by L. J. Smith
The first small bedroom was empty. So was the second. That left only the large room over the kitchen.
Cassie walked toward it without faltering. On the threshold she saw that the red glow in here was brighter, like the surface of the shadowed moon.
She went in.
He was inside, standing so tall that his head almost touched the uneven ceiling. He was giving off a light of pure evil. His face was triumphant and cruel, and inside, Cassie thought she could see the outlines of the skull.
Cassie stopped and looked at him.
“Father,” she said, “I’ve come.”
“With your coven,” Black John said. “I’m proud of you.” He extended a hand to her, which she ignored.
“You brought them here very nicely,” he went on. “I’m glad they had the sense to acclaim you as leader.”
“It’s only temporary,” Cassie said.
Black John smiled. His eyes were on the Master Tools. “You wear them well,” he said.
Cassie felt a slow writhe of panic in her stomach. Everything was going according to his plan, she could see that. She was here, with the tools he’d wanted for so long, on his territory, in his house. And she was afraid of him.
“There’s no need to be frightened, Cassandra,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. We don’t need to quarrel. We have the same purpose: to unify the coven.”
“We don’t have the same purpose.”
“You are my daughter.”
“I’m no part of you!” Cassie cried. He was playing on her emotions, looking for her weaknesses. And every minute the hurricane was getting closer to land. Cassie sought desperately for a distraction, and she glimpsed something behind the tall man.
“Faye,” she said. “I didn’t see you there, standing in his shadow.”
Faye stepped forward indignantly. She was wearing the black silk shift, like a negative image of Cassie’s, and her own diadem, bracelet, and garter. She lifted her head proudly and gazed at Cassie with smoldering golden eyes.
“My two queens,” Black John said fondly. “Dark and bright. Together, you will rule the coven—”
“And you’ll rule us?” Cassie asked sharply.
Black John smiled again. “It’s a wise woman who knows when to be ruled by a man.”
Faye wasn’t smiling. Cassie looked at her sideways.
Black John didn’t appear to notice. “Do you want me to stop the hurricane?” he asked Cassie.
“Yes. Of course.” This was what she’d come for, to hear his terms. And to try and find his weak point. Cassie waited.
“Then all you have to do is swear an oath. A blood oath, Cassandra; you’re familiar with those.” He held a hand out to Faye without looking at her. Faye stared at the hand for an instant, then reached down to pull a dagger out of her garter. The black-handled knife used for casting circles on the ground. Black John held it up, then he cut his own palm. Blood welled out sluggishly, dark red.
Like Adam, Cassie thought wildly, her heart accelerating. Like the oath Adam and I swore.
The tall man held the dagger toward Cassie. When she made no move to step forward and take it, he held it toward Faye. “Give it to her,” he said.
Faye took the dagger and handed it to Cassie, handle first. Slowly, Cassie’s fingers grasped it. Faye moved back to Black John’s side.
“It’s just a little blood, Cassandra. Swear obedience to me and I’ll release the hurricane, let it turn harmlessly back out to sea. Then you and I can begin our reign together.”
The dagger was actually trembling in Cassie’s hand. There was no way to steady her pulse now. She knew what she was going to do, but she needed time to get her nerve up.
“How did you kill Jeffrey?” she said. “And why?”
The tall man looked momentarily taken aback, then he recovered. “By getting him to sit down for a moment; and to cause dissent between our kind and the outsiders,” he said. He smiled. “Besides, I didn’t like his attention to my daughter. He wasn’t one of us, Cassandra.”
Cassie wished Portia could see her “Mr. Brunswick” now. “Why did you use Sean?” she asked.
“Because he was weak, and he already wore a stone that I could influence,” he said. “Why all these questions? Don’t you realize—”
He broke off then and moved lightning fast. While he was in the middle of speaking, Cassie had thrown the dagger at him. She’d never thrown a knife before, but some ancestor who’d worn the Master Tools must have, because the bracelet seemed to guide her right arm, and the dagger flashed end over end straight toward Black John’s heart. But the tall man was simply too quick. He caught the dagger in midair—by the blade—and stood holding it, looking at Cassie.
