The Power

by Lisa J. Smith

  Cassie spoke softly. "He was telling them we're not in power anymore. He was as good as giving them permission to ..."

  Her voice died away. She and the other members of the Club looked at one another silently.

  "Everybody get your guns. Sounds like it's open season for witches," Nick said finally. He put his arm around Cassie again.

  "Let's get out of here," Suzan said.

  "We can't," said Laurel. "Leaving school grounds without permission is an offense."

  "Everything is an offense," Suzan said.

  "Where are Chris and Doug?" Cassie asked sharply. "And Deborah?"

  Everyone looked around. Aside from Nick, the Henderson brothers and the biker were the ones most likely to get into trouble.

  "They have history first period, but I think their class went back without them," Sean volunteered. "I think they're still in the auditorium."

  "Come on," said Adam briefly.

  Chris and Doug were just outside the auditorium. They were in the center of a group of outsider students and they were getting ready to fight.

  " – not gonna get away with it anymore," one of the outsider boys was caroling triumphantly.

  "Oh, yeah?" Chris yelled back.

  "Yeah! Your days are over, man! You're gonna get sent to the office."

  "Didn't take them long to catch on," Nick murmured in Cassie's ear.

  "You're all going to get sent to the office," Adam said, pushing between the outsiders to get to Chris and Doug. He faced them, holding up the handout like a magic talisman. "Fighting's a Type-B offense. You'll all go down for it."

  There was a moment of uncertainty, then the outsiders drew back, eyeing each other.

  "We'll see you later," they decided finally, and turned down the hall. Doug tried to go after them.

  "Any time, any place," he yelled as Nick caught him and held him still. "Leggo of me!" he snarled at Nick.

  "We can't afford a confrontation yet," Diana told him. "Good job," she added to Adam.

  "It worked – this time," Adam said. "If I'm right about what he's doing, they'll eventually figure out that the rules are mainly against us. They may not get in trouble for fighting, but we will."

  To Cassie's vast relief Deborah came around the corner at that moment. "Deb, where have you been?"

  "Watching the hall monitors get their orders. They're giving them badges like SS men."

  "It is like the Nazis," Cassie said.

  "He's organizing a witch hunt," said Adam.

  "I wonder if he's done it before," Suzan said.

  Cassie started to say, "What do you mean?" but stopped in the middle of it and stared at her. Suzan, who looked so – fluffy, so brainless, who even now was groping in her purse for a compact, had done it again.

  "And Faye is working for him – " Diana was saying. Cassie interrupted.

  "No, wait, listen. Did you hear what Suzan just said? Don't you get it? 1 wonder if he's done it before. You know, I'll bet he has."

  "In 1692," Adam said slowly. "In Salem. How could we be so stupid?"

  "Huh?" said Chris.

  "I think they're saying that Black John could have organized the Salem witch hunt," Diana said. "But – "

  "Not organized, maybe, but contributed, helped it along," Cassie said. "Made sure it didn't just die out, fed the hysteria. Like he was feeding it today."

  "But why?" asked Laurel.

  There was a silence, then Adam lifted his head, his frown clearing. His voice was grim.

  "To get the coven to leave. To follow him. They couldn't hang around in that atmosphere anymore, so they followed him to New Salem, with all their tools – including the Master Tools."

  "You told me that he was a leader of the original coven," Cassie said. "But I wonder if he was a leader before the coven moved to New Salem – or only after."

  The faces of the Circle members were very sober.

  "I think he's trying to do the same thing again," Adam said. "Turn everybody against us so we don't have anywhere else to go – but to him. He's the only one who can defend us."

  "He can go to hell," Deborah said, as if this ought to be obvious.

  "Yeah, well, I'm sure he doesn't think we're going to come crawling to him right now,"

  Nick murmured. "Things may look a little different in a couple of weeks."

  "I think we'd better have a talk with Faye," Diana said.

  They lay in wait for Faye by the back entrance of the auditorium, where Deborah thought she was most likely to come out. When she did she had the clipboard on her arm.

