Volume II: THE CAPTIVE

One

Fire, Cassie thought. All around her she saw blazing autumn colors. The yellow-orange of sugar maples, the brilliant red of sassafras, the crimson of sumac bushes. It was as if the entire world were flaming with Faye's element.

And I'm trapped in the middle of it.

The sick feeling in the pit of Cassie's stomach got worse with every step she took down Crowhaven Road.

The yellow Victorian house at the bottom of the road looked as pretty as ever. Sunlight was striking rainbow sparks off a prism which hung in the highest tower window. A girl with long light-brown hair called out from the porch.

"Hurry up, Cassie! You're late!"

"Sorry," Cassie called back, trying to hurry when what she really wanted to do was turn around and run the other way. She had the sudden, inexplicable conviction that her private thoughts must show in her face. Laurel would take one look at her and know all about what had happened with Adam last night, and all about the bargain with Faye.

But Laurel just grabbed her by the waist and hustled her inside and upstairs to Diana's bedroom. Diana was standing in front of the large walnut cabinet; Melanie was sitting on the bed. Sean was perched uneasily in the window seat, rubbing his knees with his palms.

Adam was standing beside him.

He looked up as Cassie came in.

Cassie met those blue-gray eyes for only an instant, but it was long enough. They were the color of the ocean at its most mysterious, sunlit on the surface but with incomprehensible depths underneath. The rest of his face was the same as ever: arresting and intriguing, pride showing in the high cheekbones and determined mouth, but sensitivity and humor showing there too. His face looked different only because last night Cassie had seen those eyes midnight-blue with passion, had felt that mouth…

Not by word or look or deed, she told herself fiercely, staring down at the ground because she didn't dare look up again. But her heart was pounding so hard she expected to see the front of her sweater fluttering. Oh, God, how was she ever going to be able to carry this off and keep her vow? It took an incredible amount of energy to sit down by Melanie and not look at him, to block the charismatic heat of his presence out of her mind.

You'd better get used to it, she told herself. Because you're going to be doing a lot of it from now on.

"Good; we're all here," Diana said. She went over and shut the door. "This is a closed meeting," she went on, turning back to the group. "The others weren't invited because I'm not sure they have the same interests at heart as we do."

"That's putting it mildly," Laurel said under her breath.

"They're going to be upset if they find out," Sean said, his black eyes darting between Adam and Diana.

"Then let them be," Melanie said unemotionally. Her own cool gray eyes fixed on Sean, and he flushed. "This is much more important than any fit Faye can throw. We have to find out what happened to that dark energy… and now."

"I think I know a way," said Diana. Out of a white velvet pouch she took a delicate green stone on a silver chain.

"A pendulum," Melanie said at once.

"Yes. This is peridot," Diana said to Cassie. "It's a visionary stone—right, Melanie? Usually we use clear quartz as a pendulum, but this time I think the peridot is better—more likely to pick up traces of the dark energy. We'll take it down to the place where the dark energy escaped, and it'll align itself in the direction the energy went and start swinging."

"We hope," Laurel murmured.

"Well, that's the theory," Melanie said.

Diana looked at Adam, who had been unusually quiet. "What do you think?"

"I think it's worth a try. It'll take a lot of mental power to back it up, though. We'll all have to concentrate—especially since we're not a full Circle." His voice was calm and even, and Cassie admired him for it. She kept her face turned in Diana's direction, though as a matter of fact her eyes were fixed on the walnut cabinet.

Diana turned to Cassie. "What about you?"

"Me?" Cassie said, startled, tearing her eyes away from the cabinet door. She hadn't expected to be asked; she didn't know anything about pendulums or peridot. To her horror, she felt her face redden.

"Yes, you. You might be new to the methods we use, but a lot of the time you have feelings about things."

"Oh. Well…" Cassie tried to search her feelings, scrabbling to get beyond the guilt and terror that were uppermost. "I think… it's a good idea," she said finally, knowing how lame that sounded. "It seems fine to me."

Melanie rolled her eyes, but Diana nodded as seriously as she had at Adam. "All right, then, the only thing to do is try," she said, dropping the peridot and its silver chain into the palm of her left hand and clasping it tightly. "Let's go."

