by L. J. Smith
“He’s Herne, the horned god,” Melanie said. “Sort of like Pan, you know, a nature god. He’s god of animals, too—that’s why he gets to take Raj with him.”
Raj was there, trying to thrust his nose forward to give Cassie one of his embarrassingly warm greetings. Adam—or Herne; it unnerved Cassie how natural he looked with the horns and the oak leaves—held the dog back.
The other girls were laughing at the guys’ costumes. “Sean,” Laurel said, “you’re skinny enough without showing all your bones.” He was dressed as a skeleton.
Chris and Doug had strange symbols painted on their faces: black and red triangles, yellow lightning bolts. Their long hair was even more disheveled than usual. “We’re Zax,” they said, and everyone said, “Who?”
Chris answered: “Zax the magician. He pulls cigarettes out of the air.”
“It’s from some science-fiction show they saw once,” Suzan explained finally.
Faye’s slow, lazy voice broke in. “And just what are you supposed to be, Nick? The Man in Black?”
Cassie looked at Nick for the first time. He wasn’t wearing a costume, just black jeans and a black pullover sweater. He looked very handsome, very cool.
“I’m supposed to be her date,” he said calmly, and without another look at Faye he held out his hand to Cassie.
Faye can’t mind, Cassie told herself as they walked to the line of cars outside. Faye doesn’t want him anymore; she shouldn’t care who he goes with. But there was a thin coil of uneasiness in her stomach as she let Nick guide her to the Armstrong car. Deborah and Laurel got in the back.
On the porches around them, jack-o’-lanterns had fiery grins and dancing flames for eyes. It was a crystal moonlit night.
“A haunted night,” Laurel said from the backseat. “Tonight spirits gather at all the windows and doors, looking in. We always put a white candle in the window to guide them.”
“Or a plate of food to feed them, so they don’t try to come inside,” Deborah said in a hollow voice.
Cassie laughed, but there was a slightly false note in the laughter. She didn’t want spirits looking in her windows. And as for what Laurel had said two weeks ago, about dead relatives coming back to visit the living—well, Cassie didn’t want that, either. She didn’t know any of her dead relatives, except her father, and he probably wasn’t really dead. No, on the whole, she’d rather just leave all dead people alone.
But the Circle was planning to do just the opposite tonight.
The gym was decorated with owls, bats, and witches flying across giant yellow moons. Black and orange crepe paper was wound around the girders and streamed from the basketball hoops. There were dancing skeletons, spitting cats with arched backs, and surprised-looking ghosts on the walls.
It was all so fun and harmless. The ordinary students who’d come to dance and masquerade and drink purple poison punch had no idea of the real darkness that lurked outside. Even the ones who hated the Club didn’t know the full truth.
Diana and Adam arrived together, making what must have been the most impressive entrance New Salem High School had ever seen. Diana, in her simple white shift, with her bare throat and arms looking as fresh as baby’s skin, and her aureole of shining hair falling down her back, looked like a shaft of moonlight that had somehow wandered accidentally into the gym.
And Adam—Adam always had a presence, a way of innately commanding respect from anyone smart enough really to look at him. Tonight, as Herne, he was more arresting than ever. He seemed to be the forest god, perilous and mischievous, awe-inspiring but not unkind. Above all, he looked wild. There was nothing domesticated about him; he belonged in the open spaces, running underneath the stars. Raj stayed beside him, looking more like a wolf than a dog, and none of the chaperons said a word of objection.
“You know what happens tonight,” a voice murmured, breath warm on Cassie’s neck.
Cassie said, “What, Faye?” without turning around.
“Well, the coven leaders who represent the goddess Diana and the horned god have to make an alliance. They have to . . .” Faye paused delicately. “. . . merge, shall we say? To represent the union of male and female principals.”
“You mean they . . . ?”
“It can be done symbolically,” Faye said blandly. “But somehow I don’t think Adam and Diana will be satisfied with symbolism, do you?”
Chapter 4
Cassie stood petrified. Her heart was going like a trip-hammer, but that was the only part of her capable of motion.
