The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection: The Initiation and The Captive Part I, The Captive Part II and The Power, The Divide, The Hunt, The Temptation

by L. J. Smith

  Cassie’s mother remained quiet until he finally looked up. His eyes matched the gray of the floor tile.

  “After all these years, you show up here like this without warning,” he said. “I can only imagine the horrors that have driven you here. Too bad I don’t care.”

  The gravel of his voice shot across the foyer, ricocheting between the rickety columns lining the perimeter of the room like soldiers. Cassie realized she was holding her breath.

  Her mother stepped forward in spite of Timothy’s rebuke, and Cassie had the urge to pull her back.

  “You’re right, we are in trouble,” her mother said in a barely audible tone. “Please just hear me out.”

  “It’s exhausting, being right about everything.” Timothy shut his book and stared at Cassie’s mother with a curious expression.

  “This is my daughter Cassie,” her mother said.

  Timothy squinted his eyes and turned slowly to get a better look at Cassie. The sensation was similar to being on stage, under a glaring spotlight.

  “Black John’s daughter, you mean,” he said. “You poor, poor thing.” But it wasn’t sympathy he was actually offering her; it was pity. It was a condolence.

  Timothy tottered around the counter. Only then did Cassie recognize how frail his body was.

  “You.” He pointed a dirty fingernail at Cassie’s mother. “Come no further. I don’t trust your motives.”

  He turned again to look at Cassie while continuing to address her mother. “This victim of your foolishness and that evil man’s darkness can come with me.”

  He made his way toward a set of glass doors, which Cassie understood to be his office, without bothering to check if she was following him.

  She made no motion to until her mother gave her a sharp nudge. “Go,” she said. “Don’t let him scare you. Listen carefully to what he has to say.”

  Cassie obeyed and followed Timothy into his office. He closed the glass doors behind him and gestured for her to sit on the orange vinyl chair opposite his desk. Hesitantly, she settled into the chair.

  The office was much like the rest of the library: dusty, pulpy, and a little creepy. The wall behind Timothy’s desk was a row of dark cabinets protected by chunky brass padlocks. He unlocked one of them and retrieved an oversized book, thick with plastic-covered pages.

  “Have you always known what you are?” he asked, dropping the tanned leather book onto the desk in front of her.

  What, not who you are.

  “No,” Cassie said, looking at the book. Branded onto its cover were the letters B-L-A-K.

  “I worked closely with your grandmother, you know,” Timothy said. “To try to save your mother from that awful man. But their bond had been too strong. She was a lost cause.”

  “I’m not sure if you heard,” Cassie said. “But my grandmother passed away earlier this year.”

  Timothy’s face wrinkled forlornly. He sat down. “Oh,” he said, looking at his hands. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

  Cassie watched his reaction. He’d softened before her eyes.

  “She was an amazing woman,” he said. “But I’m sure you know that.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “She and I joined forces against your father,” Timothy continued. “We knew that awful man would play your mother for a fool. But she was charmed by him the way everyone else was. I’ll never forget the way your grandmother cried on my shoulder the day John Blake betrayed your mother.”

  Timothy touched his bony fingers to his shoulder as if Cassie’s grandmother’s tears might still be damp on his shirt. “She was devastated when your mother left New Salem. Not a day went by that she didn’t wonder about you, Cassie, the granddaughter she never knew.”

  Cassie felt a knot form in her throat. She’d gotten so little time with her grandmother before she died. If only she could have known her as well as Timothy had.

  “But I suspect you’ve dropped in on me today for a more pressing reason,” Timothy said, “than to reminisce about the past.”

  “Yes.” Cassie’s voice sounded meek to her own ears. “My Circle performed a dark-magic spell from my father’s Book of Shadows. A witch-hunter curse that left them possessed by . . .” She trailed off.

  “By evil spirits?” Timothy asked.

  Cassie looked down at a stain on the floor, an amoeba of coffee or soda that had never been properly scrubbed clean.

