After a breakfast of Betty's incredible conjured blueberry muffins and my adequate coffee, Tobias left to get some things from his apartment, and Cain went into the living room to do something - he grumbled a few gruff words about research. Betty and I sat at my linoleum table and drank coffee and ate muffins until finally, she couldn't take it anymore.
"I saw Tobias coming out of your room this morning," she said.
I lowered my coffee mug. "Seriously? Everything that's going on? This is what we're going to focus on?"
Betty grinned. "You bet. The best cure for times of crisis is gossip. So, tell me ... what's going on with you two?"
"Nothing." It was the truth. I'd woken up in his arms, and there was a moment of awkwardness, and then we got up and started the day. "He slept against the door. He's just being overprotective."
I must have looked really unhappy, because the hungry glint left her expression, and she simply nodded and sipped her coffee. "Oh. Well, that's good."
The doorbell rang while Betty and I were cleaning up. We exchanged a wary glance, and then we headed into the foyer, only to be cut off by Cain darting in front of me from the living room. He put his hands on my shoulders to stop me where I was, then touched his fingers to his lips. He grabbed a Clorox spray bottle from a collection of them that were sitting in a cardboard box by the door.
"What's he going to do?" Betty whispered in my ear as Cain stepped up to the door and looked through the peephole. "Disinfect her?"
I chuckled a little, and then Cain jerked his head toward the door, motioning for me to check out whoever it was. I walked up to the peephole and there was Stacy Easter, looking impatient on my porch.
I stepped back and nodded at him, feeling like I was in witness protection. "It's okay."
He pulled the door open, looking like a deranged Merry Maid with the Clorox bottle that, I realized now, Cain had likely spent the night emptying of antibacterial solution and replacing with magical pepper spray, or something like it. Stacy stepped inside, her eyes taking in a full drink of Cain.
"Hel-lo," she said, putting a sultry tone in her voice.
Cain grunted and stalked off into the kitchen. Stacy looked at me. "Where have you been hiding him?"
"He's..." I glanced toward the kitchen, unable to figure out a word for what Cain was. I gave up and looked back at Stacy. "Doesn't matter. What's up?"
She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to me. "Not much. Your father went missing ten years ago. His last known address was in Tennessee. There's been no sign of him since. Take that to a real detective, you might have more luck." She pointed to the paper as I unfolded it; it was a printout of a newspaper article, on which she'd scribbled an address in Avery, Tennessee, into the margin. "Sorry, that's all I got on him."
"Okay, so what's this?"
"An article from the Avery Citizen-Times," she said carefully. "Is that your sister?"
I looked at it, and the first thing I saw was a picture of a smiling woman with long, wavy brown hair, and underneath her picture, the caption: Avery Unified teacher Holly Monroe.
I gasped and put my hand over my mouth, then absorbed the headline.
LOCAL TEACHER FOUND DEAD
My hand holding the printout started to shake, so I grabbed the other side with the other hand and tried to stabilize it enough to read. I absorbed it in bits, unable to take in the whole thing at once.
"Livvy?" Betty said, but I didn't look up.
Holly Monroe found ... unidentified companion unconscious ... while police won't give out details of the scene ... possible satanic rites ... thirty-one-year-old teacher was born in Avery, and taught at Avery Unified High School since ... authorities still looking for anyone who can identify the companion, who has been unable to respond to medical staff ... African-American woman in her late forties or early fifties ... was calling the name, "Gabriel," when she was first brought in, before slipping into unconsciousness ...
"What's going on?"
When I looked up, Cain was standing in front of the kitchen door, looking grim. But to be fair, Cain always looked grim. He stalked over to me, and I handed him the printout. He glanced at it quickly; it was obvious he'd seen it before. He shot a sharp look at Stacy.
"Who the hell are you? What do you know about this?"
Betty stepped closer. "Cain, this is Stacy."
"Yeah?" He advanced on her, waving the printout. "Where'd you get this?"
Stacy widened her stance and met his eyes. "None of your fucking business."
I touched his arm, which was taut as a wire. "I asked her to find my father."
He shifted his focus to me. "What the hell did you do that for?"
"May I repeat?" Stacy said, stepping closer to him and drawing to her full height, which was still a foot shorter than his. "None. Of. Your. Fucking. Business."
"Cain." I touched his arm again. It took him a moment to look back at me, and when our eyes met, he softened a bit, but just a bit. There was still impotent fury in his expression, but he didn't seem quite as likely to act on it.
