by L. J. Smith
Diana spoke first. “That does seem like a fair compromise,” she said. “Melanie, I call for a revote.”
“I second the call for a revote,” Nick said gallantly.
Melanie raised her eyebrows. “Okay then. All those in favor of . . . Cassie’s idea, raise your hands.”
All hands went up, except for Deborah’s, Suzan’s, and Faye’s.
“It’s decided then,” Melanie said.
Faye stood perfectly still. She didn’t move a muscle, but a dark shadow fell over her face.
Suzan bounced out of her chair. “Oh, well,” she said. “I guess that’s that. I’m starving. Can we go eat now?”
“Yeah, let’s go get tacos,” Sean said.
One by one, everyone stood up and began gathering their things, talking about meeting at Melanie’s great-aunt Constance’s later to practice their invocations. Diana snuffed out the candles and turned down the lanterns. All the while, Faye remained motionless.
“You,” she said.
Instinctively, Cassie took a step back even though Faye was across the room.
“Don’t be too proud of yourself.” She sauntered over to Cassie and leaned in close. Cassie could smell her heady perfume, and it made her dizzy. “You may have won the battle,” Faye said. “But . . . well, you know.”
Cassie drew away from Faye’s reach. Her fear still got the best of her every time Faye threatened her. Whether or not Faye was actually stronger was beside the point. She had the singleness of mind of a sociopath and a complete lack of conscience. Faye couldn’t be reasoned with, and that was what made her dangerous.
“We’re on the same side,” Cassie said weakly. “We want the same thing.”
Faye narrowed her honey-colored eyes. “Not really,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”
It sounded like a threat, and Cassie knew Faye never made an empty threat.
Chapter 2
Cassie and Adam barely said a word the whole drive back to Cassie’s house. She was still shaken up by Faye’s words, and Adam, sensing that, just quietly held her hand while he drove.
She clicked on the radio for a pleasant distraction and fiddled with its dial till she found a song she liked. She couldn’t remember the song’s title, but it triggered a feeling of nostalgia in her heart, a memory of a time when her life was much simpler than it was now. She had been in New Salem less than a year, but it felt like forever and a day.
Instead of watching the spring night drift by her window, Cassie closed her eyes. She let the music wash over her and tried to remember what it felt like to be not a witch but just a girl.
Then she opened her eyes for a little peek at Adam. He was beautiful. In the pale moonlight, his hair appeared auburn and his eyes darkened to a deep navy that matched the night sky. How was it possible that this boy was in love with her, and only her? The Cassie from last year would never have believed it.
She glanced at her own reflection in the car’s side-view mirror. She didn’t even look like the self she knew in California. Back then, she’d always felt so average. Average height, average build, ordinary brown hair. But now Cassie noticed her own multicolored highlights, and how big and round her grayish blue eyes were. And most importantly, she recognized how she’d matured into her power. She was confident now in a way she never could have imagined.
When they pulled up to Number Twelve, the last house on the bluff, Cassie remembered the first time she’d seen it, how frightening and old it appeared to her with its sloping roof and weathered gray clapboard siding. Was it a good thing that she’d grown so used to it, and to all the old houses on Crowhaven Road? Everything that had struck her as odd and a little creepy before had become normal to her—it had become her life.
Adam cut the engine and turned to Cassie with eager eyes.
“Just ignore her,” he said.
“Who?”
“Faye. What she said about you winning the battle but her winning the war—you can’t let that get to you. She’s always saying that about everything. If there were a Faye doll, when you pulled its string that’s what it would say . . .” He made his voice husky like Faye’s. “Win the battle, lose the war.”
Cassie had to laugh at this.
Adam took her hands into his, obviously pleased he’d gotten her to smile. “You came up with a great solution for the Master Tools,” he said. “How did you think of it?”
“I don’t know. It was weird,” Cassie said. “It just came to me out of nowhere.”
