On a hunch, Cassie put her hands on his arm. She felt nothing; the stone was silent. Her hand caught his and the fingers on her opposite hand traced over the face of the stone. Nothing. She turned her excited eyes up to find him staring coldly at her.
"Is that shocking to you?" He let her hold his hand in both of hers, feeling too ill to bother removing it. Drew waited out Cassie's manic phase not understanding at all what she was getting so jacked about. That he was mad shouldn't surprise her. The thing that was plucking at his nerves was the fact that she was excited about it. And now she was way too interested in the stone out here in front of everyone. She was the one who'd told him how important it was that no one else find out about the existence of witches or their "powers." Now she was down here turning his bar into a circus, risking exposure for her own amusement. Jaime was watching them from the other side of the bar. He sniffed, trying to ascertain if she'd been drinking.
Cassie's warm golden eyes sparkled in the overhead light undaunted. "I've figured it out." She held his long fingered hand in one of her small tan ones. With her other hand she grasped his amulet in her fingers, eyeing him meaningfully. "Do you trust me?"
It was easy to figure out what she wanted to do and he stood bolt upright. The thought of losing the effects of the amulet gave him no qualms, he had recovered from his childhood tragedy and Pritchard was miles from here. Drew needed no protection at the moment. And yet fear sent its cold barbs into his skin raising a chilled perspiration immediately under his arms. Drew's fear was not from outside but from within. He was terrified of his actions without the mitigation of his brother's gift. His eyes darted to her cheek, evidence of his lack of control the one time he'd removed the stone. It would be far too easy to hurt someone here without knowing what he was doing. Drew's thoughts flashed to the bodies in the alley and he shuddered. What if he was as deadly as his brother?
That Brandon had played a part in last night's deaths as well as his parents' was no longer in question, Drew could deny the evidence no longer. However, he continued to hold out hope that it had been an accident. If he could get Brandon alone and talk to him, find out what had happened that night and even last night, Drew knew they could argue their case. Together he hoped they could explain to Cassie's people at Veritas that Brandon didn't mean any harm, he could learn to follow the rules. Drew would help him. They would learn together.
"Isn't that dangerous?" He made a point of sending his eyes to roam the room taking in the crowd. "What if something happens?"
She shook her head. "I won't let you hurt anyone. If it looks bad, I'll give it back."Antsy, Cassie's knees bobbed up and down on the edge of the stool. "We don't have much time before it recovers. I want to see if this works."
Drew was hesitant but in answer to her question of trust he nodded, watching her pull the ring from his hand and drop it unceremoniously into the teacup behind her with a plop as it hit the water. For two blinks nothing happened. Then, the pain in his head began to flow out of him leaving him feeling like he'd taken too much cold medicine, all balloon headed and fuzzy.
"Is anything different?" Cassie asked him, her eyes searching his face for any outward signs of change.
He started to say no and stopped. A strange sensation, far back in his mind, began to mumble to his consciousness. At first it was so faint he had to struggle to hear it, like a conversation in another room he could hear the rumblings though not the details. He strained to hear and then it began to get louder.
"Drew, maybe we should go to your office." Cassie started to worry the ramifications of leaving him open and unprotected in such crowded quarters. He was beginning to look a little vacant. The possibilities of what could come of her impulsive move outside of any protections began to sink in and automatically her eyes scanned the crowd for dark hair and a widow's peak. Cassie firmly believed Drew was not a threat to anyone here given that he wasn't being provoked, yet the impact on him of being unguarded for the first time in years she hadn't considered.
That her experiment would be exposing him to emotions and moods he hadn't honestly experienced fully in years pulled at her need to protect the wounded soul she knew lay beneath. She adjusted her grip on his hand, her fingers wrapping around his and she grabbed the mug from the bar.
"Come on," she urged him, slipping off her bar stool and returning Jaime's curious stare with a curt wave. Let her think they were heading off for some alone time. That was sort of true just not in the way Jaime might think.
Allowing his body to be pulled along to the elevator, Drew barely registered what was happening around him in favor of listening to the things floating to the surface in his mind. Thoughts he had long considered gone and forgotten save for passing superficial remembrances turned up for him to consider in full force.