“That was unworthy of you, Cassandra,” he said. “And hardly any way to behave to your father. Now I’m angry with you.”
He didn’t sound angry; his voice was cold as death and poisonous. Cassie had thought she’d been afraid before, but that had been nothing. Now she was truly afraid. Her knees were weak and the pounding of her heart shook her whole body.
Black John tossed the dagger back and it stuck in the floor in front of Cassie, quivering. “The hurricane is about to reach land,” he said. “You don’t have a choice; you’ve never had a choice. Take the oath, Cassandra. Do it!”
I’m frightened, Cassie thought. Please, I’m so frightened . . . She was wearing the Master Tools, but she had no idea how to use them.
“I am your father. Do as I tell you.”
If only I knew how to use them . . .
“You have no power to defy me!”
“Yes, I do,” Cassie whispered. In her mind, a door opened, a silver light dawned. Like the moon coming out of a shadow, it illuminated everything. She understood the spell to turn aside evil now. Invoke the power which is yours alone . . . these powers have you over all that is evil . . .
Suddenly, she felt as if a long line of witches were standing behind her. She was only the last, only one of them, and all their knowledge was hers. Their knowledge and their power. Words rose to her lips.
“Power of moon have I over thee,” she said shakily.
Black John stared at her, seeming to recoil.
“Power of moon have I over thee,” Cassie repeated, more strongly. “Power of sun have I over thee.”
Black John stepped back.
Cassie stepped forward, searching for the next words in her mind. But she didn’t say them. A voice said them for her, a voice behind her.
“Power of stars have I over thee. Power of planets have I over thee.”
It was Diana, her fair hair stirred as if in a light wind. She came to stand behind Cassie, tall and proud and slender, like a silver sword. Cassie’s heart swelled; she had never been more glad to have anybody disregard her instructions in her life.
“Power of tides have I over thee. Power of rain have I over thee,” said Adam. He was right beside Diana, his hair shining like firelight, like rubies, in the red glow.
Deborah was behind him, her dark hair tumbling around a small face fierce with concentration. “Power of wind have I over thee,” she said.
Nick joined her, his eyes cold and angry. “Power of ice have I over thee.”
And Laurel. “Power of leaf have I over thee. Power of root have I over thee.”
And Melanie. “Power of rock have I over thee.”
They were all here, all joining Cassie, adding their voices to hers. And Black John was cowering before them.
“Power of thunder have I over thee,” Doug told him, and, “Power of lightning have I over thee,” shouted Chris.
“Power of dew have I over thee,” Suzan said, and pushed a small figure in front of her. It was Sean, and he was shaking, seemingly terrified to come face to face with the man who had controlled his mind. But his voice rose in a shriek.
“Power of blood have I over thee!”
Black John was against the red wall of the house now, and he looked shrunken. His features had lost definit
ion, and the red glow had died, leaving him black in reality.
But there were only eleven in Cassie’s coven; the Circle wasn’t complete. And only a full Circle could stand against this man.
As Sean’s yell died, Black John straightened. He took a step toward them, and Cassie’s breath caught.
“Power of fire have I over thee!” a husky voice cried, and he fell back. In astonishment, Cassie looked at Faye. The tall girl seemed to have gained height as Black John had lost it, and she looked every inch a barbarian queen as the stood glaring at him. Then she moved to stand beside Cassie. “Power of darkness have I over thee,” she said, each word a stabbing knife. “Power of night have I over thee!”
Now, thought Cassie. He was weak, wounded, and they were united. Now, if ever, was the time to defeat him.
But neither Fire nor Water had done it before. Black John had been defeated twice, had died twice, but always he’d come back. If they were going to get rid of him permanently they had to do more than destroy his body. They had to destroy the source of his power—the crystal skull.
