by L. J. Smith
“Yes,” Cassie said easily. But she knew she would really have to try.
Scarlett’s forehead was cold and hard; it was almost like touching a corpse. Adam lit a candle and swung it above Scarlett’s body, back and forth from the top of her head, down to the bottoms of her feet. Then he recited the chant. “I banish you from New Salem, Scarlett, with the power of fire.”
Cassie imagined a soothing white light. She pictured it growing brighter and more intense until it had enveloped not only Scarlett but herself and Adam as well.
Adam secured the lit candle in a holder upon the floor, just north of Scarlett’s head. Then he scattered the fistful of dirt he’d collected from the front yard onto the floor, encircling Scarlett within it. He said, “I banish you from New Salem, Scarlett, with the power of earth.”
Cassie could smell the loamy trail of dirt and was reminded of the elemental wholesomeness of the earth, the cleanliness of stark terrain. She imagined the white light filling the whole room, and then the entire house from the inside out.
Next Adam reached for a cup of water he’d set on the table. He dipped his hand deep into the cup and then sprinkled drops of water, like rain, over Scarlett’s skin. “I banish you from New Salem, Scarlett, with the power of water,” he said.
Finally Adam went to open the front door of the house and a large window on the opposite side, creating a strong cross-breeze in the main room. The rush of air blew out the candle he’d set on the floor. “I banish you from New Salem, Scarlett, with the power of air,” he said.
He placed his hands gently over Cassie’s, joining her in holding Scarlett’s forehead. He closed his eyes and said, “Fire, earth, water, and air, and the power of the Master Tools, mote it be.”
Scarlett stirred and Adam opened his eyes. “That’s it,” he said.
Cassie let her hands drop to her sides. “Did it work?”
“We’ll find out,” Adam said. “But after all this, I don’t think she’ll be much of a threat anymore.”
Cassie nodded, but she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t imagine a time when Scarlett would no longer be a menace.
Adam picked up Black John’s Book of Shadows and gestured to the door. “What do you say we get out of here?”
Cassie looked Scarlett over one last time and nodded.
She went to the front door and put one hand on the knob. With her other hand, she waved her fingers at Scarlett. “I tollere malum incantatores,” she said, the words of the reversal spell.
Scarlett’s color came back and she gasped for breath just as Cassie and Adam stepped outside, slamming the door behind them.
Chapter 19
Once they were back at Cassie’s house, Adam and Cassie took a few minutes to sit down on the front porch swing and collect themselves. It was dark, and they both began to yawn now that their adrenaline had settled. Adam turned to Cassie and shyly smiled. “Thanks for saving my butt back there.”
Cassie was comforted by Adam’s ability to make light of the situation—it meant he was beginning to get over the shock of seeing her overcome by dark magic. Maybe things could finally go back to normal for them. But first she had to address what he’d done.
“I owed you one,” Cassie said. “But it was stupid of you to go after Scarlett by yourself. You could have been killed.”
“It didn’t seem stupid in my head. I knew where you’d hidden the book, and I had hoped to trade it for the Master Tools.”
“But do you know how dangerous that book could be in Scarlett’s possession?”
“To be honest with you, Cassie, I did it because I wanted to get the book away from you. I thought getting it out of your hands might save you from its darkness. You have to believe me. I was trying to help.”
Cassie recalled how the book seemed to be summoning her each time Scarlett turned one of its pages, how it beckoned her to attack Scarlett with black magic.
“After how I acted back there,” Cassie said, “I’m worried it’s too late. I think the book has done its damage.”
“No. Don’t talk like that,” Adam said. “It was a close call, but nothing irreparable was done.”
Cassie’s heart instantly flooded with regret. She knew this was the moment to tell Adam what had happened the night before with Nick. If she didn’t tell him now, she may never have the courage again.
“I did do something irreparable,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”
“What did you do?” Adam asked, but when Cassie remained silent, he tried a less accusatory tone. “Whatever it is, we can work through it,” he said. “As long as you’re honest with me.” Cassie still picked up on the hint of dread in his voice.
“Last night,” Cassie said, feeling sick with shame, “I kissed Nick.”
Adam’s whole body constricted. “I can’t believe him,” he mumbled to the air.
“It was all me,” Cassie insisted. “Nick was a perfect gentleman. I practically forced myself on him.”
Adam glared straight ahead for a few seconds.
“I am so unbelievably sorry,” Cassie said.
She was hoping Adam would say something in return, but he was dead silent.
“I know it’s no excuse,” Cassie continued. “But when it happened it was like the book was making me want to hurt you. Like it had taken over my mind and my body. I couldn’t control myself.”
“I get it,” Adam said. His voice cracked with emotion. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“But I want you to understand that I didn’t mean for it to happen. That’s not how I feel about Nick. I know that still doesn’t make it okay, and you have every right to hate me—”
“I can never hate you,” Adam said. “But I can’t say I’m not a little hurt.”
Cassie placed her hand on Adam’s knee, relieved he was at least speaking to her. “It will never happen again,” she said. “I promise.”
“I know it won’t happen again. Especially after we figure out what to do with that book.” Adam glanced at the book, which was resting between them alongside the Master Tools. “It’s the book I hate, not you.”
