Succession of Witches (10 page)

On a Friday night, Cassie knew she had a snowball’s chance in hell of prying the Xbox away from her brother, so she didn’t bother. Besides, there was nothing to say: Ethan knew that she was coming. The mechanics of how she was getting there and who was coming with her weren’t for him to worry about.

She planned to get her weekend homework out of the way that night, but hung out in the living room after dinner watching TV for a little while. The silly show about the cupcakes was on, and for some reason Cassie found she enjoyed guessing which leaning tower of processed sugar would collapse first. After the winning cupcake monument was crowned, she had every intention of rising from the couch and going upstairs to her room.

She would later regret the decision to stay in the living room for some time.

She was engrossed in the Green Team’s plan to bake 1000 Apple Pecan Chocolate cupcakes when her mother’s words startled her. “Who bought you those?”

“Uh, what?” said Cassie through a mouthful of pretzel nuggets.

Annette stood in the middle of the living room, wearing one of her tennis outfits. “Those earrings. Who bought those for you?”

“Oh!” Cassie said, sitting up and facing her mother. She’d completely forgotten she was wearing Sam’s present. “You mean these? They look real, but they’re plastic. They were five bucks at the drug store,
you know the one on second and—”

“Stop,” said Annette, and Cassie’s eyes widened at the seriousness of her mother’s tone. “Those are not fakes, they are large opals with topaz accents and if you think I can’t tell the difference, you have another thing coming. There is no
way those cost less than a five hundred dollars.”

Cassie swallowed, hard. This was bad; she’d forgotten that jewelry was one area where her mother knew her stuff. Annette never left the house without wearing at least three rings and five bracelets.

“Cassie,” began Annette, sitting down on the couch next to her. “The earrings. That gorgeous dress in your closet, which I don’t believe you bought on clearance at Maude’s no matter what you say. That weird computer thing that looks more expensive than your father’s tablet. Someone is buying you all of these things, and you are going to tell me who it is right now.”

She put a hand on Cassie’s knee and looked at her, expectantly. Cassie’s mind worked feverishly, in the few seconds for thought she had, to come up with a lie Annette would believe. At a loss, she went back to her general principle of
lying: always stick as close to the truth as possible. That way, she was less likely to get confused and give away the lie later.

“Okay, okay, you’re right, someone is buying me things. I’ve been…seeing someone.
Someone older.”

“I knew it!” Annette yelled; Cassie winced at the shrill yell in her ear. “It’s that good-looking one from the coffee
shop, isn’t it? I KNEW I never should have let you keep working at that place, after last fall. How is he even affording this, on a coffee shop paycheck?” She was interrupted by the sound of the front door creaking.

“What’s all this about?” said Cassie’s father, coming in after a late night at the office.
Oh great
, thought Cassie,
this I need
.

Annette’s grip on Cassie’s leg had grown painfully firm. “Jon, your daughter is dating an older man, how do you like that?”

Cassie’s father dropped his briefcase. “Wha-what’s this? Cassie, is this true?”

“Yes it’s true,” said Cassie, her mind still working a mile a minute to try to lessen the damage. “I’m sorry I lied, but I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d freak out. I should have just been honest, because I bet if you knew him, you’d be okay with it.”

“I doubt that highly,” said Annette. “Jon, can you believe this? She lied to us.”

“I know.” Jon crossed the room and kneeled on the floor in front of her. “Kiddo, we’re less upset about the fact that you’re dating than the fact that you lied, do you understand?”

“Speak for yourself, I am incredibly upset that she’s dating,” said Annette. She turned to cup her daughter’s face in her hands. “For the love of God, just tell me you’re not pregnant!”

“Mom!”
Cassie yelled.

At that moment, Hunter poked his head out of the den. “Cassie’s pregnant?”

“Get back in the den and play your games, Hunter!” said Annette, not looking away from Cassie.

“You’re telling me to stay in here and play more games? Okay,” said Hunter, ducking back into the room and closing the door.

Cassie took a deep breath, preparing for her counterattack. “Mom, I am not pregnant, and I’m not going to get pregnant, okay? Sam doesn’t believe in premarital sex. That’s why he buys me so many things, because he’s sorry that we can’t be, you know, close like that.”

Annette’s hands dropped away from Cassie’s face and into her lap. “You mean to tell me he’s…
religious
?” She said the word like it was disgusting.

Cassie nodded. “Yes, he’s a very spiritual person. He believes that having sex outside of the sacred bond of marriage is like, an insult to Jesus. We hold hands, but he told me that we have to wait—we have to wait a really long time. Like, after college, long time.”

