Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (2 page)

Something struck the door with the force of a wrecking ball, denting the steel. Arthur flattened his back to the wall, his heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and fear.

BANG! BANG!

The door flew off the hinges and crashed into the wall inches from him. The thrill of nearly being crushed brought a twisted smile to his weasel-like face.

A petite woman stepped into the doorway. She looked like she was made of porcelain, with the palest complexion Arthur had ever seen. Sapphire eyes as cold as glass regarded him from a classically beautiful face framed by ivory curls. Her attire suggested that she was preparing to have tea with the queen of England: a perfectly fitted, high-collared dress in dusty rose, a matching hat rimmed with a two-inch veil, pearl earrings, and lacy white gloves.

Arthur’s eyes slid down her delicately formed figure to her shapely calves, which appeared to be made of metal. Metal feet sported dusty rose pumps.

“My eyes are up here,” she lightly reprimanded.

Grinning, Arthur looked up into her icy eyes. “Brrrr.” He shivered playfully. “Where have you been all my life, gorgeous?”

“Behave,” she scolded, peeling the glove off her left hand, which shone with a metallic gleam. “Time to go.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Daddy wants you home for dinner.”

Throwing back his head, Arthur exploded with laughter.

One

What Now?

I paced my bedroom floor as I listened to Emery Phillips shooting the breeze with my dad in our foyer downstairs. I was wringing my hands and sweating bullets—not that anyone can sweat bullets, but with me you never know.

“It isn’t like this is a matter of life and death, Emery,” I grumbled ironically, because what was headed our way was, indeed, a matter of life and death. Mine for sure, and maybe my family’s and Emery’s.

Mom and Dad will freak when they find out, then take me to the hospital, and then some government agency will nab me—if I’m lucky.

According to Professor Serena Phillips, Emery’s mom and the geneticist indirectly responsible for my mutation, there were “depraved individuals who would stop at nothing” to acquire me if my secret were to get out. They might even use my family to get to me. One such individual was Arthur King Sr., Serena’s former employer, who was richer than snot, and dead—or so the world believed. Serena said otherwise.

My pace quickened with each dire thought, back and forth like a caged lion—not an inaccurate comparison, considering the animal DNA fused into my cells. Since being infected with a strange retrovirus in Serena’s former laboratory at Wallingford University a few months earlier, my changes had not been obvious—until now.

Before today, you would have looked at me and seen a perfectly average five-foot-five-inch redheaded fifteen-year-old girl, hardly anyone who would trigger alarm. Aside from Emery and Serena, no one knew that every living creature on the planet should feel alarmed by me, because if I wasn’t careful, I could be downright lethal.

“Especially when you’re not in control of your emotions,” I sang to myself.

Side effects of the virus included ultra-enhanced senses, super speed and strength, and the ability to learn fight moves just by watching. I could also turn my skin rock-hard and heal rapidly from any injury, which might make me immortal—something I avoided thinking about. I suffered from extreme emotions and the urge to chase down fleeing objects—another thing I avoided thinking about and tried super hard to resist doing.

Needless to say, a red-hot temper and the ability to bend a crowbar with my bare hands did not make an ideal combination, and the fact that I was a teenager didn’t help in the emotional department. It definitely made it harder to keep my cool.

The beast doesn’t help matters, either
, I added silently.

“The beast” was what I called the feral side of me—the part that was impulse-driven and acted upon pure animal instinct, the part of me I had to fight back with a mental stick when something set me off. It was exhausting, to say the least. Luckily, over the last couple of months, I’d gotten a better handle on keeping the beast leashed. Fear of exposure, hurting someone, and humiliating myself drove my determination not to go Hulk when I got angry, as did concern that if I released myself completely to savage impulses, Cassidy might be lost for good.

Which I will never do
, I vowed, and complained at the door, “Oh, Emery, stop talking.” Exasperated, I flung it open. “Emery!” I shouted, interrupting my dad midsentence.

He was updating Emery on some news about Stanford University, where the fifteen-year-old-college-graduate genius would have been advancing his degree in molecular biology if my accident hadn’t upset his plans.

