I stared out the window even though I couldn’t see past the headlights. My father’s confession was heavy on my mind, and my heart. I thought it was bad that Henry was Margaret’s father, but it hurt a lot more when it wasn’t just a distant ancestor, but the man who fathered me. At Henry’s urging.
“Am I still heading for the plantation?” Gabriel asked, interrupting my thoughts. Embry never would have let the silence last that long, but Gabriel understood keeping it all inside.
“Isn’t that where the books are?” I asked without looking at him.
“It is,” he agreed. “But if we’re tracking down things that meant stuff to your ancestors, the best place for Cassie…” he let the thought linger, waiting for me to catch on.
“I can’t,” I argued.
“Can’t, or won’t?” he asked. “And why?”
“Because I can’t face them. Until I see them, they get to live in a world where they’re worried about us, but they still think Sam and I will come home to them. Once we go to the Beach House, I won’t be able to lie to them, so I’ll have to tell them Sam is dead because of me. They’ll never be happy again, they’ll hate me, and I will lose what’s left of my family,” I said simply, though it was anything but.
“First, you will always have me and Embry.” He waited for me to look at him before going on, “And second, the girls aren’t there anymore.”
“What happened? Where are they?” My heart raced, pounding against my chest.
“It’s October,” he shrugged.
“What does that mean?”
“Clara had to go back to school. They’re staying with Deanna’s dad and being careful. With increased protection,” he told my horrified look.
“You’re letting Clara go to school?” It was reckless. What if Henry made good on Donovan’s threat and went after them to get to me?
“Clara isn’t the one they want, and I told you she is being watched.”
“I guess you never promised to protect her,” my blood was boiling. I wanted to call Deanna and warn her to run and hide and never let Clara out of her sight, but I didn’t have a phone, and had no idea where I could send them to be safe.
“You’re upset, so I will let that one slide, but we would never do anything to put Clara or Deanna in danger. There are people who have put their lives on hold to guard them, 24/7, and make sure nothing happens to them.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“I know. And I know it’s hard, not knowing how to keep them safe, but you have to trust that we’re doing everything we can.”
“Of course.”
“So, the beach house…” he tried after a few minutes of silence.
“If they’re not there, we might as well. That’s where most of Cassie’s stuff ended up, right?” I didn’t know how real these women were when I would go to the Beach House every summer, but there was a room above the garage that held wooden chests, crates and luggage from way before even Grams was born. I only went inside once, but their age and the bright yellow color of it all suggested it might be hers.
“After she died, Corinne couldn’t stand the Beach House or any of her mother’s gadgets, so she left it all behind before moving back to the manor.”
“She didn’t miss her?” I asked, thinking of how often I had bribed Sam to bring me to my mother’s room so I could play with her things and feel like I was close to her again. “I mean her things.”
“She did. After a few years she came back to the Beach House, eventually bringing her daughter and telling her all about Cass… but to her, the Beach House was where she waited in fear to find out her mother died, filled with the things that got her killed.”
“At least the manor had a lot of happy memories for me.”
“The family summered at the Beach House, so I imagine she had a lot of those too, but in the winter Cassie and her band of saviors used it as their base of operations to fight crime. I don’t think Corinne knew anything about her mother’s vigilante activities until she was locked in the house with nothing else to do but explore. Alan defended her, but he didn’t want Corinne to know that they might hunt her too, so he let her think her mother died for getting involved in other people’s problems.”
“It was her lair?” I focused on my ancestor’s activities rather than her daughter’s pain. She never mentioned that in the Chronicles.
“It was less of a secret lair and more of a place of business,” he made it sound less cool, but when you were in the business of defending the helpless, your coolness was a given.
“Did they have a sign on the door with their team name?”
“It was more of a word-of-mouth operation, but they got stuff done.”
“I read,” I agreed.
“That book was a fraction of what she and her friends accomplished. If she thought it was paranormal or was likely to happen again, she put it in the book, but they accompanied women home late at night, rescued children from abusive homes, housed the poor and desolate…”
“Cassie was a saint,” I summed it up.
“She was… sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t get me wrong, she was amazing, with a heart of gold, but she would never turn the other cheek, or a blind eye to suffering. She ruffled more than just a few feathers in her day.”
“And still managed to be the perfect eighteenth century woman.”
“Only because she had money and a rich and influential husband who loved her unconditionally, just the way she was,” he warned.
“Sounds like a badass role model to me,” I sighed and turned to look out the window. I hated being that teenager, who is all sighs and woe-is-me, but this wasn’t about silly high school things.
“That she was,” he smiled nostalgically. “What’s on your mind?” He picked up on the sigh.
“Maybe we’re wasting our time,” I shrugged.
“Maybe,” he agreed. “We don’t know how powerful Henry is, or if anything will work, but I could never forgive myself if we didn’t try.”
“But maybe we shouldn’t,” I pressed.
“Are you afraid?”
“What if I’m not supposed to live because I’m not a good person?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Not in a silly way. In the ‘we created a man whose mission in life is to kill you and we believe so strongly in this that we will make sure he can’t die until he accomplishes it,’” I shared.
“He told you his mission is to complete the ritual, not to kill you,” Gabriel argued.
“The ritual involves ripping my heart out. That doesn’t sound good.”
“Just because it’s his mission doesn’t mean it’s right. You’ve seen it yourself. Some Gifted are downright evil. That’s why there’s debate on the name, because a lot of us consider it a curse, and we can’t reconcile God giving these Gifts for evil people to use in terrible ways.”
“You’re proving my point,” I told him, but I also made a mental note to ask him about his beliefs some other time. I never thought of him as religious, but they said his mother was devout.
“Some of us are evil, Luce. There’s a balance. Sometimes terrible things happen to ensure better ones will come. Some missions get misinterpreted, some never come true. Maybe Henry is here to complete his ritual, but Embry and I are here to protect you and make sure that doesn’t happen. Two to one sounds like the odds are in your favor.”
“Maybe you’re just supposed to protect me so I can continue the line, or die at the right time.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Maybe I was supposed to be stronger, and I failed.”
“You didn’t fail anything. Nothing that happened was your fault.”
“I know that in the big scheme of things, you’re right. I didn’t ask for any of it to happen, and I was an innocent bystander when it started. Only I wasn’t. I am the descendent of the man who married Annabelle for her birthmark, so he could kill her, and has hunted his daughter and granddaughters ever since. All so he could be powerful. A man who not only does terrible things, but makes innocent people do terrible things to other innocent people, when there’s nothing they can do to stop it.”
“I never pegged you as someone who so deeply valued nature over nurture,” he said, like I disappointed him.
“Sometimes nature wins,” I stood my ground.
“How can you say that when you are nothing but kindness and warmth and generosity?” He asked. “It isn’t our DNA that defines who we are, it’s our choices. The things we do time and time again, day in and day out.”
“You’re trying so hard to protect me, but maybe I shouldn’t be saved.”
I turned to look out the window and pretended I couldn’t feel him looking at me with even more concern than before.