"You okay?" he asked.
I held my hand out for the article, and he gave it back to me. I looked at the picture, trying to find something in there that said sister to me. But it was just a black-and-white shot, taken probably for a school yearbook somewhere along the line. She was beautiful; a wide smile, dark eyes, and she seemed ... I don't know. Smart. If you can tell that from a picture.
I looked back up at Cain. "This is what happened?"
Angry eyes met mine, but I could tell they weren't angry with me. "Yeah. I went to the hospital to get Davina, but she was gone by the time I got there. Been tracking her ever since. And now, you're up to date."
Every muscle in my body felt suddenly weak. I had known the story, known I had a sister who had died, known that Davina had killed her. But there was something so ... visceral about seeing her, about seeing what could have been my fate. What could still be my fate.
"Liv," Betty said, putting her arm around me, "you go sit down in the living room. Stacy, go sit with her. I'm going to make some tea. Cain - "
But before she could give him any instructions, the front door was slamming behind him. Betty exchanged a look with Stacy, and Stacy walked with me to the living room, where we sat down on the couch. A moment later, I heard the kitchen door swing behind Betty.
"So, I take it that article means something then?" she said, motioning toward the printout in my hand.
I nodded. "Yeah."
"You want my take on things?"
I smiled. "I asked you, didn't I?"
"Yep. But I'd tell you anyway." She leaned forward. "I think your father's alive."
I felt my heart skip, and I stared at her. "You think so?"
"Look. People go missing for ten years without a sign, ten-to-one, they're buried in the cement foundation of a high-rise. But whoever it was in that forest with your sister was asking for Gabriel, and why would she call the name of a man who's been dead ten years?"
"I don't know," I said. "But then, I don't understand a lot of it."
"You don't need to understand," Stacy said. "What does your gut tell you?"
I thought about that for a minute, then said, "I don't know."
"Jesus Christ, Liv. Sure you do. You asked me to find him. You think he's alive, too."
Hope surged within me, and I tamped it down; I had no room in my heart for hope at the moment. "Maybe. So, what do I do now?"
"Hire a real detective, for one thing," she said.
"I don't know, you did pretty well for an amateur." I looked at her. "You seen Peach?"
Her eyes darkened. "I just came from there. She's still a little out of it because of the painkillers. Nick's with her."
I nodded. "Can I ask you something?"
"Has permission ever stopped you?"
"Millie ... do you think she was always a time bomb, just waiting to go off?"
Stacy leaned back, stretched one arm over the back of the couch, and looked thoughtful. "Yeah, probably."
"Do you think we can get her back from this?"
Stacy looked at me, then slowly shook her head.
"It's over, isn't it?" I said. "The four of us?"
She sighed. "It was always going to end eventually. Peach is getting married, Millie finally toppled over the edge, and you're going away. Me, I'll always be the townie slut. I'm the anchor that will keep us marginally connected, at least."
She grinned at me, but I didn't smile back. "You're more than just the townie slut."
"Oh, I'm not ashamed," she said. "And speaking of shameless, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I think I'm in love with that man."
I was so surprised by the comment that I almost laughed. "What?"
"Oh, don't worry, I'm not gonna piss in your flowerpot again but" - she waved her hand in front of her face, and then motioned to the front door where Cain had gone - "he is something else."
"Go ahead and piss on him," I said. "He's not my flowerpot."
Her eyes widened. "Really? Because you know, he's just my type."
I laughed. "The type that will screw you senseless, give you shit, and leave you stranded?"
She looked at me and shrugged. "What can I say? Daddy issues." She gently took the article from my hands, and said, "You know everything's gonna be okay, right?"
"Yeah? How would I know that?"
"Because, eventually," she said, leaning back, "it always is."
And then, the article in her hands burst into flames.
It was quick, less like burning and more like disintegrating. A red ridge of fire rimmed the edges and consumed the whole thing with a zip sound, until there was nothing but pieces of ash floating to the ground. Stacy didn't seem surprised at all. She shook out her hand, and as she did, I saw flickers of red light dancing around her fingertips.
"Wow," she said, swallowing. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen Stacy even remotely flustered. "That was weird, wasn't it?"
"Oh, crap," I said. "You, too?"
She looked at me for a moment, then said, "Me, too, what?"
I reached over to the coffee table, picked up a cork coaster, and held it in my hands. I closed my eyes and concentrated, surprising myself with how easy it was this time to draw the energy through myself, to focus it. When I put the coaster back down on the table, it was a turtle, slowly making its way across the surface.