If we only had a larger crystal, Cassie thought. But there was no larger crystal. She thought desperately of the protruding outcrops of granite in New Salem . . . but they weren’t crystal, they wouldn’t hold and focus energy. Besides, she didn’t just need a big crystal, she needed an enormous one. One so huge—so huge . . .
I like to think of crystals as a beach, she heard Melanie’s laughing voice say in her mind. A crystal is just fossilized water and sand . . .
Along with the words came a picture. A glimpse of Cassie’s own hand that first day on the beach at Cape Cod. “Look down,” Portia had hissed, seeing Adam coming, and so Cassie had looked down, ashamed, staring at her own fingers trailing in the sand. In the sand that glittered with tiny flecks of garnet, with green and gold and brown and black crystals. A beach. A beach.
“With me!” Cassie shouted. “All of you think with me—give me your power! Now!”
She pictured it clearly, the long beach stretching parallel to Crowhaven Road. More than a mile of it, of crystal piled on crystal. She sent her thoughts racing toward it, gathering the power of the coven behind her. She focused on it, through it, looking now at Black John—at the crystal skull with its grinning teeth and its hollow eyes. And then she pushed with her mind.
She felt it go out of her, like a rush of heat, like a solar flare with the energy of the entire Circle driving it. It poured through her into the beach, and from the beach into Black John, focused and intensified, with all the power of Earth and Water combined. And this time when the skull exploded it was in a shattering rain of crystal like the blasted amethyst pendant.
There was a scream that Cassie would never forget. Then the floor of the house at Number Thirteen disappeared from under her feet.
Chapter 16
“Are you okay?” Cassie asked Suzan, whom she happened to be lying on. “Is everybody okay?”
The Circle was lying scattered over the vacant lot as if some giant hand had dropped them. But everyone was moving.
“I think my arm’s broken,” Deborah said, rather calmly. Laurel crawled over to her to look at it.
Cassie stared around the lot. The house was gone. Number Thirteen was a barren piece of land again. And the light was changing.
“Look,” Melanie said, her face turned up. This time there was joy and reverence in her voice.
The moon was showing silver again, just a thin crescent, but now the crescent was growing. The blood color was gone.
“We did it,” Doug said, his blond hair disheveled more wildly than Cassie had ever been it. He grinned. “Hey! We did it!”
“Cassie did it,” Nick said.
“Is he really gone?” Suzan asked sharply. “Gone for good this time?”
Cassie looked around again, sensing nothing but brisk air and the endlessly moving sea. The earth was quiet. There was no light but moon and stars.
“I think he is,” she whispered. “I think we won.” Then she turned quickly to Adam. “What about the hurricane?”
He was fumbling at his belt with the radio. “I hope it’s not broken,” he said, and put the headphones on, listening.
Limping and crawling, they all gathered around him, and waited.
He kept listening, shaking his head, flicking the channels. His face was tense. Cassie saw Diana beside her, and reached out to take her hand. They sat together, hanging on. Then Adam sat straight suddenly.
“Gale force winds on Cape Cod . . . storm moving northeast . . . northeast! It’s turned! It’s heading out to sea!”
The Henderson brothers cheered, but Melanie hushed them. Adam was talking again.
“High tides . . . flooding . . . but it’s okay, nobody’s hurt. Property damage, that’s all. We did it! We really did it!”
“Cassie did it—” Nick was beginning again, irritably, but Adam had leaped up and grabbed Cassie and was whirling her in the air. Cassie shrieked and kept shrieking as he swooped her around. She hadn’t seen Adam this happy since . . . well, she couldn’t remember when she’d seen Adam this happy. Since the beach on Cape Cod, she guessed, when he’d flashed that daredevil smile at her. She’d forgotten, in their months of trouble, that grimness wasn’t Adam’s natural state.
Like Herne, she thought, when she was deposited, breathless and flushed, back on her feet. The horned god of the forest was a god of joyful celebration. Chris and Doug were trying to dance with her now, both together. Adam was waltzing Diana. Cassie collapsed, laughing, just as something large and furry hit her and rolled her over.
