by L. J. Smith
The silence this time had a different quality. Cassie saw Laurel look quickly at Melanie. Everyone knew that Cassie had spent several weeks on the Cape last summer. And everyone knew that Adam had been down in that area too, looking for the Master Tools. Cassie saw the dawning of startled understanding on the faces around her.
“It all started on the beach there,” Faye went on. She was obviously enjoying herself, as she always enjoyed being the center of attention. She looked sexy and commanding as she wet her lips and spoke throatily, addressing the entire group although her words were meant for Diana. “It was love at first sight, I guess—or at least they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. When Cassie came up here she even wrote a poem about it. Now how did that go?” Faye tilted her head to one side and recited:
“Each night I lie and dream about the one
Who kissed me and awakened my desire
I spent a single hour with him alone
And since that hour, my days are laced
with fire.”
“That’s right; that was her poem,” Suzan said. “I remember. We had her in the old science building and she didn’t want us to read it.”
Deborah was nodding, her petite face twisted in a scowl. “I remember too.”
“You may also remember how strange they both acted at Cassie’s initiation,” Faye said. “And how Raj seemed to take to Cassie so quickly, always jumping up on her and licking her and all. Well, it’s very simple really—it’s because they’d known each other before. They didn’t want any of us to know that, of course. They tried to hide it. But eventually they got caught. It was the night we first used the crystal skull in Diana’s garage—Adam was taking Cassie home, I guess. I wonder how that got arranged.”
Now it was the turn of Laurel and Melanie to look startled. Clearly they remembered the night of the first skull ceremony, when Diana had asked Adam to walk Cassie home, and Adam, after a brief hesitation, had agreed.
“They thought they were alone on the bluff—but somebody was watching. Two little somebodies, two little friends of mine . . .” Lazily, Faye worked her fingers, with their long, scarlet-tipped nails, as if stroking something. A flash of comprehension lighted Cassie’s mind.
The kittens. The damned little bloodsucking kittens that lived wild in Faye’s bedroom. Faye was saying the kittens were her spies? That she could communicate with them?
Cassie felt a chill at her core as she looked at the tall, darkly beautiful girl, sensing something alien and deadly behind those hooded golden eyes. She’d wondered all along who Faye had meant when she talked about her “friends” who saw things and reported back to her, but she’d never imagined this. Faye smiled in feline satisfaction and nodded at her.
“I have lots of secrets,” she said directly to Cassie. “That’s only one of them. But anyway,” she said to the rest of the group, “it was that night they got caught. They were—well, kissing. That’s the polite way to put it. The kind of kissing that starts spontaneous combustion. I suppose they
just couldn’t resist their lustful passions any longer.” She sighed.
Diana was looking at Adam now, looking for a denial. But Adam, his jaw set, was staring straight ahead at Faye.
Diana’s lips parted with the quick intake of her breath.
“And it wasn’t the only time, I’m afraid,” Faye continued, examining her nails with an expression of demure regret. “They’ve been doing it ever since, stealing secret moments when you weren’t looking, Diana. Like at the Homecoming dance—what a pity you weren’t there. They started kissing right in the middle of the dance floor. I guess maybe they went somewhere more private afterward . . .”
“That’s not true,” Cassie cried, realizing even as she said it that she was virtually confirming that everything else Faye had said was true.
Everyone was looking at Cassie now, and there was no more jeering from the Hendersons. Their tilted blue-green eyes were focused and intent.
“I wanted to tell you,” Faye said to Diana, “but Cassie just begged me not to. She was hysterical, crying and pleading—she said she would just die if you found out. She said she’d do anything. And that,” Faye sighed, looking off into the distance, “was when she offered to get me the skull.”
“What?” said Nick, his normally imperturbable face reflecting disbelief.
“Yes.” Faye’s eyes dropped to her nails again, but she couldn’t keep a smile from curling the corners of her lips. “She knew I wanted to examine the skull, and she said she’d get it for me if I didn’t tell. Well, what could I do? She was like a crazy person. I just didn’t have the heart to refuse her.”
