by L. J. Smith
“No, wait,” Adam said, beginning to look excited. “There are some things that that would explain. I know my grandmother wanders in her mind now and then, but she’s said things to me about my parents—about us kids forming a coven—that just might fit.” His blue-gray eyes were snapping with intensity.
“Here’s something else,” Deborah said, looking sideways at Nick. “Cassie’s grandma said my mom was going to marry Nick’s dad, but Black John made her marry my dad instead. That might explain why my mom freaks when you even mention magic, and why she always looks kind of guilty when she says Nick is growing up to look just like his father. It might explain a lot.”
Cassie noticed Nick, who was standing apart from the group as usual, in a dark corner. He was staring at the floor so hard, his eyes seemed to be about to bore a hole through it. “Yeah, it might,” he said so softly Cassie could barely hear the words. She wondered what he meant.
“It would explain why they yell at each other all the time, too—my parents, I mean,” Deborah was adding.
“All parents yell all the time,” Chris said with a shrug.
“All the parents around here are the ones who survived Black John,” said Cassie. “They survived because they didn’t go to fight him. My grandmother said that after eleven babies were born in one month, our parents realized what Black John was up to. He wanted a coven he could control completely, a coven of kids he could mold while they were growing up. You guys”—Cassie nodded around the group—“were going to be his coven.”
The members of the Club looked at one another. “But what about you, Cassie?” Laurel asked.
“I wasn’t born until later. Neither was Kori, you
know. We weren’t part of Black John’s plans; we were just regular kids. But you guys were going to be his. He arranged everything about you.”
“And the parents who didn’t like that idea went to fight Black John,” Deborah put in. “They killed him; they burned him and the house at Number Thirteen, but they died themselves doing it. The ones that are alive are the cowards who stayed at home.”
“Like my father,” Suzan said abruptly, looking up from her nails. “He gets really nervous if you mention the Vietnam Memorial or the Titanic or anything about anybody dying to save other people. And he won’t talk about my mom.”
Cassie saw startled looks around the Circle. There was a kind of recognition in many of the members’ eyes.
“Like my dad,” Diana said wonderingly. “He always talks about my mother being so brave, but he’s never said exactly why. No wonder, if he didn’t go, if he let her go alone.” She bit her lip, distressed. “What a horrible thing to find out about your own father.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got it worse,” Deborah said, looking grim. “Both my parents didn’t go. And neither did yours,” she added to the Hendersons, who looked at each other and scowled.
“While those of us with no parents are lucky?” Melanie asked, raising her eyebrows.
“At least you know they had guts,” Deborah said shortly. “You and Adam and Laurel and Nick have something to be proud of. I’d rather be raised by a grandmother or a great-aunt than have parents who scream at each other all the time because they’re so ashamed of themselves.”
Cassie was watching Nick again, and she saw something leave his face, some tension that had been there ever since she’d known him. It made him look different, softer somehow, more vulnerable. At that moment he raised his eyes and met hers, catching her in the act of watching him. Cassie wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, and to her surprise there was no hostility in his gaze. His mouth crooked slightly in a wry, relieved smile, and she found herself almost smiling back in sympathy.
Then she realized Faye was looking at them. Turning back, she spoke quickly to the entire group.
“The ones who died were killed because our parents didn’t all stick together. That’s what my grandmother said, anyway. She said that we were the ones in danger now, because Black John’s come to take us back. He still wants his coven, and now he’s alive again—a living, breathing man. She said that he won’t look burned and awful when we see him again, and we might not recognize him, but we have to be ready for him.”
“Why?” Adam asked, his level voice seeming loud in the sudden silence. “Just what did she think he’s going to do?”
Cassie lifted her hands. There was no longer a guilty secret between her and Adam, but every time she looked at him, she felt—a connection. A new connection, that of two people who’d been tried by fire and had come out stronger. There would always be an understanding between them.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” she told Adam. “Fool us, my grandma said. Get us to follow him the way our parents did. But how, I don’t know.”