  "Alone at last," Nick said, and they surrounded her, the eleven of them, forcing her to a stop. Looking at the faces of the Circle members right then, Cassie was reminded of the way Faye, Deborah, and Suzan had looked when they had caught her spying on them in front of the school. Beautiful, focused, and deadly. Dangerous.

  Faye looked around at them and tossed her head. It didn't work as well with her hair gathered up in a bun.

  "Get out of my way. I have work to do," she said.

  "For him?" Adam asked tightly. Diana laid a hand on his arm and spoke herself.

  "Faye, we know you can't talk now. But we're going to have a ceremony tonight, because it's the night of Hecate – "

  "And our birthday," Chris put in, aggrieved.

  " – and we want you to be there."

  "You're going to have a ceremony?" Faye said, looking less like a rich man's girl Friday and more like her old self, the black panther. "You can't. I'm the coven leader."

  "How can you be the coven leader when you're never even with the coven? We're going to have this ceremony tonight, Faye, at the crossroads of Crowhaven and Marsh Street. With or without you. If you're there, you're welcome to lead it."

  Faye looked for backing from Deborah and Suzan, her age-old supporters. But the biker's petite face was set in a hard scowl and Suzan's china-blue eyes were blank. No help was coming from that quarter.

  "Traitors," Faye said contemptuously. Her beautiful, sulky mouth pinched, but she said,

  "I'll be there – to lead the ceremony. Now you'd better get out of here before a hall monitor spots you."

  She turned and stalked away.

  They all managed to get through that day without serious trouble, although Suzan received a detention for not throwing away a cupcake wrapper. Not for leaving it at a table or anything, just for not throwing it away as soon as she was done eating. It was a Type-A infraction.

  That night they celebrated the Henderson brothers' birthday quietly, at Adam's house. Chris and Doug were extremely disappointed. They wanted a beach party with skinny-dipping.

  "And all kinds of wildness," Chris said. Adam said it was this or nothing.

  Faye showed up around ten, wearing the black raw-silk shift she'd worn the night of the leadership vote. "In my day it was white," old Mrs. Franklin chuckled, leading her into the untidy living room with its comfortable, shabby furniture. "But times change."

  Faye didn't even answer her. "I'm here," she said with a haughty glance around. "Let's go."

  Cassie studied the silver diadem nestled in Faye's midnight-dark hair, the silver bracelet on Faye's rounded arm, and the garter, made of green leather lined with sky-blue silk, on Faye's thigh. She wondered what the real ones, the ones used by the original coven, looked like.

  There wasn't much talking as the seven girls walked slowly down Crowhaven Road. Diana and Faye were in the lead, and Cassie heard Diana speaking in a low voice. The blond girl was carrying a white bag that held the things necessary for casting a circle and beginning a meeting.

  They reached the crossroads. "It has to be a junction where three roads diverge," Diana had said, "to symbolize the three stages of womanhood: maiden, mother, and crone." Here Marsh Street met Crowhaven Road running north and south.

  "Do we have to be right in the road?" Suzan said now. "What if somebody comes driving up?"

  "We get out of the way, fast," said Laurel.

  "I think we're s
afe," Diana said. "There aren't many cars this late. Come on, you guys, it's cold."

  "It's my ceremony," Faye reminded her, taking out the ritual black-handled knife.

  "I never said it wasn't," Diana said quietly. She stepped back to watch Faye cast the circle.

  Cassie felt blood burning in her own face as she stood behind Diana, watching Faye do what Diana had always done, what Diana would still be doing – if not for Cassie. She wanted to whisper something to Diana but instead she just made the promise in her own heart.

  Somehow I'll make things right. Faye won't be the leader forever. Whatever I have to do, I'll see to that, she thought. She added, almost absently, I swear by Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

  EIGHT

  Faye drew a circle on the road with the black-handled knife. Then she went around the circle with water sprinkled from a cup, then with a long stick of incense, then with a lighted candle. Symbolizing the elements Cassie had named: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The sweet, pungent smell of the incense drifted to Cassie on the cool night air.

  "All right, come inside," Faye said. They filed into the circle through a gap which faced northeast, and sat down around the inner perimeter. It was strange to see only the faces of girls around the circle, Cassie thought.

