The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection

by L. J. Smith

  Cassie was thinking. No wonder her mother had run away from New Salem, no wonder there had always been helpless terror lurking at the back of her mother’s eyes. How could you not be terrified when the man you loved turned out to be something from a nightmare? When you had to go away to have his baby, someplace where no one would ever know?

  But she’d been brave enough to come back, and to bring Cassie. And now Cassie had to be brave.

  There’s nothing frightening in the dark if you just face it. Cassie didn’t know how she was going to face this, but she had to, somehow.

  “I’m okay now,” she whispered. “And I want to see my mom.”

  Diana and Adam were telegraphing things over her head.

  “We’re going with you,” Diana said. “We won’t go in the room if you don’t want, but we’re going to take you there.”

  Cassie looked at them: at Diana’s eyes, dark as emeralds now, but full of love and understanding; and at Adam, his fine-boned face calm and steady. She squeezed their hands.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.”

  Great-aunt Constance answered the door. She looked surprised to see them and a little flustered, which surprised Cassie in turn. She wouldn’t have thought Melanie’s aunt ever got flustered.

  But as Cassie was going into the guest room, Granny Quincey and old Mrs. Franklin were coming out. Cassie looked at Laurel’s frail great-grandmother, and at Adam’s plump, untidy grandmother, and then at Aunt Constance.

  “We were—trying one or two things to see if we could help your mother,” Aunt Constance said, looking slightly uncomfortable. She coughed. “Old remedies,” she admitted. “There may be some good in them. We’ll be in the parlor if you need anything.” She shut the door.

  Cassie turned to look at the figure lying between Aunt Constance’s starched white sheets. She went and knelt by the bedside.

  Her mother’s face was as pale as those sheets. Everything about her was white and black: white face, black hair, black lashes forming crescents on her cheeks. Cassie took her cold hand and only then realized she didn’t have the first idea what to say.

  “Mother?” she said, and then: “Mom? Can you hear me?”

  No answer. Not a twitch.

  “Mom,” Cassie said with difficulty, “I know you’re sick, and I know you’re scared, but there’s one thing you don’t have to be scared of anymore. I know the truth. I know about my father.”

  Cassie waited, and she thought she saw the sheets over her mother’s chest rise and fall a little more quickly.

  “I know everything,” she said. “And . . . if you’re afraid I’ll be mad at you or anything, you don’t have to be. I understand. I’ve seen what he does to people. I saw what he did to Faye, and she’s stronger than you.” Cassie was holding the cold hand so tightly she was afraid she was hurting it. She paused and swallowed.

  “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I know. And it’ll all be over soon, and I’m going to make sure he doesn’t ever hurt you again. I’m going to stop him somehow. I don’t know how, but I will. I promise, Mom.”

  She stood up, still holding the soft, limp hand in hers and whispered, “If you’re just scared, Mom, you can come back now. It’s easier than running away; it is, really. If you face things they’re not as bad.”

  Cassie waited again. She hadn’t thought she was hoping for anything, but she must have been, because as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened her heart sank in disappointment. Just some little sign, that wasn’t much to ask for, was it? But there was no little sign. For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, warmth filled Cassie’s eyes.

  “Okay, Mom,” she whispered, and stooped to kiss her mother’s cheek.

  As she did, she noticed a thin string of some kind of fiber around her mother’s neck. She pulled, and from the collar of her mother’s nightgown emerged three small golden-brown stones strung on the twine.

  Cassie tucked the necklace back in, waited one more second, and then left.

  Can I face it if my mother dies like my grandma? she wondered as she shut the bedroom door. She didn’t think so. But she was beginning to realize that she might have to.

  In the parlor, Adam and Diana were drinking tea with the women.

  “Who put the crystals around my mother’s neck? And what are they?”

  The old women looked at each other. It was Great-aunt Constance who answered.

  “I did,” she said. She cleared her throat. “They’re tiger’s eyes. For keeping away bad dreams—or so my grandmother always said.”

