You Can't Go Home Again Page 2

  I started to ask whose breath he was worried about, but the car door opened, and a tall man with startlingly green eyes stepped out, peering over the top of the Mercedes at me.

  “Miss Cassandra,” he said in his jovial voice. “Wonderful to see you.”

  “You too, Lockwood,” I said, grinning at him.

  “Shall I get you back to your house before your mother has another meltdown?”

  I groaned. “And I was only ten minutes late that time …”

  “There is no wisdom in seeking fights you don’t have to.” Lockwood tipped his chauffeur’s hat to Mill. “All is well, sir?”

  “It’s getting there,” he said, glancing down at me. “She’s coming along.”

  I smiled in spite of the flash of annoyance within.

  Mill opened the back door as Lockwood got back inside.

  “I’m sorry things are tough at home still,” Mill said after he closed the door behind me. He leaned in through the open window, arms resting on the sill.

  “Yep,” I said. “It sucks.”

  “They’ll get better. Your mom and dad will come to trust you again.”

  I sighed heavily, falling back against the seat. “I kinda doubt it. This wasn’t exactly my first time getting caught lying. There’s a history. Probably way too much to forget at this point.”

  “Nonsense,” Mill replied. “Parents are very forgiving people. It just may take some time.”

  I really didn’t think he knew what he was talking about, but I smiled up at him anyways and nodded. “Sure.” Why argue?

  Mill stood up straight and thumped his hand on top of the limo, signaling Lockwood that I was ready. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Definitely,” I said.

  Lockwood pulled the car away from the curb and slid smoothly into the street, speeding away from Mill and the quiet, dark side of the city of Tampa.

  I swallowed hard as I glanced up at the rearview mirror. Mill waited on the sidewalk, arm still bandaged with torn sleeve, his sandy hair melting into the shadows beneath the darkening sky.

  I looked away. Those butterflies were back. Just anxiety to prove myself. Yeah. I wanted nothing more than to impress Mill. I wanted him to see that I was getting better, that I was learning. I wanted him to know that I was doing all I could. Nothing more than that.

  But he had offered to take me out for dinner … hadn’t he? In a weird way.

  I sighed, looking up at the rearview mirror again, unable to stop myself. Mill was gone. The night had swallowed him up like the dark creature he was.

  Chapter 3

  “You better let me off on the corner here, Lockwood,” I said, dread washing over me as I approached my street. “Mom thinks I was at Xandra’s, studying. She might question the car.”

  “I still think telling your parents the truth is the best policy, Cassandra,” Lockwood said, but he obliged, pulling over.

  I normally hated hearing my full name, but Lockwood had sole permission to use it.

  “You keep saying that,” I said. “But you don’t know them. I’ve been trying to leave them out of all of this since Byron. They still don’t know about him being a vampire.”

  “Are you certain they would not believe you?” His bright green eyes watched me for an answer, filled with concern.

  “One hundred percent,” I said.

  The car came to a stop. I reached for the backpack I had tossed onto the seat beside me when he had picked me up earlier that afternoon.

  “I appreciate your desire for me to have a solid, honest relationship with my parents,” I said. “There are a lot of times … a lot of things … I wish I could tell them. But it’s safer if they aren’t involved. You know?”

  “I suppose,” he replied, though his disagreement was made plain in his voice. “Have a good night, Cassandra. Shall I pick you up the same time next week?”

  “I look forward to it,” I said, and clambered out of the back of the car.

  I swung my backpack over my shoulder and waved as Lockwood pulled away.

  The enticing aroma of smoky meat hung in the air. One of our neighbors was grilling. I could hear the excited shrieks of children playing on a squeaky trampoline from a nearby backyard. A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Plenty of those, now that summer loomed, the sound another harbinger of still hotter days ahead.

  I squared my shoulders as I set off toward home.

  The door to the garage was unlocked, and I stepped inside hesitantly. Dad’s car was inside, and Mom’s car was parked right beside it.