  "Do you want to explain or shall I?" Diana asked Faye, her hand on the white bag. There was still something inside it.

  "Oh, you can explain" Faye said negligently.

  "All right. We each take a candle, you see, and light it, and put it in a circle in the middle.

  And we each say a word, naming one of the aspects of womanhood. Not the stages, you know, like maiden, mother, and crone, but a quality. A – "

  "Virtue," Melanie helped her out.

  "Right. A virtue. Something that women have. Then, when we get all of them together, we show the candles to the elements and get their blessing. It's an affirmation of what we girls are, sort of; a celebration."

  "I think that's lovely," Cassie said softly.

  "All right; let's do it. Who wants red, or do I need to ask?" Diana took a red candle out of the bag. Very faintly, Cassie thought she caught the warm, spicy scent of cinnamon.

  "Me. I'm red," Faye said. She turned the candle over in her hands, examining its smooth waxiness. She held it upright and cupped a hand swiftly around the wick. Cassie saw the flame spring into being, shining through Faye's fingers so they looked like pink shells, turning Faye's long red nails into jewels.

  Diana, who had been holding a pack of matches toward Faye, put them down.

  "Passion," Faye said throatily, smiling her old, slow smile around the group as she dripped wax on the road and stuck the candle in it.

  "Is that a virtue?" Melanie asked skeptically.

  Faye raised an eyebrow. "It's an aspect of womanhood. It's the one I want to celebrate."

  "Let her have it," Laurel said. "Passion's okay."

  The red candle burned like a star.

  "Next comes orange," said Diana. "Who wants that?"

  "I'll take it," Suzan said. The orange candle was close to the titian of Suzan's own hair.

  Suzan sniffed at it.

  "Peaches," she said, and Cassie could smell the sweet, voluptuous fragrance from where she sat. "All right: beauty," Suzan said. She lit her candle in the conventional manner, with a match.

  "Beauty definitely isn't – "

  "Well, it's not a virtue, but it's something women have," Cassie argued. Melanie rolled her eyes. Suzan stuck the orange candle in its own wax on the road, beside the red one.

  "Here, let me go next. I know how to do this," Deborah said. She snatched up the white sack and rummaged in it, coming out with a yellow candle.

  "Matches," she said commandingly to Suzan, who put them in her outstretched palm.

  Deborah lit the yellow candle.

  "Courage," she said, clearly and distinctly, tilting the candle so a transparent stream of yellow wax ran onto the road. Cassie smelled a clean lemony sharpness and thought that it smelled like Deborah, like courage. The flame of the yellow candle lit Deborah's dark hair and flickered madly off her leather jacket as it burned by the other two.

  "Okay, green," Diana said, retrieving the bag.

  "Me," said Melanie, and took the dark green candle. She was sitting right beside Cassie and Cassie leaned in to smell the wax when Melanie did. It was scented with something woodsy: pine, Cassie decided. Like a Christmas tree.

  "Wisdom," said Melanie, her cool gray eyes steady as she lit the wick. She breathed in the scent for a moment, then placed the green candle on the road. The four burning candles formed a semicircle.

  "Now blue," said Diana. Cassie felt a jolt of nervousness and excitement. Blue was her favorite color, and she wanted it, but she wasn't quite sure she ought to speak out. Still, Diana and Laurel weren't saying anything, and she remembered that Laurel liked amethysts and often wore purple. Cassie cleared her throat.

  "I'll take it," she said, and reached for the pale blue candle Diana offered. She was very pleased to have it, to represent blue in the coven's rainbow – but she hadn't thought of anything to say. What's blue like? she asked herself, sniffing at the candle to gain time. What virtue do girls have that I want to celebrate?

  She couldn't quite identify the scent, which was sweet but sharp. "It's bayberry," Melanie told her, as Cassie kept sniffing. "A smell with a history. The colonists all used to make bayberry candles."

  "Oh." Maybe that was why it smelled familiar. Maybe her grandmother had burned bayberry candles – her grandmother had done a lot of old-fashioned things. Cassie knew what virtue she wanted to celebrate now.