Annette looked at her husband with a dumbstruck expression. Jon rose from his kneeling position and put his hands in his pockets. “Oh. Well, I guess that’s not so bad then.”

Annette shot up. “That’s not so bad? Not so bad? Jon, our daughter is dating one of those BORN AGAINS!”

Hunter poked his head out again. “What’s a Bore Nagin?” he asked.

“Hunter, stay out of this!” yelled Cassie.

“Whatever. Skank,” he said, closing the door again.

“Look, as long as he’s not going to do anything inappropriate with Cassie, I don’t really care what he is,” said Jon. “She’s 16 years old Annie, she was going to date eventually.” He turned to Cassie. “But I hope that next
time, you’ll be honest with us.”

“I will, Daddy. I’m so sorry, hiding it was stupid,” said Cassie.

She hugged her father, but Annette would not be pacified. “He’s not trying to indoctrinate you, is he? Into his cult?”

“Being Christian isn’t a cult!” Cassie exclaimed.

Her mother narrowed her eyes. “Those religious extremists, they’re all the same—you can’t trust them.” After a pause, she continued. “So wait, you mean to tell me you’ve been dating that hot guy for how long now, and you haven’t even been making out? What a waste….”

“Annette!”

Cassie rubbed her forehead. What the hell did this woman want from her?

It was a long night, but Cassie managed to convince her parents that there was no point to making her quit her job at The Daily Grind. For one thing, if she quit her part-time job, that would give her that much more time to be with her “religious” boyfriend, and her parents did trust Dwight not to let anything inappropriate happen in his shop. Cassie was confused by Annette, who seemed to go back and forth from being relieved that Cassie wasn’t having sex to worried that Cassie was going to become a religious zealot.

At first they were going to forbid Cassie to leave the house on Saturday, but when Cassie pointed out, truthfully, that Sam was working at the shop all day and she was going somewhere else with Jay and Mike (the cover story was a gaming convention), they relented. As her childhood friend, with one of the most overprotective mothers on the planet, anywhere Jay was going was automatically considered safe. Besides, it wouldn’t be hard for them to visit the shop and verify that Sam wasn’t with her.

She sent Sam a text, just to cover that possibility:
Had to tell my Mom that u and I are dating, and u don’t believe in sex because of Jesus. Makes sense in context.

In the end, they couldn’t really do anything to punish her; she was already forbidden to go anywhere other than work and school without parental approval, and she needed to keep her cell locator on at all times so they could keep tabs on her. She got off with the threat that if she ever lied to them again, she could kiss her dream of going to an out-of-state college goodbye.

So that was how Cassie, Mike, Jay and Khalil ended up on a road trip to Connecticut in a rented Subaru that Saturday. Khalil drove and Jay rode shotgun while Cassie and Mike sat in the backseat. Many foodstuffs of the fast and fried variety were consumed en route, but that was fine with Cassie; rescue missions were probably best attempted on a full stomach.

Initially, both Cassie and Khalil had protested either Jay or Mike coming along, but they had made such a nuisance of themselves about it that Khalil had let them come, as long as they promised to stay in the car once they reached their destination.

“There’s strength in numbers,” said Mike, clicking away happily on his netbook as the car did 75 on the highway. “Sam’s much less likely to kill all four of us than just Cassie.”

“Probably true,” said Cassie, as she cycled through the documents on her tablet while finishing off her strawberry milkshake. She’d meant to familiarize
herself with the texts provided for her by the court on the Venus 7200X, but between school and work, it had been hard to find the time. As a result, she’d only read one or two of the books available on Witchbooks, a custom app that she assumed was only provided to fledgling witches.

It had the shortest User Agreement she’d ever seen on any application: “Tell anyone about this and you know very well what will happen to you. Click to agree.”

Now that she had several hours in the car, it seemed like as good a time as any to learn more about witches and magic. However, she couldn’t decide where to start. The guides to herbs, gemstones and other spell ingredients seemed rather clinical and dull, and the dictionary-length Spellcraft Compendiums I, II and III (Advanced) looked too intimidating to start. That left her with the following choices:

What’s Happening
To My Body? A Young Witch’s Guide

Help, My Master Doesn’t Understand Elementals! How to communicate with your master about things that demons just don’t understand

From Samantha To Harry: Hilarious Fake Witches and What YOU Can Learn From Them

Who Put The Man In My Demon? How to Please Your Master
The Old-Fashioned Way

The last title made Cassie’s cheeks burn, and she quickly scrolled up so the title wouldn’t be visible on screen. If she ever read that one, it wouldn’t be in a car with three guys. Fortunately, Jay offered a distraction.