The wild parade of years of emotional memories kept distant by the ring he'd thought no longer affected him turned to agitation as last night's events crashed into him. When the doors opened on the upstairs hall, Drew gasped as he was pulled under.
Cassie's hand flashed out and hit the door close button just before she threw the stop switch. The shiny box went black for a count of three before the backup lights flickered to life, casting their faint blue-white glow over the two occupants. The thrum of dance music an impatient clock counting out their seconds from outside the reinforced doors.
Drew's conscious mind succumbed to the overstimulation and caved. He went under and his legs failed him. Already disconnected from his physical body, he felt the carpeted floor rush up, barely cushioning the severity of the impact with the steel floor beneath it. Images of the bodies in the alley filled his senses, bringing back the burnt metallic scent of blood and vomit, mingling in his memory with the details of the police report from another similar murder confusing the two in his mind. For the first time since he'd slipped the amulet on his finger Drew saw his parents bodies as they'd been that night. The images of their deaths clear as the day he'd demanded that he had the right to see the report.
The report he'd made himself read believing it would give him peace. It did not. Instead it had filled him with a fierce rage he'd been unable to control. That his parents would be struck down randomly and with such violence in their own home and the fact that the killers had barely even taken anything to justify the intrusion had inflamed his sense of injustice. He'd gone what could only be referred to as temporarily insane. Lying there in the metal box Drew's nose was filled with the stink of death and blood, sharp as if he was standing there staring down at any of their lifeless eyes, frozen in terror at the pitiless torment that marked their last moments.
For almost five years after learning of the horrific details of his parents' deaths, Drew had turned his fury on himself. He drove too fast, took too many drugs, drank too much and slept with anything he could get to say yes which was a lot. Brandon, busy trying to make a fast buck and get them into a decent living situation, could only watch helplessly as his brother destroyed himself. They couldn't afford detox or therapy even if Drew would agree to go, which he wouldn't. Desperate, Brandon had called Aunt Christine pleading for help when Drew almost died from a lethal combination of alcohol and pharmaceuticals at a party.
Christine had been too frightened at the prospect of seeing Drew out of his head to come. The memory of what he'd done the last time he'd lost control forever tainted her mind against him, but she'd sent a check in a show of support. Brandon had taken that money, and with the calm that comes with a sure thing, had invested it on a small time real estate deal. That was when their luck had changed. Drew had later referred to it as Brandon swallowing a silver spoon. That hadn't been quite accurate, he now realized.
It was more likely Brandon's implausible and meteoric rise to overnight success had been due to magick and his meeting Terry Pritchard. After Pritchard's arrival two things happened: Brandon could do no wrong with investments and Drew was given his amulet and told it was good luck, not to take it off.
With its help, Drew had been able to bring himself back from the brink with relative ease. With it on, the complexities of his life suddenly seemed trivial.
Clear minded, Drew was certain Pritchard was blackmailing his brother. The man must have figured out Brandon's ability. Satisfaction mingled with culpability and he nearly choked. He had been right and he had done nothing. No, worse than nothing. Drew had let his brother pay the price for saving him from his weaknesses while he'd gone bobbing along in a general state of apathy. There could no longer be any doubt about Terry Pritchard's hand in his brother's success and current physical decline. Not with this final piece of the puzzle falling into place. Terry Pritchard was forcing Brandon to use his magick, and it was killing him. And that Brandon had done all of this to save him tore him apart.
Laying in the near dark with his mind fully exposed to all of its darkest corners all at once, Drew felt himself drowning. His eyes were open though unseeing, staring vacantly at the ceiling shining in the dim blue light. The sound of his ragged breathing filled his ears and he could feel his pulse race as his chest tightened until he saw spots. Part of him hoped that he would die and Brandon would be released of his obligation to Pritchard while another part of him wanted to live to watch Terry Pritchard die a slow, painful death.
A warm "tug" in his head brought his attention back to his body, away from the memories and guilt. He blinked. Another "tug" and Drew was back in the present. Blinking again, his eyes focused on the underside of Cassie's chin as she hovered over him, her soft voice sounding in an even cadence although the words or their meaning were unclear. The tight clamp on his chest loosed its grip and his breathing grew steadier. The guilt and anger filling him faded, becoming more tolerable and easier to bear. He stared at Cassie and as she finished her spell and looked down at him. What he saw there made him blanch.
