Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (22 page)

“Thank you both,” Emery said, slumping forward. “I need a moment to think.”

“No. You need oxygen,” I insisted.

“That you do,” Jared agreed and turned on the tank. I slipped the mask over Emery’s mouth. He rolled his bloodshot eyes at me.

“Now lay back and breathe.” I shoved him into a reclining position.

“I’ve gotta get us out of here before we have unwanted visitors,” Jared announced.

My feral side leapt with joy at the prospect. Cassidy mentally kicked the beast down.

“I’ll keep an eye on Emery,” I told him.

“Sounds good,” Jared said, unzipping his wetsuit. “Cass, hand me my clothes.”

I did, then turned back to Emery. As he inhaled through the mask, his eyelids fluttered shut.

“He’s just resting,” Jared assured.

“He needs it.” I bit my lip, fighting back tears. If Jared hadn’t performed CPR, we would have lost Emery.

“He’s going to be okay,” Jared reassured again, coming up behind me and squeezing my shoulders. I turned around and hugged him tightly.

“I love you, Jared,” I choked out.

“I love you, too.” His voice was tender, but edged with anxiety. “Cass, I need to get us out of here.”

I nodded and released him.

“Call me if you need anything,” he instructed as he climbed the ladder.

The engine powered up. Emery dozed, and I fretted over the fact that he was still wearing his soaked wetsuit.

“Emery, want to get into dry clothes?” I whispered.

He didn’t respond.

I folded the other half of the comforter over him, snagged a pillow, and crawled across the mattress to situate it under his head. Lying on my side, I rested my head in the palm of my propped arm and watched Emery’s chest steadily rise and fall, rise and fall. The image of Jared giving him chest compressions would haunt me forever.

“I love you, Emery,” I whispered.

“Love you, too,” he murmured into the oxygen mask, not opening his eyes.

I tucked the comforter underneath his chin. Then I stretched out on my back and stared at the teak ceiling, rewinding the scene at the bottom of Lake Washington over and over again.

The parasite obviously mutates its host into aqua people
, I surmised, picturing the human Mr. Levy downing a Luminous Water bottle. My thoughts raced to his reaction to the other aqua people, who had appeared with their leader. He wasn’t happy to see them.
Why?

The yacht slowed down. I assumed we were at the locks. Crawling off the bed, where Emery slept soundly, I climbed up to the cockpit. Jared cut the engine. We were the only vessel waiting for passage into Puget Sound.

I wrapped my arms around his neck from behind.

“Cass, what the heck just happened?” he asked.

I knew he had been doing what I had been doing—playing the disturbing scene over and over again in his head.

Water began to drain from the chamber.

“It seems like a bad dream right now. Doesn’t it?” I rested my cheek on his shoulder and combed his wet hair back with my fingers. “They’re like something out of a horror movie, but they’re not. Look at me, the mutants King made, Lily White . . . If we’re possible, so are they. The parasite mutated them into something. I don’t know what they are, other than evil. They didn’t think twice about trying to kill us.”

“We were in the right place at the wrong time,” Jared said. “It wasn’t about us. It was a showdown between them.”

“I was thinking the same thing. We were just an irritation that their leader wanted to eliminate.”

“We were more than that. We were a threat. If we lived, we’d tell the world about them. She thought we were dead, and we would have been if it weren’t for you.”

“I’m going to be sick,” I hissed through my teeth, feeling rage ignite.

I pressed my forehead into Jared’s shoulder, released a slow, calming breath. I wouldn’t lose control again.

“I’m sorry for losing it like that,” I apologized. I felt ashamed.

“You were afraid for Emery. So was I.”

“I didn’t mean it, you know, what I yelled. I wouldn’t kill her.”
At least I don’t think I would.

“I know.” Jared’s voice displayed no doubt. This bothered me. He should doubt me. I couldn’t be trusted.

I’m dangerous, and becoming more dangerous
.

Jared powered up the engine.

“I’m going to check on Emery,” I told him, leaving with my dire thoughts.

Emery was still asleep. His breathing was strong and steady.