  Great. They were both home.

  My heart thumped against my ribs as I put my hand on the knob. It should not be this terrifying to walk into my own house.

  “I’m home,” I said, pulling my backpack off of my shoulder.

  “Hi, honey,” Dad said. He was standing in the kitchen, at the stove, stirring something that stank to high heaven of garlic with a wooden spoon. Mill would have cringed at the damage my breath was about to take. Or something. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

  “Yes,” came another voice, this one a lot cooler. “Just in time.”

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, closing the door to the garage, and stepping fully inside.

  “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?” Mom asked, checking her watch with a glance. She had the air of a warden dealing with her least favorite prisoner. Or a mother, burned many, many times and in many unfortunate ways by a lying daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” I replied automatically. She really had no reason to be upset. I was home before my eight-thirty curfew. “We got caught up in the middle of our chemistry workbook.”

  Mom held out her hand to me just as I knew she would, and so I pulled out my chemistry book from my backpack and handed it over to her.

  She flipped it open and started thumbing through the pages.

  I wasn’t worried. I had done all of my problems on the way to train with Mill that afternoon. They were finished, if a bit sloppily done.

  “And your history test today?” she asked, handing me back the book without a word about it.

  I returned it to my bag. “I got a ninety-four.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I thought you said you would ace that one?”

  “Sweetheart,” Dad said from the stove. “That’s still a really good grade.”

  Mom chewed on her lip but turned away. “All right. Can you please set the table for dinner?”

  “Gladly,” I said, dropping my bag near the door—not only because I was starving, but because it gave brief respite from her laser-focused probing lawyer stare.

  Even though it had been a few weeks since the little escapade that had taken me all the way to Miami for a vampire club/murder night, Mom had barely let me out of her sight. And if she wasn’t satisfied with what I was doing every second of the day, she made no bones about telling me what she thought.

  I tried to engage Dad in talking about his day as I set the table, but my head wasn’t really in it. I was too busy trying to ignore Mom’s glares of suspicion.

  It wasn’t as if I had been trying to screw up the fragile trust I had built with them after the whole Byron fiasco. I really had wanted to mend things with them. And it felt like we were actually getting somewhere. I was being good, doing all of my work, and staying out of trouble.

  Then Roxy and her little gang had showed up and ruined everything.

  Mom had nearly skinned me alive when I got home that morning. I had expected it. But how could I tell her how glad I was to still be living, that they should maybe be grateful they still had a live daughter after all that? I’d had to lie again—a lame excuse about saying at Xandra’s, my ripped and torn and bloody clothing explained with a story about a fall out of a tree house. A nasty one—I’d broken my finger, and a handful of ribs too. Mom was suspicious, of course—but she stifled it just long enough to get me to hospital and patched up.

  I was grounded for a month, a sentence I was still serving. No television, no Netflix, no
nothing. I was only allowed to have my phone when I wasn’t at the house. And I was required to do any and every chore Mom came up with, regardless of child labor laws.

  Dad’s phone rang on the counter.

  “Hey, honey, could you come answer that for me?” he asked from above two butterflied chicken breasts.

  “Sure,” I replied, laying the last fork down on the little table.

  I smiled when I saw the contact.

  “Hey, it’s Uncle Mike,” I said.

  Mom, who was sitting on the couch, wheeled around. “My brother Mike?”

  “Hello? Uncle Mike?” I asked. Couldn’t control the smile that spread across my face at the sound of a familiar—and friendly—voice.

  “Hey, kiddo!” he said, clearly pleased. “How are ya?”

  “Doing fine,” I said, taking a seat at the island counter. “How are you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m just fine, kiddo,” he said. “The farm is keeping me real busy. You know how it is.”

  “And how’s Fancy?” I asked.

  “She’s a spitfire, that horse,” Uncle Mike replied. “Misses you something awful, though.”

  I smiled.

  “So how is my favorite niece liking Florida?” he asked.

