The Hunt (16 page)

The graveyard was mostly flat, comprised of a few small ponds and crooked streams. The jagged coastline was visible in the distance to the east. To the west were wooded,
rolling hills. And prevailing over all of it were the granite cliffs in the far north. This was a beautiful place. Why were such wonders made so much more visible by death and loss? Was that why tragedies happened? To open our eyes to the miraculous, to force us to appreciate joy?

Only Deborah had the courage to say a brief eulogy over Suzan's casket, to reach for a few words that might capture what the whole Circle was feeling. She cleared her throat and looked affectionately at Suzan's father.

“Suzan was easy to underestimate,” she said, and a few people giggled. “In fact, Suzan wanted you to underestimate her, so she could later surprise you with her wit and intelligence, her goodness, her generosity, and let's not forget, her sarcasm. Beneath all her fancy clothes and makeup, Suzan was a pure soul.” Deborah was choking back tears now. “She was pure through and through. And we're all going to miss her very much.”

They all began to cry, but Faye was the most distraught of all. She could barely keep herself upright, she was so overcome with grief. To keep her sobbing from disrupting the ceremony, she staggered off to the side to lean against a barren tree.

Cassie went to her. She approached her the way she would have approached an injured street cat, with
carefulness and caution, fully prepared to back off if necessary. She tried putting her arm around her, but Faye immediately pushed her away. “I don't want your pity. Just leave me alone.”

“Faye,” Cassie said. “None of this is your fault. You can't be blaming yourself.”

Faye stared viciously at the ground. “It should have been me. I wish it was me in that box right now.”

“Faye.”

“No, Cassie. It's easy for you to say it's nobody's fault. You saved the day. You're the hero. But I'm the reason Suzan was on that roof to begin with. And then she threw herself in front of the killing curse to save me. So don't stand there and try to make me feel better. I don't deserve it.”

Cassie could understand the sentiment. She didn't want to feel better either. And if Faye wished to punish herself, there was nothing Cassie could do to convince her otherwise. She took a step closer to Faye but didn't attempt to touch her this time. She just stood near her quietly and respectfully, hoping at the very least to make Faye feel less alone in her remorse.

They watched the remainder of the service together from afar. After the casket was lowered into the ground,
there was nothing left for anyone to do but file back to their cars.

Cassie took Faye's hand and guided her across the grass to the rest of the group. With her other hand, she reached for Adam. Together, the eleven of them walked solemnly across the graveyard, but Cassie felt as if each step took them further away from one another. This devastation had broken their bond and weakened their allegiance.

Then Cassie looked down at her and Adam's intertwined fingers. She willed it to be there. The silver cord. But nothing appeared.

The town of New Salem oddly came to life around funerals.
People Cassie had never even seen before poured into Suzan's house with flowers and food for Suzan's dad. He was polite, but dazed. It might take weeks for the reality of Suzan's death to actually hit him. Cassie wished she could go to him now and offer him some kind of explanation for what had happened to his little girl. He must have so many questions. But Cassie restrained herself. It was probably better to leave those things unsaid. None of it really added up to an explanation anyhow.

Diana huddled close to Cassie and whispered in her
ear. “See those?” she said, pointing to a bouquet of lilies. “They're from Max.”

Cassie could see Diana was hurting. Not having Max nearby when she needed him the most couldn't have been easy. This day would have been impossible for Cassie to endure without Adam. But then again, Adam wasn't the Circle's sworn enemy.

Diana touched one of the lilies longingly. “I broke it off with him, you know.”

Cassie tried not to appear relieved.

“After what happened with Suzan, I realized how dangerous it really was,” Diana continued. “I told him I needed to stand with my Circle.”

“And he's okay with that?”

“He doesn't have a choice,” Diana said, but she gazed around the room as if she were still hoping Max might step inside at any moment.

Cassie could relate. She had given up Adam once for the good of the Circle and her friendship with Diana. She searched her mind for the right thing to say. Max hadn't been on the roof the night of their battle, so maybe he wasn't so bad after all—maybe he was having second thoughts about being a hunter. But Cassie still couldn't ignore the facts: It was Max who'd marked Faye. It was
Max's father who'd killed Suzan—Suzan, who they'd just buried less than an hour before. Cassie couldn't help but be glad Diana had broken up with him, at least for the time being.

“Look, Diana,” Cassie said. “None of us knows what the future holds. What's going to happen between you and Max down the road isn't something we can predict. But today, you have your friends. And we're here for you—we have to be, now more than ever.”

“You're right. And I'm grateful. Believe me, I am.” Diana paused. “It's just that sometimes I wish everything could just be normal. Do you know what I mean?”

“Well,” Cassie said, looking over at Adam. He was greeting strangers at the door, thanking them for their casseroles and flowers, directing them toward the sitting room. He was always the helper, always the gentle knight. How could Cassie judge Diana harshly for choosing a complicated person to love, when she knew it was hardly a choice at all?

“You know what I think?” Cassie put her arm around Diana and brought her in for a hug. “I think sometimes, normal is overrated.”

Later that night, after the mourners had gone home, the
Circle convened in Diana's living room. They sat motionless, leaning on one another, staring into space as if waiting for something none of them could name. They listened to the sound of the driving rain on the roof and the savage gusts of wind buffeting the bay window. Outside, the night sky had turned pink in the storm: Suzan's favorite color.

Nobody knew what to say, and there was much not being said. Those unspoken words hung in the air like ghosts in their midst: that it could have been any one of them who'd been killed. That if Cassie hadn't shown
up, they'd all have witch-hunter death symbols glowing on their foreheads. It was a strange mind-set, to be both grieving for the death of their friend while also giving thanks that they'd been spared.