A pang of worry shot through Cassie’s chest. What if Adam’s resentment for the book caused him to do something drastic? He wouldn’t try to destroy it, would he?
“We’ve both made mistakes recently,” Adam said. “And we have bigger concerns to deal with. One kiss is hardly the worst of them.”
“Bigger concerns,” Cassie said. “Like me being altogether evil.”
Adam shook his head. “You’re not evil, Cassie. One day, I promise, our lives will be normal enough that I will sufficiently freak out if you kiss another guy of your own volition, not because a cursed book made you do it.”
Cassie had to laugh as Adam gave the porch swing a little nudge, sending them gently back and then forward again.
Adam took a long breath in, held it, and exhaled heavily, as if he were blowing out every hurt feeling and negative thought within him. He looked longingly at Cassie and then leaned over and kissed her.
Cassie had never felt so gratified by a kiss in all her life. For a few blissful minutes she forgot all her troubles. She was healed. She was with Adam and that was all that mattered.
Adam must have felt it, too, because his passion for Cassie now was pressing and pleading. He kissed her like he hadn’t seen her in years, like he wanted to erase her kiss with Nick from her mind and claim her for himself.
But Cassie finally, reluctantly pulled away. “We should go inside,” she said. “We can continue this later in private, after we tell everyone about getting the Master Tools back.”
Adam agreed and the two of them got up from the swing. They straightened their clothes and gathered the book and Tools to carry them inside.
“They’re going to freak out when they see these,” Adam said, holding the Tools up like a trophy. They glistened in the moonlight.
“I know,” Cassie said. “But maybe we can leave out the worst parts of the story about how we
got them back?”
Adam didn’t argue. The two of them made their way through the house and jogged down the basement stairs. They excitedly revealed the hidden door—but on the opposite side, they found an empty room.
“Hello!” Cassie called out. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Within a few seconds her joviality was quelled. This was no game of hide-and-seek. Not a single member of the Circle was to be found in the room.
There were laptops left open and dishes with food on them still on the table. Laurel’s desk lamp hadn’t been turned off and neither had the light in the bathroom.
Cassie set down her father’s book and the Master Tools, and a knot formed in her throat. “Where could they have gone?” she said. But she couldn’t state the worry nagging her: If their friends were discovered, they most likely had been killed.
“There’s no way the hunters got in here.” Adam scrutinized the room in a desperate search for clues. “They must be with the rest of the Circle. Text Diana.”
Cassie rummaged through her bag for her phone. She’d silenced it on her way to Stockbridge and forgot to turn the ringer back on. Now a list of urgent text messages, mostly from Nick, stared her in the face.
She scanned through them nervously. “Faye went after the principal,” she said to Adam. “The rest of them are chasing after her, to keep her from doing anything stupid.”
“Too late.” Adam slammed his hand down on the table. “That half-translated witch-hunter curse will never work.”
“The last text says they were headed to the school.” Cassie stuffed her phone back into her pocket. “It was sent twenty minutes ago.”
Without another word the two of them rushed upstairs. Cassie felt heat stealing into her face and a twisting panic in her stomach. She tried to catch her breath once they were inside Adam’s car, but it was no use.
Adam floored the accelerator pedal, his eyes wild. Cassie watched the speedometer arc steadily from left to right. He had to be driving ninety miles per hour, but it still didn’t feel fast enough. If they didn’t make it to the school in time … Cassie couldn’t fathom it.
But she had to be mentally prepared. Even if their friends were lying dead on the ground when they arrived, Cassie still had to be ready to fight.
Chapter 20
Arriving at the school, Adam and Cassie were unsure where to look first. The sky was dark as midnight, but there was enough security lighting to give them a decent view of the grounds. From the parking lot they scanned the empty bleachers and vacant football field. They checked the perimeter of the building, and the outer wing where the principal’s office was located.
“Do you think they’re inside?” Cassie asked. “Maybe we should split up.”
“Up there,” Adam said. “I think that’s them.”
There was movement on the roof of the building, barely visible shadows, but clashing voices echoed down to the ground. Cassie pushed away her fear and forced the trembling within her stomach to steady her. If there were sounds of a scuffle, that meant there was still a fight.
Adam rushed for the rusty fire escape that ran up the side of the building and Cassie followed just behind him. They quieted their steps as they neared the top. There, they discovered Diana, Melanie, Chris, Doug, and Sean hiding behind the metal railing.
Diana noticed them and put her finger over her lips to indicate they should be quiet. Cassie and Adam moved to where they could view the action at the center of the roof. It was a formidable sight.
Nick, Faye, Laurel, Deborah, and Suzan were aligned in a tight defensive circle. They appeared trapped and powerless, as if they’d been confined to a cage. And their marks glowed bright on their chests, like iridescent hearts beating over their clothes.
The hunter marks must shine in the presence of the relics, Cassie thought. Three hunters surrounded the group, and each of them held a gray stone carved into the dreadful shape of the hunter symbol.
It was the principal and two others—one man and one woman. Cassie wondered where Max was. Did Diana have something to do with his absence? But there wasn’t any time for questions.