“Not out of nowhere,” Adam said. “From here.” He pointed to her heart. “And here,” he said, pointing to her head. “That’s why we voted you leader. When are you going to get used to it, Cassie? You’re special.”
At that moment, Cassie was so grateful to have Adam at her side. Sure, he’d voted with Diana earlier, but when Cassie spoke up, he supported her, and that’s what mattered. She leaned in for a kiss from his full red lips.
Kissing him never got old. But he interpreted this one sweet kiss good-bye as an invitation for another make-out session. He hurriedly undid his seat belt and tossed it aside.
“No,” Cassie said. “Not again.”
Adam raised his eyebrows like a sad puppy.
“The light’s on in the dining room.” Cassie tousled his hair and then pushed him away. “Which means my mom is probably watching us right now.”
Adam grabbed for her playfully with a look of mischief in his eyes. “One day, my love, you will care less about what people think.”
She gave him one last kiss on his smooth cheek and ran for the house before she changed her mind.
Once inside, Cassie found her mother seated at the large mahogany dining room table. There was a soothing warmth to the dimly lit room. For once, Cassie appreciated her grandfather’s ancient electrical work, shoddy as it was. The golden maize-colored walls would have appeared yellow under the unforgiving brightness of modern lighting.
Her mother’s dark head of hair shot up, and she smiled wide with surprise. Apparently she hadn’t been watching them in the car at all, thank goodness.
“Cassie, I didn’t expect you home so early,” her mom said. “Care to help?”
Cassie surveyed the scattered piles of colored tissue paper strewn across the vast table. “What is all this?”
Her mother raised up both hands like she was in over her head. “Daffodils and cranes. Decorations for the spring festival. I volunteered, but I have no idea why. Now I’m drowning in tissue paper.”
After seeing her mother sick in bed for so long, night after night, watching Melanie’s great-aunt Constance feed her healing herbs and rub her down with medicinal poultices, it was a pleasure to find her mother so worked up over such an inconsequential task. And it was good to see her getting involved in a community event, too. Cassie wanted her mom to feel at home here in New Salem and to have friends, especially now that Grandma wasn’t around.
“Where do I begin?” Cassie asked as she joined her mother at the regal table. She gathered stacks of yellow and green tissue paper, figuring the daffodils were easier to make than the cranes. As she began folding and fluffing the fine paper into petals, she thought to herself: There’s probably a magic way to get this done much faster. But she was so happy and relieved to have her mom back to her old self that she didn’t mind if it took all night.
“So,” her mother said, focusing her eyes fully on Cassie at last. “How’s Adam?”
Cassie felt her cheeks get warm. “He’s good.”
“And your friends?”
“They’re good, too.”
Her mom dropped the silver crane she’d been struggling with and studied Cassie’s face.
“You know, I’m really proud of you,” she said. “You recovered so quickly from . . .” She paused.
“From all the drama?”
“The drama, yes, I guess you could call it that.” Her mother tried to smile.
Cassie hesitated for only a moment, but it was enough to catch her mother’s attention. �
��Something’s wrong,” she said. “What is it?”
Anxiety flooded Cassie’s stomach. She was enjoying this bonding time and didn’t want to ruin it. But her mother seemed genuinely open to talking tonight. For the first time in Cassie’s life, it seemed like all the secrets between them were finally out in the open, and their relationship had a clean slate. A new beginning, Cassie thought. That’s what they were celebrating, right? That’s what all these dumb paper cranes and daffodils were for, after all.
Cassie took a deep breath and looked carefully into her mother’s eyes. “I’ve been wondering about my dad,” she said.
Her mother immediately stiffened. Cassie noticed her jaw tighten, and then she took a long sip of her tea. The cup shook almost imperceptibly in her hand. Cassie was instantly sorry she’d said it. But when her mother set her cup of tea back down, she seemed to have recovered from the shock of the question. Or at least, she was trying to appear as though she’d recovered from it.