Adam and Diana . . . they couldn’t. Only, of course, they could. Diana was laughing up at Adam now, tossing her straight, shining hair back. And although Cassie couldn’t see Adam’s eyes behind the mask, his lips were smiling.
Cassie turned, almost blundering into Nick, who was bringing her some punch, and rushed off into the dimness.
She found a dark corner under a Chinese lantern that had gone out. Shielded by a curtain of black and orange streamers, she stood there, trying to get hold of herself, trying not to see the pictures her mind was showing her.
The next thing she knew, she could smell wood smoke and ocean breeze, along with a faint, indefinable scent of animal and oak leaves. Adam.
“Cassie,” he said. Just that, as if Herne were calling her in her dreams, inviting her to throw off the covers in the middle of the night and come dancing in the autumn leaves.
And then, in a more ordinary voice, he said quietly, “Cassie, are you okay? Diana says—”
“What?” Cassie demanded, in a way that would have been fierce if her voice hadn’t been trembling.
“She’s just worried that you’re not all right.”
“I’m all right!” Cassie was struggling not to let the tears escape. “And anyway—I’m tired of people talking about me behind my back. Faye says, Diana says—I’m tired of it.”
He took both her cold hands in his. “I think,” he said in a subdued voice, “that you’re just tired, period.”
I am, Cassie thought. I’m tired of having secrets. And I’m tired of fighting. If I’m already evil, what’s the point of fighting?
Just at the moment, to think was to act. Before she knew what she was doing, her hands had turned inside Adam’s, so that her fingers were clasping his. Not by word or look or deed, what a laugh, she thought. We’ve already broken it a thousand times. Why not really break it? That way at least she would have something concrete to feel bad about. That way Diana wouldn’t have him first.
That was the crux of it. Diana might have everything else, but she wouldn’t have Adam first.
I could do it, Cassie thought. Suddenly, her mind was working coolly and rationally, far removed from all the twisted pain in her chest. Adam was vulnerable to her because he was honorable, because he would never dream of her scheming to get him.
If she started to cry right now . . . If she got him close enough to hold her, then relaxed against him, making herself soft in his arms . . . If she laid her head on his shoulder so that he could smell her hair . . . If she sighed and let her head fall back . . . would he be able to resist kissing her?
Cassie didn’t think so.
There were places darker than this corner. Safe places in the school. The home-ec room with the lock anyone could pick, the storage compartment where the gymnastics mats were kept. If Adam kissed her and she kissed him back, could anything stop them from going there?
Cassie didn’t think so.
And Diana, sweet stupid innocent Diana, would never know the difference. If Adam said he’d had to take Cassie for a walk to calm her down, Diana would believe him.
No, there was nothing to stop Cassie and Adam . . . except the oath. How did it go again? Fire burn me, air smother me, earth swallow me, water cover my grave. Cassie wasn’t afraid of that. Fire was burning her body already, and air was smothering her—she couldn’t breathe. There was nothing to stop her. She leaned in closer to Adam, head drooping like a flower on a slender stem, feeling the first easy t
ears come. She heard the catch in her breath, and felt his fingers tighten on hers in concern, and awareness.
“Cassie—God . . .” he whispered.
A fierce rush of triumph swept through Cassie. He couldn’t help himself. It was going to happen. Oak and holly, leaf and briar/ Touch him with the secret fire . . .
What was she doing?
Using magic on Adam? Snaring him with words that had come from some deep well of knowledge within herself? It was wrong, dishonorable, and not just because members of the Club didn’t work spells on each other unasked.
It was wrong because of Diana.
Diana, who’d been Cassie’s friend when no one else would speak to her. Who’d championed her against Faye and the whole school. Even if Cassie couldn’t deal with being close to Diana right now, the memory of Diana was like a star shining in her mind. If she betrayed that, she betrayed everything that meant anything.
Evil or not, Cassie couldn’t do it.
She extracted her hands from Adam’s strong fingers.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice soft and weak, all its bones crushed.
He was trying to get hold of her hands again. That was the problem with magic, you couldn’t always stop what you’d started. “Adam, really,” she said. Then, desperately, she added, “Diana’s waiting.”