Cassie sank her teeth into her lower lip. She wanted to scream, to protest that it hadn’t been that way . . . but what was the use?
Melanie was speaking. “And I suppose you didn’t have the heart to refuse the skull, either,” she said to Faye, her gray eyes scornful.
“Well . . .” Faye smiled deprecatingly. “Let’s put it this way—it was just too good a chance to miss.”
“This isn’t funny,” Laurel cried. She looked stricken. “I still don’t believe it—”
“Then how do you think she knew where to dig up the skull tonight?” Faye said smoothly. “She stayed over at your house, Diana, the night we traced the dark energy to the cemetery. And she snuck around and figured out where the skull was buried by reading your Book of Shadows—but only after she stole the key to the walnut cabinet and checked there.” Gleeful triumph shone out of Faye’s golden eyes; she couldn’t conceal it any longer.
And nobody in the group could deny the truth of Faye’s words any longer. Cassie had known where to dig up the skull. There was no way to get around that. Cassie could see it happening in face after face: the ending of disbelief and the slow beginning of grim accusation.
It’s like The Scarlet Letter, Cassie thought wildly as she stood apart with all of them looking at her. She might as well be standing up on a platform with an A pinned to her chest. Helplessly, she straightened her back and tried to hold her chin level, forcing herself to look back at the group. I will not cry, she thought. I will not look away.
Then she saw Diana’s face.
Diana’s expression was beyond stricken. She seemed simply paralyzed, her green eyes wide and blank and shattered.
“She swore to be loyal and faithful to the Circle, and never to harm anyone inside it,” Faye was saying huskily. “But she lied. I suppose it’s not surprising, considering she’s half outsider. Still, I think it’s gone on long enough; she and Adam have had enough time to enjoy themselves. So now you know the truth. And now,” Faye finished, looking over the ravaged members of the Circle, and especially her deathly still cousin, with an air of thoughtful gratification, “we’d probably better be getting home. It’s been a long night.” Lazily, smiling faintly, she started to move away.
“No.” It was a single word, but it stopped Faye in her tracks and it made everyone else turn toward Adam.
Cassie had never seen his blue-gray eyes look this way before—they were like silver lightning. He moved forward with his usual easy stride. There was no violence in the way he caught Faye’s arm, but the grip must have been like iron—Cassie could tell that because Faye couldn’t get away from it. Faye looked down at his fingers in offended surprise.
“You’ve had your turn,” Adam said to her. His voice was carefully quiet, but the words dropped from his lips like chips of white-hot steel. “Now it’s mine. And all of you”—he swung around on the group, holding them in place with his gaze—“are going to listen.”
Chapter 2
“You’ve told the story your way,” Adam said. “Some of it’s been close to the truth, and some of it’s been just plain lies. But none of it happened exactly the way you told it.”
He looked around the Circle again. “I don’t care what you think of me,” he said, “but there’s somebody else involved here. And she”—he glanced at Cassie, just long enough for her to see his blue-
gray eyes, still shining like silver—“doesn’t deserve to be put through this, especially not tonight.”
A few of the coven members, notably Laurel and Melanie, looked away, slightly ashamed. But the rest simply stared, angry and mistrustful.
“So what’s your side of the story?” Deborah said, scowling. Her expression said she felt she’d been taken in, and she didn’t like it.
“First of all, it wasn’t like that when Cassie and I met. It wasn’t love at first sight . . .” Adam faltered for a moment, looking into the distance. He shook his head. “It wasn’t love. She helped me, she saved me from four outsider guys with a gun. The witch-hunting kind of outsiders.” He looked hard at Chris and Doug Henderson.
“But she didn’t know—” Deborah began.
“She didn’t know what I was, then. She didn’t know what she was. Witches were something out of fairy tales to her. Cassie helped me just because I needed help. These guys were after me, and she stashed me in a boat and sent them all off running in the wrong direction down the beach. They tried to get her to tell where I was, they even hurt her, but she didn’t give me up.”