  “Your ancestors,” Timothy said.

  For some reason, relief settled into Cassie’s shoulders. This man might be a little strange, but he seemed to understand. “How did you know?” she asked.

  Timothy pointed to the leather book he’d dropped onto the desk. “I’ve studied the Blak family—that’s the Middle English spelling of Black without the ‘c’—for decades. All dark magic can be traced back to the early days of the Blak family.”

  All dark magic, Cassie thought. That was practically like saying all evil in the world had originated from her ancestors. She was beginning to understand why her mother had kept her from this man for so long. He had nothing good to tell her.

  “I assume you learned about the Black Death in school,” Timothy said. “The bubonic plague?”

  “Yes,” Cassie said, but what did she really recall? Some rats, thousands of people getting sick and dying. She hadn’t retained much else.

  “You only learned half the story,” Timothy said. “Medieval people called that same catastrophe many different names—the Great Pestilence or the Great Plague. It wasn’t until much later that people started describing the events as black.”

  Timothy paused to let his meaning sink in. “Historians today agree that the term Black Death refers to black in the sense of gloom, to denote the terror of the events, as well as the way the disease caused the skin to turn black with gangrene. But the actual truth is that by the fifteenth century people began to figure out what was really going on.”

  “What was really going on?” Cassie asked.

  “A line of witches who went by the name of Blak were wreaking havoc on the world,” Timothy said. “They hated the Outsiders for persecuting them, and they had no qualms about getting revenge.”

  Cassie’s stomach churned. “That was my family?”

  Timothy nodded grimly. “The scientific-minded argued that the plague was spreading through rats and their fleas. That was true—but the rats had been bespelled by your ancestors. It took years, as the death tolls rose and hysteria grew, for more and more people to believe there was a supernatural cause for the sickness. That sinister witches were at fault.”

  Cassie’s legs felt weak even though she was sitting down.

  “It was a terrible time for witches and warlocks who weren’t of the Blak bloodline,” Timothy continued. “There were persecutions and massacres. But the real witches responsible, the Blaks, were smarter and much more powerful than the thousands of innocent witches who were persecuted.”

  “But what started it all?” Cassie asked. “What did the Blaks want?”

  Timothy grinned. “That’s the mystery I’ve been trying to solve for more than thirty years.”

  “And?” Cassie asked. “Have you found the answer?”

  “It seems that very early on, the man who began your family’s Book of Shadows was determined to attain eternal life. He made a deal with the devil. Sold his soul in order to live forever, but it backfired. When he died, his bloodline was cursed. And so was his book.”

  “Cursed,” Cassie repeated.

  Timothy allowed her a few seconds to process this new knowledge. “You come from a line of ancestors cursed with black magic, and all the uncontrollable urges that come with it.”

  “I’m bound to my father’s book,” she said. “I wasn’t possessed like the rest of my friends because I’ve got his blood in my veins. So I must really be one of them. Is what you’re telling me, that I’m destined to be evil, too?”

  Timothy shook his head. “You’re an innocent child. You can’t help what you come from. You can on
ly control what you do with it—though it may not always be so easy for you to control.”

  Timothy turned his attention to the leather album on his desk. “The Book of Shadows you’re bound to was composed over centuries and passed down through the Blak family, from the people I’ve just told you about, all the way to the Salem witch trials, where Black John’s younger sister fell victim to the inquisitions, and finally to Black John when he reappeared in New Salem as John Blake. That’s how the book ended up in your mother’s hands, I imagine.”

  Cassie had gotten stuck midway through Timothy’s explanation. Black John had a sister? It wasn’t such a far-fetched idea, just not one Cassie had ever considered. Did that mean Cassie had other family out there besides Scarlett?

  “What was she like?” Cassie asked. “Black John’s sister.”

  Timothy flipped through the leather album. When he found the page he was searching for, he turned it around for Cassie to view close up. It was an artistic rendering, a drawing of a girl just around Cassie’s age.