Because Emery tended to shoulder responsibility that wasn’t his, he had opted out of California sun and college coeds to masquerade instead as a freshman of average intelligence at Queen Anne High School in perpetually gray Seattle, all to keep an eye on me. If that isn’t the ultimate form of selflessness, I don’t know what is.

With this in mind, I added more gently, “I’m in my room. Come on up.”

Silence. Then Dad called back, “Cassidy, why don’t you visit downstairs?”

“I can’t,” I answered, checking the panic rising in my voice. There wasn’t a chance I was leaving my room. “I have to show Emery something—before the boys get here. Come up, Emery!”

“We’ll talk more later,” Dad told him with displeasure in his voice. I would surely get a talking to later, but maybe not. There would be more pressing matters to discuss once my family got a look at me.

“Excuse me, Mr. Jones,” Emery said, sounding none too pleased either.

I shut the bedroom door.

Clasping the doorknob, I fine-tuned my hearing and listened to Emery casually climb the stairs until my dad left the foyer to rejoin Mom, Nate, and our six-year-old brother, Chazz, in the kitchen. Then he began skipping steps. I smiled with satisfaction at his sense of urgency, even though I knew he had felt it the entire time he was talking with my dad. Emery was a skilled actor and very good at hiding what he didn’t want anyone to see. It was difficult to tell what was going on in his head most of the time, especially since his IQ was likely pretty high.

Before Emery could knock, I threw the door open, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him into my room, slamming the door behind us.

“Your parents,” he protested, catching his stumble.

“Too bad you don’t worry more about
appearances
at school,” I fired back, locking the door.

All was innocent between Emery and me, a fact he made abundantly clear to my mom and dad. Other than them, he couldn’t care less about what anyone thought
was or was not going on between us.

“Soon
everyone
will know the truth anyway, because there’s no hiding these.” I whipped around to give him the shock of his life.

Relief flooded Emery’s face. “They haven’t changed.”

“
What?
Are you blind?”

“They haven’t changed, Cassidy.”

“Look!” I demanded, stomping my foot, something I swear I hadn’t done since I was, like, six.

Emery’s expression became stern. “Calm down,” he ordered, enunciating each word as if this would make me behave. Usually when he tried to pull the parental stuff on me, it had the opposite effect. But since I was desperate for him to either acknowledge what was plain as day or tell me it was all my imagination—which I prayed like crazy it was—I obliged.

“Look,” I requested. “Closely.”

Humoring me, Emery clamped my jaw between his hands and wheeled us toward the window, tilting my face up to his utterly gorgeous one. He was six feet tall, solid build, with intelligent black eyes and black hair emphasized by a milky complexion and features on the edge of being described as “chiseled.”

He looks more like his dad every day
, I thought as he scrupulously studied my eyes in the natural light, shifting my head to different angles.

Emery’s father was the handsomest and scariest man I had ever met. Lucky for me, the last time he had been home, I was conveniently at my Grandma and Grandpa Anthony’s for Christmas. Good thing, because I had been preparing to leave the country when I heard he would be home for the holidays. Mr. Phillips handles finances for various corporations in China, or so he said. I said he was full of it, and dangerous. This was what my gut told me, anyway, and my gut is rarely wrong.

Pulling my face closer, Emery exhaled a warm, fragrant breath that swept up my nostrils, making me feel a little rummy. Smell affects me in crazy ways, and Emery smelled the way he looked: good.

“Every girl I know would be envious right now,” I told him.

“Look left,” he instructed.

“Of course, being looked at like I’m under a microscope sort of kills the romance.”

“What I observe under a microscope usually isn’t so chatty. Now look right. And if I were being romantic, this isn’t the way I would go about it.”

“And if I wasn’t so stressed, I’d ask exactly how you’d go about it. Well?
What’s the verdict?”

“Now look at me.”

My stomach sank. Emery was avoiding my question.

I met his serious gaze, silently confirming what I already knew. My eye color had changed. “No!”

Emery reached out to grab me, but got an armful of air. Already at the dresser, I leaned toward the mirror and stared at the horror looking back at me: round, vibrant,
jade-
colored eyes.