“The reason I ask is because he may not want all of us,” Adam said, still quietly. “You said he arranged for the eleven of us to be born—and if he joins the coven as its leader, that makes twelve. But you weren’t one of the eleven, Cassie. Neither was Kori. And it looks like he got Kori out of the way.”
Diana drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, my God—Cassie! You’ve got to leave. You’ve got to get out of New Salem, go back to California—” She stopped, because Cassie was shaking her head.
“I can’t,” Cassie said simply. “My grandma told me I had to stay and fight. She said that was why my mom brought me back, so I could fight him. I may be half outsider, but I guess I’m one kid he didn’t plan, so maybe I have some kind of advantage.”
“Don’t be modest,” Deborah broke in caustically. “The old lady told us it was because your family was always the strongest. You’ve got the clearest sight and the most power, she said.”
“And I’ve got our Book of Shadows, now,” Cassie said, somewhat embarrassed, bending to take the red leather book out of her backpack. “My grandmother had it hidden behind a loose brick in the kitchen fireplace. Black John wanted it, so there must be something in it that he’s afraid of. I’m going to read it and try to find out what that something is.”
“What can the rest of us do?” Laurel asked. Cassie realized the question was directed at her; except for Faye, who was glowering, they were all looking at her expectantly. Flustered, she lifted her hands again and shook her head.
“We can talk to the old ladies in the town who’re still alive,” Deborah suggested. “That’s my idea, anyway. Cassie’s grandma said our parents have forgotten about magic, that they made themselves forget to survive. But I figure the old ladies might not have forgotten, and we can question them. Like Laurel’s Granny Quincey, and Adam’s grandma, old Mrs. Franklin. Even your great-aunt, Mel.”
Melanie looked doubtful. “Great-aunt Constance doesn’t approve of the old ways at all. She’s pretty—inflexible—about it.”
“And Granny Quincey is so frail,” Laurel said. “As for old Mrs. Franklin—well, she’s not always all there.”
“To put it tactfully,” Adam said. “Let’s face it, my grandmother can get pretty loopy at times. But I think Deborah’s right; they’re all we’ve got, so we have to make the most of them. We can try to pump some parents for information, too . . . what have we got to lose?”
“An arm and an eye, if it’s my father you’re pumping,” Suzan muttered, holding her fingers in a shaft of sunlight to examine her nails. But Chris and Doug Henderson grinned wildly and said they’d be happy to interrogate all the parents.
“We’ll say, ‘Hey, remember that guy you fried like Freddy Krueger sixteen years ago? Well, he’s back, so can you, like, give us any help in recognizing him?’” Doug said with relish.
“Didn’t your grandma say anything that might help?” Laurel asked Cassie.
“No . . . wait.” Cassie straightened up, excitement stirring inside her. “She said they identified Black John’s body in the burned house because of his ring, a lodestone ring.” She looked at Melanie. “You’re the crystal expert; so what’s lodestone?”
“It’s magnetite, black iron oxide,”
Melanie said, her cool gray eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “It’s like hematite, which is iron oxide too, but hematite’s blood-red when you cut it in thin slices. Magnetite is black and magnetic.”
Cassie tried to control her expression. Well, she’d known the hematite came from Black John’s house; maybe it had even been his stone. She shouldn’t be surprised that he wore a ring of something similar. Still, she felt a twinge of apprehension. She’d really better get rid of that piece of hematite. Right now it was sitting in a jewelry box in her bedroom, where she’d put it when Diana drove her over to her house to pick up her clothes this morning before school.
“Okay, we’ll keep on the lookout for that,” Adam was saying, sparing Cassie the necessity of speaking. “We can talk to the old ladies tomorrow—or maybe we should wait until after Cassie’s grandmother’s funeral.”
“All right,” Cassie murmured.
“You’re making a lot of suggestions, Adam,” Faye said, stung into speaking at last. Her arms were still folded over her chest, and her honey-pale skin was flushed with anger.
Adam looked back without expression. “Come to think of it, there was another suggestion I was going to make,” he said. “I think we should retake the leadership vote.”
Faye lunged toward him, golden eyes blazing. “You can’t do that!”