Cassie couldn't breathe; she was still reeling from the impact of Diana's clear green eyes, slightly darker than the peridot but with that same delicate transparency, as if there were light shining behind them.

I can't do it, she thought. She was surprised at how stark and simple everything was now that she had actually looked Diana in the eyes. I can't do it. I'll have to tell Faye—no, I'll tell Diana. That's it. I'll tell Diana myself before Faye can, and I'll make her believe me. She'll understand; Diana is so good, she'll have to understand.

Everyone had gotten up. Cassie got up too, turning toward the door to hide her agitation—should I tell her right now? Ask her to stay back a minute?—when the door flew open in her face.

Faye was standing in the doorway.

Suzan and Deborah were behind her. The strawberry blonde looked mean, and the biker's habitual scowl was even darker than usual. Behind them were the Henderson brothers, Chris frowning and Doug grinning in a wild way that was disturbing.

"Going somewhere without us?" Faye said. She was speaking to Diana, but her eyes remained fixed on Cassie.

"Not now," Laurel muttered.

Diana let out a deep breath. "I didn't think you'd be interested," she said. "We're going to trace the dark energy."

"Not interested?. When all the rest of you are so busy? Of course, I can only speak for myself, but I'm interested in everything the Circle does. What about you, Deborah?"

The biker girl's scowl changed briefly into a malicious grin. "I'm interested," she said.

"And what about you, Suzan?"

"I'm interested," Suzan chimed in.

"And what about you, Chris?"

"I'm—"

"All right," Diana said. Her cheeks were flushed;

Adam had come to stand at her side. "We get the point. We're better off with a full Circle, anyway—but where's Nick?"

"I have no idea," Faye said coolly. "He's not at home."

Diana hesitated, then shrugged. "We'll do our best with what we have," she said. "Let's go down to the garage."

She gestured at Melanie and Laurel and they went first, elbowing past Faye's group, who looked as if they wanted to stay and argue some more. Adam took charge of Sean and got him out the door, then began herding the Hendersons. Deborah and Suzan looked at Faye and then followed the guys.

Cassie had been hanging back, hoping for the chance to speak to Diana alone. But Diana seemed to have forgotten her; she was engaged in a staredown with Faye. Finally, head high, she walked past the tall girl who was still semi-blocking the doorway.

"Diana…" Faye called. Diana didn't look back, but her shoulders tensed: she was listening.

"You're going to lose them all," Faye said, and she chuckled her lazy chuckle as Diana went on to the staircase.

Biting her lip, Cassie stepped forward furiously. One good shove in Faye's middle, she was thinking. But Faye rounded smoothly on her, blocking the doorway completely.

"Oh, no you don't. We need to talk," she said.

"I don't want to talk to you."

Faye ignored her. "Is it in here?" She moved quickly to the walnut cabinet and pulled at a handle, but the drawer was locked. They all were. "Damn. But you can find out where she keeps the key. I want it as soon as possible, do you understand?"

"Faye, you're not listening to me! I've changed my mind. I'm not going to do it after all."

Faye, who had been prowling around the room like a panther, taking advantage of this unique opportunity to examine Diana's things, stopped in her tracks. Then she turned slowly to Cassie, and smiled.

"Oh, Cassie," she said. "You really kill me."

"I'm serious. I've changed my mind." Faye just smiled at her, leaning back against the wall and shaking her head. Her heavy-lidded golden eyes were glowing with amusement, her mane of pitch-black hair fell across her shoulders as her head moved. She had never looked more beautiful—or more dangerous.

"Cassie, come here." Faye's voice was just slightly edged with impatience, like a teacher who's put up with a lot from a backward student. "Let me show you something," Faye went on, catching Cassie's elbow and dragging her to the window. "Now, look down there. What do you see?"

Cassie stopped fighting and looked. She saw the Club, the in-crowd at New Salem high school, the kids who awed—and terrorized—students and teachers alike. She saw them gathered in Diana's driveway, their heads gleaming in the first rays of sunset: Suzan's strawberry-blond hair turned to red, Deborah's dark curls touched with ruby, Laurel's long, light-brown hair and Melanie's short auburn and the Henderson brothers' dishevelled yellow all highlighted by the ruddy glow in the sky.

And she saw Adam and Diana, standing close, Diana's silvery head drooping to Adam's shoulder. He was holding her protectively, his own hair dark as wine.