  Cassie managed a small smile for her. “Oh. Thank you.” Maybe Melanie’s affinity for minerals ran in the family. She didn’t bother to tell Aunt Constance what Black John could do to those stones if he tried.

  “Bad dreams are a nuisance,” old Mrs. Franklin said as Adam and Diana got up to leave. “Of course, good dreams are something else again.”

  Cassie looked at Adam’s grandmother, whose disordered gray hair was coming uncoiled as she happily crunched cookie after cookie. Cassie had never known anybody who liked to eat so much, except Suzan. But there was more to Mrs. Franklin than you’d think at first sight.

  “Dreams?” Cassie said.

  “Good dreams,” Adam’s grandmother agreed indistinctly. “For good dreams, you sleep with a moonstone.”

  Cassie thought about that all the way home.

  She and Diana had dinner quietly, just the two of them, since Diana’s father was still at his law office. Adam had gone to talk to the rest of the Circle.

  “I can’t tell them,” Cassie had said. “Not tonight—tomorrow, maybe.”

  “There’s no reason you should have to,” Adam replied, his voice almost harsh. “You’ve been through enough. I’ll tell them—and I’ll make them understand. Don’t worry, Cassie. They’ll stick by you.”

  Cassie couldn’t help but worry. But she put it aside, because she had other things to think about. She’d made a promise to her mother.

  She lay in bed reading her grandmother’s Book of Shadows. Her Book of Shadows. She was looking for anything about crystals and dreams.

  And there it was: To Cause Dreams. Place a moonstone beneath your pillow and all night you will have fair and pleasant dreams which may profit you. She also found a passage about crystals in general. Big crystals were better than little crystals; well, she knew that already. Melanie had said so, and Black John had demonstrated it today beyond question.

  She put the book down and went to Diana’s desk.

  There was a white velvet pouch there, lined with sky-blue silk. Diana had long ago given Cassie permission to open it. Cassie took the pouch to the bed and poured the contents out on a folded-over section of the top sheet. The stones formed a kaleidoscopic array against the white background.

  Blue lace agate—Cassie picked up the triangular piece and rubbed its smoothness across her cheek. She saw light yellow citrine—Deborah’s stone, good for raising energy. And here was cloudy orange carnelian, which Suzan had once used for raising the passions of the entire football team. Here was translucent green jade, which Melanie used for calm thought, and royal purple amethyst—Laurel’s stone, a stone of the heart, Black John had said. There were dozens of others, too: warm amber, light as plastic; dark green bloodstone speckled with red; a wine-colored garnet; the pale green peridot Diana had used to trace the dark energy.

  Cassie’s fingers sorted through the clinking treasure until she found a moonstone. It was translucent, with a silvery-blue shimmer. She put it on the nightstand by her side of the bed.

  Diana came in, fresh from her bath, and watched Cassie putting the stones back into the pouch.

  “Find anything in your Book of Shadows?” she asked.

  “Nothing specific,” Cassie said. She didn’t want to explain what she was doing, even to Diana. Later, if it worked. “I’m beginning to think my grandmother didn’t mean there was anything specific in the book about Black John,” she added. “Maybe she just wanted me to
be a good witch, a knowledgeable witch. Maybe she’d thought that way I’d be smart enough to beat him.”

  Diana got in bed and turned off the light. There was no moon; the bay window remained dark. It was peaceful, somehow, with the two of them lying in bed—like a sleepover. It made Cassie think of the old days, when she and Diana had first decided to be adopted sisters.

  “We need to find a way to kill him,” she said.

  A sleepover with a grim and bloodthirsty purpose. Diana was silent for a moment and then said calmly, “Well, we know two things that can’t kill him—Water and Fire. He drowned the first time when his ship went down, and he burned the second time, when our parents burned the house at Number Thirteen. But he didn’t stay dead either time.”

  Cassie appreciated the “our parents.” Her mother hadn’t been trying to burn anybody, she’d bet.

  “He said his spirit didn’t need to stay in his body,” she said. “I think he can make it go different places. Maybe when he died, he just sent his spirit somewhere else.”