“Hey, so like, do you think I could take his copy of Broken Halo Messengers? He’s probably sick of it anyway, and there’s no reason for it to go to waste….”

“Jason Peglioni,” said Cassie in mock-disgust. “Did you insist on coming because you want to get your hands on Ethan’s game collection?”

“No!” said Jay, a little too forcefully, “But this is kind of a special situation. I mean, he has the collector’s edition….”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you said his character has golden wings, and only people who got the collector’s edition got that. It means he also has the limited edition figure of Risali-chan, and um, I kind of collect figures of her, so….”

“Great,” said Cassie. “I’m relieved to hear that you’ll risk your life for a stupid doll instead of a stupid game.”

“PVC Figures are not dolls,” said Jay and Mike in near perfect unison; this was an old argument.

“Okay, okay, whatever,” said Cassie, returning her attention to her tablet. Jay snuck a look at her and cleared his throat, eager to change the subject.

“So, anything cool on the DemonPad?” That was Jay’s name for the Venus 7200X; no one else thought it was funny, but that didn’t stop Jay from saying it at every opportunity.

“Not really,” said Cassie. “I don’t even get some of these titles. Like ‘Help, my master doesn’t understand elementals!’ What does that even mean?”

Mike spoke while continuing to type at full speed. “Demons don’t really get how elemental magic works because they do it all intuitively; like, if a demon wants to
move something, he just thinks ‘Move!’ and it happens. It’s not automatic for witches, so they actually have to learn how to work with air and water and stuff like that.”

Cassie wrinkled her brow; that sounded plausible, but how would Mike know that?

“Mike,” she said slowly, “Have you been reading Witchbooks?”

Mike smiled. “Not on your tablet, if that’s what you’re thinking.
But all that stuff is available online, if you know where to look. I’ve read a bunch of it.”

“Online?” Khalil interjected from the front. “Those books have got to be super-
protected, they don’t want just anyone reading those.”

“They’re encrypted, but not well enough,” said Mike.

Khalil took his eyes off the road to look over his shoulder, fixing Mike with a serious look.

“Kid, if you’re hacking into demon stuff, you have to realize how dangerous that is. They might kill you for that.”

“Yeah,” Cassie agreed, feeling icy tendrils of fear materialize in her stomach. “Mike seriously, stop it.”

“Too late,” said Mike with a shrug. “I read everything I thought was interesting already. If they didn’t want people to read it, maybe their security measures shouldn’t be two years out of date.”

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The rest of the ride was fairly quiet, or as quiet as could be when Khalil was frequently doing 80 miles per hour. Cassie could tell Khalil was mad that Mike had done something so dangerous, but now that it was already done, there was nothing to say. Cassie read the first few chapters of the book about elementals, and found that Mike’s description had been accurate; it seemed like a large element of being a witch was breaking down magic into its component parts to achieve more varied, subtle results than demons were generally capable of.

That was the gist of it, anyway; once the book started talking about how to combine flows of air and earth, with “a ribbon of lunar energy for clarity,” she completely lost the plot.

When they got closer to Ethan’s neighborhood, a suburb not far from Mystic, Jay read directions aloud while Khalil drove. They had already decided to park a few blocks away from the house, so the car wouldn’t show up on any kind of security footage Pascal might have. Plus, it just seemed safer, especially since Mike and Jay were staying in the car.

The houses were large; not quite mansion-sized, but there was no question that this was a neighborhood for people with money. It also had no sidewalks, which was something Cassie had always found annoying about a lot of upscale neighborhoods: where were the kids supposed to ride their bikes?

Eventually, Khalil parked the Subaru in front of a majestic white house with Greco-Roman pillars, two blocks away from Pascal’s residence. After he turned off the engine, the group sat in silence for a minute.

“Hey,” said Jay, “I hate to bring this up now, but something’s been bothering me. What if, what if the guy has protection spells up? Like the kind of spell that Sam put on your house?”

Cassie swallowed. In truth, the idea had occurred to her as well, but she’d been trying not to think about it. “I don’t think so, killing people in a really disgusting way is kind of Sam’s specialty,” she said, aiming for a devil-may-care attitude she didn’t really feel. “If Pascal has any kind of protection spell, it probably won’t be something so flashy. It would be more subtle.”

“Besides, we’re already here; too late to back out now,” said Khalil, undoing his seatbelt. “Time to get this show on the…on the, uh…err, guys? Does anyone remember what we’re doing here?”