  “This was Alice Black,” Timothy said. “She was hanged in 1693.”

  Cassie stared down at the drawing, which was so detailed it looked like a black-and-white photograph. Alice’s hair was pulled tightly back in some sort of bun or braid. Her face was thin and slight, nearly lost within the lofty height of her collar. But it was her expression that was the most striking. She wasn’t pouting, but her lips protruded just so, into a natural sulk. And her eyes—though it was just a rendering, Cassie could feel Alice’s cavernous eyes watching her. They were filled with longing and sadness. No, not sadness, Cassie realized. Anger. Anger directed outward, for sure, but also turned brutally in on herself.

  Timothy continued talking before Cassie could fully digest the tragic face of her young aunt. “These spirits possessing your Circle,” he said, “are the souls of your ancestors that managed to return when your father’s spell was channeled. Only the strongest would have gotten through.”

  “But Alice was so young, and so beautiful,” Cassie said, nearly to herself.

  Timothy shut the book to fully regain Cassie’s attention. “That girl there was one of the most nefarious of them all. Don’t be fooled by her looks. Some say she was more evil than Black John himself.”

  Cassie wanted to reopen the album and look at the picture again, but she knew she had to focus on why she’d come to see Timothy in the first place. “What can I do to save my friends from these spirits?” she asked. “Is there a way?”

  “There should be an exorcism spell in your father’s Book of Shadows,” Timothy said. “From one of your ancestors from the sixteenth century.”

  Timothy opened the album again and turned to a different plastic-covered page. “This man.” He pointed to another drawing, more sparse and faded than the other. It was a sketch of faded lines, barely recognizable as a face.

  “Absolom Blak,” Timothy said. “He lived his life as a priest but corrupted the Church. He was rumored to have copied the forbidden text of the exorcism rite into his own book. The Book of Shadows that later became your father’s.”

  Cassie couldn’t stomach the thought that the dark soul of this evil priest could right now be in the body of one of her closest friends. It nauseated her so much she had to turn away.

  “The exorcism is the spell you have to find,” Timothy said. “But it might be dangerous. Absolom was an evil man who would have only copied the exorcism rite for wicked reasons. He may have doctored the text, changed things. And that could have consequences. But you must find it, Cassie. It’s a risk you’ll have to take. You’ll be shocked to see how quickly these evil spirits will adapt to your friends’ bodies and to the modern world. You don’t have much time.”

  “What am I even looking for?” Cassie asked. “How will I know when I find it?”

  “Absolom was definitely the one to add it to the book,” Timothy said. “So try to figure out which sections he might have contributed to.”

  He turned to another page of the album. “Here’s another ancestor you should keep your eye out for. Another one who died young, like Alice.”

  Timothy directed Cassie’s attention to a faded black-and-white pamphlet or what may have been a cutout of an old newspaper drawing. It was so frayed and soft at its edges it looked almost like felt. Cassie had to strain her eyes to make out its image.

  It was a picture of a persecution, not of one person but many.

  “It’s a witch trial,” Timothy said.

  The writing beneath the picture was in German, and a barely legible caption stated the year: 1594.

  “Beatrix Blak was burned alive in the Trier massacre,” Timothy said. “The charge was sorcery. They say her last words were ‘You haven’t seen the last of me.’ So you can be sure she’s one of the spirits who made it back—and is currently ravaging the insides of one of your friends.”

  Timothy shut the book again and pushed it toward Cassie. “Take it home with you,” he said. “Study it.”

  Cassie took the book into her lap.

  “You must be very careful,” Timothy continued. “These spirits will try to trick you. Some of your friends might appear normal at times, like their regular selves, but don’t be fooled. The only way you’ll be able to tell if they’re possessed or not is by their heartbeats. Hearts can’t lie. The heart of a possessed body will beat four times faster than a regular heart. Remember that.”

  “So it is possible then,” Cassie said. “For some of them to break through the possession.”