Saying Diana’s name helped. He stood for a moment, then escorted her back, Herne bringing a wayward nymph home to the Circle. Cassie went over to Laurel for safety; Nick was nowhere in sight. Well, she didn’t blame him.
Diana was talking to Sally Waltman, who was there and looking hard as nails, despite the loss of Jeffrey. That left Adam and Cassie with Laurel and Melanie and their dates, and Sean and Deborah. A merry group of witches. Next to them was a group of outsiders.
A slow dance was starting. The group of outsiders broke up, moving onto the dance floor. All except one.
That one remained standing there, isolated, on the fringe of the Club. She was a junior Cassie vaguely recognized from French class, a shy girl, not beautiful, but not ugly, either. Right now she was trying to pretend that she didn’t mind being abandoned, that she didn’t care.
Cassie’s heart went out to her. Poor girl. Once, Cassie had been just like her.
“Want to dance?” It was Adam’s voice, warm and friendly— but he wasn’t talking to Cassie, he was talking to the outsider girl. Her face lit up, and she went happily with him out onto the floor, the scales of her mermaid costume flashing and twinkling. Cassie watched them go with a pang.
But not of jealousy. Of love—and respect.
“The parfit gentil knight,” Melanie said.
“What?” said Cassie.
“It’s from Chaucer. We learned it in British lit class. That’s what Adam is, the perfect gentle knight,” Melanie explained.
Cassie thought about this for a while. Then she turned to Sean. “Hey, skinny, want to shake your bones?” she said.
Sean’s face lit up.
Well, Cassie thought as she and Sean began swaying to the music, one thing was for sure: This dance wasn’t anything like the last one. With Adam, the gym had seemed a place of beauty and enchantment. Now all she saw were paper cutouts and naked pipes overhead. At least Sean-the-Day-Glo-skeleton didn’t try to pull her in too close.
Afterward, other guys approached her, but Cassie made a beeline for Nick, who’d rematerialized, and hid behind him. At least this part of her plan worked—the other guys retreated. It was strange to be something everybody wanted and couldn’t have. Nick didn’t ask her why she’d rushed off, and she didn’t ask him where he’d disappeared to.
They danced a few times. Nick didn’t try to kiss her.
And then it was time to leave. After saying good-bye to their bewildered, slightly indignant dates, the members of the Club gathered at the exit, and not even the strawberry-blond goddess Aphrodite was late. Even the two identical Zaxes, their slanted blue-green eyes sparkling, were waiting outside the door. Then they all started off into the darkness. The moon had set, but the stars seemed to be on fire.
It was cold on the point of the headland. They sat on bits of the foundation of the razed house, while Deborah and Faye built a bonfire in the center. Other people were bringing provisions out of the cars. Cassie had expected everyone to be solemn, but the Circle was in a party mood, excited by the night, laughing and joking, defying the danger of what they were going to do in an hour or so. Cassie found herself enjoying the celebration, not thinking about the future.
There was lots of food. Dried pumpkin seeds (“Without salt,” Laurel said), pumpkin bread and gingerbread baked by Diana, boxes of chocolate- and orange-frosted doughnuts from Adam, a bowl of mixed Halloween candy provided by Suzan, soft drinks and spiced cider, and a large paper bag of Chris’s that rattled.
“Nuts! Yeah! For virility!” Doug yelled to the other guys, with an uncouth gesture.
“Hazelnuts symbolize wisdom,” Melanie said patiently, but the Henderson brothers just sneered.
And there were apples: winesaps, greenings, macintoshes. “Apples for love and death,” Diana said. “Especially at Halloween. Did you know they were sacred to the goddess Hera?”
“Did you know the seeds contain cyanide?” Faye added, smiling oddly. She’d been smiling oddly at Cassie ever since Cassie had emerged from behind the streamer curtain with Adam at the dance. Now, leaning over to take a piece of gingerbread, she murmured in Cassie’s ear, “What happened back there when he followed you? Did you blow your chance?”
“It isn’t nice to fool around with guys who’re taken,” Cassie whispered tiredly, as if explaining to a five-year-old.
Faye chuckled. “Nice? Is that what you want for your epitaph? ‘Here lies Cassie. She was . . . nice’?”
Cassie turned her head away.