  “I’m liking it okay, I guess,” I said, tracing my finger along a particularly dark vein in the milky marble countertop. Somehow it reminded me of Mill’s skin and the wound I had given him earlier … A quiver ran across me.

  “Just okay? But you’ve got all those beaches and restaurants and palm trees.”

  “Yeah, but none of that is any fun when you have to go to school.”

  Uncle Mike chortled. “It’s good for you to go to school. Makes ya smart. Provides a future that doesn’t involve shoveling horse manure like your dumb uncle.”

  It sure would … if I managed to survive all these vampire encounters.

  “I don’t have any dumb uncles,” I said. “But I’m sure you didn’t call to talk to me, huh?”

  “Hey now, I love talking to you!” he said, then laughed. “But yeah. I’d like to chat with your mom, kiddo. Thanks.”

  I handed the phone to Mom, who gave me a skeptical look. “What?” I asked.

  She didn’t say anything, just took the phone and answered with a big smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hey, Mike. How are you?”

  I stepped back to the island and resumed my seat.

  “We’re fine, fine,” Mom answered Mike. I went back to tracing my finger along the marble veins.

  The sound of the chicken hitting the hot pan filled the air, sizzling and spitting. The dull thud of Dad’s knife on the cutting board followed it as he diced up some onions.

  “Yeah, work is fine. Just finished a big case … yeah, I know.”

  I sighed. Hearing Uncle Mike’s voice made me homesick. It had been a long time since I had thought of New York so fondly, but hearing him and thinking about his horse—one that I had grown to love—made my heart ache for home.

  “Really? In Onondoga Springs?”

  My ears perked up.

  “What happened exactly?” my mom asked. She was wearing her concerned face. Which was different from her angry-and-concerned face, something I’d seen a great deal of lately. Dad glanced over his shoulder, his spatula hovering over the skillet.

  “That’s crazy,” she said, voice falling to a hushed tone. “Was anything stolen?”

  I started to relax, at least a little.

  “Wait, what?” Mom asked. She stood, mouth hanging open. She started to pace the living room, bare feet padding across the fluffy rug.

  “You’re joking … someone actually burned it down? Intentionally?” Mom stopped walking, her eyes not focused on anything particular, just staring into space. “Did they have security cameras?” A pause. “Well, what did they look like?”

  I frowned, listening to the one side of the conversation, trying to make sense of what I was hearing.

  “What do you mean, ‘Eurotrash’?”

  Dad threw some more olive oil into the pan. The glug muted the sizzle briefly, then it rose to temperature, starting it up again. The smell would have been mouth-watering, but my interest in dinner had been replaced by the one-sided conversation I was listening to as intently as I could manage with sizzling pans blotting out Uncle Mike’s responses.

  “Odd,” Mom commented. “So, these pale, weird foreign people just show up out of nowhere? And they’re the ones responsible for this crime wave?”

  Pale? Weird?

  Oh. Oh no.

  “It’s such a small town. How can the police not be all over them?” My mom was huffing outrage. “I mean, this is ridiculous. There’s never been this kind of—we grew up there, for crying out loud, never saw anything like that … It’s making me sorry we didn’t sell the house before we left.” She sniffed, shaking her head. “Pale foreigners. That’s all they have to go on …?”

  My fingers tightened on the marble counter. Breath hitching, I bit my lip, staring into the middle distance. My mind made the leaps.

  Pale.

  Strangers.

  Crime.

  This was worse, way worse than I could have thought.

  There were vampires in my hometown.

  Chapter 4

  Breathe, Cassie, breathe. I must be jumping to conclusions. Maybe they actually were just Eurotrash foreigners without any respect for property.

  But Mom definitely said pale. And weird.

  And vampires are always pale and weird. I knew this from unfortunate experience.

  I chewed on my fingernails, trying to decide what to do.

  I had to find out what was going on. But in order to do that, I was going to have to make a call.