There was a silence. Deborah, who admired physical bravery above all other qualities, looked quizzical, her scowl smoothing out a little.
Faye, though, was squirming like a fish trying to get off a hook, and her expression was unpleasant. “How sweet. The brave heroine. So you just couldn’t resist fooling around with her.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Faye,” Adam said, giving Faye’s arm a little shake. “I didn’t do anything with her. We just—” He shook his head again. “I told her ‘thank you.’ I wanted her to know that I wouldn’t forget what she’d done—remember, at the time I still thought she was an outsider, and I’d never known an outsider who did anything like that for one of us. She was just this nice outsider girl; sort of quiet and pretty, and I wanted to say ‘thanks.’ But when I was looking at her I suddenly felt—as if we were connected somehow. It sounds stupid now, maybe, but I could almost see this connection . . .”
“The silver cord,” Cassie whispered. Her eyes were full, and she wasn’t aware she’d spoken aloud until she saw faces swing toward her.
Melanie’s eyebrows went up and Diana looked startled too, maybe just at hearing Cassie break the silence she’d kept so long. Suzan’s rosebud lips were pursed into an O.
“Yeah, I guess that was what it looked like,” Adam was saying, staring off into the distance again. “I don’t know—it was just this confused impression. But I did feel grateful to her, and I would have liked her for a friend—how about that, an outsider friend?” There were murmurs of amusement and unbelief. “And,” Adam said, looking straight at Diana, “that’s why I gave her the chalcedony rose you gave me.”
No murmurs this time. Grim silence.
“It was a token of friendship, a way to repay a debt,” Adam said. “I figured if she ever got in trouble, I could sense it through the crystal and maybe do something to help. So I gave it to her—and that was all I did.” He looked at Faye defiantly, and then even more defiantly around the group. “Except—yeah, right—I did kiss her. I kissed her hand.”
Laurel blinked. The Henderson brothers looked at Adam sideways, as if to say he was crazy but they guessed it was his own business what bits of girls he kissed. Faye tried to look scornful, but it didn’t come off very well.
“Then I left the Cape,” Adam said. “I didn’t see Cassie again until I came back up here for Kori’s initiation—which turned out to be Cassie’s initiation. But there’s one other important thing. In all the time I talked to Cassie I never told her who I was or where I was from. I never told her my name. So whatever she came up here and did—whatever poems she wrote, Faye—she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t know Diana and I were together. Not until that night when I showed up on the beach.”
“So I suppose that’s a good reason for pretending you didn’t know each other, for sneaking around behind everybody’s back and meeting each other,” Faye said, on the offensive again.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said tightly, looking as if he’d like to shake Faye again. “We didn’t sneak anywhere. The first time we ever talked alone was the night the skull ceremony in Diana’s garage went wrong. Yeah, that night on the bluff when your little spies saw us, Faye. But d’you know what Cassie said to me in our first conversation alone since we’d met? She said she was in love with me—and that she knew it was wrong. Ever since she’d found out it was wrong, ever since she realized that I wasn’t just some guy on the beach, but Diana’s boyfriend, she’d been fighting against it. She’d even taken an oath—a blood oath—not to ever show anybody, by word or look or deed, how she felt about me. She didn’t want Diana to find out and feel bad, or feel sorry for her. Does that sound like somebody who’s trying to sneak around?”
The Circle looked back at him. Soberly, Melanie said, “Let me get this right. You’re saying there’s nothing at all to Faye’s accusations?”
