The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (67 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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T
he kitchen was shadowy and quiet when Cassie stepped inside. Her mother wasn’t home, and she was glad. She didn’t want to have to explain why she was hauling bricks out of the fireplace. Just up the block, Diana was retrieving the tiara and whatever other materials they’d need to complete the resuscitation spell. And a little farther down Crowhaven Road, the rest of the group was somehow going to convince Melanie to allow them to bring her great-aunt’s body to the lighthouse. Before this year, Cassie had never even seen a real dead body, and now she was going to put her hands over one and try to bring it back to life.

The fireplace wasn’t such a creative hiding spot for the bracelet, Cassie knew, but it had worked successfully for so many years, why try to think up someplace different? Deep inside its gaping stone mouth, she found the silver document box just as she’d left it. And when she removed its ancient lid, the bracelet glistened inside, as if it were celebrating the sudden, surprising light.
Cassie allowed herself to admire the bracelet’s beauty for only a second. She ran her fingers over the intricate design on its rich silver surface and felt its weight in her hands. But then Diana called to her from outside.
“Be right there!” she yelled, and ran upstairs to quickly change into her ceremonial white shift.
Once she was dressed and ready, she found Diana waiting for her on the front porch swing with a large cotton sack at her side. She’d also changed into her ceremonial shift, but there was a composure to Diana’s appearance that Cassie could only aspire to. Even under all this stress, Diana remained in control.
Cassie reached for her hand, hoping some of the strength would rub off Diana’s skin onto hers. And somehow it did. A few moments of holding Diana close calmed her.
“We’re doing the right thing,” Diana said. “We need Constance.”
Cassie remembered what a refuge Constance had been since she lost her grandmother. And all the afternoons she’d spent in her parlor, learning new spells and studying ancient rituals. Constance was the only connection to the old ways the Circle had.
“I know we are,” Cassie said in her most courageous voice. “I’m ready to go.”
“Okay, everyone, let’s get started.” Diana emptied the cotton sack onto the table when they arrived at the lighthouse and immediately began reading directions from her Book of Shadows.
It didn’t surprise Cassie how everyone automatically turned to Diana in moments like this—moments when it really mattered. She would always be the most natural leader among them, no matter what.
“The body should be entirely covered in white cloth of two layers,” Diana read aloud to Adam. “With head and face veiled in tulle.” She gestured to a pile of fine white netting on the table.
Adam nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Nick, Chris, and Doug pushed all the furniture to the room’s perimeter. Melanie kneeled in the center beside the covered body. Cassie helped Deborah drape the windows with purple linens.
Diana approached Faye carrying two golden censers. “We have to fumigate the chamber with sage and frankincense,” she said.
Faye had changed into her ceremonial black shift, and she was already wearing the green leather garter with its seven silver buckles. She accepted the censers from Diana and then called Sean over to tend to the chore. “Where’s the diadem?” she asked.
Diana nodded over to Melanie, sitting solemnly with the diadem on her head. “She’s the one who gets to wear the Tools tonight,” Diana said. “She’s doing the conjuring. The rest of us are her support.”
Even Faye couldn’t disagree that Melanie should be the one leading this spell, but she still tore the garter from her leg with fury before walking it over to Melanie. Cassie followed close behind her, removing the bracelet from her wrist on her way.
In a few minutes, the room had been properly prepared, and Diana called for the ritual to begin.
“Faye and Cassie, will you do the honors of casting the circle according to my instructions? Forgive me if I go slowly—this text is really hard to read—but I’ll do my best. Is everyone ready?”
Cassie looked around the dimly lit room. She wasn’t the only one who seemed nervous, but nobody was about to back out now. Melanie appeared to be in a cloudy-eyed daze, but she looked more beautiful wearing the Master Tools than Cassie had ever seen her.
Diana cleared her throat and began reading aloud. “A magic circle is to be formed upon the ground with an ink of soot and port wine. A second circle is formed half a foot within the first.”
Together Cassie and Faye formed the circles around Melanie and Constance, using the chalice of ink Diana had prepared.
“And within there,” Diana continued, “cast a triangle, the center of which will serve as the resting place of the deceased and primary conjurer.”
Cassie and Faye formed the triangle within the circles, outlining Melanie and Constance.
“Everyone get inside,” Diana said. “And then I’ll close the outer circle with the four layers of protection.”
Quickly the group arranged itself, kneeling upon the outer circle’s perimeter as Diana called on the elements.
“Powers of Air, protect us,” Diana called out. “Powers of Fire, protect us.”
Cassie closed her eyes and listened.
“Powers of Water, protect us.” Diana enunciated each syllable with precision. “And finally,” she said, “I call on the powers of Earth to protect us.”
Diana then joined the circle beside Cassie and continued reading from her Book of Shadows. “To commence, the conjurer must light a black candle and cast it over the body seven times thereon, calling the name of the spirit to be raised.”
All eyes turned to Melanie now. Cassie wondered if she had the strength to do it. But the Tools glistened, and Melanie’s posture straightened as she lit the candle and passed it over the white sheet, calling out, “Great-Aunt Constance, Constance Burke, hear us.”
Diana continued, “Then from a golden chalice of dried amaranth flowers, sprinkle the body and its surrounding area.”
While Melanie did the sprinkling, Diana said, “Melanie, repeat after me: Thou who art mourned, see now the nature of this mourning.”
And Melanie repeated, “Thou who art mourned, see now the nature of this mourning.”
Cassie felt her eyes fill with tears as Diana chanted:

This is the spell that we intone

Flesh to flesh and bone to bone

Sinew to sinew and vein to vein

Constance shall be whole again

 
They all concentrated hard, harnessing their powers together as one. Cassie could sense an energy rising up from the center triangle, webbing out to each member of the group, linking them all together in a maze of light.
Diana read aloud, “After a moment of silence and concentration, uncover the face of the deceased. Then call to the spirit again, affectionately. Say ‘Welcome.’”
With quivering hands, Melanie gently unveiled Constance’s face. “Great-Aunt Constance,” she said. “Welcome.”
“The body will stir,” Diana read. “The eyes will open, and then the desired awakening.”
The room crackled with energy. Cassie could feel it zipping and twisting around her in spirals, but she wasn’t afraid of it anymore. The air around them warmed, and Cassie could see the life flickering back into Constance’s face slowly, like the rising sun.
Then a shape began to form. Cassie noticed it faintly at first in the glow on Constance’s forehead, but then it grew bigger and brighter until it stood out like an iridescent bruise. It was most definitely a symbol, a primal-looking mark resembling two crooked
U
-shapes within a hexagon. Then everything went dark. The light that had come to Constance’s face, the symbol, the candles illuminating the room—all of it disappeared, as if a heavy blanket were dropped from the ceiling, snuffing the room to death.
Diana lit her lantern and held it up to Melanie’s grief-stricken face. Her great-aunt Constance was still dead. And now she had to experience her death all over again.
“The spell didn’t work,” Laurel said.
“But it was working.” Diana’s eyes franticly searched the group. “Didn’t you all feel it?”
“Yes, of course,” Adam said. “I don’t understand what went wrong.”
Faye was silent but looked just as confused as the others.
Adam spoke out again. “Is there anything more to the spell, Diana? Does it say anything else in your book?”
Diana squinted at the bottom of the page she’d been reading, then turned to the next page, and then turned it back again.
“It’s nearly illegible,” she said. “But there’s a scrawled line here at the bottom edge.” She held her lantern close to the book’s tiny wording.
“It says, ‘Should nothing result, and this witch hath been true . . .’ and then it stops. Whatever it said next got smudged out.”
“Smudged out?” Faye grabbed the book from Diana’s hands to have a look for herself. “How could something so important be smudged out?”
“It’s a three-hundred-year-old book,” Adam said in Diana’s defense. “It’s not that hard to believe.”
Cassie wondered if she was the only one who saw the symbol appear on Constance’s forehead. Or had she imagined it? Over the echoes of Melanie’s sobs, she knew it wasn’t the right time to ask. Constance was lost to them forever.
It was late by the time Cassie got back home, but her mother was awake, lying on the sofa in her nightgown. She sat upright as soon as Cassie stepped in from outside. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cassie assured her, closing and locking the door behind her.
“How’s Melanie?”
“She’s been better.” Cassie pulled her jacket tightly closed, not wanting her mother to see she was wearing the white shift.
“And Constance?”
Cassie hesitated. She realized her mother was eyeing the Master bracelet on Cassie’s left wrist. “You know then,” Cassie said. “About the resuscitation spell.”
Her mom nodded and gestured for Cassie to join her on the sofa. “I just figured,” she said. “Did it work?”
At first Cassie simply shook her head and took off her coat. But she wanted to be able to tell her mom everything, even about the symbol she saw illuminating Constance’s forehead. And for once she did, without holding anything back for her mother’s benefit.
Her mother surprised her by listening, really listening this time. She didn’t change the subject or become so overwhelmed with fear that Cassie had to worry about her more than herself.
Until she mentioned the symbol she saw appear on Constance’s forehead.
“The symbol,” Cassie said, “looked like something primal. Like two bent
U
-shapes inside a hexagon.” Cassie noticed the alarmed look that flashed across her mother’s face. “What is it?”
Her mother shook her head. “Not two
U
-shapes,” she said. “One. A
W
.”
Cassie didn’t understand what she was hearing.
“
W
, as in Witch,” her mother said.
Cassie was breathless. Her mother closed her eyes for a moment and when she reopened them they looked as grim as two black coals.
“I know what went wrong with the spell,” she said. “There’s a way a witch can be killed that can never be reversed. But there’s only one kind of person who can do it.”
“Who?” Cassie asked. “What kind of person?”
“A witch hunter,” her mother said.