He’s recovering
. I sighed with relief and gathered my clothes. In the tight bathroom, I wiggled out of the wetsuit and the Neoprene shirt and shorts, cursing under my breath each time I whacked a body part against the porcelain sink or wall. Back in jeans and a T-shirt, I slipped on my sweater and untangled my wet locks with my fingers.

My ears picked up Emery moving in the next room. The oxygen tank turned off.

“You okay?” I asked, opening the bathroom door.

He stood up, looking groggy.

“Yes. Thank you.” He examined me. “Good idea. Be a sport and help me out of this wetsuit.”

I didn’t hesitate, nor did I have the same feelings I’d had earlier, when he’d put on the wetsuit, which seemed like eons ago. We didn’t talk as I helped him shed the wetsuit and pull a hoodie over his head. When I handed him his jeans, the yacht slowed down.

“Have we gone through the locks?” Emery asked, stepping into his pant legs.

I glanced away. “About ten minutes before you woke up.”

“We’re in the marina,” he deduced. “Good. We have a lot to discuss.”

“When Jared was giving you CPR, I sort of lost it and threw your tank into the lake,” I confessed, flooded with familiar shame.

“So?”

“So, I’ll pay for it.”

The yacht came to a stop.

“No, you won’t.” Emery patted my cheek. “Thanks for caring enough to go beast.”

“You always know the right thing to say!”

“Unlike you, I appreciate your beast. Jared and I wouldn’t be here if the beast hadn’t emerged to protect us.”

“I don’t want to think about that.” I waved away the suggestion of them dying, and took a deep breath, fighting the threat of tears again. “What happened to you down there?”

“I’d like to know, too,” Jared chimed in as he came down the ladder.

“I was thrown into a tree, or so the throbbing spot on the back of my head tells me. I don’t remember exactly.” Emery’s gaze sprang to my face, as though he’d suddenly recalled something.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Let’s sit,” he said.

Emery plopped down on the built-in L-shaped leather sofa. I sat on the other side, diagonal to him. Jared plunked down beside me. Emery stared at me as though he were working a complex math equation in his head.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I heard you call me. How is that possible?”

“You mean on the surface?” Jared asked, confused. “You were passed out, but could have heard us talking.”

“No,” Emery answered him, his eyes drilling into mine. “I didn’t hear your voice, Jared, and not Cassidy’s
actual
voice, either. I heard her speak, here.” He tapped his forehead, not breaking our stares. “You asked me where I was.”

“And you told me you were drowning.”

Emery’s expression grew intense as he slipped mental puzzle pieces into place. I already had. Obviously, I had a new ability. What the heck was I evolving into?

“You’re telepathic?” Jared asked me, incredulous.

I shrugged. I really had nothing else to say, and if I tried to talk, I might just start bawling again. I didn’t want to be telepathic. How much would it take to scare everyone off who was privy to my freakishness?

“Cassidy, have you ever heard anyone in your head, aside from me?” Emery questioned.

“No,” I choked out.
Darn it. Don’t cry.

“Tell me specific instances where you heard me.”

“When I was lost in Elliott Bay.”

“I heard you, too. I’ve heard you often, actually. I thought it was my imagination.” He raked his hands into his damp bangs, computing.

“So you
can
read minds?” I deduced.

“What?” Jared asked, appearing uncomfortable with the notion. I knew it would scare him. I wouldn’t like the idea of anyone crawling around in my head.

“Relax.” Emery gave him a disarming smile. “I can’t
read
minds. But there is some kind of psychic connection between Cassidy and me.”

“Great!” Jared joked, but was clearly bothered. “You’re
exclusively
telepathic.”

Emery smirked. “Bites, doesn’t it?”

Jared barked a laugh. “And I saved you,
why
?”

“Because you can’t fight who you are,” I said ironically. When didn’t I have to fight what I was?

“Cassidy, rest assured, I catch only snippets of your thoughts, here and there,” Emery clarified. “And I don’t
audibly
hear your voice—”

“Well, I hear yours. How can we be telepathic at all?” The question was out before I could stop it. I averted my eyes to my fingers, fidgeting in my lap. I already knew
how
. When would I learn to just shut up?

“And why would only
you two
have this connection?” Jared added. I truly wished he hadn’t.

