Chapter 400
I did check my phone again before I got off the elevator, and my mom was right. The message hadn’t sent. I was irritated because there was no reason why it shouldn’t have, but I assumed Brandon was correct, and the signal hadn’t gotten through on the elevator. Rather than trying again automatically, it waited for me to try to send it again, a flaw in the default settings for my particular not-so-smartphone. I fixed it so that any time I sent a message that didn’t initially go through, my phone would keep trying until it went.
That didn’t fix the problem with my mom.
She was literally standing a foot inside of the door with her arms crossed as I opened it. She had to move aside to keep from getting hit with it. “I’m sorry,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more apologetic than I actually felt. “It didn’t go through.” I flashed my phone in front of her face, but she didn’t care to look at it.
“This is unacceptable, Cassidy.” Her voice was as quiet and even as I had heard it in a while when she was mad, which made me wonder if she was about to lose it completely. “You cannot just go wherever you want to, whenever you want to. We have rules, and you are not through being punished for your last incident.”
I stormed around her, headed toward my room. I also tried to keep my voice calm but it was hard when all I really wanted to do was shout, grab my stuff, and leave. “Why am I not through being punished? I didn’t get hurt. It turned out to work in our favor.” I stopped in the doorway to my room. “I was right, you know?”
“You were not right!” My mom had already swiveled around to look at me while I was walking, but she made a grand gesture of finishing the quarter turn. “You could’ve been killed!”
“Nothing can kill me!” I retorted. “It’s a proven, scientific fact!”
“I am your mother, and no amount of scientific proving is going to convince me that there’s not something out there that can do it!”
“Well, it isn’t Transformation serum! Mom, I was one floor up. One! In the same building. Eating chicken and pasta with my best friend, who, by the way, lives by herself! Her mom isn’t even in the same state!”
“Lucy didn’t take a bus across the country to get bitten by a Vampire!”
“Neither did I!” It was a technicality—I’d been scratched, not bitten.
“Cassidy Elizabeth! We are not having this discussion again. You are grounded! You do not leave this apartment unless it’s work related, and then I want a text confirming it from Aaron! Not your sister!”
“Aaron’s not the boss of me!” At this point I was so mad, I started sounding like a five-year-old. “Cadence is my boss!”
“I’m your boss!”
I slammed my door hard enough the entire wall shook. It didn’t stop my mother from continuing her rant. So I turned the radio on, loud, hoping it would drown her out. Instead, I heard her stomp off toward the other side of the apartment, and a few seconds later, the electricity went out in my room. She’d flipped the breaker. Growling, I used my new powers to turn just the radio back on. I should be able to power that for a while. I heard her shout my name again, this time in exasperation more than anger, I think. She realized she couldn’t handle me, and there was little anyone could do about it.
I was an emotional wreck. I was angry at both of my parents for being so strict, even though I could empathize with their positions. Yes, I had done some dangerous, stupid things. But it had been for the good of the team in the long run. No one else could do what I could do! I was embarrassed that my mom had yelled at me in front of my friends and continued to treat me like I’m a child when I’m just a few months younger than Lucy. And I was jealous. It seemed ridiculous to be jealous of my friend whose dad had just been killed by Vampires, but I wished I had her freedom, her ability to come and go as she pleased.
But most of all, I was just sad. For a few moments, I wanted my old life back. I wanted to be the girl I had been before Vampires. Back then, I never did anything wrong, never gave my parents any reason whatsoever to think I might be in danger or up to no good. I’d never gotten in trouble for anything more serious than arguing with my sister in the back seat of the car on a long trip. That’s it. Now, well, all I did was get myself into trouble.
There had to be a way to convince my mom that this wasn’t worth it, that she would be better off letting me go than continuing to try to hold onto a wild horse with no reins. I thought about the apartment Juan Diego had mentioned. The idea of moving in there, of coming and going as I pleased, was so appealing, it made my mouth water the same way Elliott’s does when he’s got a fresh bag of Cheetos in front of him.
I couldn’t fathom there being a chance in you-know-where that my parents would ever just let me move out. My dad, maybe. But he never stood up to my mom about anything, so the chances he would pick now to be my savior were slim. I wondered if there was a way I could get in there without my mom even realizing what I was up to....
It would be hard. And I’d need my sister, even if she didn’t realize what I was doing. I might need Aaron’s help, too, in the long run. And he owed me. Chances were, he wouldn’t like to go back to letting Holland control his thoughts.
But first, I’d need some help from my good buddy Juan Diego—whether he recognized it or not. Would it be possible to trick my parents into thinking I’d moved in with my sister without her knowing what I was up to? It was a long shot, but then, the fact that I’d managed to give myself a second dose of Transformation serum without anyone noticing what I was doing was also a one in a million, and look where that had gotten me.
I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to come up with the perfect plan. One thing was sure, I had to get out of that apartment before my mom drove me insane, even if that meant more lies and manipulation. It wasn’t something I enjoyed, but sometimes evil was necessary to survival.