“Raj!” Adam said. “I told you to stay at home!”
“He’s about as obedient as all of you,” Cassie gasped, hugging the German shepherd as his wet tongue lapped her face. “But I’m glad you came. All you guys, not the dog,” she said, looking around at them.
“We couldn’t just leave you in there,” Sean said.
Doug snickered, but he slapped the smaller boy on the back. “’Course not, tiger,” he said, and rolled his eyes at Cassie.
Cassie was looking at Faye, who had been sitting a little apart from everyone else, the way Nick used to do. “I’m glad you came to join us too,” she said.
Faye didn’t look anything at all like a stenographer. Her mane of pitch-black hair was loose over her shoulders, and the black shift exposed more pale honey-colored skin than it covered. She looked a little bit like a panther and a lot like a jungle queen.
Her heavy-lidded golden eyes met Cassie’s directly, and a small smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
Then she looked down. “I can do my nails red again, anyway,” she said lazily.
Cassie turned away, hiding a smile of her own. That was probably as much acknowledgment from Faye as she was ever going to get.
“If you guys are all finished yelling and dancing,” Laurel said, in a carefully patient voice, “can we go home now? Because Deborah’s arm is broken.”
Cassie jumped up guiltily. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Aw, it’s nothing,” Deborah said. But she let Nick and Laurel help her up.
As they walked back, Cassie was struck by another thought. Her mother. Black John was dead, the hurricane was detoured, but what about her mother?
“Can we take Deborah to the crones?” she asked Diana.
“That’s the best place, anyway,” Diana said. “They know the most about healing.” She looked at Cassie with understanding in her green eyes, then she took Cassie’s hand and squeezed it.
I’ve got to prepare myself, Cassie thought as they approached Number Four. I’ve got to be ready. She could be dead. She could be just the same as when I left there . . . lying on that bed. She could stay that way forever.
Whatever happens, I kept my promise. I stopped Black John. He won’t ever hurt her again.
Cassie glanced up at the moon before stepping up to Melanie’s house. It was a thick crescent now, a fat happy moon. She took it as a good omen.
; Inside, candles flickered. Cassie wondered for one wild instant if the three old ladies were still dancing around sky-clad, and then she saw the parlor. Great-aunt Constance was sitting as stiff as a ramrod on the rounded seat of a chair, immaculately dressed and looking very proper as she served tea by candlelight to her three guests.
To her three guests . . .
“Mom!” cried Cassie, and she ran forward, knocking over one of Great-aunt Constance’s fragile chairs as she went. The next minute she was holding her mother, hugging her wildly on Aunt Constance’s couch. And her mother was hugging back.
“Good heavens, Cassie,” her mother said a few minutes later, pulling away slightly to look at her. “The way you’re dressed . . .”
Cassie felt for the diadem, which had fallen askew. She settled it on her head and looked into her mother’s eyes. She was so happy to see those eyes looking back at her, and seeing, that she forgot to answer.
Deborah’s voice came from the hallway, tired but proud. “She’s our leader,” she said. Then: “Anybody got an aspirin?”
“Well, obviously it isn’t just temporary,” Laurel said, looking nettled. “I mean, we elected you.”
“And you came through,” Deborah said, taking a large bite out of an apple with the hand that wasn’t in a cast.
It was the next day. There was no school, because of minor storm damage and the disappearance of the principal. The Circle was enjoying the unseasonably mild weather by having a picnic in Diana’s backyard.
“But we’ve got two leaders now,” said Chris. “Or is Faye unelected?”
“Hardly,” Faye said, with a withering glance.
Melanie shifted thoughtfully, her gray eyes considering. “Well, other covens have had more than one leader. The original coven did; remember, Black John was only one of the leaders. You could share with Faye, Cassie.”
Cassie shook her head. “Not without Diana.”
“Huh?” said Doug.
Nick directed an amused glance at her. “Diana might not want the honor,” he said.