So who did that leave? Some buddies, maybe? People like Jason and Tyler? It was at least a little possible that they were still his friends. Though, somehow, she couldn’t imagine them giving a shit. Most likely they would find it funny, then cut out on him.
He must have been so lonely, her brain whispered, in this far too sympathetic way.
And that was before he spoke.
“See, I don’t think anybody this concerned about someone who fucked up their life could make some poisonous potion. So maybe you should trust me. And trust in yourself. You’re better than you think you are, Cassie. You always were,” he said. And that was how she wound up letting Seth Brubaker walk away with a Tupperware container full of nonsense.
Oh, and magic that would most likely liquefy him from the inside out.
Then quite possibly destroy the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cassie spent the day googling everything she could about the term he’d used. But all that came up was a ton of stuff about shoes, and streets in England, and baked desserts. There wasn’t one thing that she could see about the sort of witches who could half do magic.
Or how you could figure out if you were one.
And that was good, in one way, because it meant that she wasn’t about to be unearthed as an unwitting destroyer of worlds. But it was bad, in another, because now everything made even less sense than it had before.
She had a million more questions, and what seemed like no way to answer any of them. There didn’t appear to be anything in the house of horrors that really explained things. No secret note saying,now I shall finally reveal your legacy to you. No ancient books handing down the secret lore of some supernatural cabal.
All she found were spooky things all over the house, ready to scare her half to death.
Heck, evennonspooky things made her jump out of her skin now. When the doorbell chimed the next morning, she came extremely close to screaming. And it wasn’t until a voice called out, “Hey, I have a delivery here for Cassandra Camberwell” that she managed to open the door.
But even then she kept the chain on.
The deliveryman had to squeeze the parcel through the gap, while she eyed him suspiciously for signs of the supernatural. Which turned out to be a bummer, because the parcel was apparently a fruit basket. And fruit did not take kindly to being crushed between adoor and its frame. The bananas were mush; the grapes had been flattened. Her fingers were sticky from the pulp of an orange when she read the card.
Saw you were back in town, so happy to see you. Pretty sure you hated the flowers I sent after everything that happened, so thought I’d try a fruit basket instead, she read, and felt her heart lift and sink all at the same time. Because oh, Nancy was lovely, she was so sweet, it was so nice to know that someone who barely even knew her cared that much.
But it also meant she was definitely going to have to make that call. Even though she was now mired in even wilder stuff than she’d been before.How would I ever manage to explain any of this to someone that sunny. I don’t even know how to explain it to myself, she thought, as she did her best to rescue the rest of the fruit.
And that was probably why she didn’t sigh and roll her eyes the second she saw him through her kitchen window, strolling out from the woods and across the grass. Instead, something weird happened inside her. Her stomach seemed to clench and collapse at the same time; for some inexplicable reason her breath caught in her throat. And she had the strongest urge to do something very inadvisable.
Like race immediately to the door and fling it open. Then yell about seventy different questions at him.
But thankfully, she managed to get hold of herself. She focused on drying her still-wet-from-the-sink hands on her jeans. And straightening her series of misshapen sweaters and cardigans into something resembling an outfit. Then she waited, calmly, for him to knock. Or maybe call out her name with the same sort of impatience she’d seen in him the night before.
Only for some reason, all she got was the clomp of his boots on her porch. Back and forth, back and forth. And it was followed by something even weirder—a rifling, papery sort of sound. Like he was busy going through a bunch of legal documents on her doorstep.
So of course she had to go and prove to herself that he wasn’t.This will have a normal explanation, she thought as she crept to the door.
Then she peered through the peephole, and somehow he was doing something even more deranged than she had imagined. He had anotepadin his hands. And he wasscribbling in it, furiously. He filled an entire page with that thick print of his, as she watched. Pressing down on the page too hard, as usual. Every letter just as cramped together as she remembered.
Then—best of all—she looked at his face in the middle of this note-writing, and caught him doing the thing he had once been so self-conscious about. The thing he’d forced himself out of when he’d made the jump to being cool.
He mouthed the words he wanted to write as he wrote them.
Like he was really struggling to get them just right.
Then he folded the piece of paper and stooped, and next she knew those words were skittering under the front door. They slid to a stop by her right foot, about a second before she heard him clomp his way back off her porch. Like he was just going to leave, she realized. And she couldn’t force herself to hesitate.
She snatched up the note, and flung open the door, and called out his name.
And watched him jump almost out of his skin. He actually clutched his chest in shock. “Oh god,” he gasped. “I didn’t think you’d want to come out and talk to me, after… you know. All the breaking into your house and almost biting you into pieces and the whole mangled arm being trapped inside my arm thing.”
All of which made her feel better about her choice to stop him. Not to mention even more curious about the piece of paper in her hand.
