The Secret Circle: The Captive Part II and The Power (20 page)

“These trees,” she said to Portia, “have put up with a lot from your kind. If you try to run you’ll end up lost in the middle of them. That’s not to mention what the dog might do. If I were you, I wouldn’t move a muscle.”

Portia didn’t.

Diana walked over and cut Cassie’s ropes with a white-handled knife. It took some time.

“Good job,” Suzan said from the sidelines.

“Are you all right?” Diana asked Cassie, still with that frightening, unearthly aura about her. Cassie nodded.

“We were already on our way when you called to Adam,” Diana said. “Laurel saw their car speeding down Crowhaven Road and Adam felt there was something wrong. He guided us to their car, but it was Raj who tracked you through the woods.”

Cassie just nodded gratefully. She couldn’t speak.

“Since Cassie’s all right, we won’t hurt you four,” Diana said aloud, then. “But we’re going to take
this
”—she picked up Jordan’s gun, holding it as if it were a poisonous snake—“and we’re going to leave you here. Your car has a few flat tires. You can walk home.”

The four outsiders said nothing. Sally, still on the ground, was panting; Logan, with Nick’s arm around
his throat, was trembling-still; Portia remained frozen against the tree. But it was Jordan who held Cassie’s attention. He was staring at Diana with eyes of pure hatred, like a cornered wild dog.

It will never stop, Cassie thought. They’ll hate us even more after this. They’ll do something else to us, and we’ll do something to them, and it will never stop.

On impulse, she walked over to where Jordan lay sprawled on his back on the forest floor, and she held out a hand to him.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” she said. “Can’t we just end it now?”

Jordan spat on her.

Cassie went still, too surprised to be upset. Nobody had ever spat at her before. She looked in shock at her outstretched hand, then wiped it on her jeans.

What happened next she heard later from Laurel, because she was actually looking down at the time. Nick started toward Jordan instantly, but he was hindered by having to get rid of Logan, and anyway Adam was simply
faster
. He moved faster than the eye could follow, grabbing Jordan by the front of the jacket and hauling him up, then knocking him down again with one lightning-quick blow to the face. Behind Cassie, the bonfire shot up in orange flames ten feet high. Jordan landed on his back, both hands clapped over his nose.

“Get up,” Adam said. The flames roared and crackled, sending a shower of sparks floating into the darkness of the woods.

Nick was beside Adam now. His face was emotionless, utterly cool, the old Nick. “Naw, buddy, I think he’s had enough,” he drawled, taking hold of Adam’s arm.

Jordan lifted one hand from his nose, and Cassie saw the blood. “She’s a little liar. You’ll find out,” he yowled in a thick voice, looking from Cassie to Adam.

For a moment Cassie thought Adam was going to hit him again. Then Adam turned away, as if forgetting Jordan existed. He didn’t seem to notice Nick’s existence either. He took Cassie’s hand, the one Jordan had spat on, turned it over, and kissed it.

Cassie thought that somebody had better do something fast.

“We should tie them up,” Melanie said, her calm, thoughtful voice pervading the clearing. “Or three of them at least—the fourth can be untying the others while we get away.”

“Not too tightly,” Diana said, conceding. While Jordan, Logan, and Sally were being tied up, she stuck the white-handled knife in the ground by Portia. “You can cut them free when we leave. Don’t try to follow us,” she said. Portia didn’t look as if she might follow; her eyes were showing white all around.

Diana followed her gaze to the fire, which was still roaring more like a burning oil well than a bonfire, and spoke softly to Cassie. “Can you tone that down a little? I think they’re scared enough.”

Cassie, who wasn’t doing it, mumbled something inarticulate, and hastily went over to check on Sally’s bonds.

Sally glanced at her out of the sides of her eyes and spoke without moving her lips. “I was wrong about you.”

Cassie looked at her in surprise, but said nothing, leaning over as if to examine Sally’s tied wrists.