“Haven’t you figured out yet that I’m . . .
unusual
,” Emery teased Jared. “In all honesty, I don’t know. Do you, Cassidy?”

I looked up and met his scrutiny. “Like you said, you’re unusual.” I managed a smile. Now wasn’t the time to tell Emery about his dad and King’s conversation, not in front of Jared. Whatever King did to him, it was probably responsible for this connection between us.

“I also heard you call Mr. Levy a prig,” I deflected, and almost mentioned his rude comment to Jared in the lab, before thinking better of it. Emery hadn’t said the dig, he had thought it. “Oh, and the time I was about to attack Robin in the cafeteria, when she was hitting on
you
!” I jabbed Jared’s ribs with my elbow.

“Me?” he asked, taken aback.

“Yes, you! And you know the situation I’m referring to! The little witch kept taunting me, and I was
this
close to, I don’t know—punching her, flinging her across the room, ramming a sandwich into her foul mouth. I started to get up from the table, but then I thought Emery yelled at me to stop.”

“I did,
in my head
.” Emery chuckled at the memory. “I had just consigned myself to tackling you to the floor when you sat back down.”

“Because you yelled at me!” I laughed, too, despite the unsettling disclosures and my shameful lying.

Why did I promise Gavin to keep my mouth shut? Emery will never forgive me.

“Don’t take this personally, but I’m weirded out,” Jared admitted.

“You and me both. So, let’s not digress any further,” Emery suggested, ending the conversation, which was okay by me. I wasn’t much liking the fact that he could catch even a fragment of my thoughts.

What if he caught a snippet when we were getting into wetsuits?

Stop thinking about it!

Oh, this was scary.
All romantic thoughts are hereby banned
.

“Back to our discovery in Lake Washington,” Emery went on, seemingly unaware of my internal dialogue.

“Aqua people,” I offered, to divert my mind more than anything else. Of course, now that I had banned fantasizing, reminders of specific daydreams fired through my head, one after another.

“Aqua people,” Emery repeated. “A cute and adequate description for this new species, for now. Obviously, we had landed smack dab in the middle of a tussle between them.”

“Cassy and I thought so, too,” Jared said. “We weren’t the problem. Levy—or whatever he is now—and his friends were.”

“I agree. It was bad timing on our part.”

“You were probably unconscious when their leader unleashed her power,” Jared said. Then he explained what had happened.

“That’s disturbing,” Emery remarked. His eyes settled on me.

I stared back, wide-eyed, wondering if he’d caught a bit of a classic Jared daydream that I was mentally batting away. It had flown into my mind from nowhere. I hadn’t fostered that romantic scene for months.

“We need to go,” Emery announced abruptly, standing up. “I have to get my parents up to speed ASAP. Gather everything. We can’t leave behind any trace that we’ve been here. Jared, we can refuel the yacht later today. Take care of your wetsuits and BCD jackets. I’ll collect other gear and rentals. Cassidy, straighten the comforter.”

“How about I gather everything?” I said. Emery still looked pale.

“I’m fine,” he assured, looking slightly perturbed.

I bit my tongue. I hated the word “fine” now.

While fixing the damp comforter, I discretely observed Emery as he put scuba masks and fins back precisely where he’d found them. As a test, I allowed a couple of banned fantasies to play through my head. His focused expression showed no indication that he’d heard them. Despite this fact, I still blushed from head to toe.

“Oh, crud,” I groaned as our English Tudor came into view. It was 3:34 a.m., and the living room lights were ablaze.

Nate had called Jared’s cell phone as we were walking out to the marina parking lot. My brother had woken up and discovered Jared was missing. He checked my room, and saw I was gone, too, but didn’t want to assume Jared and I were together, since I went out to exercise every night. So he’d called Jared, who then gave my twin a brief overview of what had occurred, quietly, in case there were any prying ears about. I could have told him there weren’t.

When they hung up, I thought that was that. Nate would rather eat a bucket of dirt than be a tattletale. But, obviously, my parents had found out. Not completely surprising, since I knew—from listening in on the marina parking lot conversation—that Nate hadn’t been as conscious about the volume of his voice as Jared had been about his.

“Ready to face the firing squad?” I asked the boys as Emery pulled up to the curb in front of his house.