Chapter 403
Despite my superhuman speed and stamina, by the time I reached the penthouse, I was out of breath. I waited a second in the hall outside Cadence’s door, trying to catch it again. I didn’t want to panic her, and there was no reason to try to talk when I couldn’t. Once I was able to speak again, I knocked lightly on her apartment door and waited, hoping this conversation went as well as the last one.
I heard my sister sigh like I’d just interrupted something uber important, but she was at the door in a second. She must’ve looked through the peephole because when she opened the door, she was smiling. I guess of all of the people who could’ve been interrupting whatever critical work she was doing, her little sister wasn’t nearly the worst.
“Hey, Cass. What’s up? Does Mom know you’re here? Aren’t you supposed to be at training?”
Four hundred questions and I hadn’t even stepped through the door yet. “Hey. Can I come in?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Don’t mind my mess....”
There were wedding magazines everywhere—a stack on the coffee table, a pile on the floor, even a couple on the sofa. The rest of the coffee table was cluttered with a three-ring binder spilling its guts everywhere and what I might’ve thought was a vision board if I didn’t know my sister even a little bit. Upon closer inspection, that was exactly what it was. I took a seat on the couch and began to wonder exactly how her fiancé might be rubbing off on her.
“So no actual work today?” I joked, flipping my hair around to the front of my shoulder.
“Well, you know, not a lot of Vampires around these days.” She looked at the disarray around her and sighed, running her hand through her hair. “I just wish I was more decisive.”
“I think I might be indecisive, but I’m really not sure,” I deadpanned. She looked at me for a second before she started to giggle. “I won’t take up too much of your time, but I have some great news to share with you.”
“What’s that?” She looked at me more skeptically than I would’ve liked.
“Well, Mom and Dad have agreed to let me move in with you!” I tried to make my voice sound as optimistic as possible, as if this was a good thing. Immediately, my sister’s face fell, like I’d just told her she’d be strapped with babysitting a fleet of kittens for the next twenty years of her life. “Don’t worry—I won’t.”
“I’m confused,” Cadence replied. Her hair was up in a very messy bun, and when she went to run her hand through it, it wiggled like the whole mass might just fall out.
“I know, right? Me, too.” That didn’t help alleviate her confusion. I readjusted on the couch. “Listen, here’s the deal. We both know I need out of there. Mom is driving me crazy, and perhaps more importantly, I’m driving her crazy. And let’s be honest, Liz isn’t exactly a young woman anymore. We don’t want any undue stress on her heart....”
“She’s in her early fifties.” My sister’s skepticism was unwavering.
“I know, but why make her live in a state of constant worry and anxiety if we can change that? You’d have to agree that it’s not healthy to be stressed out all the time.” I wasn’t just talking about Mom now. I knew what it was like because I lived it every day, too. “Anyway, she’s agreed to let me move in here. But I know how busy you are with the wedding, and I don’t want to be in your way either. So rather than move in here, I’m going to live with Lucy.” I said it like it was a done deal, like all she had to do was agree with me.
She didn’t. “Cassidy, you can’t tell Mom you’re moving in with me and then move in with Lucy. That wouldn’t be right.”
“Cadence, I’m not asking you to lie for me. Not exactly. Just... ease your mother’s mind. If. She. Asks. You know, no reason to go out of your way to tell her anything. You do have to agree that her life will be much calmer if I’m not in the same apartment as her. And quite frankly, you have to know I’m just as capable of taking care of myself as Lucy is. Come on, that girl was a train wreck in high school. Now that she’s on her own, she’s thriving.”
“But you wouldn’t be on your own. You’d be with her,” Cadence countered suspiciously.
I had messed up and needed to recover. It only took me a second. “Precisely! Better for both of us. And what’s good for the individual members of the team is good for the team.”
Cadence just stared at me for a very long time. I kept my cheesy smile glued to my face, wishing I had Elliott’s powers of persuasion. Or even Brandon’s! Why hadn’t I brought him with me? Finally, she said, “Look, Cass. I don’t have time for this. I’m not going to go out of my way to lie to Mom or Dad, but I don’t want to be a part of it either. So as long as they don’t ask me directly, I don’t care what you do.”