The lack of proper lighting could not hide the shine from the tears in her eyes, nor the worry etched plainly on her face. Her concern for him was more than professional. He could feel tenderness in her touch and it scared him. Drew had taken great care in keeping his encounters superficial. Memories of earlier that afternoon replayed in his mind and he saw that same gentle expression on her face when they had been alone together.
The removal of the amulet that had so effectively shielded him showed him why everything over the past few years had been easy to keep at arms length. Drew understood by its absence how he had been capable of avoiding deep emotional thoughts, good or bad, for any duration. And with the return of his normal human emotional range, his guarded views of relationships remained as they had been before the stone had altered him. When it had been the fear of loss that had driven him, whether consciously or not, to avoid caring for anyone other than his brother.
Cassie's affection for him was visible and, faced with it, Drew panicked. Hurrying to tear himself away from her, he felt the need to hide himself from the fear of being hurt.
"Drew, can you hear me?" Her voice faltered when she saw him struggling to get to his knees.
He cleared his throat. "I'm fine, let me up. We should get out of here before someone notices the elevator is out of commission."
Turning her face aside, Cassie backed up to let Drew stand. Running a hand over the front he smoothed his shirt, used his fingers to brush back his hair and glanced down at her. "Come on, get up." His voice was harsh even to his ears and he saw a flash of hurt before she closed down, her face going blank as she grabbed the ring and tossed it in her pocket. Rising to her feet, Cassie backed up to lean on the farthest wall of the claustrophobic metal box. She pulled her phone out and cursed.
"Let's go to your office. I need to make a call and I can't get a signal in here." Her distance was not solely physical. Cassie had read between the lines and heard his message loud and clear.
Inside his office, Drew waited in his brother's chair keeping the desk between them as he listened openly to her conversation.
Leaning the backs of her legs against the file cabinet by the door she dialed and shifted from one foot to the other until she realized how nervous she looked. She forced herself to be still. Julia took forever to answer and sounded annoyed when she finally did. Cassie filled her in without bothering with polite small talk. "The amulet acts as a cache absorbing the magick it feels around it. That's what gave him the headaches, it was the buildup. He doesn't know how to get rid of it and the energy beats him up. I took it off of him." Her gaze flicked up repeatedly though she caught it each time, never letting her eyes reach him. Her awareness of him was painful to them both. "Yeah, I'm guessing he's back to normal."
Unconsciously, she went back to shifting from foot to foot. "Uh, I don't know if that's wise. Should I leave him here? Alone?" Her lips tightened and she nodded her head stiffly. "Okay." As she was about to hang up, adding in a rush, "Hurry back."
That last part he could guess at relatively easily, Cassie didn't want to be alone with him. Drew gritted his teeth against the impulse to explain himself to her. This was the only way for them. She lived who knew where, traveling all over the world seeking out murderers and other dangerous folks. Like Pritchard.
Even if he had the guts to try, Cassie was the worst possible choice for someone like him. The chance of losing her was even more so than if she were a normal girl without a life threatening career path.
Cassie's throat clearing brought his attention back to her. "Julia says they're going to be a while longer. Quan's got them up in Georgia outside a town called Swainsboro. Ever heard of it? They're pretty far inland now. Quan's having trouble and it's going really slow. He's not as strong that far away from water." She spoke faster in her heightened anxiety.
For his part, Drew tried to think what could draw Brandon to that area and came up blank. "Brandon doesn't have anything up that way. It has to be Pritchard." He stared at the desk, wiping at imaginary debris on the opaque surface. "Does Quan know if they're together?"
Lips tight she shook her head. "No, she said his trail's blurry and keeps shifting. They keep having to circle back and it's going really slow. I don't think Julia could get him off the trail now if she tried. He's never quit on a chase." Amber eyes wider than normal were half wild. Cassie ramped up until she was pretty much voicing a stream of consciousness. "When Quan is on something he doesn't let up. Like when he was tracking down this real black magick type in Detroit. This guy we were after, he was taking kids off the street. Sometimes he'd take them right off the playground. He'd figured out how to absorb their energy and when he was done, he just dumped them. They were alive but they were fried and the regulars couldn't figure it out. They were like zombies. He had snatched seven kids by the time Quan caught up to him. He was so strong."