  "Inspiration," she said. "That's imagination – or like the flash of an idea, you know. When my grandmother was helping make my muse outfit for Halloween, she said that's what the muses were for: They gave people inspiration, the ability to think of new things, to have brilliant ideas. And they were female, the muses."

  Cassie hadn't meant to make a speech, and she looked down, embarrassed. I didn't get the matches, she realized – and then she had an inspiration. Cupping her hand around the candlewick as Faye had, she concentrated hard, thinking of fire, bright leaping fire – then she pushed with her mind, the way she had with the doberman and with Sean. She felt the power leave her like a blast of heat and focus on the wick and suddenly a flame shot up, so high that she had to jerk her hand away to keep from getting burned.

  "An idea – just like that," she said, a little shaken, and she dripped wax on the road to stick the blue candle in. The other girls were looking at her wide-eyed, except Faye, whose eyes were narrow and hooded.

  Deborah grinned. "I guess we've got more than one fire-handler around here," she said.

  Faye looked even less amused.

  "Ah – purple," Diana said, giving herself a little shake and taking a lavender candle from the bag.

  "That's me. How did you do that, Cassie? All right; I'm going on with the ceremony. I just wanted to know," Laurel said. She looked at her candle. "I don't know how to get mine into one word," she said. "I wanted to do environmental awareness – sort of like, connectedness to all things. We're a part of the earth and we should care about all the other things that live here with us."

  "What about 'compassion'?" Melanie said quietly. "That would cover it, I think."

  "That's good; compassion." Laurel lit the purple candle.

  "What's it smell like?" Suzan whispered as Laurel stuck the candle in the road between Cassie's blue candle and Faye's red one, completing the rainbow circle.

  "It's sweet and floral; I think it's supposed to be hyacinth," Laurel whispered back.

  "Wait," Cassie said. "If it goes there, what about Diana? Don't you get a candle, Diana?"

  She felt jealous on Diana's behalf, she wanted the blond girl to have a turn too.

  "Yes: white goes in the middle, and I'm the only one left to do it." And it's perfect, Cassie thought, watching Diana take out the vanilla-scented white candle and hold it up. Diana represent
ed white as surely as Faye did red.

  It showed in the virtue Diana named, too. "Purity," she said simply, lighting the white candle with a match and reaching into the circle of candles to place it in the center. Anybody else would have sounded ridiculous saying it, but Diana looked like the embodiment of purity sitting there, her beautiful face lit by the candles, her silky straight hair of that impossible color falling down her back. Her expression was serious and unself-conscious. When Diana said purity she meant purity, and not even Faye dared to snicker.

  The circle of candles was pretty; seven tongues of flame leaping and dancing in the night air; seven scents mingling into one delicious composite fragrance. Eddies in the breeze seemed to bring the smell of cinnamon to Cassie, then a whiff of pine, then the sharpness of lemon.

  "Passion, beauty, courage, wisdom, inspiration, compassion, and purity," Laurel ticked off, pointing to the candles that represented each.

  "Let us all . . ." Diana prompted, nudging Faye.

  "Let us all have all of them," Faye said. "Earth, Water, Fire, Air, witness. Not that we don't have them already," she added, regarding the glowing circle with a satisfied smile. Laurel's eyes twinkled at Cassie from across the flames and Cassie let her own eyes twinkle back.

  "Well, anyway, we have all of them if you count all of us," Deborah said, and grinned.

  Diana smiled her gentle smile. For a moment, all the girls were smiling at each other over the candles, and Cassie felt as if they were a part of . something bigger. Each of them contributed something important, and together they were more than just the sum of the parts.

  "Now we're supposed to let them burn all night," Melanie said, nodding at the candles.

  "What if somebody runs them over?" Suzan asked pragmatically.

  "Well, I guess if we don't see it, it doesn't matter," Diana said. "Wait, though, there's something else I wanted to do. It's not part of the night of Hecate, but it's another Greek thing, the Arretophoria. It means the trust festival." She reached into the white bag again. "The Greek priestesses of Athena used to do this. It's where one of the older members of the group