44. Caught
44
CAUGHT
Despair creates a rival for our fears
And tender pity softens into tears.
— JAMES DELACOUR, “HOW LOVE WAS BORN”
“ T ake your time,” Caitlin told me as we exited the house to greet Jonathan. “I’ll run to the house for clean linens and food.”
She rubbed Jonathan’s shoulder as he approached. I lingered on the porch while we waited for Caitlin to leave, examining the overgrown yard, the clouds, and literally everything but Jonathan.
“Hi,” I mumbled once Caitlin was out of earshot. I didn’t know how far her range went, but I did my best to keep my thoughts blank anyway. “I thought you would be gone by now.”
“I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”
We sank onto the porch step together, facing the ocean. He was dressed for travel again—out of the worn jeans and flannel shirt appropriate for chores, and back in neatly ironed pants and a pressed gingham shirt.
“Cass,” Jonathan said as he toyed with his watch.
I failed to ignore the pleasurable shiver that traveled up my back when he said my name.
“So, how’s the teacher’s pet?”
“Ready for her sentence. A week’s silent meditation, in which I am supposed to discover my mind.”
A snort emitted next to me. “Is that all?”
“I’m sure it’ll be a snap.” To demonstrate, I snapped my fingers.
“Well, you need to protect yourself, but how can you do it if you don’t know yourself, right?”
I narrowed my eyes. I had been hoping for an ally. “That’s just what Caitlin said.”
“She’s quick, that one.”
Like he couldn’t help himself, he tucked an errant lock of hair behind my ear and wasn’t quite able to hide the slight flush that rose to his cheeks. Mine blazed immediately, and he pulled back. He felt bad, but his touch indicated that he was finding it as difficult as I was to keep his attraction at bay. Even now.
“I suppose it’s just as well I’m leaving,” he said with a sigh.
And just like that, anger replaced attraction.
“Yes, you don’t have to deal with it anymore,” I said, standing up and walking out into the grass. “You’ll have all sorts of things to distract you from your babysitting.”
“Cass…”
I swatted at some overgrown grasses. “You had a laundry list, right? Instead of a silent house and your crazy thoughts, like me. And why would you bother with a witch who doesn’t even know her own mind? Not when you can go back to the girls in Rome, hm? I’m sure they can’t resist the siren song of a man like yourself.”
Jonathan stared at me, dumbfounded. I yanked a dried, seeded stalk from the ground and started picking at the hull.
“What are you talking about with this rubbish?” he demanded. “You sound ridiculous, do you know that?”
I did know that, but I continued despite my better instincts. “Sounds like you’re skating the issues. Is it just one girl waiting for you back there, or a whole gaggle?”
“Cassandra, do shut up. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought you the jealous type.”
Jonathan got up and walked into the house. I threw the grass stalk into the yard and followed him inside.
“And you sound like a man who doesn’t want to be honest,” I called out. “Always hiding. Always pulling away. I knew how it would be from the beginning, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have the guts to say it. Get me settled, then kiss and run. At least it didn’t go any further. It’s fine.”
He turned just before reaching the porch. “Come here, if that’s what you think.”
“No.”
“Cassandra, dammit.” He reached out again, missing me by inches.
“What are you doing? I said no.”
“I want to touch you so I know what’s going on in that head of yours and you can See exactly what’s happening in mine,” he snapped. “Because there’s obviously more than this bloody nonsense. We talked about this yesterday. It shouldn’t surprise you that I’m leaving.”
It shouldn’t have. And yet it did. Something about it felt wrong , but I was too embarrassed to admit it. Why I should feel this way, this strongly about someone I still barely knew but for a few traumatic moments and even fewer drunken kisses made no sense.
But that was how I felt.
And I didn’t know how to deal with it.
As I darted into the kitchen, Gran’s form danced around me, making the ache that never seemed to leave throb that much harder.
I was alone. Or would be for at least a week. Without people. Without friends. And without this man, with whom I shared such an oddly intense connection, who was leaving without so much as a backward glance.