When she finally spoke, the words came out stilted, but patient and kind. “I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know,” she said. “All you have to do is ask.”
Relief settled into Cassie’s shoulders. It occurred to her how long she’d been keeping her worries and questions tightly wound up within her body. She pushed herself to continue talking.
“I know he—I mean, Black John—was evil,” Cassie said. “But he’s a part of me. And it’s a part I feel I need to understand. Is there anything you can tell me about him?”
There. She said it. It was out in the open.
Her mother focused hard on the paper crane in her hands. “You’re absolutely right,” she said, but she didn’t answer the question, and she didn’t look at Cassie when she said it.
Cassie watched her mother in careful silence. She honed in much too closely on the silver crane she was holding, folding and refolding it several times.
“The problem is that they make this paper much too thin and flimsy,” she said. “It falls apart the second you touch it.”
Right before Cassie’s eyes, her mother had completely checked out of their conversation. But Cassie was determined to not give up that easily, and after a few minutes of heavy staring on Cassie’s part, her mother stopped ignoring her and briefly looked up.
“Is there something you want to ask me right now?” she asked, with a feigned nonchalance.
The look in her mother’s eyes revealed a fear Cassie hadn’t seen in her since she’d fallen ill. Her face turned pale and ghostlike, like she’d aged twenty years in those five seconds of silence. And, Cassie noticed, the silver tissue paper she held in her hand wrinkled and cracked beneath the crushing tension of her fingers, like she was squeezing it for dear life.
It was all too much for Cassie to handle. Her mother had just started feeling better. She’d just started to participate in life again. Cassie couldn’t afford to wreck all that with her selfish questions. Her mother was fragile, far more fragile than Cassie ever would be.
“Never mind,” Cassie said. “We can talk about all that another time. We have a lot to get done here.”
It had always been this way. Cassie was always the one who had to be the adult in their relationship, the one to keep her questions to herself because her mother couldn’t bear the answers—or the truth. She was a fool to think it could be any different.
Chapter 3
“Spring is in the air,” Melanie said to Cassie and Laurel, closing her gray eyes momentarily and taking a deep breath in. “You can almost smell it, can’t you?”
Cassie slammed her locker shut and inhaled, but all she could smell was the same school hallway scent of sweat, paper, and ammonia.
“It was a rough winter,” Laurel said. “I think that has something to do with it.” She had adorned herself appropriately this morning in a floral-print dress. “The spring equinox festival is going to be huge this year.”
There was a bustling excitement to their surroundings—voices seemed louder, footsteps quicker, everyone appeared more lively and animated—everyone had spring fever. Then Cassie remembered that the new principal was being announced at this morning’s assembly. Maybe that was the source of all the new energy in the air? She was eager to meet the man who would be in charge of their school, especially after their last principal turned out to be Black John in disguise. But Melanie and Laurel were probably right—it was this weekend’s spring festival that had everyone keyed up. Their schoolmates were all planning their outfits and debating over who’d be a worthy date. Nobody cared who the new principal was.
“It’s a good sign,” Melanie said. “A celebration of new beginnings is just what this town needs.”
Cassie wanted to be as excited as everyone about the coming spring, but her heart felt heavy in her chest. Her disastrous attempt to talk to her mother the previous night was still weighing on her.
Just then Chris and Doug Henderson swept by on Rollerblades, laughing as they tore through the crowded hallway. Their forward momentum blew their disheveled blond hair back from their identical blue-green eyes. They slowed down only to hand out star-shaped flowers to whichever pretty girls they passed. Suzan, carrying a wicker basket full of the flowers, jogged behind them to keep them supplied.
“What the heck was that?” Cassie asked.
“Chionodoxa luciliae,” Laurel said.
Melanie gave Laurel a shove. “In English.”
“Sorry.” Laurel smiled. “Those blue flowers. They’re called glory-of-the-snow. They’re one of the first signs of spring.”