Faye's voice came from behind Cassie. "If you tell her, you'll kill her. You'll destroy her faith in everything she's ever believed in. And you'll take away the only thing she has to trust, to rely on. Is that what you want?"

"Faye…" Cassie seethed.

"And, incidentally, you'll get yourself banished from the Club. You know that, don't you? How do you think Melanie and Laurel are going to feel when they hear that you messed around with Diana's boyfriend? None of them will ever speak to you again, not even to make a full Circle. The coven will be destroyed too."

Cassie's teeth were clenched. She wanted to hit Faye, but it wouldn't do any good. Because Faye was right. Cassie thought she could stand being blackballed, being a pariah at school again; she even thought she could stand destroying the coven. But the picture of Diana's face…

It would kill Diana. By the time Faye got finished telling it her way, it would. Cassie's fantasy of confessing to Diana and having Diana understand vanished like a pricked soapbubble.

"And what I want is so reasonable," Faye was going on, almost crooning. "I just want to look at the skull for a little while. I know what I'm doing. You'll get it for me, won't you, Cassie? Won't you? Today?" Cassie shut her eyes. Against her closed eyelids the light was red as fire.

Two

Somewhere on the way downstairs Cassie stopped feeling guilty.

She didn't know exactly how it happened. But it was necessary, if she was going to survive this. She was doing everything she could to protect Diana—and Adam, too, in a way. Adam must never know about Faye's blackmail. So Cassie would do whatever it took to protect them both, but by God she wasn't going to feel guilty on top of it.

She had to handle Faye somehow as well, she thought, marching behind the tall girl past Diana's father's study. She had to keep Faye from doing anything too radical with the skull. She didn't know how; she'd have to think about that later, but somehow she would do it.

If Faye had looked back just then, Cassie thought, she might have been surprised to see the face of the girl behind her. For the first time in her life, Cassie felt as if her eyes were hard, like the blue steel of a revolver instead of the soft blue of wildflowers.

But right now she had to look neutral—composed.

The group on the driveway looked up as she and Faye came out the door.

"What took you so long?" Laurel asked.

"We were plotting to kill you all," Faye said breezily. "Shall we?" She gestured at the garage.

There were only traces of yesterday's chalk circle left on the floor. Once again the garage was empty of cars—they were lucky Diana's father worked so much at his law firm.

Diana, her left fist still closed, went over to the wall of the garage, directly behind the place Cassie had been sitting when they had performed the skull ceremony. Cassie followed her and then drew in her breath sharply.

"It's burned." She hadn't noticed that last night. Well, of course not; it had been too dark.

Diana was nodding. "I hope nobody is going to keep arguing about whether there was any dark energy or not," she said, with a glance back at Deborah and Suzan.

The wood and plaster of the garage wall was charred in a circle perhaps a foot and a half in diameter. Cassie looked at it, and then at the remnants of the chalk circle on the floor. She had been sitting there, but part of her had been inside the skull. Diana had told them all to look into it, to concentrate, and suddenly Cassie had found herself inside it. That was where she'd seen—felt—the dark power. It had begun rushing outward, getting bigger, determined to break out of the crystal. And she'd seen a face…

She was grateful, suddenly, for Adam's calm voice.

"Well, we know what direction it started in, anyway. Let's see if the crystal agrees."

They were all standing around Diana. She looked at them, then held her left fist out, palm up, and unclasped the fingers. She took the top of the silver chain with her right hand and drew it up taut, so that the peridot just rested on her palm.

"Concentrate," she said. "Earth and Air, help us see what we need to see. Show the traces of the dark energy to us. Everybody concentrate on the crystal."

Earth and Air, wind and tree, show us what we need to see, Cassie thought, her mind automatically setting the simple concept in a rhyme. The wood of the wall, the air outside; that was what they needed to help them. She found herself murmuring the words under her breath and quickly stopped, but Diana's green eyes flashed at her.

"Go on," Diana said tensely, in a low voice, and she started up again, feeling self-conscious.

Diana removed the hand that was supporting the crystal.

It spun on the chain, twirling until the chain was kinked tightly, and then twirling the other way. Cassie watched the pale green blur, murmuring the couplet faster and faster. Earth and Air… no, it was useless. The peridot was just spinning madly like a top gone wild.