W
itch hunters go back as far as witches. Just as Cassie was descended from a long line of powerful ancestors, the witch hunters, too, had their lineage. That’s what Cassie’s mom told her as they walked down Crowhaven Road toward Melanie’s house.

They walked side by side, her mother carrying a casserole dish and Cassie holding a few soothing herbs from the garden. Cassie felt her hair lifted by the salty wind coming off the ocean, and she watched the trees fill with that same wind. The birds nesting within the trees began to sing and a strange sort of calm came over her.
“The symbol you saw on Constance’s forehead was an ancient mark only a true hunter could make,” her mother said. “Something must have brought them to New Salem.”
Cassie noticed the tiny crocus buds just beginning to poke their heads up from the ground alongside the sidewalk.
Spring is still on its way
, she thought,
even as we’re being hunted and killed
. “I wish whatever brought them to New Salem would leave,” she said.
Melanie’s house was so crowded when they arrived that they could barely get through the door. It appeared that everyone who’d been at the spring festival and seen Constance collapse had come now to pay their respects to the old woman. The first familiar face Cassie saw belonged to Sally Waltman. What was she doing here? Had she come with Portia? Were Portia’s brothers, Jordan and Logan, here, too?
A million worst-case scenarios raced through Cassie’s mind. Were they hoping to turn Constance’s wake into a celebration? Jordan and Logan were longtime enemies of the Circle, and Cassie wouldn’t put it past them to gloat publicly over the death of a witch. But when Sally met Cassie’s eyes and approached her with an outstretched hand, she recognized that Sally had come alone, with only good intentions.
“I’m so sorry for your loss, and for Melanie’s loss,” she said. She looked a little nervous to be there. She fidgeted with her dress and played with her rust-colored hair.
“Thank you,” Cassie said hesitantly.
Sally continued, speaking almost directly to Cassie’s hesitation. “I know I don’t belong here,” she said, “and that your friends don’t even like me, but Constance always greeted me warmly when I’d see her in town, and she was a nice lady, and I guess I just wanted to stop by to pay my respects.”
Sally took a breath and Cassie gently patted her on the back. It was true, the Circle didn’t like Sally very much, and she and Cassie would probably never really be friends, but since last fall when they’d overlooked their differences and worked together to get through Black John’s hurricane, they’d had an understanding. Sally was the closest thing the group had to an Outsider ally, and that was nothing to take lightly.
“It was good of you to come,” Cassie said. “Really. This was a nice gesture, and I know Melanie appreciates it.”
That seemed to put Sally at ease. Her small, wiry body relaxed.
“Speaking of Melanie,” Cassie’s mother said. “We should probably go find her.”
“Of course,” Sally said, and Cassie and her mother elbowed through the crowd as politely as they could until they located Melanie.
The group had Melanie surrounded like an army of black-clad secret-service agents. Most days Cassie forgot how intimidating the Circle could appear to others, and how superior they looked compared to average kids their age. It wasn’t only their genetics that set them apart; it was also their attitude.
But
