Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (35 page)

Ruben Schleper’s mom’s paddle went up.

“Four-thousand-dollar bid!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Ruben Schleper, I could handle.

“Now five thousand, will ya give me—”

Robin’s dad’s paddle went up again.

“Are you insane?” she yelled and tried to grab the paddle. He maneuvered it out of her reach, a determined look on his face. He aimed on winning.

“I got five thousand!”

“I want to go on a cruise with Drake Jones!” Mr. Newton told her, loudly and unabashedly. I wanted to crawl under the table for her.

“Now six thousand, will ya give me—”

“Gavin!” I pleaded.

“Cassidy Claire,” Mom scolded.

“For heaven’s sake,” Serena said, seizing the paddle from her husband. Very primly, she raised it.

The auctioneer pointed at her. “Six-thousand-dollar bid! Now seven thousand, will ya give me seven thousand?”

No paddles went up.

“How about six thousand five hundred? Six thousand five hundred? Six thousand five hundred? Would you go six thousand two hundred fifty?”

Smugly smiling, Serena slapped the paddle against Gavin’s chest.

“Six thousand two hundred fifty? No? Then six thousand is going once, going twice—”

“Ten thousand dollars!” Mr. Newton called.

Robin released a savage howl.

“I got ten thousand dollars! Eleven thousand, eleven thousand—”

“Gavin!” I begged.

He let out a whistle and placed the paddle down. “Too rich for my blood.”

“Ten thousand five hundred, ten thousand five hundred—”

My desperate gaze shot to Emery.

“Ten thousand two hundred fifty—”

“Why are you looking at me?” he asked.

I swiped Chazz’s dinner roll and threw it at him.

“
Hey!
” Chazz complained. “I was saving that.”

“Ten thousand dollar bid to the gentleman in the Hawaiian shirt!”