Suddenly, with broad, sweeping strokes, the crystal began swinging back and forth.

Someone's breath hissed on the other side of the circle.

The peridot had straightened out; it was no longer twirling, but swinging steadily and hard. Like a pendulum, Cassie realized. Diana wasn't doing it—her left hand holding the chain remained steady. But the peridot was swinging hard, back toward the center of the chalk circle on the floor, and forward toward the burned place on the wall.

"Bingo," Adam said softly.

"We've got it," Melanie whispered. "All right, now you're going to have to move it out of alignment to get outside. Walk—carefully—to the door, and then try to come back to this exact place on the other side of the wall."

Diana wet her lips and nodded, then, holding the silver chain always at the same distance from her body, she turned smoothly and did as Melanie said. The coven broke up to give her room and regrouped around her outside. Finding the right place wasn't hard; there was another circle burned on the outer wall, somewhat fainter than the one inside.

As Diana brought the crystal into alignment once more, it began to swing again. Straight toward the burned place, straight out. Down Crowhaven Road, toward the town.

A shudder went up Cassie's spine.

Everyone looked at everyone else.

Holding the crystal away from her, Diana followed the direction of the swinging. They all fell in behind her, although Cassie noticed Faye's group kept to the rear. Cassie herself was still fighting every second to not watch Adam.

Trees rustled overhead. Red maple, beech, slippery elm—Cassie could identify many of them now. But she tried to keep her eyes on the rapid swish of the pendulum.

They walked and walked, following the curve of Crowhaven Road down toward the water. Now grasses and hedges grew poorly in the sandy soil. The pale green stone was swinging at an angle and Diana turned to follow it.

They were heading west now, along a deeply rutted dirt road. Cassie had never been this way before, but the other members of the Circle obviously had—they were exchanging guarded glances. Cassie saw a chain-link fence ahead, and then an irregular line of headstones.

"Oh, great," Laurel muttered from beside Cassie, and from somewhere in back Suzan said, "I don't believe this. First we have to walk for miles, and now…"

"What's the problem? Just gonna visit some of our ancestors underground," Doug Henderson said, his blue-green eyes glittering oddly.

"Shut up," Adam said.

Cassie didn't want to go inside. She'd seen many cemeteries in New England—it seemed there was one on every other street in Massachusetts, and she'd been to Kori's funeral down in the town. This one didn't look any different from the others: it was a small, square plot of land cluttered with modest gravestones, many of them worn almost completely smooth with time. But Cassie could hardly make her-self follow the others onto the sparse, browning grass between the graves.

Diana led them straight down the middle of the cemetery. Most of the stones were small, scarcely reaching higher than Cassie's knees. They were shaped like arches with two smaller arches on either side.

"Whoever carved these had a gruesome sense of humor," she breathed. Many of the stones were etched with crude skulls, some of them winged, others in front of crossbones. One had an entire skeleton, holding a sun and moon in its hands.

"Death's victory," Faye said softly, so close that Cassie felt warmth on the nape of her neck. Cassie jumped, but refused to look back.

"Oh, terrific," said Laurel as Diana slowed.

The light was dying from the sky. They were in the center of the graveyard, and a cool breeze blew over the stunted grass, bringing a faint tang of salt with it. The hairs on the back of Cassie's neck were tingling.

You're a witch, she reminded herself. You should love cemeteries. They're probably your natural habitat.

The thought didn't really make her feel less frightened, but now her fear was mingled with something else—a sort of strange excitement. The darkness gathering in the sky and in the corners of the graveyard seemed closer. She was part of it, part of a whole new world of shadows and power.

Diana stopped.

The silver chain was a thin line in the gloom, with a pale blob below it. But Cassie could see that the peridot was no longer swinging like a pendulum. Instead it was moving erratically, round and round in circles. It would swing around a few times one way, then slow and swing back the other way.

Cassie looked at it, then up at Diana's face. Diana was frowning. Everyone was watching the circling stone in dead silence.

Cassie couldn't stand the suspense any longer. "What does it mean?" she hissed to Laurel, who just shook her head. Diana, though, looked up.

"Something's wrong with it. It led here—and then it just stopped. But if we've found the place, it shouldn't be moving at all. The stone should just sort of point and quiver—right, Melanie?"

