by L. J. Smith
"We won't let it," said a new voice at the door. Cassie's heart began to pound dully and blood rushed to her face.
"Adam," said Diana. She relaxed visibly as he came over to the window seat to kiss her and sit beside her. She always seemed both more tranquil and more radiant whenever he was around.
"We'll keep the ceremony under strict control tonight," he said. "And if anything dangerous starts to happen, we'll just stop it cold. Did you get the garage ready?"
"No, I was waiting for you. We can take it down now." Diana unlocked the large cabinet, and Cassie saw the crystal skull resting in a Pyrex baking dish full of pink rose petals.
"Looks like John the Baptist's head," she murmured.
"I've used salt and rainwater to try and clear it," Diana said. "But what it really needs is a full course of crystals and flower essences, and then to be buried in moist sand for a few weeks."
"We'll take every precaution," Adam said. "A triple circle of protection. It'll be all right." He picked up the skull, with a few rose petals still clinging to it, and he and Diana left for the garage. Cassie watched him go.
"Don't be nervous," Melanie told her. "You won't really have to do anything at the ceremony. You won't be able to; it takes a long time to get the hang of scrying—years, usually. All you have to do is sit there and not break the Circle."
Cassie tried not to mind the condescending note in her voice. "Listen, do we have time for anybody to drive me over to my house?" she said. "There's something there I'd like to pick up."
Diana's garage was empty—of cars, at least. The floor was clean and bare, except for a circle drawn in white chalk.
"I'm sorry to make us all sit on concrete," Diana said, "but I wanted to do this inside—where I can be sure the wind won't blow out one of the candles."
There were a number of white candles lying at the center of the circle. They formed a smaller ring. In the very center of that, something draped with a piece of black cloth sat on a shoe box.
"All right," Diana said to the rest of the group, who had arrived in small clusters and were now standing in the garage. "Let's get this thing over with."
She had changed into her white shift and jewelry. Looking at them now, Cassie suspected that the diadem and cuff bracelet—and maybe even the garter—had some mystic significance. She watched Diana "cast" the circle, going around it with the dagger and then with water and then incense and then a lit candle. Earth, water, air, and fire. There were also some incantations, which Cassie tried to follow. But when they all filed into the circle and sat down knee to knee as Diana instructed, any interest in the actual ceremony flew right out of her mind.
She had ended up between Faye and Adam. She didn't know how it had happened. She had been in line to sit next to Sean, but somehow Faye had gotten in front of her. Maybe Faye didn't want to sit by Adam. Well, neither did Cassie, although for a very different reason.
Adam's knee was pressing against hers. That was how Diana had told them to sit. She could feel the warmth of it, the solidity. She could think of nothing else.
On her other side, Faye smelled of some heady, tropical perfume. It made her slightly dizzy.
Then all the lights went out.
Cassie didn't see how it was done; she was sure no one left the seated circle. But the overhead fluorescent panels had abruptly gone off.
It was pitch-black in the garage. The only light now was the flame of the single candle Diana held. Cassie could see her face illuminated by it, but nothing else.
"All right," Diana said quietly. "We're just going to be looking for the last imprints left. Nothing more than that; nobody goes in really deep until we know what we're dealing with. And I don't have to tell anybody that whatever happens, we don't break the circle." She didn't look at Cassie as she said it, but several of the others did, as if to imply that maybe she did have to say it.
Diana touched the candle flame to the candle Melanie held out to her. The flame doubled. Then Melanie leaned over to light Deborah's candle, and there were three flames.
The fire went around the circle until Laurel gave it to Adam. Cassie's hand was trembling as she held up her candle to receive the flame from him. She hoped everyone would assume it was just general nervousness.
At last all twelve candles were lit and stuck in their own wax to the concrete floor. Each shed a pool of radiance and cast huge dark shadows of the seated figures on the walls.
Diana reached into the ring of candles and pulled off the black cloth.