They say when pressed into a corner, people turn to fight or flight. My instinct was the latter.
“Stay away from me!” I snapped as Jonathan chased me around the kitchen island and back into the living room.
“Fucking hell, Cassandra, I said come here !”
Just as I was about to dodge around an armchair, he snagged one of my wrists and yanked me back toward him with a quick spin. Then, grasping both of my shoulders, he landed a hard stamp of a kiss on my mouth. One that shut us both up for nearly a minute.
“Satisfied?” he hissed, his warm breath mingling with mine.
My mind had quieted again, but my insides boiled. “Not in the fucking slightest.”
“Listen to me, you stubborn girl.” His grip on my shoulders was so firm I was sure they would bruise. “Can’t you See what I’m thinking? What I’m feeling for you ?”
Unfortunately, I could. He was undeniably frustrated, but it was only because he was scared for me and desperately wanted me safe. He had been lying on the beach when he said he had better things to do than stay here. We’d both known it, of course, but it had still hurt. However, it was only because he thought alienating me would be easier than the truth—that he cared deeply, and that, to his confusion, it was going against every instinct he had to leave me here.
But my best bet wasn’t him. It was with learning what my own abilities would provide. I understood that, and I could See it in his thoughts, but this newfound position and duty still didn’t quite make sense to me. I wasn’t special. I was simply an unmanifested scholar who just wanted to get through this ordeal unscathed. The shadow of Caleb Lynch rose in the back of my mind, and both Jonathan and I shuddered. I had nothing in me that could ward off such a monster.
“Can you See too?” I whispered.
Solemnly, he nodded. “I See your fear. But also your bravery. I won’t let him near you, I promise.”
“How can you promise that if you aren’t here?”
“Because that’s where I’m going. He’s on the run—missing since February, and I won’t stop until I find him.” Sincerity vibrated through his touch, his thoughts, his every emotion. Papers, classes, experiments—they could all hang.
I mattered to him, deeply.
Jonathan’s grip loosened, and I allowed him to wrap me tightly in his arms, pressing my nose to his collar to inhale his clean musk.
“You are more important to me than you could possibly know,” he muttered fiercely in my ear. “We’ll help you find it—all of us.” He held me back out so he could look into my face. “But you know the truth, Cass. You and I…we want something we can’t have. Not right now. I’m sorry.”
But why ? I didn’t say it out loud. Perhaps I was too scared to know the answer.
When I pulled back, Jonathan’s eyes dropped to my mouth.
One last kiss…
His desire spoke through his touch as if through a megaphone.
Please , I begged, knowing he would hear my unspoken request.
Please what, I didn’t know. Kiss me? Stay with me?
Love me?
I pushed away the thought as he bent closer, pulled by the magnet between us. His mouth brushed mine, and I sighed with relief.
Finally .
The same relief coursed through him.
“Don’t go,” I whispered as his lips trailed over my face. “It’s wrong. You’re not supposed to leave.”
A low groan rumbled deep in his chest. “Cass.” Those eyes found mine, large and pained.
He couldn’t quite say no, though he knew it was right. Instead of speaking, he took my face between his palms and bent to kiss me again.
“ What is going on here?”
I felt her in my head right after the words came out of her mouth. She wasn’t gentle about it, and the blundering about my mind was like an enraged parent rifling through her daughter’s closet to find a secret diary.
Jonathan sprang away from me like I was a hot burner, and we both turned to Caitlin, who stood in the doorway with a bundle of linens and an expression somewhere between outrage and sorrow. She opened and closed her mouth multiple times in a very good imitation of a fish.
“Oh, damn,” she said, then cursed softly in Irish before switching back to English. “How did I not See this? Bloody shite and damn.”
“Cait,” Jonathan croaked. “I’m so sorry. Believe me, I couldn’t help it?—”
“No, I don’t imagine you could,” Caitlin snapped. She shook her head and swore again. “Christ, Jon, you don’t even believe in this sort of thing.”