Stacy blinked a few times, then looked at me. "What the fuck is going on here, Liv?"
"Stacy, I'm so sorry. I didn't do it on purpose, I swear - "
She gave me a pointed look. "You did this to me?"
"I think ... maybe. I don't know how. Something happened at that last Confessional - "
And then I stopped. The coffee. That Saturday morning before the girls came over, when Davina had told me about my sister, she'd given me a cup of coffee.
And I drank it.
"Shit." I shot up from my chair. "What an idiot!"
I headed for the door, Stacy following closely behind, and pushed my way through. I glanced both ways down the street and didn't see Cain, so I started down the street.
"Liv," Stacy said, on my heels. "Wanna tell me what's going on here, babe?"
And then Cain darted out of the narrow space between my house and Dale Hibbert's, and grabbed me by the arm.
"Where the hell you think you're going?"
"I was looking for you."
"Well, you found me." He shot a suspicious look at Stacy, then said, "What's going on?"
"Davina, she - "
Cain stepped out toward the street, putting me behind him. "What? She here?"
"No, last week. Listen." I stepped around him to face him again. "She gave me a cup of coffee, and I drank it."
Cain's expression got even more grim, if that was possible, and he said, "What happened?"
"It was right before the girls came over last week; she brought me coffee. Later that day, I touched Peach, and there was this static electricity shock between us. I didn't think it was a big deal, but then Peach has started making things ... I don't know. Kind of dance around? And I saw this pink light on her fingers, like the yellow light that I get, and the blue light that Betty gets. And now Stacy ... there was a moment when we had a static shock thing, too, right?"
I looked to Stacy, who nodded. "I thought that was weird."
Cain eyed her. "So, what's your power?"
"Intense heat, apparently." Stacy pulled her car keys out of her pocket. One of them was wavy, as though it had been thrown into the heart of a blazing fire and then shaped around someone's fingers. "I don't have a normal goddamned spoon left in my house." She tucked her useless keys back into her pocket.
I pulled on Cain's sleeve. "Is there something you can do? Can you reverse it?"
He grunted a curse, and said, "Hell if I know. I don't know what she gave you. What'd it taste like?"
I thought about that for a moment and shrugged. "Coffee?"
"Great," he breathed, annoyed, and started back toward the house, me following close behind. "Next time a conjurer gives you something to drink, pass."
"Davina said that normal people with magic ... she said it hurts them. Should I be worried?"
He climbed up the steps to the front door. "No."
I grabbed his arm, and turned him to face me. "Cain, these are my friends. If they're going to be hurt because of me..."
His expression changed to something approaching sympathy, then he quickly shook his head. "The magic Davina stole hurts her because she took all of it. If your friends just got a little bit, they're probably gonna be fine. Might even wear off after a while. She probably did it to make you freak out, turn to her for help." He shot a quick look at Stacy, then looked back at me. "You'd need to deliberately dose someone before they'd be in serious trouble, and you're not there yet."
Then he went inside. I stood on the porch with Stacy for a moment, absorbing the information, and then she touched me on the arm and said, "Did he say magic?"
I opened the door for her and let her in first.
It was going to be a long afternoon.
An hour later, Stacy sat back on my couch, turning the coaster turtle around in her hand.
"Magic," she said finally, and set it back on the coffee table, where it slowly started moving. It tended to favor its right back leg, and moved in slow, aimless circles across the surface of the coffee table. "All right. I think my mind's wrapped around it now."
I couldn't help but laugh. "Then you're doing better than I am."
The front door opened and Cain - who'd been sitting guard on the porch, although I think that was as much about not having to listen to me and Stacy as it was about security - came in with Tobias behind him. Tobias had a large army-navy duffel bag over his shoulder, which he dumped on the floor by the stairwell, and they both walked over to us in silence.
"Hey, Tobias," Stacy said casually, putting her feet up on the coffee table.
Tobias looked at Stacy, then at me.
"Stacy's lighting things on fire," I said awkwardly.
"Again?" Tobias asked.
Stacy waved one hand at him in a dramatic flourish. "Without matches this time." She angled her head at me. "Courtesy of magical Typhoid Mary over here." She stood up. "Anyone want a Diet Coke?"
Both Tobias and Cain just looked at her, then I said, "No, thanks, we're fine." Stacy shrugged and went into the kitchen.