“The color change is slight,” Emery reassured me, catching up with me at the dresser.

“Slight? They’re jade. Have you
ever
seen eyes this color? What am I going to do?”

“Your voice,” Emery warned, gripping my shoulders. “There’s nothing to do.
No one
will notice, other than you. Just like the freckles.”

“Thanks for bringing that up!”

The morning after I was infected with the retrovirus, the faint spray of freckles on my nose had vanished, along with a gash on my forehead—both healed due to “rapid cell regeneration.” This phenomenon had also reformed my windpipe after Arthur King Jr.’s ninja had crushed it with nunchucks and then jumpstarted my dead heart. It might also have made me immortal.

“Look at my skin!” I manically motioned to my face, unable to peel my gaze from my freakish eyes. “Flawless! Every inch of me looks like plastic, like a mannequin.”

“Calm down,” Emery insisted, but I couldn’t do that. How could I? Secretly being different was tolerable, but
looking
different—not even close.

“Emery, I don’t look real. Look at me. It’s like I’m airbrushed—or a drawing from a comic book. How appropriate!”

Emery spun me around to him. “Enough with the hysterics,” he ordered, ducking his face toward mine, trying to force me to look at him.

I glared at his shoes, resisting his efforts, and bit my lip hard as I fought back tears. I hated crying. I hated my life.

“Cassidy, do you trust me?”

I jerked a nod. The motion sent hot tears streaming down my face. I did trust Emery, I truly did. How could I not trust my protector, confidant, and best friend? He had put his life on hold for me. I was just afraid this would prove to be one of those rare instances when he was wrong.

“No one will notice,” he repeated.

“What if it gets worse?” I choked out. “What if my pupils change—into slits, like a cat’s? You already said my eyes don’t blink when I’m concentrating.” Serena’s Formula 10X, which had started this whole thing, had been heavy on feline DNA.

“It won’t, and they won’t,” Emery assured me without a hint of doubt, something I could rarely accomplish, since doubt was my middle name.

“How do you know? You didn’t see
this
coming.” I concentrated on his Nikes and willed my armor to come up. I felt the rippling sensation move over my body, then thickness and numbness. If one of Arthur King’s ninjas were to punch me now, he’d break his hand.

“True,” Emery admitted, not loosening his grip, or maybe he had. It was difficult to tell when my skin was hard like this.

“And imprinting. That was a shocker.”

Imprinting
was what Emery called my ability to perform a fight move after observing it. Even I had to admit, this was a very cool skill to have.

“Yes, it was,” Emery agreed, and then feigned a suspicious look. “Are you
trying
to make me jealous? ’Cause ya know I think your armor and sick ninja skills are
da bomb
.”

Despite myself, I smiled. Emery sounded ridiculous talking his age and knew it. As part of his average teenager act, he muddled his perfect diction with slang words for those unaware that he was a brainiac, which was everyone I knew except my family and Ben Johnson, Dad’s cameraman for his news show,
In the Spotlight
. They thought Emery’s decision to attend high school was an attempt to regain his lost childhood.

“Slanguage always works, especially the oldies but goodies,” Emery teased, referring to the fact that when he really wanted to make me laugh, he used slang terms our parents or grandparents would have used when they were our age. He seemed to have an endless reserve, as if he had memorized the Urban Dictionary.

“Not always.”

“
Au contraire, ma beauté
. You become putty in my hands.” He hooked my chin with a finger and tried to nudge it up, which would have been impossible for even a crane to do if I so chose.

“Stop,” I said, swatting his hand away. “This is serious.”

“Absolutely. You wanted me to look at you, so let me. Scout’s honor, I’ll give you an honest opinion.”

“Don’t be lame.” I looked up into his sparkling black orbs, smiling.

Pursing his lips, Emery pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger and pretended to study me. “Honest opinion,” he said. “I see a very attractive redhead with a too-cute nose, a
to-die
-
for
complexion, and big, beautiful
green
eyes.” Swiping a finger across my cheek, he added, “Minus the black tears, of course.” He flipped over his finger, now caked with gooey mascara.