“You may be right about Brunswick,” Sally said, still in almost inaudible tones. “If you are, I feel sorry for you. He’s going to do something on the ninth. There’s a full moon or something—and that’s when he’s going to move. He wanted the tools before then.”

“Thanks,” Cassie whispered and she squeezed Sally’s hand behind her back. Then she straightened up as Diana said, “Let’s go.” As they left, Cassie nudged Adam inconspicuously.

“Are you doing the fire?” she whispered.

“What? Oh.” The flames fell, collapsing suddenly into a normal bonfire. “I guess so,” he said.

They walked through the woods, Laurel and Deborah leading them surely among the dark trees, Raj trotting alongside. Cassie spent the entire walk thinking about Nick.

She got in the Armstrong car with him when they came to the road. He drove silently, one arm along the back of the seat. The other cars were in front of them, headlights shining on the lonely road as they made their way back to New Salem.

Cassie was trying to find the right words to say. She’d never had to do anything like this before and she was afraid to do it wrong. She was afraid to hurt Nick.

But there was no way around it. From the instant that Adam had kissed her hand she had
known
. Cassie could like it or hate it, but there was no way to do anything about it.

“Nick . . .” she said, and choked up.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, in his old detached, nothing-hurts-me voice. Cassie could hear the pain underneath it. Then he looked at her, and his tone softened.

“I knew what I was doing when I got into this,” he said. “And you never pretended anything else. It’s not your fault.”

He’d said she didn’t have to say anything—but she did. She had to try to explain to him.

“It’s not because of Adam,” she said softly. “I mean, it’s not
for
him, because I know there’s no hope. I—
accept
that now, and I’m happy for him and Diana. But I just . . .”

She stopped and shook her head helplessly. “This is going to sound totally stupid, but I can’t be with anybody else. Ever. I’m just going to have to . . .” She tried to think of a way to put it, but all she could come up with was a phrase out of one of her grandmother’s Victorian etiquette books she’d read one rainy afternoon.

“I’m going to have to live a life of single blessedness,” she mumbled.

Nick threw back his head and laughed. Real laughter. Cassie looked at him, embarrassed, but glad that at least he was smiling. His voice was more normal too, as he glanced at her sideways, taking his arm off the back of the seat.

“Oh, you think so?” he said.

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?”

Nick didn’t answer, just shook his head slightly, with another little snort of laughter.

“Cassie, I’m glad I met you,” he said. “You’re—unique. Sometimes I think you belong back in medieval times instead of now. You and Diana and
him
, all three. But, anyway, I’m glad.”

Cassie felt more embarrassed, and she didn’t understand. “I’m glad I met
you
,” she said. “You’ve been so nice to me—you’re such a good guy.”

He snorted again. “Most people would disagree,” he said. “But I’m not so bad. I’ll have to make sure I’m not, or I’ll still see you looking at me with those big eyes.” He started to fish a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket, then glanced at her sideways and tapped it back.

Cassie smiled. She wished she could hold his hand, but that wouldn’t be right. She was going to have to make it alone now.

She leaned back and looked through the windows at the lighted houses slipping by.

Chapter 13

“I
t’s the Moon of Long Nights,” Diana said. “And it’s not just full on the ninth. There’s an eclipse.”

“A total lunar eclipse,” said Melanie.

“Is that bad for us?” Cassie asked.

Diana considered. “Well, all witches’ powers are strongest in moonlight. And certain spells are best done at the dark of the moon, or at the full moon, or at some other phase. I’m sure that if Black John is going to move on that particular night, an eclipse must be best for whatever he’s going to do. And worst for us fighting him.”

“Except,” Adam said, “if we know he’s going to move—and he doesn’t know we know it. He won’t realize we’re prepared.”

There were thoughtful nods around the Circle. It was the day after Thanksgiving and everyone who had come to rescue Cassie the day before was gathered at Adam’s house. Cassie had told them what had happened in the clearing before they came—except about Jordan asking for the Master Tools. This she’d whispered to Adam and Diana in front of Diana’s house last night. Now she looked at the two of them with a question in her eyes.

