know that."
"I thought that once, too," her mother said. "But it isn't true. You can always leave."
Cassie moved carefully toward her mother. "You're the one who brought me here, remember?"
"And I can be the one to take you away." Her mother met her eyes sharply now.
"I won't run away," Cassie said, her voice cracking with emotion.
"You won't run away because of Adam." Her mother said it as a statement rather than a question. As if it were a weakness that she knew too well.
"I won't run away because I took an oath," Cassie said.
Her mother started crying again, not just one single tear this time but many, as if a dam had broken inside her.
"I never wanted this for you," she said. "This is exactly what I've spent my entire life trying to protect you from."
"I know." Cassie strived to sound unafraid. "But the best way you can protect me now is to keep talking to me, keep telling me things I need to know from the past, even if they're hard to talk about. Because I don't have anyone else to tell me these things but you."
Her mother opened her arms, and Cassie let herself be held.
"I promise you, Cassie," her mother said. "All I want is for you to be safe."
They cried together for a little while, holding each other. It felt to Cassie like they were in mourning, grieving a death, and perhaps in a way they were. The death of the protective silence between them, and of their secrets and lies. The death of normalcy. Her mother rubbed soft circles into her back and told her everything would be okay, that they were in this together. For the first time, Cassie felt like a daughter.
Later that night, Cassie went to Adam's to tell him about the hunter's attack on the beach. They rarely hung out at his house, and she was happy for the change of scenery. She loved being in his bedroom. Lying on his bed, she couldn't help but imagine him sleeping there, wrapped in those same sheets, with his features softening innocently as he dreamed. She gazed around the room and observed his things, everyday items that would have no meaning to her if they didn't belong to him - his schoolbooks stacked on his desk, his sneakers piled haphazardly in the closet, and a pair of jeans strewn on the floor. She could almost see him coming home from school, tossing the books down, kicking off his shoes, and stepping out of his jeans into something more comfortable. She felt an affection for the whole scene as she imagined it, and for every object he touched - by extension, it was all a part of him.
Adam returned to the room with some snacks and drinks in hand. He closed the door behind him.
"Sorry it's a little messy in here," he said. "I tried to clean it up, but . . ."
"It's perfect just like this," Cassie said.
He joined her on the bed, and she had the sudden urge to start rubbing his shoulders, to kiss his face and his neck
- to forget all about the awful storm on the beach.
Adam's breathing slowed, and Cassie could sense he was thinking the same thing. He swept his fingers suggestively across her thigh.
"You look beautiful tonight," he said. "But I've been worried about you. What happened today?" His hand slid from her thigh up to her hipbone, which was his favorite place to touch her.
Cassie took a deep breath and sat up. "I went for a walk on the beach, and I ran into Nick," she said. Cassie paused to read Adam's expression, but his face remained neutral.
"And I was glad to see him," she continued, "because you know I've been trying to repair my friendship with him any way I can. But we'd just got to talking when the sky turned black and this awful storm started. We knew immediately by the looks of it that it was something supernatural."
"The hunters," Adam said.
Cassie nodded. "We couldn't get away fast enough.
Lightning bolts were flying straight for us. One would have . . ."
Cassie felt herself get choked up. She struggled to swallow down the knot that had formed in her throat. "Nick risked his life to save me, Adam. I would have been hit if he hadn't acted so quickly to push me out of the way." Lines formed on Adam's forehead, but he stared straight down at the bedspread.
"He proved himself a real