Grinning and nodding his head, Mr. Newton gave my dad two thumbs up while his daughter went on a rampage. I dropped my head to the table miserably. I couldn’t believe I had to go on vacation with Robin Newton.

~~~

“Do you think you and Robin will buddy up in a cabin?” were the first words out of Emery’s mouth when I crawled through his bedroom window later that night.

The next thing he knew he was being slammed on his bed and beaten savagely with a pillow.

“You think you’re funny?” I demanded, whacking him.

Curling into a ball with arms sheltering his head, he laughed and shouted protests.

“This is the
most
terrible thing that has ever happened to me!” I declared, pummeling him with every word.

“The
most
terrible?” Emery managed.

“Practically!” I flopped down next to him, jammed the pillow under my head, and stared up at the ceiling. Peripherally, I saw him turn to his side to study my profile.

“This has been a weird night,” I told him.

“A weird three weeks.”

“A weird seven months.” I shifted to my side and smiled into his eyes. “I always think of glittery black coal when I look into your eyes.”

Emery puckered his lips. “Does coal glitter?”

I laughed. “Well, if it did, it would look like your eyes.” The evening crowded my thoughts again. “You know what I find strange?”

“No. Tell me.”

“How normal we all appeared tonight. No one would have guessed we have so many secrets.”

“Everyone has secrets. Just not as interesting as ours.” Emery flicked my nose, coaxing a smile out of me.

“Well, I don’t have any from you anymore—thanks to our brain connection! I wonder why I can tap into your thoughts and no one else’s.”

“Have you tried?”

“You know me. What do you think?”

Emery grew serious. For several moments, he absently raked my hair across his pillow, deliberating.

Concentrating on his face, I attempted to extract the thoughts firing off behind his serious eyes, to no avail.

I chuckled, and those black orbs focused on me.

“Yep, I suck as a telepath. Maybe Spock had it right.” I stuck my fingertips on his forehead and mimicked the blank expression Leonard Nimoy always wore when reading minds on
Star Trek
. Emery stared back at me, just as blankly.

“Shoot. No mind melding,” I joked. “You must have thrown up some kind of mental shield. So much for digging out your deepest, darkest secrets.” I sighed.

“I have a great comeback for that, but I’ll resist,” Emery said without an ounce of humor tinting his voice. “Are you sure you want to know my deepest, darkest secrets? There’s one in particular I have in mind.”

I nodded against the pillow.

Emery smiled. “Your head is indicating yes, but your
wide
, terrified eyes aren’t as confident. Think about it, Cassidy. You don’t have to make a decision right now.”

He started to sit up. I tugged him back down.

“Oh no, you don’t! There is
no
way you’re getting out of this. Tell me.”

“Promise me what I’m about to share never leaves this room.”

“No one else knows?”

“No, and I want it to stay that way. It’s critical that it does.”

“It will.” There wasn’t a chance I would betray Emery. “I swear I will tell no one.”

“You have it wrong. I am not a mere receiver of your thoughts. Yes, you and I have a telepathic connection. But I lied. I don’t hear only your thoughts.”

“You can read other people’s minds?”

“Like I told you before, I catch snippets of thoughts out of the blue. Most are so vague that they’re cryptic. There’s no frame of reference to help me know what the person is thinking about specifically—unless it’s obvious, of course. I hear just a smattering of words.”

“Um . . .” I searched for the right way to phrase this. “Do you think you’ll ever get a handle on this, so you’ll know
exactly
what the other person is thinking about?”

Emery gauged me. “I don’t know. Perhaps. You’re confirming why no one else can know. You’re frightened of me.”

“
Me
frightened of
you
? You can only read minds. I can crack skulls.” Emery didn’t laugh, so I granted him: “You’re right. This isn’t funny. I’m sorry for making light of the situation, which I only did because, as you already know, the idea that you can invade my private thoughts scares the heck out of me.”

“And rightly so. Now imagine how the CIA agent I live with would feel.”

“You’d be a national threat.”

“Plus, everyone aware would be afraid of me.”

Emery was right.

“No one will know,” I vowed. “But you will tell me if you ever, um, get better control of your ability, right?”

“You’ll be the first to know.” A sly look came into his twinkling eyes. “By the way, thank you.”

“For what?”

“Figure it out.”

“Do I want to?”

“Probably not,” he said. His grin faded. “There’s more.”

“Another secret?”

“This secret starts with an apology. I’m sorry I’ve let you wallow in guilt about what King did to me as a kid.”

My heart stopped. “You know?”

“I know he experimented on me. But I don’t know the specifics, or why. I just have flashes of memory.”

“Do your parents know you know?”

“No.” Emery didn’t elaborate.

Why wouldn’t he tell them that he knew and alleviate
their
crushing guilt? Guilt had consumed Gavin for years, fueling his drive to bring King to justice. And if Emery told them, maybe they could help him understand
why
they had allowed King to hurt their son.

Instinct warned me not to tread on this particular ground, though, or risk Emery clamming up. Besides, Emery wasn’t cruel. He had his reasons for keeping his parents in the dark, and he’d share his motives with me in due time. I’d make sure of that.

“What do you remember?” I asked gently.

Emery rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. “King’s face, bright lights, pain, and the faces of other children.”