Adam swallowed. “No,” he said quietly. “That’s not what I’m saying. That night on the bluff . . .” He stopped and swallowed again, and then his voice hardened. “I can’t explain what happened, except that it was my fault, not Cassie’s. She did everything she could to avoid me, to keep out of my way. But once we were alone we were drawn together.” He looked at Diana without flinching, although the pain was evident in his face. “I’m not proud of myself, but I never meant to hurt you. And Cassie is completely innocent. The only reason she was speaking to me at all that night was that she wanted to give me back the chalcedony rose—so I could give it back to you. In all of this, she’s never been anything but honest and honorable. No matter what it cost her.” He stopped and his mouth turned grim. “If I’d known she was being blackmailed by this snake—”
“I beg your pardon,” Faye interrupted, golden eyes flashing dangerously.
Adam returned the look, just as dangerous. “That’s what it was, wasn’t it, Faye? Blackmail. Your little spies saw us that night—when we were saying good-bye, and swearing never to see each other alone again, and you decided to make the most of it. I knew there was something going on with you and Cassie after that, but I could never figure out what it was. Cassie was scared to death all of a sudden, but why she didn’t just come to me and tell me what you were up to . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked toward Cassie.
Cassie shook her head mutely. How could she explain? “I didn’t want you caught up in it too,” she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “I was afraid you’d tell Diana, and Faye said if Diana found out . . .”
“What?” Adam said. When Cassie shook her head again he gave Faye’s arm a little shake. “What, Faye? If Diana found out it would kill her? Wreck the coven? Is that what you told Cassie?”
Faye smirked. “If I did, it was only the truth, wasn’t it? As things turned out.” She wrenched away from Adam.
“So you used her love for Diana against her. You blackmailed her to make her help you find the skull, right? I’ll bet it took some persuading.”
Adam was only guessing, but his guess was dead on target. Cassie found herself nodding. “I found out where it was—”
“But how?” Diana interrupted, blurting it, speaking for the first time directly to Cassie. Cassie looked into the clear green eyes with the tears hanging on the dark lashes and spoke directly back.
“I did what Faye said,” she said tremulously. “First I looked in the walnut cabinet—remember when I stayed overnight and you woke up with me in the room? When the skull wasn’t there I thought I’d have to give up, but then I had a dream. It made me remember something I’d seen in your Book of Shadows, about purifying an evil object by burying it in sand. So I went and searched the beach and finally found the skull under that ring of stones.”
Cassie paused, looking at Faye, her voice growing stronger. “Once I had my hands on it, though, I realized I couldn’t give it to Faye. I just couldn’t. But she had followed me an
d she took it anyway.”
Cassie took a deep breath, making herself meet Diana’s eyes again, her own eyes begging Diana to understand. “I know I shouldn’t have let her have it. I should have stood up to her, then and afterward, but I was weak and stupid. I’m sorry now—I wish I’d just come and told you in the beginning, but I was so afraid you’d be hurt . . .” Tears were choking her voice now, and making her vision blur. “And as for what Adam said—about it all being his fault—you have to know that isn’t true. It was my fault, and at the Halloween dance I tried to make him kiss me, because I was so upset by then and I thought that nothing really mattered, since I was evil anyway.”
There was wetness on Diana’s cheeks, but now she looked taken aback. “Since what?”
“Since I was evil,” Cassie said, hearing the terrible, stark truth in the simple words. “Since I was responsible for killing Jeffrey Lovejoy.”
The entire coven stared at her, appalled.
“Wait a minute,” Melanie said. “Run that by me one more time.”
“Whenever anybody used the skull, it released dark energy, which went out and killed somebody,” Cassie said carefully and clearly. “Faye and I were the ones who used the skull before Jeffrey was killed. If it wasn’t for me, she couldn’t have used it, and Jeffrey would still be alive. So, you see, I’m responsible.”
Animation was returning to Diana’s eyes. “But you didn’t know,” she said.
Cassie shook her head fiercely. “That’s no excuse. There’s no excuse for any of it—not even for doing worse things because I thought I was evil anyway and what did it matter? It did matter. I listened to Faye and I let her bully me.” And I kept the hematite, she thought, but there was no point in getting into that. She shrugged, blinking more tears away. “I even let her make me vote for her for leader. I’m sorry, Diana—I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did it.”