“I know an apple spell,” Laurel was saying to the group. “You peel an apple in one long spiral, then throw the peel over your shoulder, and if it doesn’t break, it forms the initial of your true love.”
They tried this, without much success. The peelings kept breaking, Suzan cut herself on Deborah’s knife, and when Diana did manage to throw a peeling over her shoulder, it only formed a spiral.
“Well, that’s sacred to the goddess at least,” Laurel said, frowning. “Or to the Horned One,” she added mischievously, looking at Adam.
Cassie had been deliberately breaking her apple peels; the whole fortune-telling thing made her uneasy. And not just because Melanie mentioned cheerfully, “They used to execute witches for this kind of divination on Halloween.”
“I’ve got another one,” Laurel said. “You throw a nut in the fire, say a pair of names, and see what happens. Like Suzan and David Downey,” she added impishly. “If the nut pops, they’re meant for each other. If it doesn’t, they’re doomed.”
“If he loves me, pop and fly; if he hates me, burn and die!” Suzan quoted dramatically as Laurel tossed a hazelnut in. The round little nut just sizzled.
“Laurel and Doug,” Chris snickered, throwing in another.
“Chris and Sally Waltman!” Doug countered.
“Cassie and Nick!”
Deborah tossed that one in, grinning, but Faye was noticeably unsmiling.
“Adam . . .” she said, holding a nut up high between long red nails and waiting until she had everyone’s attention. Cassie stared at her, poised on the edge of her brick. “. . . and Diana,” Faye said finally, and flicked the hazelnut into the flames.
Cassie, mesmerized, watched the nut where it lay on glowing embers. She didn’t want to look at it; she had to.
“There are lots of other Halloween traditions,” Laurel was going on. “It’s time to remember old people, people who’re coming to the winter of their lives—or that’s what my Granny Quincey says.”
Cassie was still staring at that one hazelnut. It seemed to be jiggling—but was it going to pop?
“It’s getting late,” Adam said. “Don’t you think we should get started?”
Diana brushed pumpkin-bread crumbs off her hands and stood. “Yes.”
Cassie only took her eyes off the fire for an instant, but in that instant, there was a sound like gunfire. Two or three nuts had exploded at once, and when Cassie looked back she couldn’t see the one Faye had thrown. It had popped—or she’d lost track of it. She couldn’t tell which.
A heartbeat later it flashed through her mind to wonder about Deborah’s nut—for Cassie and Nick. But she couldn’t tell what had become of that one, either.
“All right, now,” Diana said. “This is going to be a different kind of Circle. It’s going to be more powerful than anything we’ve ever used before, because we need more protection than we’ve ever needed before. And it’s going to take everybody’s help.” She followed this with an earnest glance at Faye, who replied with a look of utmost innocence.
Cassie watched Diana draw a circle inside the ruined foundation with her black-handled knife. The bonfire was at the center. Everyone was serious now, their eyes following the path of the knife as it cut through the soil, making an almost perfect ring with a single gap at the northeast corner.
“Everyone get inside, and then I’ll close it,” Diana said. They all filed inside and sat along the inner perimeter of the ring. Only Raj was left on the outside, watching anxiously and whining a little in his throat.
“After this,” Diana said, closing the gap with a sweep of the knife, “no one leaves the protection of the circle. What we’re summoning up inside will be dangerous, but what’ll be hanging around outside will be even worse.”
“How dangerous?” Sean said nervously. “What’s inside, I mean.”
“We’ll be safe as long as we don’t go near the fire or touch it,” Diana said. “No matter how strong a spirit it is, it won’t be able to part from the fire we use to summon it. All right,” she added briskly, “now I’m going to call on the Watchtower of the East. Powers of Air, protect us!”
Standing facing the dark eastern sky and ocean, Diana held a burning stick of incense and blew it eastward across the circle. “Think of air!” she told the coven members, and at once Cassie not only thought of it, but felt it, heard it. It started as a gentle breeze blowing from the east, but then it began to gust. It became a blast, a roaring wind beating in their faces, blowing Diana’s long hair backward like a banner. And then it diverted, flowing around the circumference of the circle, enclosing them.