Jared pulled off his shoes, letting them drop to the floor, and slumped forward on his bed.

“What is wrong with me?” he spoke into the silence, massaging his forehead. His mood had swung like a pendulum for the past two weeks—euphoria one moment, depression the next—back and forth to extremes, until he thought he’d go completely mad.

Perhaps he was going crazy. There were the voices.

He hadn’t heard them that night; they’d been silent, giving his frayed mind a brief reprieve. Perhaps that could be attributed to the upswing of the pendulum into elation. He had been on such a high that he had spent most of the auction suppressing the sporadic laughter building in his throat, like the carbonated contents in a shaken soda can. The part of his mind that hadn’t succumbed to the rush had reasoned that he was sitting across the table from the most beautiful girl in the room.
His
girl.

Who wouldn’t be walking on air?

But then his psyche would counter this argument, rationalizing that he had no reason to be happy, no matter how much Cassidy meant to him. He had lost his father, a man he’d never really known. He had only known the creatures that were controlling his
real
father’s brain. Maybe his
real
father would have been the dad he had always wished for, a dad like Drake.

Maybe his
real
father would have never left his mom and him.

A tear trickled down Jared’s cheek. He swiped it away.

“Up and down, like a freaking rollercoaster,” he admonished, pushing himself off the bed and to his feet. “Stop being mental. Get a grip!”

Aggravated, he snatched up the jar of crickets. The swift motion triggered their frantic chirping.

“I know how you feel.” Jared examined the startled insects that were hopping around the jar, bumping into the glass and one another. “Trapped, waiting to die, and there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it.”

He stopped talking and wondered where that sick thought had come from. On the heels of this contemplation, his tormentors returned.

We won’t let you die
, the voices promised.

Jared squeezed his eyes shut and delivered a punishing blow to his forehead with his palm, as though it could knock the voices loose.

“Shut up!” He gritted his teeth so hard that it felt like they would shatter. Pain shooting through his jaw forced him to relax the muscles. Shaking his head, he drew in a ragged breath and went back to his task. He would ignore the voices. Pretend they weren’t there. Maybe then they would go away.

Jared
, they summoned.

Jared captured a cricket and dropped it into the terrarium.

Find your father
.

“How am I supposed to do that?” he snapped, and then reprimanded himself for answering the voices. They had been telling him for days to find his father and Patrick Grimm.

An image of his dad watching Joe pull him from the water materialized in his mind’s eye. His dad had just stood there, looking on. Sure, he had protected him from that psycho Ashlyn, but he hadn’t lifted a finger when Constance attacked him, flinging him into that pool swarming with parasites.

Jared rubbed his ear, remembering how the parasites felt squirming around the canal. If Joe hadn’t saved him, maybe they would have eaten his brain.

Maybe they did. Maybe that’s why I’m schizophrenic now.

“That’s it!” He plucked up another cricket. “I need to tell someone what’s happening to me—”

You can’t,
the voices insisted, just as they’d done every time he’d entertained the notion of confessing that he’d gone crazy.

Even without the demands of the voices, Jared could feel himself retreat from the idea. The instinct to protect his secret was too strong. No one could be trusted with it. He couldn’t confide in his mom, since she didn’t know what had really happened to his dad, and the thought of telling
any
Phillipses caused his insides to recoil. They were dangerous people who had their own agenda. The Joneses might have had the wool pulled over their eyes, but he hadn’t.

There was only one person he could confide in, only one person he could trust. Her loyalties to Emery were strong, but he was the person she loved. He knew every time he looked into her eyes that he was special to her. He also recognized that her feelings for Emery were confused. He’d hung back for months, observing them together, waiting for things to progress. They never did. She only had eyes for him, no one else. Cassidy wouldn’t betray him.

She cannot be assimilated
, the voices interjected.
Her species is our enemy.
They must be destroyed. Tell Patrick Gri—

“Shut up!” Jared bellowed. He stood still, listening for his mom, and heard running water. She was in the shower—thank goodness.

Stop resisting. Open your eyes.

Laughter built in his throat, exploding.

“Fine! I give in.” He tossed his hands up in heedless surrender. “I’m totally wacked.” He reached into the terrarium for the water bowl. Killer scurried to the corner. “Eyes are
wide
open.”

Then see what you can do—

Jared felt raw energy blast from his head, down his neck and arm, and out his fingertips, which were aimed at the water bowl. The ceramic bowl shook, and the vibrating water rose, swirling higher and higher, thinning into something resembling a fine, rotating spike.

His heart pounded with excitement and fear. He moved his forefinger slightly. The thin column followed the motion.

Killer
, the voices prompted.

Without a second thought, Jared responded, swinging his finger toward his pet. The water spike plunged, impaling the tarantula dead center in the abdomen. The spider reared up in pain as the water spike disintegrated, droplets splattering the mortal wound.

You are a new man.

Paralyzed with horror, Jared watched his pet collapse, appearing half its size in death.