The man was older—Cassie would even call him elderly. He had long white hair and eyes the color of ice. The woman appeared to be around Cassie’s mother’s age. She was rail thin and had mousy brown hair and brown eyes, but there was no mistaking the resemblance between the two.
Through her research, Laurel had identified two of the last remaining hunters as Jedediah Felton—an ancestor of one of the most feared hunter families in history—and his daughter, Louvera Felton. Now here they were in the flesh.
The Feltons didn’t look as Cassie had expected they would. They seemed so normal. In Cassie’s imagination, the hunters were giant tribal-looking men wearing some sort of traditional garb, like a robe a martial-arts master would wear. But these hunters would have passed for three average adults if not for the ancient relics they wielded like weapons.
“They don’t look so tough,” Adam said. “Without those stones, they’d have nothing on us.”
“But those stones contain power that goes back over six hundred years,” Diana whispered. “Isn’t that what Laurel said?”
Cassie nodded.
“What are they mumbling?” Adam asked. “Do you think it’s the killing spell?”
The hunters chanted in a low hum, repeating an ominous phrase:
I sum eius agens,
I occidere in eius nomen—
I sum eius agens,
I occidere in eius nomen—
Just then, all five of their friends on the center of the roof dropped to their knees. They held their skulls as if they were suffering from terrible migraines.
“It has to be the killing curse,” Cassie said. She made a motion to lunge forward and reveal herself, but Diana grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back.
“Wait,” she said. “If we show ourselves, we’ll be trapped just like the others. The witch-hunter curse we translated must not have worked. Otherwise Faye and the rest of them wouldn’t be in this state.”
Laurel and Suzan were writhing on the ground at the hunters’ feet. Faye was on her knees, screaming out in pain. Nick cringed, holding his head like it was bleeding, and Deborah looked like she had passed out from the torture.
“We have to try something,” Cassie said. “We probably only have a few minutes, maybe even seconds.”
“A blocking spell,” Adam said. “To turn the energy of their curse back on them. With the seven of us, we might have enough power.” He closed his eyes and reached for Cassie’s hands. “Repeat after me: Hunters, disperse. We reverse your curse.”
The group of them linked arms and did as Adam said, though Cassie didn’t have much faith that such a generic spell could be strong enough to have an effect on those ancient relics. Still, she concentrated all her energy on the chant. “Hunters, disperse. We reverse your curse.”
At first nothing happened, but then the hunters paused. Continuing their low hum, they looked from side to side. The magic had caught their attention, but they continued with the chant.
Then Cassie felt a change. A heated power. Not knowing where it came from, a string of new words sprouted from her mouth. “Venatores dispergam. Nos vertite maledictionem.” The words were rasping, guttural sounds that rose from deep in her throat. She immediately recognized the feeling as dark magic, but she allowed it to come. Her whole being trembled with a painful ecstasy.
The hunters were truly startled now. They halted their chanting and searched the shadows for the source of the spell. They waved their relics, but they seemed not to understand what they were feeling. They only knew it wasn’t good.
“Venatores dispergam. Nos vertite maledictionem,” Cassie said again.
Mr. Boylan scolded the others for breaking their concentration. “Focus!” he shouted. “We’re not finished yet.”
But within seconds the old man stopped reciting the curse. His face reddened and he clutched his chest. “
It’s an ancient,” he said. “I don’t know how, but I’m sure of it.”
Jedediah doubled over, and began pounding on his own heart. “Find him,” he screamed out to the others.
But Cassie continued uttering her dark words, louder now that she saw how well they were working. Adam and the others stood silently by, their arms still linked.
Louvera made a motion to go to her father’s aid, but then she also grabbed her chest as if she were having a heart attack. She gasped for air, unable to speak.
Mr. Boylan was visibly weakening. His spine curved downward, bending his usually rigid posture into a rounded question mark. All the color had drained from his face and his whole body shook with exhaustion.
Jedediah climbed to his hands and knees and began crawling to the hatch door in the roof that led down into the school building.
Louvera cried out with whatever air she had left, “Release them!” She choked and crawled in the same direction as the old man, and slid down the gaping hole in the roof to safety.
But the principal refused to run away. He continued reciting the curse, holding tight to his relic, as he fell to his knees.
Cassie took a few steps forward, directing her words straight for him. He tried to stand back up, but fell down again.
One by one, the Circle members who had fallen began slowly rising to their feet. Faye and Laurel, then Nick and Suzan, and finally Deborah were shaking off the pain that had debilitated them only minutes earlier.
Cassie could feel herself growing stronger as Mr. Boylan became weaker, as if she were sucking out his power and keeping it for her own use. She watched him shrivel before her eyes, panting like a cowardly animal. He clutched his chest and cried out. But Cassie felt no remorse for him whatsoever. She was only disgusted by his frailty. She was sure he would remain there withering to his death, and she would let him.
Then, one last time, he got to his feet. He wobbled and, still unsure where the real opposition was coming from, he honed in on Faye. In a final desperate effort, he cast all his remaining energy at her, shouting the killing curse one last time as loud as he could.