Adam and Diana both regarded the group unhappily. “Right,” Adam said. “I guess we’d better tell them. Since
he
knows, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Faye must have found out somehow,” Diana said, looking more unhappy than ever. “She went to Black John—”

“No,” Cassie said.

Diana looked at her, surprised. “But—”

“Not Faye,” Cassie said, grimly and with absolute certainty. “
Sean
.”

Adam cursed softly. Diana stared at him, then at Cassie. Then she whispered, “Oh, my God.”

“What about Sean? What did he do?” Deborah demanded. Nick was very alert, his narrow eyes fixed on Cassie.

After a glance at Diana—who nodded and leaned her head on one hand—Cassie said simply to Deborah, “He told Black John that Adam and Diana and I had found the Master Tools.”

“You found—you mean you guys—you mean you really—?” Deborah was sputtering. The others looked speechless with amazement.

“
Cassie
led us to them,” Adam said. “They were in the fireplace at Number Twelve. On the way back we ran into Sean, who said he’d seen a light. But you think . . . ?” He looked at Cassie.

Cassie took a deep breath. “I think Black John has been influencing him all along. I think he was the one who stole the hematite from my room. I figured it out last night, when I was trying to get to sleep. I started thinking about who could have told Black John—and I kept getting this flash of Sean the first time I saw him. He was wearing a belt with his name carved on some shiny stone. I used to see him wear it all the time, but now that it’s cold and everybody’s wearing sweaters, I haven’t noticed it. But I’ll bet he’s been wearing it underneath, and I’ll bet he was wearing it that night he came out in his pajama top. And I’ll bet that shiny stone is—”

“Hematite,” half a dozen bleak voices chorused, and everyone looked at Melanie.

“Hematite or lodestone,” Melanie confirmed. “Yes, it is; I’ve seen that belt too. How incredibly stupid of us. It never even occurred to me.”

Nick leaned forward. “So you think Faye
wasn’t
the one who told Black John we were wearing amethysts as protection? You think Sean did that?”

Cassie looked at the hard line of his mouth. “It wasn’t his fault, Nick. If Black John got into his mind—well, I know how I felt when he was trying to get into
my
mind. Sean wouldn’t have been able to resist. In fact,
we
saw that he couldn’t resist, at the assembly when he volunteered to be a hall monitor. I had to yell at him to break the trance.”

“Sean . . . God!” Laurel said, settling back. “It’s just too awful.”

“I’m afraid it’s worse,” Cassie said. She stared down at Mrs. Franklin’s coffee table, pressing one hand flat against it. She didn’t know how to say this next. “You guys, I think . . . I think Black John used Sean to commit the murders.”

There was a deafening silence. Even Diana looked too horrified to support Cassie. But Adam looked into her eyes and then slowly, shutting his own eyes, nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh,
no
,” said Suzan.

“I think”—Cassie swallowed—“that he could have written a note to Kori the night before, asking her to meet him in front of school. She wouldn’t have suspected him; she’d have just thought it was Circle business. He could have come up behind her, and—”

“I’ll kill him!” Doug shouted, jumping up. Nick and Deborah grabbed him, but by then Chris was shouting too, lunging for the door. Adam and Melanie wrestled him to the ground.

“It wasn’t
him
; it wasn’t Sean,” Cassie shouted. “Listen to me, you guys! It was Black John;
he’s
the one who killed Kori. If I’m right, Sean probably doesn’t even remember it! He was just a—a
container
for the dark energy to use.”

“God,” Laurel said. “God—remember the skull ceremony in Diana’s garage? The time the second bunch of dark energy was released? Sean and Faye started fighting, the candle went out, and the dark energy escaped. Sean said Faye started it, and we all believed him. But Faye said Sean was trying to break the circle. What if she was right?”

