Succession of Witches Read Free Page A

disinterest that the swirls of the dark wood paneling were rather pretty.
    She couldn’t see Sam’s expression, but she felt the vinyl shift as he fidgeted in his seat. “Yeah, I’m sure it was nothing,” he said sharply. “Look, you can’t avoid me forever.”
    She licked her lips, nervous but somewhat pleased that he’d at least addressed the 600-pound gorilla in the room. “You’re avoiding me too.”
    “Only because you started it,” he said, and spread his hands flat on the table. She decided she liked his hands; they were large and masculine, without becoming the veined, sinewy monstrosities that some men had. It was with some effort that she tore her gaze away from studying his long fingers.
    “I started it? What are we, five now?” she said mockingly.
    “You know what I mean. I was trying to give you some time to come to terms with…with what happened. But we can’t go on like this.”
    At that, she did look at him. This close, she could admire the contrast of his dark eyes and brows against the natural pale blond of his hair, and noted with surprise that she could see the beginnings of stubble at his chin; she’d never noticed any facial hair on him before. Then again, she’d probably never been close enough before.
    “You mean, you wanted to give me some time to get over the fact you tried to torture someone to death with magic? Sorry, might need some more time on that.”
    Sam dropped his gaze and gritted his teeth. “That’s not fair,” he said. “Cassie, I didn’t plan to —“
    At that, the otherwise lethargic band broke into a spirited drum solo, and the sounds of percussion and screaming from the dance floor drowned out whatever Sam had been trying to say. It was just as well; anything he could come up with would have sounded to Cassie like a flimsy excuse. She knew what she had seen, and what she had felt.
    She also knew she didn’t really have a choice. If she didn’t make progress in her training soon, the court would do something horrible— they’d think nothing of taking her away from her parents, faking her death, and giving her to some other power-hungry demon to train. Intellectually she accepted it, but in practice, she never felt ready to deal with Sam. So she’d kept stalling, hoping the day would dawn when she wouldn’t hear an echo of his curse whenever she looked at him; it hadn’t come yet. And now they were seriously running out of time— the next court date was in less than two months.
    They sat in uncomfortable silence while the band finished their set and began packing up their instruments. When the cheers and screams of the audience had subsided, Sam cleared his throat and tried again. “Look, can we discuss this later?”
    “What’s there to talk about?” Cassie snapped as Mike and Jay returned to the booth. She didn’t want to think about that night ever again if she could help it, and she certainly didn’t want to hear Sam try to explain away his grisly part in it.
    Mike had a big smile on his face as he slid into the booth, which faded as soon as he took in the mood at the table. “Dwight should be on soon,” he said shooting Cassie an annoyed look. She glared back; why would he assume this was all her fault?
    During the intermission between performances, Jay filled the relative silence by talking to Sam, explaining all about the origin of the name Sodatown for the downtown Sterling area while Cassie and Mike mostly stayed silent.
    Looking at Jay’s animated features as he discussed the original Slam! Cola plant that had opened in the 1960s and the town that had grown up around it, Cassie found herself irritated with him for how excited he seemed to get whenever he was in Sam’s presence. She knew that for Jay, finding out about Sam’s identity meant that a whole world of magic that he’d only dreamed of really existed, and that was heady stuff, but his obsession had a whiff of subservience to it that she didn’t like. Most of the group