The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (39 page)

Read The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection Online

Authors: L. J. Smith

Tags: #Young Adult, #Fantasy, #Romance, #Vampires, #Juvenile Fiction, #Teenage Girls, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Love & Romance, #Witchcraft, #Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Social Issues, #Young Adult Fiction, #love, #Dating & Sex, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection

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Doug, his strange slanted eyes glittering wildly, rushed back to the jeep. “Gonna
kill
that dog,” he said breathlessly. “Where’s that army pistol?”

“Hold on, Max! Hold him till I get my shotgun!” the man was yelling.

“Ow! He’s chewin’ on me! It hurts, man!” Chris bellowed.

“Don’t kill him,” Cassie pleaded frantically, catching Doug by the arm. All she needed was for him and the pumpkin man to start shooting at each other. Doug continued ransacking the litter on the jeep’s floor. “Don’t kill the dog! We can just give him this,” Cassie said, suddenly inspired. She snatched up a Dunkin’ Donuts bag with several stale doughnuts in it. While Doug was still looking for a gun, she ran back to the fence.

“Here, doggy, nice doggy,” she gasped. The dog snarled. Chris continued bellowing; the pumpkin man continued yelling. “
Good
dog,” Cassie told the Doberman desperately. “Good boy, here, look, doughnuts, see? Want a doughnut?” And then, surprising herself completely, she shouted,
“Come here! NOW!”

At the same time, she did—she didn’t know what. She did . . . something . . . with her mind. She could feel it going out of her like a blast of heat. It hit the dog and the dog let go of Chris’s foot, hind legs collapsing. Belly almost on the ground, it slunk over to the fence and crouched.

Cassie felt tall and terrible. She said, “Good dog,” and tossed the doughnut bag over the fence. Chris was scrambling over in the other direction, almost falling on his head. The dog lay down and whined pitifully, ignoring the doughnuts.

“Let’s go,” Chris yelled. “Come on, Doug! We don’t need to kill anybody!”

Between them, he and Cassie bundled the protesting Doug into the jeep and Chris drove off. The pumpkin-seller ran after them with his shotgun, but when they reached the road he gave up the chase.

“Ow,” Chris said, shaking his foot and causing the jeep to veer.

Doug muttered to himself.

Cassie leaned back and sighed.

“Okay,” Chris said cheerfully, “now let’s go to the Witch Dungeon.”

The Salem Witch Dungeon Museum looked like a house from the outside. Chris and Doug seemed to know the layout well, and Cassie followed them around the house, where they slipped in a back entrance.

Through a doorway Cassie glimpsed what seemed to be a small theater. “That’s where they do the witch trials,” Chris said. “You know, like a play for the tourists. Then they take ’em down here.”

A flight of narrow stairs plunged down into darkness.

“
Why
?” Cassie said.

“It’s the dungeon. They give ’em a tour. We hide in the corners and jump up and yell when they get close. Some of ’em practically have heart attacks,” Doug said, with his mad grin.

Cassie could see how that might happen. As they made their way down the stairs it got darker and darker. A dank, musty odor assaulted her nostrils and the air felt very cool.

A narrow corridor stretched forward into the blackness, which was broken only by tiny lights at long intervals. Small cells opened out from either side of the corridor. The whole place had a heavy, underground feel to it.

It’s like the boiler room, Cassie thought. Her feet stopped moving.

“Come on, what’s wrong?” Doug whispered, turning around. She could barely see him.

Chris came back to the foot of the stairs and looked into her face. “We don’t have to go in there yet,” he said. “We can wait here till they start to come down.”

Cassie nodded at him gratefully. It was bad enough standing on the edge of this terrible place. She didn’t want to go in until she absolutely had to.

“Or . . .” Chris seemed to be engaging in some prodigious feat of thought. “Or . . . we could just
leave
, you know.”

“Leave now? Why?” Doug demanded, running back.

“Because . . .” Chris stared at him. “Because . . . because I say so!”

“You? Who cares what you say?” Doug returned in a whispering shout and the two of them began to scuffle.

They’re not really scary after all, Cassie thought, a little dazedly. They’re more like the Lost Boys in
Peter Pan
. Peculiar, but sort of cute.

“It’s all right,” she said, to stop their fighting. “We can stay. I’ll just sit down on the stairs.”

Out of breath, they sat down too, Chris massaging the toe of his boot.

Cassie leaned against the wall and shut her eyes. She could hear voices from above, someone talking about the Salem witch trials, but only snatches of the lecture got through to her. She was drained from everything that had happened today, and this dreadful place made her feel sick and fuzzy. As if she had cobwebs in her brain.

A woman’s voice was saying, “. . . the royal governor, Sir William Phips, established a special court to deal with the cases. By now there were so many accused witches . . .”

So many fake witches, Cassie thought hazily, half listening. If that woman only knew about the real witches lurking in her dungeon.

“. . . on June tenth, the first of the convicted witches was publicly executed. Bridget Bishop was hung on Gallows Hill, just outside of Salem . . .”

Poor Bridget Bishop, Cassie thought. She had a sudden vision of Jeffrey’s swinging feet and a wave of nausea passed over her. Probably Bridget’s feet had been swinging when they hung her, too.

“. . . by the end of September eighteen other people had been hung. Sarah Goode’s last words . . .”

Eighteen. That’s a lot of swinging feet. God, I don’t feel well, thought Cassie.

“. . . and a nineteenth victim was pressed to death. Pressing was a form of Puritan torture in which a board was placed on the victim’s chest, and then heavier and heavier rocks were piled on top of the board . . .”

Ugh. Now I
really
don’t feel well. Wonder how it feels to have rocks piled on you till you die? Guess I’ll never know since that doesn’t happen much today. Unless you happen to be caught in a rockslide, or something . . .

With a jerk, Cassie sat up straight, the cobwebs swept out of her brain as if by a blast of icy wind.

Rockslide. Avalanche. Mr. Fogle, the high-school principal, had found out what it was like to have rocks piled on you till you died.

Weird coincidence. That was all it was. But . . .

Oh, my God, Cassie thought suddenly.

She felt as if her entire body were plugged into something electric. Her thoughts were tumbling over each other.

Rockslide. Pressed to death. Same thing, really. And hanging. The witches were hanged . . . just like Jeffrey Lovejoy. Oh, God, oh, God. There had to be a connection.

“. . . never know how many died in prison. In comparison to the conditions there, the swift oblivion of a broken neck may have been merciful. Our tour will now take you—”

Broken neck. A broken neck.

Kori’s neck had been broken
.

Cassie thought she was going to faint.

Copyright

The Secret Circle: The Initiation and The Captive Part I

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