When Agent Sterling caught up to us, she sent everyone back to the hotel but Dean and me. I told her what I wanted to do. She made me lay out the pros and cons. She made me walk through it again and again. She listened to my arguments and, finally, she agreed. The three of us would go back to the
quaint blue house where I’d spent a year of my childhood. Barring any unforeseen complications, I would see if the current occupant would let me poke around inside. With luck, we might knock loose a few memories.
Eventually, Agent Sterling might have to blow her cover and approach Kane Darby as an FBI agent. Eventually, we could directly interrogate him about Nightshade and my mother. But for now, we needed to know who we were dealing with, and that information was locked in my mind.
“I’d tell you that you don’t have to do this,” Dean murmured as the house came into view, “but I know that you do.”
Less than a year ago, I’d gone with Dean to his childhood home. I’d knelt in the dirt with him, searching for his mother’s initials on a weatherworn picket fence. At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to me that someday, he might be returning the favor.
“Maybe we should have brought Townsend with us.”
Dean’s comment got an eyebrow arch out of me. “So he could make inappropriate comments and lighten the moment? Or so he could tell you exactly what I’m feeling?”
Dean considered his answer very carefully. “The one that’s not going to get me a speech about how you can take care of yourself.”
I snorted and walked toward the front porch. As I made my way up the steps, the second one creaked.
“Gotcha!” I jump from the step onto the porch and wrap my arms around Mommy before the creaking can give me away.
“On the contrary…” Mommy picks me up and dangles me upside down. “I’ve got you!”
“Cassie.” Dean’s voice broke through the memory. At first, I thought he was worried about me, but as I processed my surroundings, I realized that he was more concerned with the person who’d just opened the front door.
“Shane,” I said, taking in Ree’s grandson’s appearance. Somehow, I hadn’t expected the house to be occupied. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to live here.”
Shane stared at me with every bit as much disdain as we’d gotten from him at the museum. “So?”
“So I’d like to look around a little,” I returned. “I don’t know how much your grandmother told you—”
Before I could finish that thought, Shane headed back into the house. He let the door slam behind him, but didn’t lock it. I took that as an invitation and reached for the doorknob.
When Shane realized I’d followed him into the house, he stared at me for a moment. “You didn’t use to be this brave.”
“You didn’t use to be so antisocial,” I countered.
Shane snorted. “You know what they say, Red: dance it off.”
Hearing my mother’s words come out of his mouth hit me like a jolt of electricity. This was real. My mom and I hadn’t just lived here. We’d put down roots. We’d had people in our lives. We’d had something to miss when we hit the road.
“You want to look around?” Shane said, his surly tone softening ever so slightly. “Far be it from me to stop you. I just live here.”
Wordlessly, I took Shane up on his invitation and began making my way through the house. Entryway. Kitchen. Small spiral staircase. I knew before I took the first step that at the top of the stairs, I’d find two bedrooms. When I came to stand in the doorway of the room that had been my mother’s, another memory hit me with the force of a tidal wave.
Nightmare. It’s dark. I want my mom. But Mommy isn’t alone.
“I don’t deserve you.” Mommy has her back toward Kane. “I told you about the kind of man my father is. I didn’t tell you that I have a younger sister. I left her in that hellhole, and I never looked back.”
I rub at the corners of my eyes. Sister? Mommy doesn’t have a sister. Just
me.
It’s just Mommy and Kane and me.
I shift. The floor creaks beneath me. They turn—
The rest of the memory was less vivid. I didn’t feel it, didn’t live through
it again, but I knew what had happened—knew that my mother and Kane had turned to see me, that Kane had been the one to bend down to my level, to pick me up. I knew that he’d told my mother that he was the one who didn’t deserve her.
Didn’t deserve us. “You okay?”
I wasn’t sure how long Dean had been standing behind me, but I let my body lean back into his. I let myself feel his warmth, the way my mother had
felt Kane’s.
“I knew that Kane and my mom were involved,” I said, the words like sandpaper in my throat. “I didn’t realize that he was part of my life, too.”
Kane Darby and my mother hadn’t just been involved. They’d been serious.
If you were serious about him, I thought, picturing my mom the way she’d looked in the memory, if he was serious about us, why did we leave? As I descended the spiral staircase, my stomach twisted. I felt the way I did every time I dreamed about my mother’s dressing room.
Don’t go in there. Don’t open the door.
My gaze locked on the foot of the stairs. My heart raced, but a memory never came. I just stood there, until I heard a loud crash from the kitchen. I made a beeline for the noise, but Agent Sterling cut me off. She gave me a warning look and then led the way into the kitchen herself.
Shane was standing over the sink, blood dripping from his hand, a broken glass on the floor.
Blood.
Go back to sleep, baby, my mother’s voice whispered from somewhere in my memory. It’s just a dream.
“Have an accident?” Agent Sterling asked Shane.
Shane ignored Sterling and narrowed his eyes at me. “You shouldn’t have come back here, little Red.”
“Watch it.” Dean’s voice was low and full of warning.
Shane ignored him. “The last thing Gaither needs is outsiders buying into what Serenity Ranch is selling. You should tell your little friend that,” he continued, his voice dripping with venom, “if you see her again.”
For a moment, I felt like I was watching this interaction from outside my body.
“What little friend?” I asked.
Shane didn’t answer. He grabbed a paper towel, pressed it onto his bleeding hand, then tried to storm past us. Agent Sterling stopped him. For the first time since we’d come to Gaither, she took out her badge.
“I’m with the FBI,” she said. “And you need to back up and explain exactly what you meant just now.”
Shane looked from Sterling’s badge to me and then back again. “Holland Darby is on the FBI’s radar?” It was clear from the tone of Shane’s voice that he was trying very hard not to get his hopes up.
Agent Sterling let Shane’s explanation stand.
“What about the girl who was with you?” Shane asked. “Is she FBI, too? Is that why I just got a call from a buddy of mine that she’s out there, asking to join them?”
The girl who was with you. I’d had a plan to find out more about Kane
Darby. But apparently, I wasn’t the only one. All roads in Gaither led back to the friendly neighborhood cult, and it didn’t take much profiling for me to figure out which of my fellow Naturals might have decided to follow up on that lead.
On her own.
