth’s house.
And she found what she was looking for. A sort of warping by the tree line. A tear, of the sort that Seth had definitely made himself. He’d crossed through on purpose, like she’d thought. But for a reason other than joining the wolf pack, quite clearly.
They were on the premises, and up to nothing good, and he saw them and decided to confront them, her mind supplied. All of which fit so well she could hardly believe she hadn’t thought of it before.Thatwas Seth. Brave and good, but also absolutely ridiculous enough to not even consider that it might be a trap. All he would have wanted to do was rush in, to stop whatever misbehavior was going on.
My big, foolish goofball, she thought. But all thinking that did was to stop her breath. She had to take a second to calm down, hands on her knees, eyes closed. Though she felt no better once she’d straightened.
Now she had to think about where they’d taken him.
Or worse: what if they hadn’t taken him anywhere at all? It was perfectly possible that they had killed him. She knew it was, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. Slitting his throat, leaving her forever bereft and thinking she’d been betrayed—it was the perfect revenge. And one that was permanent, even if she figured it out. Because then she would have to live with herself—with the fact that she’d spent three days believing her sweet Seth was an asshole.
And she just wasn’t capable of living with that possibility.
It made her periodically groan and clutch herself, to the point where Pod tried to bring her soothing things. Like half an uneaten pizza she didn’t know he’d ordered, or his favorite sock, or the TV remote she thought she had lost a week earlier. None of which helped. Nothing helped.