“I...didn’t.” His voice was barely audible, though his eyes didn’t stray from mine. “Before.”
“Before what? What’s wrong?” I demanded, feeling completely out of the loop. Both of them had stepped well out of reach, and I didn’t think that was accidental. “Nothing’s happened, Caitlin, not that it’s any of your business if it did.”
“I think you’d better sit down, Cassandra. Just Cassandra, mind,” Caitlin said, her voice steely now. “Jonny, Robbie’s waiting to take you to the airfield. You’d better get off, or else you’ll miss your flight. Or do something even worse, from what I can tell.”
To my shock, Jonathan nodded obediently, then turned back to me. “I’ll call with any news,” he said quietly. “And for this…I am sorry. More than you could possibly know.”
Before I could ask what exactly he was so sorry for, Jonathan practically ran from the house, leaving me with Caitlin, wondering just what we had done wrong.
We were both settled on Gran’s old couch with two more cups of tea, this time laced with Irish whiskey, before Caitlin spoke again.
“How long has it been going on, then?”
I peered at her over my cup. “With all due respect, Caitlin, it’s none of your business.” I didn’t appreciate being treated like a rebellious teenager. We were grown adults bonded through unusual circumstances. It wasn’t that surprising we were attracted to each other, was it?
“No, it’s not. But the question remains.” Her cold gray expression made me want to shrink into my corner and cover myself with a blanket.
I looked out the window, no match against Caitlin’s steel-edged gaze. “Practically since we met,” I muttered. “There was an attraction, but given the circumstances we—well, Jonathan, mostly—thought it was inappropriate to become involved romantically at that time.”
“Inappropriate.” Caitlin turned the word carefully over her tongue as if she tasted a particularly bitter medicine. “ Inappropriate . Yes, I’ll bet the gobshite does think that.” She stared out the window herself for several long moments, then seemed to make a decision. “How old do you think Penny was when she died?”
I blinked at the sudden change of subject. Gran had never told me how old she was specifically, but it seemed like she had been around for most major events in the twentieth century…at least after the Second World War. I knew that for sure.
“I’m not sure,” I allowed. “Maybe seventy-five? Eighty? We didn’t have her birth certificate. My mom isn’t quite forty-seven. I always thought Gran just aged well or had Sibyl young.”
Caitlin snorted. “You could say she aged well. You could say the same of myself. But neither of us had children young. When we were girls, we pledged we’d have a full life first.”
When we were girls.
The casual statement hit me like a sack of bricks. Caitlin couldn’t have been older than her mid-forties, with a light sprinkling of crow’s feet surrounding her eyelids and her mouse-brown hair threaded with just a few fugitive strands of silver. How could she and Penny have been girls together when Penny had been nearly twice her age?
Caitlin turned to the tray on the coffee table in front of us. She poured us each another cup of tea while she spoke, including another generous finger of whiskey.
“Technically, you’re not to know until you turn thirty-three,” she said. “The Council decreed long ago that it must be keptfrom the unmanifested. But Penny didn’t make it to your birthday, and your mam left. So I suppose it’s my decision, early or not. We’ve got enough to do without making you and Jon star-crossed lovers.”
Star-crossed what? I blinked. “Did I miss something? Why are we Romeo and Juliet?” And just how many revelations was I going to have in the space of twenty-four hours?
Caitlin sighed. “Likely a few more than this one. It will make up for the years of ignorance forced upon you. The truth is, you could live forever, Cassandra, or close to it. If you choose wisely.”
At first, I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly, if at all. The words seemed rushed, for all her effort to speak slowly and carefully.
“That’s impossible,” I blurted out. “Look at me. I got my first gray hairs last year, and I can’t swim butterfly anymore because of my shoulder. I can’t pull all-nighters either, and the last time I drank, I had a hangover for days. These are small changes, but I’m definitely getting older.”