“Why not? If all of us agree,” Adam said calmly.
“Because it’s not in the traditions,” Faye hissed. “You look at any Book of Shadows and you’ll see! The vote is the vote; I won and it can’t be changed now. I’m the coven leader.”
Adam turned to the others for help, but Melanie was looking troubled and Diana was slowly shaking her head.
“She’s right, Adam,” Diana said softly. “The vote was fair, at the time. There aren’t any provisions for changing it.” Melanie nodded her unwilling agreement.
“And I don’t like you making all these plans without consulting me,” Faye went on, pacing again like a panther in a cage. Sparks actually seemed to flash from her eyes, the way they flashed from the red gems at her throat and on her fingers as she crossed patches of sunlight.
“Well, what do you want us to do?” Laurel said challengingly, tossing her long light-brown hair back. “You were the one who wanted Black John out, Faye. You said he was going to help us, to give us his power. Well, how about it? What do you say now that he’s here?”
Faye was breathing hard. “He may be testing us—”
“By killing Cassie’s grandma?” Deborah cut in harshly. “Don’t be stupid, Faye. I was there; I saw it. There’s no excuse for murdering old ladies.”
Faye glared at her defecting ex-lieutenant. “I don’t know why he did that! Maybe he has some plans that we don’t know about.”
“That’s the truest thing you’ve ever said,” Melanie interrupted. “He does have plans, Faye—to take us over. He’s already killed four people, and if we annoy him I’m sure he’ll be happy to kill us, too.”
Faye stopped pacing and smiled triumphantly. “He can’t,” she snapped. “If Cassie is right—and I’m not saying she is, but if she is—then he needs us for his coven. So he can’t kill us!”
“Well, he can’t kill all of us, anyway,” Adam said dryly. “He can only spare one.”
Silence fell. The members of the Circle glanced uneasily at one another.
“Well, then, maybe you’d each better be sure you’re not the one,” Faye said, smiling around at them. It wasn’t quite her old, lazy smile; it was more a baring of teeth. Before anyone could say anything she turned around and stalked out of the room. They could hear her footsteps going rapidly down the stairs, then the slam of the science building’s front door.
Cassie, Adam, and Diana looked at one another. Adam shook his head.
“We’re in trouble,” he said.
“Oh, so is that what we figured out at this meeting?” said Deborah.
Diana leaned her forehead against her hand wearily. “We need her,” she said. “She is the coven leader, and we need her on our side, not on his. We’d better go talk to her.”
Slowly, the Club members got up. Outside, it was too bright, and Cassie squinted. Seventh period had just ended and people were flooding out of the school exits. Cassie scanned the crowds but couldn’t see Faye.
“She’s probably gone home,” Diana was saying. “We’ll have to go after her . . .”
Cassie didn’t hear the rest. Among the milling students in the parking lot she had suddenly glimpsed a familiar face. A strange familiar face, one that didn’t belong here, one that she had to rack her brains to identify. For God’s sake, where had she seen that turned-up nose, that straw-colored hair, those cold hazel eyes before? It was someone she’d known quite well, someone she’d been used to looking at day after day, but that she’d been only too happy to forget about when she came to New Salem.
A feeling of heat and humidity overcame Cassie. A memory of sand underfoot, sweat trickling down her sides, suntan lotion greasy on her nose. A sound of lapping waves and a smell of overheated bodies and a sense of oppression.
Cape Cod.
The familiar girl was Portia.
Chapter 4
“Hey, watch out, Cassie,” Chris said, running into her as she stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong?”
“I just saw someone.” Cassie could feel how wide her eyes were as she stared into the crowd. Portia had disappeared in a sea of bobbing heads. “A girl I knew this summer . . .” Her voice trailed off as her mind boggled at the task of explaining Portia to the Circle.
But Adam had seen her too. “A witch hunter,” he said grimly. “The one whose brothers carried a gun. They’re seriously into it—not just as a hobby, but as an obsession.”
“And they’ve come here?” Deborah scoffed. Cassie looked back and forth between the dark-haired girl and Adam; obviously witch-hunting was something these people had encountered before. “They ought to know better.”