Faye sat hugging her knees to her chest on the end of the couch, separate from the others. Her eyes were blank and drooping with exhaustion. Cassie understood it would be a long time before Faye was acting like herself again, and even then, she might never be the same.

Diana took a deep breath and looked at the group. “One of our own is dead,” she said. “The Circle has been broken.” Her Book of Shadows was at her side. She picked it up and brought it into her lap. “I don't want to talk about this any more than you do, but we have to find out what happens now that our Circle is incomplete.”

“It means we're weak again,” Deborah said. “Like we were before we initiated Cassie, before we were whole.”

Melanie nodded. “This is the worst time for us to have an unbound Circle, with the combined threat of the hunters and Scarlett. I don't mean to sound cold, but we need to initiate someone in Suzan's place as soon as possible.”

Laurel's eyes welled up with tears. Cassie couldn't
blame her. She could hardly stand to think about these technicalities either. She wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and bury her head in her mother's shoulder. But she had to stand by her friends—she had to try to help in whatever way she could.

Cassie offered the Circle the only information she knew. “Scarlett said whoever dies in a bound Circle has to be replaced by someone of their own bloodline. Whoever's next in their family lineage. So we're not going to have much say in the matter of who fills Suzan's place.”

“Right,” Adam said, responding to Cassie. “But Suzan had no siblings or other family that we know about. So what happens now?”

“Maybe it becomes a wild card,” Nick suggested. “And we get to choose whoever we want.”

“I wish that were the case, but I'd be shocked if it were that simple.” Diana flipped through her Book of Shadows, searching for something. Within a few seconds she found the page she was looking for.

“This is a family tree spell,” she said, holding the book up for all to see and then setting it back down on her lap. “It could help us fill in any blanks in Suzan's ancestry.”

Adam read the spell over Diana's shoulder. “It can definitely tell us who would be next in line. If there is anyone.”

“I'm pretty sure Suzan's bloodline ended with her,” Deborah said. “She was the only child of two only children, wasn't she?”

“We can't be too sure.” Adam looked up from the book. “Suzan's family was notoriously tight-lipped. Her father refused to talk about the past with her at all. I think checking her family tree is worth a try.”

Diana read over the detailed instructions. “It seems simple enough. All we need is some canvas paper and …” Her voice trailed off.

“What?” Sean asked, sounding like he sensed the worst.

“We need something of Suzan's,” Diana said quietly. “Something containing DNA. Like her blood.”

The room fell silent. Awful visions of Suzan's body buried tightly beneath the cold ground rushed through Cassie's mind. “There's no way,” she said. “Forget it.”

But Laurel quickly got up and ran into the other room. She returned carrying Suzan's soft leather purse. “I brought this so we could perform a deep peace ritual tonight. As a memorial with some of her favorite things.”

Laurel opened the purse so they could all view its
contents. It was a mishmash of makeup, bubble gum, and crumpled up Twinkie wrappers. Cassie felt a lump form in her throat. There was something sacrilegious about going through a deceased person's personal items. The purse even smelled like Suzan.

“I don't think you're going to find any blood in there,” Cassie said. “At least I hope you don't.”

“That's not what I'm looking for.” Laurel lifted Suzan's hairbrush out from the bottom of the purse. She pulled a few tangled strands of Suzan's strawberry-blond hair out of its bristles. “There's your DNA,” she said to Diana. “It'll work the same as a blood sample.”

“Laurel, you're a genius.” Diana bolted to her desk drawer to retrieve a canvas art pad. She flipped through the pad, past a number of charcoal drawings and acrylic paintings, until she found a blank page. She tore it out carefully and brought it back to the group. Then she continued reading from her Book of Shadows.

“We'll still need ink,” Diana said. “But it has to come from something Suzan had direct contact with. Is there a pen inside her purse? If she used it recently it might still contain some of her energy.”

Laurel dug through the bag, but she couldn't find a pen. “No luck,” she said. “But this might work.” She
offered Diana a bottle of Suzan's nail polish. It was the same color she'd painted her nails earlier that week—sparkle-flecked magenta.

Diana took the bottle from Laurel and uncapped it. “She definitely had contact with this.”

Cassie and the others gathered around Diana, forming a circle, as she prepared the spell. She placed the canvas flat on the floor and scattered Suzan's hair on it, as her Book of Shadows instructed. Then she trickled a few drops of the nail polish on the center of the page and said:

Reveal to us Suzan's family tree.

And who our new Circle member will be.

Immediately, pinkish purple lines soaked into the veins of the paper like blood. Up from the bottom of the page, a tree began to draw itself in watery magenta strokes. It was thick at its base and grew upward and out in long stalks, spreading across the entire canvas. Branches formed and then names attached to each branch.

“It's working,” Diana said. “I don't believe it.”

Cassie watched each generation of Suzan's family
grow from the tree like blossoming fruit. The first names to appear dated back three hundred years, which meant Suzan's ancestors must have been among New Salem's founding families. The tree grew fast through the decades and seemed to be picking up speed as it neared the present. By the time Suzan's parents' names appeared, almost every inch of paper had been inked over in fine print.

“Linda Forsythe,” Laurel said. “That was Suzan's mother who passed away in the storm. We would have known her as Linda Whittier.”

“Forsythe?” Cassie said aloud, but nobody heard her. She hadn't remembered until now that the surname Whittier came from Suzan's father's side. She hadn't given any thought at all to Suzan's mother's bloodline.