Caitlin watched me with obvious pity that only infuriated me more. “Of course, you are. But fae age a bit differently than plain folk. Once your body finishes growing, it takes another fifteen or so years for your mind and your power to catch up. Most children identify at age six and begin to learn their craft at twelve or thirteen. Bronagh will go off to school next year; the twins will apprentice at thirteen as well. Eight to ten years, and then they’ll be sent off to live their lives. But none of them will manifest until thirty-three, when their potential is realized. The body ages normally until your magic is fully grown. Then, it stops.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples, massaging the news that I was (or would be) essentially unchanging and immortal upon my thirty-third birthday.
“Then why doesn’t my mother look thirty-three?” I asked. “Why didn’t Gran? Why don’t you ? And how does that explain how you could have possibly been childhood friends?”
“Funny you should ask. What do you think all of us have in common?”
At the bottom of the couch, a shoe poked out from the dust ruffle next to Caitlin’s foot. A battered leather bootie that would probably fit a toddler. It might have been passed down between Bronagh and the twins, but when I picked it up, I was instantly seized with an image of a woman with blazing red hair and pursed lips holding the shoe. My heart gave a loud thump when I recognized Gran walking the shoe to a tiny red-haired girl who giggled with delight, one foot shoeless and her curly mop trailing behind her as she circled the kitchen table. Sybil.
I looked up, and the vision disappeared. “Children. You’ve all had children.”
Caitlin nodded. “That’s it. You can’t live forever if you’ve made someone to replace you. It’s the way with all living things. There’s something in our magic that keeps us in prime condition until we procreate, and then we’re like the grasses. We go to seed. And eventually, we die.”
“Does your power fade along with your body?” I thought of Caleb Lynch’s frail, almost ethereal form. His vise-grip around my mind didn’t match the frailty of his physical body.
“What you lack in brute strength, you make up for in experience and wisdom. But unless the mind succumbs as well, no, generally, they don’t. We only become pawns to our bodies, don’t we?”
“So…it starts when you have children,” I said. “And is it the same for men?”
Caitlin nodded. “Don’t ask me how the magic knows the man’s had a child when the babe arrives halfway around the world, but it does. It’s how your grandfather likely knew he was going to die, for Penny never told him she was pregnant.” She snorted. “Served him right, I’d say. Devil he was, seducing a seer. Like playing chicken with a freight train.”
She noted my confused expression and chuckled. “What I mean is, and you should know this…none of the pills or rubbers and such work when it comes to the fae. At least, not well.”
“Well, that’s not true,” I pointed out. “My best friend is a seer, and she was sleeping with a shifter for the better part of last year. I happen to know they were doing it like rabbits…especially since he actually shifts into a rabbit every day.”
“And were they in love?” Caitlin asked.
I snorted. “Definitely not. Reina knew from the beginning it wasn’t going to work.”
Caitlin gave me a look that said I should have already understood the difference.
“But…Jonathan and I aren’t in love either.”
Something about that statement felt like a lie, though I couldn’t quite place it. We hadn’t known each other very long and had spent even less time in each other’s company. Our connection was strong, yes, but love? No.
“Mmm.” Caitlin folded her hands together. “The only thing that sometimes works is magic, and it has to be more powerful magic than your partner’s. And you’ve got to maintain control…er…throughout. Penny was incredibly strong, but Ciarán was a murúch and their connection was…stronger. And he wanted her. More than he wanted anything else. Perhaps he thought that a proper mage might allow him to let go. Only problem was, Penny was in love with him too, and she couldn’t control herself any more than he could.”
“And my mother?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Was only seventeen when you were conceived,” Caitlin confirmed. “And so never manifested. And therefore, could never be Penny’s heir.”
Guilt washed over me. I’d always known my mother was a defective seer, but the truth was more complicated. For my father—for me—she had sacrificed not just immortality, but her power and place in the world.
Why hadn’t anyone told me?
“Because she didn’t know,” Caitlin supplied. “And still doesn’t. Just one more way we’re breaking the rules with you.”
