Cassel's family's been really close to the Zacharov family and worked under them for generations now. Cassel was being used by his brothers to try and take the family over. They'd use him to transform someone into inanimate objects, killing them, and then change his memory so he wouldn't remember what he did. They even had him transform Lila Zacharov into a cat to get her out of the way.

It's screwed up, but in a way they were protecting him by altering his memory. Transformation workers are the rarest kind of worker. If word got out he could do it? There's no telling how many people would be after him or what they would do to him to get him on their side.

And his mother isn't much better.

[Daneca makes a slight face at that. It's hard for her not to. She's an emotion worker herself and she could never imagine being like Shandra. Not in a million years.]

She's an emotion worker and has zero problem using working someone to get what she wants. Cassel doesn't talk about it a whole lot, but it wouldn't surprise me if she'd worked her own kids a few times. She pretty much groomed them to be pathological, ambitious liars. Though, I don't think she got to Cassel that much. Not like his brothers, anyway. He seems to actually have a moral compass. But Barron and Philip?

[She shakes her head. There's just no way to put it with those two.]

Really, Cassel wasn't exactly destined to have a normal life with his family. It's a wonder he came out of it okay or alive.