herself. Paces to the terrace ledge. Drums her fingers on the lip of a planter before reaching and plucking dead heads from a burgeoning hydrangea. The doer has gone sonic with her doing. Ohhhh shit.
“Mishella…what didn’t he try?”
My head dips, weighted by the claim. “By the powers.”
“That sounds about right too—since the boy had hallucinations about possessing super powers when he was amped.” She circles back around, one foot balanced on its heel, her face a mask of neutrality. Now I see where Cassian has gotten his talent for erecting instant emotional walls. “There were the other delusions too, of course—like the time he thought he was Snoopy battling the Red Baron, and bicycled around Cassian’s school barking at all the kids. Another when he swore he was the reincarnation of Freddie Mercury, and strutted up the street belting Don’t Stop Me Now.”
Her foot drops. So does the façade of indifference. She drops her head—but not before I catch the violent shiver of her chin. “I put up with all of it, hoping he’d wake up the next day and feel like such crap, he’d beg me to get him into rehab.” A shaky breath goes in but does not leave. “But I waited too long—and knew it the night he went at Cassian with a kitchen knife, thinking his little brother had been hired by the Russian mob to assassinate him—”
“Creator’s teeth.”
My gasp is well-timed. At the same moment, she exhales as if setting down a huge weight. Not a surprise, though the start of a revelation. Has Mallory been carrying that awful memory all by herself over the years? Cassian knows, of course—but he was a small boy when it happened, unable to process all of it fully or properly. Talk about a giant thumb into the modeling clay of his psyche…hardening into the man he is today, now making so much more sense to me. His unshakable devotion to Mallory. His fierce loyalty to the Temptation Manor “family” who serves and loves him. And his protectiveness of me, intense as a sun guarding a planet in a cosmic storm.
“Wh-what did you do then?” I finally rasp.
Mallory kicks at the deck with her toe. “Only thing I could do. Told him to get clean or get out—and that if he ever came again at Cas like that, tweaked or not, I’d call the police.” The wind whips her hair against her face. She ducks her head, letting it happen, her mind and heart seemingly lost in a dark, spinning whirl. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”
The gust wanes as quickly as it rose. In the following silence, my soul battles my body. I yearn to rush and embrace Mallory again, to match her tears with the burst of my heartache, but sense her composure is only bound by pins of glass. If even the wind touches her now, her worst nightmare will come true. She will shatter.
“What happened after that?” I abhor that I must ask it—but it is not an option. Once more I remember Cassian’s face from last night, right after we exploded in passion together—sweeping from fulfillment to torment in the space of seconds. But the recall no longer confuses me. Dredging up everything about Lily was just the first stop on his soul’s world tour of pain. And if the story about his brother ends where I think it shall…
“Damon took off, of course.” Her all-business mask is re-secured as she jerks up her head and sets her shoulders—another move so much like Cassian, I wonder who borrowed it from whom. “Cas and I dealt with it the only way we knew how. Moved on, one day at a time.” The edges of her gaze tighten, emulating her son even more. “I took advantage of some free social programs to get Cas some counseling about it, though I was never sure how much of it stuck. Whenever I asked him about the sessions, he only shrugged and told me shrinks were like strippers—teasing at answers but never giving them.”
I concentrate on not swallowing my tongue. “And he was how old?”
“Too old.” It is clear the words—and their allegory—are not new for her. “He’s been too old for it all since the day he was born.”
I tip my head toward the sky. Not really necessary, for the accuracy of her words is as obvious as stating Cassian has green eyes, deep dimples, and one ear lobe a little