  “Like into the crystal skull,” Diana said. “And it stayed there until we brought it and his body together. Yes. But what can we use against him?”

  “Earth . . . or Air,” Cassie mused. “Though I don’t see how Air could kill anybody.”

  “I don’t either. Earth could mean crystals . . . but we don’t have a crystal big enough to use against him.”

  “No,” Cassie said. “It sounds like it’s the Master Tools or nothing. We’ve got to find them.”

  She could feel Diana nodding in the darkness. “But how?”

  Cassie reached over and felt for the moonstone. She put it under her pillow.

  Maybe it’s not the size, but how you use them, she thought. “Good night, Diana,” she said, and shut her eyes.

  Chapter 11

  From the start, this dream was clearer than the others. Or maybe it was Cassie who was clearer; more calm, more aware of what was happening. Saltwater slapped her face; she swallowed some. It was so cold she couldn’t feel her hands or feet.

  Going down. She was going to drown . . . but not die. With the last of her will she sent her spirit to the place prepared for it . . . to the skull on the island. Some of her power had been left in the skull already; now she herself would go to join it. And someday, when the time was right, when enough of her body diffused through the sea and washed up on the island, she would live again.

  Good dreams, I wanted good dreams, Cassie thought frantically as the water closed over her head.

  A shifting . . .

  Sunlight blinded her.

  “You and Kate may go play in the garden,” the kind voice said.

  Yes. She’d made it. She was here.

  The garden was in back. Cassie turned to the back door.

  “Jacinth! What have you forgotten?”

  Cassie paused, confused. She had no idea. The tall woman in Puritan dress was looking down at the floor. There, on the clean pine boards, lay the red leather Book of Shadows. Cassie remembered now; it had dropped off her lap when she stood up.

  “I’m sorry, Mother.” The word came so naturally to her lips. And her eyes had adjusted—but she couldn’t figure out where the book was supposed to go. Somewhere special . . . where? Then she saw the loose brick in the fireplace.

  “Much better,” the tall woman said, as Cassie slid the book into the hole and plugged it up with the brick. “Always remember, Jacinth: we must never grow careless. Not even here in New Salem, where all our neighbors are our own kind. Now run along to the garden.”

  Kate was already going out the door. In the sunshine outside, Cassie noticed that Kate’s hair was just the color of Diana’s: not really gold, but a paler color like pure light. Kate’s eyes were golden too, like sunshine. She was altogether a golden girl.

  “Sky and sea, keep harm from me,” she laughed, twirling, looking over the herb bushes to the blue expanse of the ocean beyond the cliff. There was no wall in this time—it hadn’t been built yet. Then she darted forward to pick something.

  “Just smell this lavender,” she said, holding out a bunch to Cassie. “Isn’t it sweet?”

  But Cassie was hovering by the open door. Two other people had come into the kitchen; Kate’s mother and father, she guessed. They were talking in low, urgent voices.

  “. . . news just came. The ship went down,” the man was saying.

  There was an exclamation of joy and surprise from Jacinth’s mother. “Then he is dead!”

  The man shook his head, but Cassie didn’t hear the next few words. She was afraid to be caught listening and sent away. “. . . the skull . . .” she heard, and “. . . can never tell . . . come back . . .”

  “And this jasmine,” Kate was singing. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Cassie wanted to tell her to shut up.

  Then she heard words that raised the hair on her arms, even in the hot sunshine. “. . . hide them,” Kate’s mother was saying. “But where?”

  That was it. Where, where? If this dream had any meaning, it was to tell Cassie this. Kate was trying to put an arm around her waist, to get her to smell the jasmine, but Cassie grabbed her hand to hold her still and strained to listen.

  The adults were arguing softly: exclamations of worry and disagreement came to Cassie’s ears. “Could we not . . .?” “No, not there . . .” “But where, then?” “Oh, mercy, my bread is burning!”

  And then, soft laughter. “Of course! We should have thought of it earlier.”

  Where? Fending Kate off, Cassie twisted to try and look into the kitchen.