It occurred to Cassie then that even the Henderson twins, who’d lost their sister, Kori, just last fall, were embracing the new season. She could try a little harder to have a more positive outlook. “I think I’ve seen those flowers,” she said. “They’re in the rock garden behind the gymnasium.”
“Not anymore they’re not,” Sean said, laughing loudly. He walked toward them with a bouquet of the blue flowers in his skinny outstretched hand and hesitantly offered them to Cassie.
“Thanks, Sean,” Cassie said, but before she could accept the bouquet, Faye stepped in and swiped it from Sean’s hand. She sniffed at the buds and then shoved them back onto Sean’s chest. “Run along to the assembly and find some other pathetic girl to give those to,” she said. Then she turned to Cassie. “I need a word with you.”
Faye was wearing all black, as she often did, but her outfit today was tighter and more revealing than usual. Cassie gave a nod to Melanie and Laurel. “It’s okay,” she said. “Go ahead to the auditorium. I’ll see you there.”
She’d promised herself she would show no fear to Faye, no matter what. She couldn’t allow herself to be afraid to be alone with her, especially at school, where it was safe to assume she’d be protected from any abuse Faye could inflict upon her.
Faye, of course, wasted no time making her point. “I know you’re new to this whole leader thing,” she told Cassie. “But even you should recognize you won’t be able to play fair for long.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Faye scoffed, like it was beneath her to have to explain herself. “Don’t play innocent with me, Cassie. It doesn’t work.”
Cassie glanced up and down the empty hallway and put her hands on her hips. “If you actually have something to say to me, Faye, then say it. But if you’re just trying to intimidate me, you’re not succeeding.”
“Liar.” Faye reached out to lightly brush aside the few strands of hair that had fallen in front of Cassie’s eyes, and Cassie jumped back.
Faye smiled. “Here’s what I have to say. Power always creates enemies. It divides people into two types, good and bad. If you really want to be a leader of this Circle, then you need to pick a side.”
Cassie remembered Diana once saying that power was only power—it wasn’t good or bad. Only the way we use it is good or bad, she’d said. But even Diana had changed her opinion about this.
“I’ve already chosen a side,” Cassie sa
id.
The star ruby around Faye’s neck glistened. It was the same color as her lipstick. “No, you haven’t,” she said. “There’s something in you that proves you’re daddy’s little girl. You can feel it inside you. A darkness. I know you can.”
Cassie hugged her books tighter to her chest. “You don’t know anything.”
“Isn’t it exhausting trying so hard to emulate Diana when really you’re just like me?”
“No. Because I’m nothing like you.”
Faye let out a deep, throaty laugh and took a step back. She’d accomplished what she’d intended. Cassie was significantly rattled.
“Better hurry up,” she said. “You don’t want to be late to the assembly.” She pulled a tube of lipstick from her bag and applied another slash of dark pigment to her lips. “Want some?” She held the bloodred tube out to Cassie. “I think it’s your color.”
In a flash of anger Cassie thought to swat the lipstick right out of Faye’s hand. But that would be giving her exactly what she wanted. She was trying to push Cassie into giving in to her lowest impulses, to be as brash and reckless as she was.
But Cassie wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t give Faye that satisfaction. Instead, she turned her back on her, and when she did, she caught sight of someone she hadn’t seen before. A boy. Faye noticed him, too.
Together, they watched him walk up the hallway. He was tall and muscular with light brown hair, and he must have just finished working out, because he was wearing warm-ups and sneakers. He carried a gym bag in one hand and a lacrosse stick in the other.
“That boy is gorgeous.” Faye capped her lipstick and stuffed it into her purse. “You know how I love those sweaty jocks.”
Cassie rolled her eyes.
Faye immediately approached the boy to stake her claim. “Are you lost?” she called out to him. “I can help you find your way.”
His head shot up when he realized he was being spoken to. Cassie saw that his eyes were green like emeralds, as beautiful as Diana’s.