  “Possible, but not likely.” Timothy’s eyebrows crumpled sadly over his eyes. “Pretty soon, Cassie, these friends of yours will be long gone. If the possession lasts until the next full moon, it’ll become permanent.”

  “Permanent?” Cassie felt her face flush. “But the next full moon is less than two weeks away.”

  “I told you,” Timothy said. “You don’t have much time.”

  The sinking feeling in Cassie’s stomach dropped to a new low. This was a bad idea; she wasn’t strong enough to hear any more.

  “I have to go,” she said, and stood up abruptly. “Thank you for your help.”

  She turned toward the door, but Timothy grabbed her firmly on the wrist and pulled her back down to her seat. “Wait,” he said. “One last thing.”

  His hand felt warm on her skin. She’d expected it to be cold, like his eyes.

  “I’m a simple man,” he said. “A lonely, powerless man. Forgive me if I frighten you.”

  He was still holding Cassie’s wrist. “But in you, I can see light,” he said.

  Timothy gradually released his hold once he was sure Cassie wouldn’t run away. He stared deep into her eyes.

  “The strength inside you,” he said. “And the love you have for your friends. That love can be the most powerful spell of all.”

  Cassie wasn’t sure how to respond, or if she should respond at all.

  “Do you understand?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Cassie nodded hesitantly at first, then with more assurance. “Yes.”

  Timothy came around his desk and opened his office door to the foyer. “Then there’s nothing else you need but luck.”

  With the album tucked beneath her arm, Cassie ran back out to the library’s main room, though she wasn’t sure why she was running. Timothy was strange, but she didn’t think he was harmful. In a way, she felt sorry for him.

  As Cassie rejoined her mother in the car, she couldn’t get Timothy’s last few words out of her head—that love was more powerful than all of this.

  Silently, Cassie began to forge a plan. She needed to visit Adam in the cave. If Timothy was right about the power of love, maybe Cassie could break through to Adam after all. Whose love was stronger than theirs? And who better to help her search for the exorcism spell than Adam?

  Cassie was calmed by this thought. In her mind it was decided. She would bring Adam through tonight, and together they would save the rest of their friends.

  CHAPTER 4
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  The caves felt frigid in the dark of night even though the temperature hovered around a balmy eighty degrees. Cassie found herself shivering as she rowed the final few feet to land. She wasn’t sure what to expect traveling here alone. In her imagination the whole angry mob of her friends would be waiting for her, salivating, hungry to return the pain she’d caused them by trapping them there.

  Dry-mouthed, she brought in her oars and awaited the worst. She was relieved to see there was only one person visible at the mouth of the cave. A dark shadow of the tall, strong body she knew well. Adam. He was sitting out near the exit, hugging his knees toward his chest, looking lonely. The others must have been deeper within the cave, sleeping.

  Cassie beached her rowboat and moved toward Adam with careful determination. Her heart knocked against her ribs as she took quiet steps, one foot in front of the other, until she stood before him—just out of his reach beyond the barrier in the cave. At first she said nothing, just watched him, and tried to locate the real him somewhere inside this shell of the boy she loved.

  “Cassie,” he said, sounding just like his true self. He stood up with joy. “I was just watching the water wishing you would appear, and now here you are.”

  He looked good, she thought. A little dirty, but aside from that nothing about him appeared different. His hair still shone with multicolored streaks of auburn in the moonlight, and his eyes were their natural, gorgeous blue. There was a vulnerability to their depth that couldn’t be feigned.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Better now that you’re here.” Adam reached out his hand, but it couldn’t pass through the bound cave entrance. “If only I could touch you,” he said, frowning.

  Cassie was careful not to get too close. “How do I know it’s really you?” she asked. “And not the demon.”

  Adam reached out his hand again, this time open palmed with his fingers outstretched. “It’s me,” he said. “I swear. Let me prove it to you. Raise up your hand to mine.”