"Get rid of her," Cain said, stepping into the living room. "We've got stuff to do."
"I think she's part of the team," I said.
"Yeah?" Cain narrowed his eyes at me. "And who decided that?"
I sat back in my chair. "She did."
"Well, tell her she's wrong and kick her out."
I shared an amused look with Tobias. "Spoken like a man who's never tried to tell Stacy Easter what to do."
Cain gave me an annoyed stare for a minute, and then cursed, and stalked off to the kitchen. Tobias, a small smile on his face, settled down across from me on the couch.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
"Good," I said. "You know, considering."
We held eye contact for a little longer than absolutely necessary, but didn't speak again. From the kitchen I could hear Stacy's defiant tones overwhelming Cain's annoyed ones, and Tobias and I shared a grin. A few moments later, both Stacy and Cain came back into the living room. Stacy settled on the couch next to Tobias, sipping her Diet Coke.
"So," she said, "I guess we're having a meeting?" She looked from me to Tobias to Cain. "About how to take down the magical bitch?"
Cain ignored her, focusing on me. "Where's Betty?"
"Taking a nap," I said. "Want me to get her?"
"I'll do it." Stacy hopped up and headed up the stairs.
After she was out of earshot, I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Cain. He shot me an annoyed look and grumbled, "Fire could come in handy."
"I didn't say anything." I got up to go sit on the couch, and Tobias put his arm around me when I settled down next to him. A minute later, Betty and Stacy walked into the living room. Stacy seemed surprised for a moment at the sight of me and Tobias together, then shrugged and sat down on the other side of me.
"All right," Cain said once everyone was settled. "Here's the plan. Davina's gonna be weakened for a while, but I say she makes a move tomorrow night, Friday at the latest. She's angry, she's desperate, and she's running out of cards to play, so the play's gonna get dirty."
I tensed up. "The play hasn't been dirty?"
Cain looked at me, but didn't answer. "She's strong at night, so during the day, we won't find her if she doesn't want to be found. The only way to end this thing is to draw her out when she's feeling secure." Cain looked at me. "That means, at night."
My heart clutched in my chest. "But I don't have any power at night."
"Do what I tell you, you won't need it. She needs to come after you when she thinks you're weak. That's at night. We send you out on your own to someplace, she follows you, tries to make her move and then..." He looked grimly around the group. "Then you let me take care of it."
I felt a chill at the coldness in his voice. "What do you mean, take care of it?"
He met my eye. "That's my concern. Your job is getting her to me."
"So you can do what?"
Cain stayed quiet, and Stacy said, "You're going to kill her." Cain turned his icy look on Stacy and she held it for a moment, then looked at me. "Yeah, he's definitely going to kill her."
"You can't," I said automatically. "No."
Cain looked at me, annoyed. "She'd break your neck without a second thought if it'd get her what she wanted. What are you protecting her for?"
"I'm not protecting her. But I'm not a killer, either."
"You don't have to be," he said. "This is my thing, and I'm gonna get her with or without you. Be easier with you, but either way, that woman is getting put down."
The hardness in his eyes scared me. Cain had never been exactly fluffy, but all the rage simmering underneath was coming to the surface now, and I felt like things were getting quickly out of control. I looked at Betty.
"Is it just me who thinks talking about killing people is insane?"
Betty took in a deep breath and shook her head carefully. "It's not just you."
Stacy shrugged. "I say the bitch started it, but then, I wanna kill someone at least twice a day, so..."
Betty looked at Cain. "I know Holly was important to you, and I'm sorry about what happened, but isn't there a way to protect Liv without killing anyone?"
Cain's cold eyes met hers. "No."
"I don't believe that," I said. "If she could steal Holly's magic, maybe we can just ... I don't know. Steal it back. Then she'd be relatively harmless."
"She'd still be a conjurer, and a damn powerful one at that," Cain said. "Soon as she healed up, she'd be back for you. You wanna spend the rest of your life with her on your tail?"
"No, but - "
Cain slammed his hand down on the coffee table, sending a sharp report throughout the room.
"She killed Holly!" His voice was full of rage and heartbreak, and while he pulled the emotion back in quickly, it was clear what his dog in this fight was, and it had nothing to do with protecting me. The room went quiet, and I had no idea what to say, but Tobias did.
"Have you ever killed anyone, Cain?"
"No," Cain said, a sharp bite in his tone as he turned angry eyes on Tobias. "You?"
"Yes," Tobias said, and the room went silent.