It was unclear who she meant was strong, Quan or their quarry.
Artificially wide eyes were turned inward at some scene playing out in her head. "Quan wouldn't quit, even when Anna called us back. He said that kind of evil can't be allowed to walk the Earth, it throws everything out of balance. No amount of good can offset that. When we found him, he fought. I've never seen anything like it." Slowly her head wagged back and forth, her hair brushing over her shoulders. "We were in a warehouse by the water. Quan was at his most powerful there. He was in his element." She snorted at her macabre pun then the illusion of mirth disappeared. "This guy, the bad guy, he was a Representational witch. He used power he drew from an object. He used an amulet too, not the same kind of stone as yours though and he stored the kids' energy in it. Quan used the water to pull enough power to separate the kid's souls from the amulet. He set them free and they turned on him. He was sobbing, begging me to kill him." She looked down at her feet, seeing the man's ghost still pleading for mercy and she shook her head deliberately. Exactly as it had when he'd asked her to save him. "We had to put him in the trunk on the way to the airport, we couldn't listen to it."
Drew stared, his blood frozen at her recollection of the capture of a man who'd done a crime arguably in the same class as his brother. It was impossible not to see the similarity. Quan wasn't going to stop until he caught him. And what then?
He had to get rid of Cassie so that he could get Brandon away from here when he returned. And with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Drew knew that he would. Brandon would come back for his brother when he was able, making it most likely he would come to Drew's or go to the club.
As soon as the other two found Pritchard or tracked him back to Brandon, a fact Drew believed wholeheartedly was inevitable, they would take them into custody and from there he imagined the worst. Cassie had never been exactly forthcoming about what they did after they caught someone if they weren't "trainable."
"So what do they want you to do?" Drew rested his hands on his thighs to avoid fidgeting.
"We're supposed to go to Pritchard's church and see what we can find. They don't want us to go when no one's around. Our numbers would put us at a disadvantage." She emphasized the "we," avoiding eye contact by staring at a spot on the floor.
That was one way to get her out of the club. Drew looked at his watch. "When are we supposed to go?"
"Now."
Perfect, all he had to do was drop her off and leave her there. That would give him enough time to get back to his place and check if Brandon had been by. "Let me give Jaime some instructions for the night, I'll be right back." He could trust Jaime to hide him if Brandon showed up here in the meantime.
***
Julia hung up the phone and made a popping sound with her lips, a habit she had when she was debating something. It drove peace and quiet loving Quan nuts. They were sitting in the car outside a natural food store getting dinner.
"Yes?" He inquired sharply.
Used to his strict moral code, tight adherence to duty, and honestly piss poor sense of humor, Julia folded her arms and leveled a look at him meant to remind him that he was not her first partner nor was she willing to let him take anything out on her. Respectfully, Quan gave a slight nod of his head and forced a placid expression that went no further than skin.
Her reply was a sarcastic two-second smile, equally shallow. "Cassie's taken off his amulet." She raised her brows at his open mouth, using her dominant position to maintain control of the conversation. "The headaches he was getting were from the stone's receptivity. She thought the best bet was to remove it." Nodding deeply, eyes wide to purvey her own misgivings, she went on. "Right. So, now he's raw, emotional and with only a green broke agent keepin' him from going down the same dark road as his big brother. Killin' is killin' whether it's by accident or otherwise." Julia was pure Louisiana in her displeasure. "We need to go back."
Quan dug in his heels, passively resistant. He crossed his arms and settled himself squarely in his stance. "I will find him."
Squared off, they stared each other down, well matched in stubbornness as well as magickal ability. Yet another reason their superiors had paired them. Recognizing the folly of walking away from the investment in time and energy they'd put in thus far, Julia dropped her arms first.
"You have a day. After that, unless he's close enough you can count his pores, we're gone. Hear?"
Quan graciously accepted her extension. "Agreed."
"All right then. Lead on water dog." Julia swept an arm broadly.
Aside from a slight narrowing of the eyes, Quan gave her no hint how deeply the barb stung. No one had ever eluded him. This one would not be the first. He vowed it, calling upon his ancestors, his element alone unable to give him the strength he needed. Not now. Quan longed for their pursuit to take them nearer a water source.