"That's true, I guess." Adam tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
Cassie was wearing his suit jacket draped over her shoulders to keep warm. She went to take it off and give it back to him, but he stopped her.
"Keep it on a little longer," he said. He made no motion to restart the car's engine. Something else was obviously on his mind.
Cassie feared she knew what it was. Adam was concerned that Nick being marked would mean he'd have to start spending the night in Cassie's basement. The two of them would be sleeping under the same roof.
She decided to help him along. "Adam," she said. "About Nick staying here ..."
Adam stared straight ahead. "It's not that," he said. "Can I ask you one more time what happened when the lights went out in the school?"
"I told you," Cassie said. "Nothing happened with Nick while you were gone that you need to worry about."
"I just need to hear it again."
Cassie had already given Adam a detailed account of her and Nick's every move from the moment they spotted Scarlett to their escape. But she repeated the story anyway.
"It's just so strange," he said, unable to look at her.
"Adam, what are you freaking out about? I know if you had been there when Scarlett showed up, you would have protected me, just like Nick did. I don't doubt that for a second."
Finally Adam turned to Cassie, allowing her to see his tearful eyes. "I felt something," he said. "An arm brushed up against mine in the chaos."
"What?" Cassie was confused.
"When the lights went out. I had just come out of Boylan's office and everyone started running. I was making my way toward the gym when someone grabbed my hand, and it felt like ... I don't even know." Adam could barely continue, and Cassie began to understand just how upset he was.
"It's okay," she said, trying to coax the full truth out of him. "What did you feel?"
"I thought it was you leading me to safety, but then we got separated. I could have sworn it was you. Because of the sparks I felt."
"But I was already out of the gym and in the parking lot by that point," Cassie said. "It wasn't me."
There was a moment of silence as it all sank in.
"Oh," Cassie said, finally comprehending what this meant. Neither of them wanted to say it out loud, but it was obvious. It was Scarlett who'd grabbed Adam's hand. The sparks he felt were for her.
"It's you that I love, Cassie. I swear it." Adam's voice rose. "This doesn't mean anything."
"It means the cord between you and Scarlett must be real after all," Cassie said. "That's the only explanation."
"I shouldn't even have told you."
"Of course you should have told me!"
"This doesn't change anything." Adam persisted. But the more he swore and pleaded, the more obvious it was to Cassie that he was just as shaken by this as she was, if not more.
"My hand just got confused," he said. "That's all."
"Your hand got confused?" Cassie took an immediate breath to recalibrate her emotions. If she wasn't careful, her hurt and anger would blow up right in Adam's face.
"You don't have to feel guilty," she said, trying to sound sympathetic. "It's not your fault. It just is."
Adam got quiet then. "But I don't want this."
Cassie reached over to give Adam a kiss good night. She needed to get out of his car as quickly as possible. "I know," she said. "Don't worry too much about it. We'll be okay."
"That's it? Don't you think we should talk about this?" Adam asked.
Cassie slipped Adam's suit jacket from her shoulders. It smelled like him, like autumn leaves and ocean wind. She gently folded it and placed it on his lap. Then she put her hand on the door handle.
"It's going to be okay," she said, knowing she had to appear strong for Adam in this moment. Adam could always be relied on to reassure Cassie. Now it was her turn.
"Cassie, please don't go."
"Let's sleep on it," she said, as sweetly as she could. And then borrowing a favorite phrase of her mother's, she added, "Everything will look brighter tomorrow."
She got out of the car and almost made it to the front door before tears filled her eyes and began running down her face. But Adam couldn't see them, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter 9
After her encounter with Scarlett at the dance, Cassie's sleep was fitful - nightmare after nightmare plagued her mind. As she woke up, she knew what she had to do to make it stop. She pulled the gunmetal chest out from under her bed and unlocked its clasp. She'd wanted to wait for Adam to be with her before she tried to open the book again, but time was running out, and things with Adam had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. She couldn't allow a potential love triangle to trip up her search for answers.
Plus, she had an idea. In the jewelry box where she kept all her precious stones, Cassie had an obsidian crystal. It was the same crystal she'd once used to disable a guarding spell Faye had placed on one of the Master Tools. Cassie squeezed the sharp-edged black rock in her hand now. It was known to purify dark matter. Why not give it a try?
She glided the crystal over and around her father's Book of Shadows while whispering the chant that had been successful last time:
Darkness be gone, no shields are needed, purity enters and leaves here unhindered.
Then she pulled on the book's leather string and fanned its cover open. She touched the first page hopefully, but it immediately grew hot, singeing the tip of her pointer finger.
Cassie drew back, but before the book flapped closed she thrust the obsidian crystal between its pages. At first the book struggled against the stone, rattling and thrashing, and the crystal shook over its pages like a kernel of corn in hot oil. But then the book seemed to tire. Slowly, each page grew calm and quiet beneath the crystal until they were still. The book's darkness had been tamed just enough to allow the rock to hold it open like a simple paperweight.
The words scrawled upon the first two pages still looked like an ancient language of lines and symbols. Viewing them this closely made Cassie's eyes feel strange and off kilter, like staring at an optical illusion. But at least now she could get to researching and translating. And if she maneuvered the obsidian just so, she could even use it to turn the book's pages. Wait till Adam saw this.
Just then her doorbell rang and Cassie realized what time it was. The Circle meeting to go over the events of the night before was set to begin in a few minutes. Cassie removed the obsidian and the book flapped closed. She quickly locked it back in its hiding place before running down to answer the door.