“I’ll bet she
was
right,” Cassie said. “Black John’s been with us all the time. Whatever Sean saw, he saw. And when enough dark energy was released from the skull—which Black John
arranged
to happen whenever he could—then it worked with Sean to commit the murders.”

“It would have been easy to get Mr. Fogle over to Devil’s Cove, too,” Suzan said. “Sean could have pretended he had something bad to tell about somebody else in the Club. I used to do that all the time; tell the principal things about—” She glanced at Diana. “Well—that was in the old days. Anyway, Sean could have asked Fogle to meet him under the rocks and then—
foom
.” She made a pushing gesture. “Good-bye, Mr. Fogle.”

“Can we let you up now?” Adam asked Chris, and “Can we trust you to act sensible?” Deborah asked Doug.

There were incoherent snarls from the Henderson brothers, and when they were released they sat up with flushed faces and blue-green eyes as bright as gas flames.

“We’re gonna get that bastard,” Doug said quietly.

“If it’s the last thing we do,” said Chris, equally quiet. Cassie hoped they meant Black John.

“But what about Jeffrey?” Diana asked Cassie.

Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know how Sean could have gotten him down to the boiler room—”

“By saying
you
were down there, maybe,” Laurel said.

“—but if he did, he could have just come up behind him and strangled him with the rope—no, Sean’s too short. Oh, I don’t know how he could have done it—”

“By getting Lovejoy to sit down or lean over,” Nick said, his voice crisp and low. “That’s what I’d have done, anyway, if I were trying to strangle somebody that much taller. And look, if Sean had that dark energy
inside
him somehow, he could have had outrageous strength. He must have had, to be able to put the noose around Lovejoy’s neck and haul him up over that pipe afterward.”

Cassie felt sick. “It’s true—I didn’t see either Sean or Jeffrey at the dance for a while before the murder. Then all of a sudden Sean appeared on the dance floor, coming toward me. So I ran to the boiler room . . . and found Jeffrey.”

“I think we need to talk to Sean,” said Diana.

“No,” Adam said, with surprising vehemence. “That’s just what we shouldn’t do. If we talk to him now, Black John will realize we know. But if we don’t say anything, if we play along with Sean and pretend we
don’t
know, we can feed him disinformation. Tell him things that aren’t true, for him to pass along to Black John.”

“Like tell him we don’t know when Black John is going to move,” Deborah said, her dark eyes beginning to snap. “Tell him we’re terrified of Black John—we don’t know how to use the Master Tools—we’re unprepared . . .”

“Or that we’re all fighting among ourselves,” suggested Laurel. “We can’t agree on anything. We’re deadlocked.”

“Right! And then that night we’ll actually be ready for him. When’s the eclipse, Melanie?” Adam said.

“Around six forty in the evening. That’s what I’d say we have to look out for. The moon in shadow.”

“The moon in shadow,” Cassie repeated softly. “I think I can understand why he would choose that time.” He’s a shadow himself, she thought.

“And until then all we have to do is pretend to be completely disorganized, terrified, and argumentative,” said Melanie.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Suzan said, raising an eyebrow.

“There’s somebody I think we
should
talk to,” Cassie said, “without giving away any of our secrets. I think one of us should talk to Faye.”

“And I think you’re elected,” Nick said. “I can’t think of anybody better for the job.” He winked at Cassie, but it was a grim wink.

“We need you.”

“I’m sure,” Faye said lazily, examining herself in the mirror. She was trying her hair in different ways: twisted back, on top of her head, at the nape of her neck. Cassie hadn’t been in Faye’s bedroom since the night Faye had set a ring of red stones around the crystal skull and released the dark energy that had eventually killed Jeffrey. The room was as opulent and luxurious as ever: the wallpaper patterned with lush jungle orchids, the bed piled with cushions, the stereo system packed with expensive extras. Faye’s vampire kittens once again twined sinuously around Cassie’s ankles.

But there was a different atmosphere here than before. The red candles were gone from the dresser tops; in their place were stacks of paperwork. On the bedspread along with the cordless phone was a beeper. An appointment book was sitting in front of the mirror, and the clothes strewn carelessly about were of the sultry office-girl kind Faye had taken to wearing.

