Chapter 274
I’m sure my statement that I knew where the Vampires were but just needed to remember made no sense to most of them, and I heard Shane snicker and start to laugh, which made me form my hands into fists, but Elliott reached out and rested his hand on my shoulder and calmly asked, “Cass, what do you mean?”
“I mean—I saw them. I saw both of them. There are two. Mina said she also saw it. You all heard, didn’t you?” I looked around, wondering why it was so hard for them to understand what she’d been talking about when they were all listening in on the same conversation I was referring to. “She also said I already know everything. I just have to find it. So… let me figure it out.”
“And how long will that take?” Shane asked. I couldn’t see him, but I could tell his voice was riddled with sarcasm, and I could imagine he had that smirk on his face. Then he added a phrase that almost lit the whole place on fire. “How will we even know we can trust you?”
I was ready to find out if I could truly kill a Guardian, but my sister beat me to it. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” she asked, banging her hands on the table. Aaron was definitely awake now, moving closer to her as Shane began to stammer a response.
“Nothing. I meant… how will we even know she has it right. Not that we can’t actually trust her.” He could say what he wanted to now, but I knew exactly what he had meant. He thought I might be more Vampire than Hunter.
And then I thought, maybe he was right not to trust me….
“Choose your words more carefully,” Aaron warned, and he caught my eyes for a brief second before returning his attention to my sister who continued to glare at Shane.
I wanted to be grateful to Aaron for coming to my defense, but he was still a murderer, so I leaned up so I could see around Elliott and spoke directly to Shane. “Look, I don’t know how I know what I know, but I do know some things I shouldn’t.” I hated trying to explain myself to him, so I shifted my gaze so that I was looking at friendlier faces. Jamie, Ashley, Meagan, Aurora. “I knew Mina’s name before I entered the room. She mentioned someone like me, and I saw her in my mind, though I didn’t think this had ever happened before.” Jamie shook his head at me, like that was also a surprise to him. I know he didn’t think it had either. “So… I know I can figure it out. I just need some more time.”
“We don’t know how much time we have. Maybe we need to do both.” Christian’s voice was a little less irritating than usual as I considered what he might mean. “Let Cass think but continue to study this pattern, send out our informants en masse, see what we can find out.”I actually appreciated the fact that he seemed to support the idea that I might actually be able to find out information from what I already knew, and I thought that was a good plan.Until Aaron went and spoiled it all. “We’ve been doing that,” he said with a somber expression. “The funny thing is, most of our informants basically fell off the face of the earth a few days ago. They’re not reporting anymore.”
I knew he didn’t mean funny ha ha, but it certainly didn’t seem funny at all to me. Cadence asked, “Why do you think that is?” for all of us, but our fearless leader only shrugged and said he didn’t know.
Cadence looked at me, like she thought maybe I might have an answer. I was as dumbfounded as everyone else, but I added it to my list of things to try to figure out. I was just puzzling over what it might be when Christian blurted out, “We need to find out what can kill her.”
I looked up, realizing he was talking about me. I glanced at my sister and saw her ready to fly across the room again. But I was intrigued. I had wondered myself ever since I’d gone and gotten myself into this state. More so now that I knew someone like me could die. He continued, and I listened intently. “Knowing that will tell us what we can get away with.” That was not exactly what I was hoping to hear, but I understood what he was saying. If I knew what could kill me, I would have a better idea of how far I could push myself with the Vampires before I got myself into danger.
It really didn’t matter what I thought, apparently, as my sister answered with a resounding, “No. Absolutely not,” before I could even formulate a response.
“Cadence, we wouldn’t hurt her,” Christian said, almost rolling his eyes, like she should trust him.
I think my sister’s ability to trust Christian died somewhere in Ireland, along with her fiancé, and only one of those things had come back to life. “No. No experiments on my sister.”
Everyone’s eyes ping-ponged from one of them to the other. “Not on your sister,” Christian replied, and everyone shifted their attention back to Cadence for a response.
But it was my voice that drew their interest. “What would you need to do?” I wondered exactly what he would need in order to find out how I could die without actually experimenting on me. “What does that mean?”
For some reason, Christian didn’t answer me. Instead, he looked at Jamie, and I shifted my expression to him. I trusted him far more than I did Christian, so the fact that he would be involved was comforting. The Healer said, “We’d just need to take some tissue samples that Christian and I can run some tests on.” He made it sound so simple, like a mouth swab or something.
I felt Brandon’s hand on my shoulder and wanted to shrug him away, but I ignored it instead as I asked, “Would it hurt?”
“No, not at all.” Jamie’s response was fast, and I nodded. I didn’t think he’d let anything hurt me. “I’d put you under, take the tissue from the inside of your arm, and then sew you up. I’d heal you before you even came to. No pain involved.”
Whatever had gotten into my sister, the doctor’s words had not dissuaded her. “I think this is an awful idea,” she said, and I turned and looked at her with a questioning expression on my face. She could add her two cents, but this definitely wasn’t her decision.