“Maybe it was a mistake—or an accident. Maybe her parents moved and she was just transferred here or something,” Laurel said, ever the optimist.
Cassie shook her head. “Portia doesn’t make mistakes,” she murmured. “And I pity the accident that tries to happen to her. Adam, what are we going to do?” She was almost more upset by this than she had been by the knowledge that Black John was loose somewhere in New Salem. That terror was mind-numbing, too much to deal with rationally. Fear of Portia was more familiar, and Cassie felt herself being sucked toward an old pattern of helplessness. She’d never been able to deal with Portia; she came out of every encounter tongue-tied and humiliated, defeated. Cassie shut her eyes.
I am not like that anymore. I won’t be like that, she thought. But dread churned in her stomach.
“We’ll deal with her,” Adam was beginning bleakly when Doug leaned in, his tilted blue-green eyes sparkling.
“Hey, she’s an enemy, right? Black John the Witch Dude said he wanted to help us destroy our enemies, right? So—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Melanie cut in swiftly. “Don’t, Doug. I mean it.”
Doug hunched his shoulders, but he looked at his twin sideways under his lashes.
“Bad magic,” Chris muttered, staring into the distance.
Cassie looked at Adam.
“Never,” Adam said reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Cassie. Never.”
Cassie was living with Diana now. “Obviously you can’t stay in that house alone,” Diana had said, and that afternoon she and Laurel and Melanie helped Cassie move her things. Adam and Deborah came too, for protection, pacing around the house restlessly, and most of the other Club members stopped by for one reason or another. Only Faye was conspicuously absent. No one had seen her since she’d disappeared from school.
The house itself wasn’t too badly damaged, aside from the strange burned places on the floor and some of the doors. The official story, as decided on by the adults who’d come last night to take Cassie’s grandmother’s body away, was that there
had been a fire and Mrs. Howard had been frightened into a heart attack. The Club hadn’t mentioned an intruder, and the police hadn’t even cordoned the house off. How the police thought a hardwood floor had caught fire in such a strange pattern, Cassie didn’t know. Nobody had asked her and she certainly wasn’t going down to the station to volunteer anything.
The house seemed empty and echoing despite the Circle members bustling around it. There was an emptiness inside Cassie, too. She’d never have thought she would miss her grandmother so much—just a stooped old lady with coarse gray hair and a mole on her cheek. But those old eyes had seen a lot, and those knotted hands had been deft and kind. Her grandmother had known things, and she had always made Cassie feel better.
“I wish I had a picture of her,” Cassie said softly. “My grandma.” Witches didn’t like being photographed, so she didn’t even have that.
“She was a pretty cool old broad,” Deborah said, slinging a tote bag over one shoulder and picking up a cardboard box full of books and CDs. “You want anything else?”
Cassie looked around the room. Yes, everything, she thought. She wanted her four-poster bed with the dusty-rose canopy and hangings, and her damask-upholstered chairs, and her solid mahogany chest that was just the color of Nick’s eyes.
“That’s bombé, that chest of drawers there,” she told Deborah. “It was made here in Massachusetts, the only place in the colonies that produced that style.”
“Yeah, I know,” Deborah said, unimpressed. “My house is full of it. It weighs a ton and you can’t take it. You want the stereo, or what?”
“No, I can use Diana’s,” Cassie said sadly. She felt as if she were leaving her life behind. I’m only moving down the road, she reminded herself as Deborah left.
“Cassie, if you want to stop by and see your mom this afternoon, it’s okay with Great-aunt Constance,” Melanie said, appearing in the doorway. “Any time before dinner.”
Cassie nodded, feeling something twist in her chest. Her mother. Of course her mom was going to be all right; Melanie’s great-aunt was willing to take care of her, and it would be better for her to stay at Melanie’s house than to be taken—somewhere else. Say what you mean: an institution, she told herself fiercely. If the doctors saw her they’d want to put her in an institution or a hospital. But she doesn’t belong there, and she’s going to be just fine. She needs to rest a little, that’s all.