"Like a good hound dog," Doug said, with his wild grin.

Melanie ignored him. "That's the theory," she said. "But we've never really tried this before. Maybe it means…" Her voice trailed off as she looked around the graveyard, and then she shrugged. "I don't know what it means."

The tingling at the back of Cassie's neck was getting stronger. The dark energy had come here—and done what? Disappeared? Dissipated? Or…

Laurel was breathing quickly, her elfin face unusually tense. Cassie instinctively moved a little closer to her. She and Laurel and Sean were the juniors, the youngest members of the Circle, and witch or not, Cassie's arms had broken out in gooseflesh.

"What if it's still here, somewhere… waiting?" she said.

"I doubt it," Melanie said, her voice as level and uninflected as usual. "It couldn't hang around without being stored somehow; it would just evaporate. It either came here and did something, or—" Again, though, she could only finish her sentence with a shrug.

"But what could it do here? I don't see any signs of damage, and I feel…" Still frowning, Diana caught the circling peridot in her left hand and held it. "This place feels confused—strange—but I don't sense any harm the dark energy has done. Cassie?"

Cassie tried to search her own feelings. Confusion—as Diana said. And she felt dread and anger and all sorts of churned-up emotions—but maybe that was just her. She was in no state to get a clear reading on anything.

"I don't know," she had to say to Diana. "I don't like it here."

"Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that we don't see any burns the dark energy could have left, or sense anything it's destroyed or hurt," Diana said.

Deborah's voice was impatient. "Why are you asking her, anyway?" she said with a jerk of her dark head toward Cassie. "She's hardly even one of us—"

"Cassie belongs to the Circle just as much as you do," Adam interrupted, unusually curt. Cassie saw the arch, amused glance Faye threw him and wanted to intervene, but Diana was agreeing heatedly with Adam and Deborah was bridling, glaring at both of them. It looked as if an argument would break out.

"Be quiet!" Laurel said sharply. "Listen!"

Cassie heard it as soon as the voices died down; the quiet crunch of gravel at the roadside. It was noticeable only against the deathly quiet of the autumn twilight.

"Somebody's coming," Chris Henderson said. He and Doug were poised for a fight.

They were all hideously on edge, Cassie realized. The crunch of footsteps sounded as loud as firecrackers now, grating against her taut nerves. She saw a dim shape beside the road, and then saw Adam move forward, so that he was in front of both Diana and her. I'm going to have to talk to him about that, she thought irrelevantly.

There was a pause in the footsteps, and the dim shape came toward them. Adam and the Henderson brothers looked ready to rush it. Quarrel forgotten, Deborah looked ready too. Sean was cowering behind Faye. Cassie's heart began to pound.

Then she noticed a spot of red like a tiny burning coal floating near the figure, and she heard a familiar voice.

"If you want me, you got me. Four against one ought to be about fair."

With a whoop, Chris Henderson rushed forward. "Nick!"

Doug grinned, while managing to look as if he might still jump the approaching figure. Adam relaxed and stepped back.

"You sure, Adam? We can settle this right here," Nick said as he reached the group, the end of his cigarette glowing as he inhaled. Adam's eyes narrowed, and then Cassie saw the daredevil smile he'd worn at Cape Cod when a bunch of guys with a gun had been chasing him. What is wrong with him, what's wrong with everybody tonight? she wondered. They're all acting crazy.

Diana put a restraining hand on Adam's arm. "No fighting," she said quietly.

Nick looked at her, then shrugged. "Kind of nervous, aren't you?" he said, surveying the group.

Sean emerged from behind Faye. "I'm just high-strung."

"Yes, you ought to be—from a tree," Faye said contemptuously.

Nick didn't smile, but then, Nick never smiled. His face was handsome, but cold. "Well, maybe you have a reason to be nervous—at least some of you," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean? We came here looking for the dark energy that escaped last night," said Adam.

Nick went still, as if struck by a new idea, then his cigarette glowed again. "Maybe you're looking in the wrong place," he said expressionlessly.

Diana's voice was quiet. "Nick, will you please just tell us what you mean?"

Nick looked around at them all. "I mean," he said deliberately, "that while you've been scurrying around here, a crew's been up at Devil's Cove pulling rocks off old Fogle."