  “Jacinth, what’s wrong with you?” Kate cried. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying. Jacinth, look at me!”

  Desperately, Cassie stared into the dark kitchen. It was too dark. The dream was fading.

  No. She had to hang on to it. She had to see the end. Grandmother, help me, she thought. Help me see . . .

  “Jacinth!”

  Darker and darker—

  Long skirts rustling, moving out of the way. And just a glimpse . . .

  “The old hiding place,” Jacinth’s mother said in a satisfied voice. “Until they are needed again.”

  Darkness took Cassie.

  She woke confused.

  At first, she couldn’t remember what she’d been looking for in the dream. She remembered the dream, though. Who was Jacinth? An ancestress? One of her great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, she supposed. And Kate?

  Then she remembered her purpose.

  The Master Tools. The members of the first coven had hidden them from Black John, because they’d known he might come back. Cassie had gone into the dream to find out where, and she had succeeded.

  She’d wondered why Black John had come after her grandmother the night he was released. Not just for the Book of Shadows, she realized now; not just because he’d known her mother and grandmother before. He’d wanted something else from her grandmother. He’d wanted the Master Tools.

  But her grandmother hadn’t known where they were. Cassie felt sure that if she had, the old woman would have told Cassie. All her grandmother had known was that her own grandmother, Cassie’s great-great-grandmother, had told her the fireplace was a good place to hide things. And now, because of the dream, Cassie knew that the loose brick had already been a hiding place in Jacinth’s time.

  But there had only been one loose brick, and nothing but the Book of Shadows had been stored behind it. Cassie knew that, and she knew that the original coven had been looking for a long-term solution, a place to put the Master Tools “until they were needed” by some future generation. Not just a loose brick, then. Cassie thought about the glimpse of the hearth she’d gotten between the women’s skirts in the last second of her dream. The fireplace had been a different shape than it was in modern days.

  Cassie lay for a few moments in the velvet darkness. Then she rolled over and gently shook Diana’s shoulder.

  “Diana, wake up. I know where the Master Tools are.”

  They woke
Adam by throwing pebbles at his window. The three of them went to Number Twelve armed with a pickax, a sledgehammer, several regular hammers and screwdrivers, a crowbar, and Raj. The German shepherd trotted happily along beside Cassie, looking as if this kind of expedition in the wee hours was just what he liked.

  The waning moon was high overhead when they got to Cassie’s grandmother’s house. Inside, it seemed even colder than outside, and there was a stillness about the place that dampened Cassie’s enthusiasm.

  “There,” she whispered, pointing to the left side of the hearth, where bricks had been added since the time of her dream. “That’s where it’s different. That’s where they must have bricked them up.”

  “Too bad we don’t have a jackhammer,” Adam said cheerfully, picking up the crowbar. He seemed undisturbed by the chill and the silence, and in the sickly artificial light of the kitchen his hair gleamed just the color of the garnets in Diana’s pouch. Raj sat beside Cassie, his black and tan tail whisking across the kitchen floor. Looking at the two of them made Cassie feel better.

  It took a long time. Cassie grazed her knuckles helping to chip the ancient mortar away, using a screwdriver like a chisel. But at last the bricks began to drop onto the cold ashes of the hearth, as one after another was pried out. Each was a different color; some red, some orange, some almost purple-black.

  “There’s definitely something in here,” Adam said, reaching inside the hole they’d made. “But we’ll have to get rid of a few more bricks to get it out. . . . There!” He started to reach again, then looked at Cassie. “Why don’t you do the honors? It’s okay, there’s nothing alive inside.”

  Cassie, who didn’t want to encounter a three-hundred-year-old cockroach, nodded at him gratefully. She reached inside and her hand closed on something smooth and cool. It was so heavy she had to use both hands to lift it out.

  “A document box,” Diana whispered, when Cassie set the thing on the floor in front of the fireplace. It looked like a treasure chest to Cassie, a little treasure chest made of leather and brass. “People used them to store important documents in the 1600s,” Diana went on. “We got Black John’s papers and things out of one like it. Go on, Cassie, open it.”