“But I’ve slept with men.” I couldn’t stop arguing. “Not millions, but I’ve never gotten pregnant. Birth control worked just fine. Condoms, pills. I had an IUD.”
“They were plain?”
I nodded.
“And did they satisfy you?”
I snorted. Caitlin looked like she understood completely.
“And did you want a baby with any of them?”
“Gods, no,” I said, shaking my head vigorously. “Last thing I want.”
“There’s your answer. You’ve little in the way of defenses, but if you felt no real desire for him, it would be awfully hard for any plain man to get a babe on you. He’d have to be the best lover you’d ever had, enough to make you lose control. Do you follow?”
I did. Until just recently, my abilities had stymied just about every romantic interaction I’d ever had. Losing control was completely out of reach for someone like me.
Except .
That kiss. Jonathan’s face appeared unbidden in my mind, and the memory of his hands on my skin sent tremors through the rest of me.
In Dublin, I had felt totally consumed, the chatter silenced.
Control? Yeah, there wasn’t much of that with him.
I shoved the thoughts from my mind and focused on the confetti of dust dancing in the rays of sunlight shining through the windows.
Caitlin arched another sardonic brow. “Don’t bother hiding it now. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and now I’ve Seen more. But Jonny’s lived like a monk most of his life to keep his immortality intact, just like his wretched dad before he met Jon’s mother.”
“I didn’t say?—”
“Sure, and you didn’t have to, love. It was written all over your face, not to mention your thoughts.”
I scowled. I couldn’t deny the connection between Jonathan and me, but I certainly didn’t want Caitlin and Robbie to think I intended to force mortality on him either. Or on myself.
I sat up. “Wait a second. How old is Jonathan?”
Caitlin cast her gaze to the ceiling. “Oh…let’s see…Robbie brought him home just after the Great War, and he was six then. That would make him near one hundred and twelve or so.”
I blanched. I had been making out with a centenarian. Gross.
Except it wasn’t. Not even a little bit.
Caitlin gave a deep throaty cackle that only put me in a worse mood. With the memories of Jonathan’s kisses, the bristle of his stubble against my cheek, and the shared energy that made me tremble…yeah, his age paled next to the effect he had on me. And the thought of losing that made the sunlight outside seem quite gray indeed.
At that, Caitlin’s laughter silenced. She sighed sympathetically, then stood.
“You must give him up, Cassandra,” she said softly as she cleared our dishes. “And now you know why.”
I sighed and tucked my legs under me to burrow farther into the corner of the couch. “Even if we could remain celibate?” I asked weakly. Gods, I sounded like a lovesick teenager.
From the sink, Caitlin snorted.
“We could,” I said weakly.
No matter how many times Jonathan said it couldn’t happen, he still reached for me, still couldn’t stay away. He had one hundred and twelve years of practicing self-control. What were my chances?
“You must give him up,” Caitlin repeated, though not without sympathy. “You’d never be able to stop a pregnancy, and if that happens before you turn thirty-three, you’d lose everything. It’s why you’re here and not your mam. She gave up her manifestation when she fell in love with your father and had you. And you must reach your zenith to take your place on the Council, Cassandra. Penny’s legacy, her place on the Council, the chance to find Caleb Lynch and bring him to justice—all of it relies on you making it to thirty-three.”
When she returned to the couch, she took my hands in hers despite the fact that she knew I’d See into her mind better than she could See into mine. She was frightened to the core, which, in as little time as I’d known Caitlin, wasn’t something I’dever imagined. But her Sight verified what I had already suspected to be true—that the connection between Jonathan and me was more than just lust. It was potent, primal, and extremely dangerous.
She set my hands back into my lap. “Look. If it were some silly island fling, some boy you cared nothing for, I wouldn’t speak a word. But it’s too important for you not to know.”
“But you and Robbie,” I burst out before she could continue. “You’ve been together for years, since Jonathan was a boy. Over a hundred years!” I practically choked on the number. “But you didn’t have children until Bronagh. Either you managed to stay celibate for all that time?—”
I was interrupted by a loud snort from Caitlin.