I raised my eyebrows at her, trying to decide whether that was good enough for government work or if I needed to push further. If Elliott hadn’t come over my IAC right then, I probably would’ve pressed on. “Okay. Thanks!” I said, bounding out of my seat and heading for the door. “Do you need any help with anything?” I gestured back at the piles with the crown of my head.
My sister was back in sighing mode. “No, I’ve got it.”
“Okay. Well, if you do, let me know.” I prayed she wouldn’t, but then, if she did, I guessed I could help her a little, especially if she didn’t go out of her way to tell Mom what I was up to.
I waited until I was in the stairwell to respond to Elliott. His IAC message had said, “Well, that wasn’t hard, but I’m never doing your dirty work again. I feel awful tryin’ to tell another parent how to mind their business.”
“Thank you!” I gushed. I couldn’t believe my nefarious plan was working. “Just one more thing—”
“NO!” he said before I could even complete my thought. “I’m not lying to anyone else.”
“No, you don’t have to. You just have to say something to Cadence for me in an overly suggestible fashion. And maybe Aaron—though I think I can get away without him knowing any of this.” He was never home anyway. Would he even notice whether or not I was living in his apartment?
Elliott seemed to think so. He laughed so loudly I swore he was standing right next to me. “You’re going to pull one over on A-A-Ron?”
I giggled at the Key and Peele pronunciation of my soon-to-be-brother-in-law’s name. “Listen, just tell Cadence you think it’s great that I’m moving in with Lucy, and we should do everything we can to support this. While you’re staring into her eyes with your magical green ones.”
“So... trick her? You want me to trick her, too. Listen, Cass, I’m all for Jedi mind tricks when they’re necessary...”
“Or when they suit you.”
“Which is always necessary. But I’m not in the practice of lying to my best friends to help with high school hijinks.”
“Are you in the practice of being left for dead on the dirty floor of a broken down amusement park while Vampires plan to cart you off and run experiments on your unconscious soul?”
“I told you, you can’t use that excuse again!”
“This is the same time!” I countered.
“No, it’s not!” he shot back. “This is a second time! Your mom was the first time.”
“And that was me dying not you. But it’s all related.”
“Cassidy Elizabeth!”
“Elliott Michael!”
“How do you even....”
“I can read your mind.” I used the creepiest voice I could muster. “I know everything. Once, when you were in first grade—the second time—”
“Okay, okay, okay.” I didn’t have visuals, but I could picture him folding his arms in defeat. “I will say something to your sister if it comes up. But I am not going out of my way to stop by her apartment and brainwash her. Got it?”
“Got it.” I wasn’t sure if that would work exactly as I had hoped, but it was better than nothing. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say I was welcome, only grumbled before mentioning, “You’re lucky I like you, lil girl.”
“And you’re lucky I like you. Or else you could still be lying face down....”
“All right, all right! That’s getting old. You know, I might save your neck one of these days, and if I do, I’m going to rub it in your face for as long as I possibly can.”
I snickered. “I’m sure you will.” That’s what we did—saved each other’s necks, got each other out of harm’s way, lied to family members on each other’s behalf’s—it was part of being a team. “Thanks again.”
“Yeah, well, when this whole thing blows up in your face in a day or two, don’t blame me. I already told you it was a bad idea.”
The deeper into the pit I dug myself, the slimmer I thought the chances of failure were. Things just seemed to be coming together. But I said, “I know. I’ll take the blame.” It couldn’t possibly be any worse than my last shenanigans, could it?
I checked the time and saw that training was over, and Lucy should be in the locker room now. I needed to let her in on my plan, to make sure if anyone asked, she said I was living with her. I knew she’d buck at the idea as well, but I’d be able to convince her. Maybe I did have a little bit of Elliott and Brandon’s ability to pull the wool over people’s eyes. So far, I’d been convincing everyone to do exactly what I wanted, and it had been working like a charm.