Fogle? Cassie couldn't place the name. And then suddenly she saw it in her mind's eye—on a brass plate in a wood-paneled office. "Our principal?" she gasped.

"You got it. They say he got caught in an avalanche."

"An avalanche?" demanded Laurel in disbelief. "Around here?"

"How else do you explain the two-ton chunk of granite that was on top of him? Not to mention all the smaller stuff."

There was a moment of shocked silence.

"Is he…" Cassie couldn't finish the question.

"He wasn't looking so well when they got that chunk off him," Nick said, and then, with less sarcasm, "He's been dead since last night."

"Oh, God," Laurel whispered. There was another silence, just as shocked and even longer this time. Cassie knew they were all seeing the same thing: A crystal skull surrounded by a protective ring of candles—and one of the candles going out.

"It was Faye's fault," Sean began in a whine, but Faye interrupted without looking at him. "It was his fault."

"Wait, wait," said Diana. "We don't know the dark energy had anything to do with it. How could it have, when we know it came here and then stopped?"

"I don't think that's much comfort," Melanie said in a low voice. "Because if it wasn't the dark energy, who was it?"

There was a sort of strange shifting in the group, as if everyone was standing back and looking at all the others. Cassie felt a void in the pit of her stomach again. The principal was—had been—an outsider, who hated witches. And that meant they all had a motive—especially anybody who blamed the outsiders for Kori Henderson's death. She looked at Deborah, and then at Chris and Doug.

Most of the rest of the coven was doing the same. Doug glared back, then gave a wild, defiant grin.

"Maybe we did do it," he said, eyes glittering.

"Did we?" said Chris, looking confused.

Deborah just looked scornful.

There was another silence, then Suzan spoke in a petulant voice. "Look, it's too bad about Fogle, but do we have to stand here forever? My feet are killing me."

Adam seemed to shake himself. "She's right; we should get out of this place. There's nothing we can do here." He put an arm around Diana, and gestured everybody else ahead. Cassie lingered. There was something she wanted to say to Diana.

But Diana was moving now, and Cassie didn't have a chance. With the Henderson brothers in the lead, the group was taking a different route than the one they had taken in, cutting toward the northeast corner of the cemetery. As they approached the road, Cassie noticed the ground was rising. There was a strange mound of grassy earth near the chain-link fence on this side; she almost tripped when she reached it. But even stranger was what she saw when they had passed it and she looked back.

The front of the mound was faced with stone slabs, and there was an iron door, maybe two feet square, set between them. The door had an iron hinge and a padlock on it, but it couldn't have opened anyway. Pushed right up against it was a large, irregular hunk of cement. Grass was growing up around the cement, showing it had been there a while.

Cassie's hands were icy cold, her heart was thudding, and she was dizzy. She tried to think, noticing with only part of her mind that she was passing by newer gravestones now, marble slabs with writing not worn smooth by time. She was trying to figure out what was wrong with her—was it just reaction to all the events of the past day and night? Was that why she was shaking?

"Cassie, are you okay?" Diana and Adam had turned around. Cassie was grateful for the growing darkness as she faced both of them and tried to get her mind clear.

"Yeah. I just—felt weird for a minute. But wait, Diana." Cassie remembered what she had wanted to say. "You know how you were asking me about my feelings before… well, I have a feeling about Mr. Fogle. The dark energy had something to do with it, I'm almost sure. But…" She stopped. "But I don't know. There's something strange going on."

"You can say that again," Adam said, and he reached for her arm to get her moving once more.

Cassie evaded him and shot him a reproachful glance while Diana was looking into the distance. He looked at his own hand, startled.

There was something strange going on, something stranger than any of them realized, Cassie thought. "What is that thing back there, with the iron door?" she asked.

"It's been there for as long as I can remember," Diana said absently. "Something to do with storage, I think."

Cassie glanced back, but by now the mound was lost in darkness. She hugged herself, tucking her hands under her clasping arms to warm them. Her heart was still thudding.

I'll ask Grandma Howard about it, she decided. Whatever it was, it wasn't a storage shed.

Then she noticed that Diana was toying with something around her neck as she walked, lost in thought. It was a fine golden chain, and at the end of it dangled a key.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 722