Cassie gasped.
The skull was facing her directly, its empty eye sockets staring at her. But that wasn't the most alarming thing. The skull was glowing. The candle flames around it played on it, and the crystal in turn reflected and refracted the light. It almost looked—alive.
Around the circle the others had straightened, tensed.
"Now," said Diana. "Find someplace inside the skull that interests you. Concentrate on it, look at the details. Then look for more details. Keep looking until you find yourself drawn into the crystal."
Someplace that interests you? Cassie thought blankly. But when she looked carefully at the glowing skull, she saw that the crystal wasn't completely clear. There were gossamer webs and what looked like wisps of smoke inside it. There were internal fractures that seemed to be acting as prisms to form miniature landscapes. The closer Cassie looked, the more detail she saw.
That looks like a spiral or tornado, she thought. And that—that looks almost like a door. And a face…
She jerked her eyes away, stomach lurching. Don't be silly; it's just imperfections in the crystal, she told herself.
She was almost afraid to look again. But no one else seemed disturbed. Their shadows loomed and flickered on the walls, but all eyes were turned toward the skull.
Look at it! Now, she commanded.
When she looked back at the skull, she couldn't find the misty face again. There, that proves it was just a trick of the light, she thought. But the skull had developed another disturbing quality. Things seemed to be moving inside it. It was almost as if the skull were made of water, contained inside a thin skin, and things were drifting slowly around.
Oh, stop it and pick one detail to focus on, she ordered herself. The doorway, look at that. It isn't moving.
She stared at the little prismatic fracture in the left eye socket, just where the pupil of a real eye would be. It looked like a half-open door with light spilling out.
Look at it. Notice the detail.
Dizziness from Faye's perfume swept over her. She was looking—just looking. She could see the door. The more carefully she looked, the larger it seemed. Or perhaps she was coming closer.
Yes, closer… closer. She was losing her sense of space. The skull was so large now; it seemed to have no boundaries, no shape. It was all around her. It had become the world. The door was right in front of her.
She was inside the skull.
Fifteen
The door was no longer tiny but life-size, large enough to go in. It was ajar, and colored light streamed from the other side.
Inside the skull, Cassie gazed at the door, her scalp tingling. If it opened, could I go inside? she wondered. But how could it open?
Maybe if she just imagined it opening… but that didn't seem to do any good. What had Melanie said? Crystals help us call on the Powers. What Powers would be connected with clear quartz? Earth and water? For sand and sea?
That sounded almost like the beginning of a poem.
Earth and water, sand and sea
As I will, so let it be…
She concentrated on the door, willing it to open. And as she stared, it did seem that there was more rainbow light spilling out. More… and more. Keep it opening. Let it draw you closer. She was floating in front of the door now. It was huge, like the door to a cathedral. Opening… opening… She was drowning in rainbow light.
Now! Go in!
But at that instant a scream tore through the room.
It w
as a scream of terror, high and wild, and it lanced through the utter silence. The door stopped opening, and Cassie felt herself being pulled backward. The door was receding, faster, faster. Then, just before she found herself outside the skull, a face flashed before her eyes. The same face she'd seen before. But it wasn't receding; it was traveling toward her. Getting bigger. Bigger and bigger so fast—it would burst the crystal. It would—
"No!" cried Diana.
Cassie felt it at the same instant, an overwhelming sense of evil. Of something rushing toward them at incredible speed. Something that had to be stopped.
She never quite knew what happened next. Sean was sitting on the other side of Faye. Maybe he was the one who moved first; maybe he panicked and tried to bolt. In any case there was a commotion. Faye seemed to be trying to do something and Sean to stop her, or maybe it was the other way around. They were struggling. Diana was crying, "No, no!" Cassie didn't know what to do.
She tried to check her instinctive flinching away from Faye, but it didn't matter. Faye lurched forward and Cassie felt the pressure of Faye's knee leave hers. The circle was broken, and Faye's candle went out.