The room felt—pressured. Type-A lifestyle. More like Portia than Faye.

“I suppose you know that Portia Bainbridge and Sally had me kidnapped two days ago,” Cassie said.

Faye shot her an amused glance in the mirror. “And I’m sure you know you only had to open your pretty little mouth and yell, and Daddy would have been right there to help.”

Cassie tried not to look as sick as that made her feel. “I don’t want his help,” she said, swallowing.

Faye shrugged. “Maybe later.”

“
No
, Faye. Not later. I don’t ever want to see him again. But if you know about me being kidnapped, you must know what they were after. We’ve found the Master Tools.” Cassie looked at the strange opposite-Faye image in the mirror, and then turned to look the real Faye in the eyes. “They belong to you,” she said distinctly. “You’re leader of the coven. But the coven is going to fight . . . Black John.”

“You can’t even say it, can you? It’s not so hard. Daddy. Father. Pops. Whatever you want to call him, I’m sure he won’t mind—”

“Will you listen to me, Faye!” Cassie almost shouted. “You’re sitting here being fatuous—”

“And she knows big words, too!”

“—while something
serious
is going on! Something deadly serious. He is going to
kill
people. That’s all he is, Faye, hatred and the desire to kill. I know it; I can feel it in him. And he’s taking
you
for a ride.”

Faye’s golden eyes narrowed. She looked less amused.

“I’ve known you for a while now, Faye, and there’ve been plenty of times when I’ve hated you. But I never thought I’d see you become somebody’s
stenographer
. You used to make up your own mind about things and you didn’t kiss up to anybody. Do you remember how you once asked me if I wanted my epitaph to be ‘Here lies Cassie. She was . . . nice’? Well, do you want yours to be ‘Here lies Faye. She was a good secretary’?”

One of Faye’s hands, with its long fingernails—mauve these days, instead of scarlet—was clenched on the dresser. Her jaw was set, and she was staring hard into her own golden eyes in the mirror.

Cassie’s pulse quickened. “When I looked at you I used to see a lion—a sort of black and gold lion. Now I see”—she glanced down at her feet—“a kitten. Some rich guy’s kitten.”

She waited tensely. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . Maybe the bond forged during the candle ceremony would be strong enough, maybe Faye had enough pride, enough independence . . .

Faye’s eyes met hers in the mirror. Then Faye shook her head. Her face was closed, her mouth tight.

“I think you know the way out,” she said.

The kittens tangled around Cassie’s feet as she turned, and she felt the razor-sharp nick of claws.

No
, she told them with her mind, and she felt the kittens freeze, ears back. She picked them up, one in each hand, and tossed them onto Faye’s bed.

Then she left.

“We have to give her until the ninth,” Diana said. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

“‘Maybe later,’” Cassie quoted, but there wasn’t much hope in her voice.

“We’ll wait until the ninth for Sean, too,” Adam said.

They made it through the next seven school days without trouble—except among themselves. At New Salem High, the members of the Club only spoke to each other in public to argue. Laurel’s birthday on the first and Sean’s birthday on the third of December went uncelebrated, because, according to a distraught Diana, none of them could get along long enough to plan a party. Cassie saw the looks and heard the whispers and knew that the plan was working. She concentrated on being as much like the old Cassie as possible—shy, tongue-tied, easily frightened or embarrassed. The role was uncomfortable, like some old skin she’d outgrown, and she itched to get rid of it. But for the time they were fooling Sean. They were even fooling Faye.

“I hear you and Nick have broken up,” Faye said in the hall one day. The hooded golden eyes were warm and pleased.

Cassie flushed, looking away.

“And the Club isn’t much of a club without me, from what I see these days,” Faye went on, practically purring.

Cassie squirmed.

“I may join you sometime—maybe for the next full-moon celebration. If you’re having one, that is.”