“ Or ,” I continued purposefully, “you figured out a way around it. So which is it?”
She sighed, in that way that people do with very young, very na?ve children. I frowned.
“It’s true. Neither Robbie nor I wanted children for a long time, and between us, we managed to keep to ourselves until we chose. We were well-matched that way. And lucky. But, Cassandra,” she said, her voice softening again, which only told me more that I was about to face yet another unpleasant truth. “You’re different.”
“You mean as an oracle?” I crossed my arms. “What does that matter?—”
I cut myself off as the realization washed over me like cold water. I wasn’t just another fae who could protect myself and shut down my abilities when I needed to. I was an open book, and my touch rendered other people the same.
A vessel, they’d said. A vector for truth. Or anything else.
I cringed. “And Jonathan knows about all of this, I presume?”
Caitlin nodded. “He does.”
Which meant he already knew there was no real chance for us. It was why he had been trying his hardest to keep anything from happening. Why his thoughts had revealed, along with his desire, underlying amazement in the fact that he literally couldn’t seem to stop himself. And why he felt so damn guilty.
“Gods.” I gave a heavy sigh. “No wonder he’s leaving. I’d steal his life, like a succubus.”
“We’re all that, when it comes down to it, Cassandra. Robbie’s taken my life and I his, and we’ve given them to our girls. I’ve got the gray hairs and sagging tits to prove it. But it’s your power—the power of true empathy—that no one could refuse. Not when we all secretly desire another person to know us, deep down.”
Like Jonathan knew me. He touched me and didn’t just know my thoughts, but everything I thought and felt. For whatever reason, empathy went both ways with him.
“If I do know him that way, he’ll die?” I asked.
“No, you’ll die,” she corrected me. “Jonathan’s worried more about that than anything else, as are we all. You must manifest, Cassandra. For everyone’s sake.”
Suddenly, I was on a hill facing the shadowed man, holding Gran’s mysterious box under one arm, my other hand stretched out toward an army of darkness. The vision was fleeting, too fleeting to know if I was preparing myself to accept their energy or shielding my booty from them.
I blinked and was back in the room, with Caitlin watching me sharply.
“What was it?” she demanded. “You’re scared now. Confused.”
I leaned forward and rocked my throbbing head into my hands. It felt the same as when I woke up after a vivid dream—only this time it had happened in broad daylight.
In stunted language, I managed to tell her what I’d Seen. “What is happening to me?”
“You’ve had a vision,” Caitlin said. “Of the future. Your eyes flashed white, same as happens to Enda when she gets them.”
“It was—I—” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to recall the fleeting scene, hoping Caitlin could See it if I was consciously recalling it.
It worked.
“Ah,” she said. “Yes, that’s quite a fate.”
I didn’t know what I was doing at that moment. But even in that flash, I knew that I was the only person who could do it, whatever it was I was doing.
“But you do understand?” Caitlin asked. “Why it’s so important? That you and Jon…”
I stared at the dusty floorboards for what seemed like minutes before finally releasing my head and sitting up. When I answered, my voice sounded lower, heavy with a burden I still didn’t quite understand, but which I knew without a doubtI must carry.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I understand.” I got up and went to the window, where the sight of the rolling waves calmed my confusion.“You should probably go now. I need to sort some things out if I’m to start my meditation in the morning.”
Caitlin shut the door behind her. Woodenly, I washed, then dried our dishes. Then I returned to the couch and sat there for hours, staring at the window, the fireplace, not really knowing what I was seeing. Occasionally, a vision would spring from my touch, but otherwise, I was too numb to See anything.
The sun was beginning to set. Somehow an entire day had passed in the space of a few minutes. I felt like it had run me over like a truck.
I looked down at the floorboards, scratched and spit-stained after years—hundreds, perhaps?—of abuse and hard living. There were no books in the house, no paper, nothing with which to entertain myself in the waning hours of the evening.
For the first time in my life, I was completely alone with my thoughts.
And they terrified me more than ever.