Instantly all the other candles were snuffed out too, as if by a blast of wind. In the same instant Cassie felt the rushing thing reach the limits of the crystal. It burst out of the skull and past the dark, smoking candles. Cassie didn't know how she could tell this—everything was pitch-black. But she felt it. She could sense the rushing thing like an inkier blackness. It exploded past her, blowing her hair straight up and to the side. She threw out an arm to protect her face, but by that time it was gone.
There was a faint cry in the darkness.
Then everything was quiet again.
"Turn on the lihts," somebody gasped.
Suddenly Cassie could see. Adam was standing by the light switch. Diana was standing too, her face white and frightened. Around the circle every face reflected alarm and consternation—except Nick's. His was impassive as usual.
Faye was just sitting up. She looked as if she'd been blown backward by some tremendous force. Fury blazing in her eyes, she turned on Sean. "You pushed me!"
"No, I didn't!" Sean looked around the room for help. "She was trying to get to the skull! She was lunging for it!"
"You lying little worm! You were trying to get away. You were going to break the circle."
"She—"
"No, I didn't!"
"All right!" shouted Diana.
Adam came up beside her. "It doesn't matter who did what," he said, his voice tense. "What matters is that—energy—that escaped."
"What energy?" Faye said sullenly, examining her elbow for bruises.
"The energy that knocked you flat on your back," Diana said grimly.
"I fell. Because this little snot pushed me."
"No," said Cassie before she could stop herself. She was beginning to shake in delayed reaction. "I felt it too. Something came out."
"Oh, you felt it. The expert." Faye gave her a glance of scorn and disdain. Cassie looked around at the others, who were still sitting, and was surprised to see uncertainty in their expressions. Surely they had felt it too?
"I felt—something," Melanie said. "Something dark inside the skull. Some negative energy."
"Whatever it was, it was released when we broke the circle," Adam said. He looked at Diana. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have let this happen."
"You mean you should have kept the skull a secret from the rest of us," Faye said sharply. "For your own personal use."
"What difference does it make?" Laurel cried from the other side of the circle. "If something was released from the skull, it's out there right now. Doing God knows what."
"It's—bad," Cassie said. What she wanted to say was "evil" but that seemed such a melodramatic word. Yet that was what she had sensed in the dark, rushing thing. Evil. The intent to destroy, to harm.
"We've got to stop it," Adam said.
Suzan was fiddling with a button on her blouse. "How?"
This silence was long and uncomfortable. Adam and Diana were looking at each other, seeming to have some grim unspoken conversation. The Henderson brothers were also telegraphing something to each other, but they didn't look as if they minded having something murderous and evil loose in the immediate community. In fact, on the whole they looked pleased.
"Maybe it'll get whoever got Kori," Chris offered at last.
Diana stared at him. "Is that what you think?" Then her face changed. "Is that what you were thinking when we were reaching into it? Is that what you were willing?"
"We were supposed to just try and read the last imprints," Melanie said, her voice as angry as Cassie had ever heard it.
The Henderson brothers looked at each other and shrugged. Deborah's expression was somewhere between a scowl and a grin. Suzan was still fiddling. Nick, face expressionless, stood up.
"Looks like that's all for tonight," he said.
Diana exploded.
"You're damn right it is!" she cried, astounding Cassie. She snatched up the skull in her two hands. "Now this is going to a safe place, where it belongs. Where it should have gone in the first place. I should have known you were all too irresponsible to deal with it." Hugging the skull to her, she strode out of the garage.
Faye was instantly alert, like a cat who sees the flicker of a mouse's tail. "I don't think that was a very nice way to talk to us," she said throatily. "I don't think she trusts us, do you? Hands up—how many people here want to be led by someone who doesn't trust them?"
If looks could maim, the one Melanie threw Faye would have left her a basket case. "Oh, get stuffed, Faye," she said in her classy accent. "Come on, Laurel," she added, and got up to follow Diana toward the house.