  Just to be sure. I had to know. I had to make sure.

  Vampires in my little hometown would not be good. Not only would no one ever believe that vampires were real there, but it would be super easy for people to start disappearing.

  But why were vampires showing up there, of all places? And why now? There was absolutely nothing special about Onondoga Springs, New York—no monuments, no beautiful state parks, no tourist centers. Just a lot of hills, trees, and cows.

  Then it hit me.

  They were there looking for me.

  But that was insanity, right?

  Dad’s back was still turned as he finished making dinner.

  “I’ll be back in a few,” I told him, snatching my phone off the counter while Mom was facing away.

  “Okay, but dinner’s in ten,” he called after me.

  I hurried up to my room, slamming the door behind me. I collapsed onto my bed with trembling fingers.

  Scrolling through my contacts, I was surprised at the sheer amount of them I’d added since moving to Florida. Only four months ago, I was a total stranger here. Now I had friends—and enemies. Vampire enemies, too—not the usual fare for a seventeen-year-old girl outside of friggin’ Twilight. I found the name I was looking for. I clicked it, and then clicked video call.

  It was better to do it face to face. And it would be nice to see a familiar face from home.

  The girl who answered the phone had a thin face, dark hair, and dark eyes. Her hair was tied in a long braid that hung over her shoulder. I was glad to see that some things never changed.

  “Hey, Jacquelyn!” I said happily, waving at her, hoping my smile was convincing enough.

  “Cassie,” she replied dryly, chewing on a piece of gum like she always used to. “What a surprise to hear from you.”

  I faltered, and then laughed, even though I knew it sounded hollow and insincere. “Hey, yeah, I’m really sorry about that. Life has been totally insane since I started school. I’ve had to deal with annoying teachers, tons of homework, and I joined math league down here. And let me tell you, the schools down here are so—”

  “Save it, Cassie,” Jacquelyn said, rolling her eyes. “I only answered because I wanted to hear what giant lie you had to tell me this time.”

  “Ah
… no lie,” I said hastily. “Seriously.”

  “Really?” Jacquelyn stared at me over the video connection. “So why are you calling now? Why not … months ago?”

  “I’ve been grounded almost constantly since I got here.” An excuse—only it wasn’t, I realized with a sinking feeling. I really had been grounded pretty much round the clock since moving—and especially since this vampire business started. “My parents are like Captain and Sergeant Punishment.”

  Jacquelyn raised an eyebrow. “Knowing you, you probably deserve it.”

  I pursed my lips, the words stinging. “Okay, I guess I earned that,” I said, hoping to pacify her. “Look, I did have a reason for calling you.”

  “An ulterior motive?” She put her hand up to her cheek. “What, you didn’t want to just catch up with your former bestie?” Her eyes flashed dangerously.

  I exhaled heavily. “Jackie, you have to know that I’ve missed you. Just because I moved, it doesn’t mean that I stopped thinking of you as my friend.”

  Jacquelyn, who was lying on her bed, adjusted her arms and didn’t answer.

  “Have you been okay?” I tried again.

  Jacquelyn rolled her eyes, but she didn’t hang up on me, so I took that as progress.

  “I’ve been fine,” she said. I could see she was having an internal debate with herself, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Gary Haze asked me out last week.”

  Low blow, Jackie, low blow.

  “Did he now?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “Didn’t you have a crush on him since … what … second grade?”

  I forced a smile. I did not want to play her little game.

  Sure, I had liked Gary Haze for pretty much forever. Sure, I had hoped that he was going to ask me to Homecoming my sophomore year. It wasn’t like I had dreamed of going on an actual date with him, or him asking me to be his girlfriend.

  But I had bigger fish to fry right now.

  Only … it hurt. And whether I masked it or not, that was what Jackie had been aiming for.

  “I’m happy for you,” I lied. She grinned, though it was more of a sneer, really. A victorious, smug sneer—she had hit her mark, and she knew it.