Cassie, not knowing what else to do, followed them. Behind her she heard Adam saying to Faye in a low, tightly controlled voice, "I wish you were a guy."
And Faye's laughing, husky answer: "Why, Adam, I didn't know your tastes ran that way!"
Diana was putting the skull back in the Pyrex dish when Adam came in behind Cassie. He went to Diana and put his arms around her.
She leaned against him a moment, eyes shut, but didn't hold him in return. And after that moment she moved away.
"I'm all right. I'm just angry with them, and I've got to think."
Adam sat on the bed, running a hand through his hair. "I should have kept it a secret from them," he said. "It was my own stupid pride—"
"Don't," said Diana. "It would have been wrong to keep something from the Circle that belongs to them."
"More wrong than to let them use it for stupid, malicious reasons?"
Diana turned away and leaned against the cabinet.
"Sometimes," Adam said quietly, "I wonder about what we're doing. Maybe the Old Powers should just be left asleep. Maybe we're wrong to think we can handle them."
"Power is only Power," Diana said tiredly, not turning. "It's not good or bad. Only the way we use it is good or bad."
"But maybe nobody can use it without ending up using it badly."
Cassie stood and listened, wishing she were anywhere else. She was aware that in some terribly civilized way, Diana and Adam were having a fight. She met Laurel's eyes and saw that the other girl was just as uncomfortable.
"I don't believe that," Diana said finally, softly. "I don't believe that people are that hopeless. That evil."
Adam's expression was bleak and longing, as if he wished he could share her belief.
Cassie, watching his face, felt a stab of pain, and then a wave of dizziness. She shifted, looking for a place to sit down.
Diana immediately turned around. "Are you all right? You're white as a ghost."
Cassie nodded and shrugged. "Just a little dizzy—I guess maybe I should go home…"
The anger had drained out of Diana's eyes. "All right," she said. "But I don't want you out there by yourself. Adam, would you walk her back? The beach way is faster."
Cassie opened her mouth in re
flexive horror. But Adam nodded quickly.
"Sure," he said. "Although I don't want to leave you alone…"
"I want Melanie and Laurel to stay," Diana said. "I want to start to purify this skull properly, with flower essences"—she looked at Laurel—"and other crystals." She looked at Melanie. "I don't care if it takes all night; I want to get it set up. And I want to start now. This minute."
The two girls nodded. So did Adam. "All right," he said.
And Cassie, who had been standing with her mouth open, suddenly thought of something and nodded too. Her hand automatically patted her front jeans pocket to feel the hard little lump there.
So that was how she found herself walking on the beach alone with Adam.
There was no moon that night. The stars shone with a fierce, icy brilliance. The waves roared and hissed on the shore.
Not romantic. Raw. Primitive. Except for the faint lights of houses above on the cliff, they might have been a thousand miles from civilization.
They were almost all the way to the narrow path up the bluff to Number Twelve when he asked her. She'd known in her heart that she couldn't avoid it forever.
"Why didn't you want anyone to know that we'd met before?" he said simply.
Cassie took a deep breath. Now was the time to see what kind of actress she was. She was very calm; she knew what had to be done, and somehow, she would do it. She had to do it, for Diana's sake—and his.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, and marveled to hear how casual her voice sounded. "I just didn't want anybody—like Suzan or Faye—to get the wrong impression. You don't mind, do you? It didn't seem very important."
Adam was looking at her in an odd way, hesitating, but then he nodded. "If that's what you want, I won't mention it," he said.
Relief washed over Cassie, but she kept her voice light. "Okay, thanks. Oh, by the way," she went on, fishing in her pocket. "I've been meaning to give this back to you. Here." It was strange how her fingers seemed to cling to the chalcedony rose, but she managed to open them and drop it into his hand. It lay on his palm, the quartz crystals seeming to capture a little of the starlight.