, Cassie wondered,
don’t they ever grow weary of striving to appear so infinitely strong to the outside world
? Sometimes vulnerability was appropriate, and this was one of those times.
Cassie locked eyes with Adam and dreamed for a moment that they could run away together, far away from all this. He didn’t even know yet how bad all this actually was. None of the Circle did. How would they react when she told them everything she’d learned from her mother about witch hunters?
Cassie went to Adam first, just to breathe in his scent and feel his strong arms around her body. Then she offered her condolences and the soothing herbs to Melanie.
Diana tapped Cassie on the shoulder and pulled her in for a tight squeeze. Hugging Diana was like hugging daylight, and she was about as constant. Tall, magisterial Diana could always be relied upon. “How are you doing?” she whispered into Cassie’s ear.
But before Cassie had the chance to answer, Diana got distracted. Her attention turned to someone else who’d just walked in. “Scarlett’s here,” she said.
It was a surprise to see Scarlett making her way through the crowd, dressed conservatively in all black with her wild hair tamed into a neat ponytail.
As she meandered through the crowd, Cassie noticed people stepping aside to let her pass.
How weird
, Cassie thought, but then it occurred to her the reason why: All these strangers must have thought Scarlett was one of the group. She assumed the air of belonging right there with Melanie and the rest of the Circle, and so people believed she did.
But when she finally reached Cassie and the others, some of that confidence fell away. “I know I don’t really know any of you,” she said, looking down. “But I wanted to say I was sorry.”
Diana scanned Scarlett up and down with her sharp green eyes and then said in a slightly artificial tone of voice, “It was nice of you to come.”
“Yes, thank you,” Melanie said.
Like Sally, Scarlett didn’t have to be there, but she’d gone out of her way to show her support to Melanie and the group.
Maybe
, Cassie thought,
if any good could come from this crisis, it would be the start to better relations with Outsiders
.
Adam stepped in to make small talk with Scarlett, giving Cassie the chance to grab Diana and lead her to a quiet corner. “Gather the others,” Cassie said quietly. “Melanie, too. I know why the resuscitation spell didn’t work.”
Diana’s eyes grew wide. She took a step back to size up Cassie’s expression and then immediately began rounding up the group.
Constance’s garage was filled with ancient junk and knickknacks that may or may not have been authentic magical relics. Two stone swords rested on hooks in the wall, bronze jewelry boxes and dusty heirloom books were stacked high on drooping shelves, and multicolored stuffed birds hung precariously from wire pitched to the ceiling. A claw-foot table sat in the center of the room in front of a sagging green couch.
Melanie sat on the couch, but everyone else remained standing, spread out between piles of cardboard boxes. They waited silently for Cassie to begin.
Melanie was examining her, leaning forward, eager to hear what Cassie knew. There were dark circles beneath her usually alert eyes, and all the life had escaped from her features. Cassie suddenly worried this news might be more than she could handle at the moment.
Cassie bought some time and tried to soften the blow by explaining, step by step, the conversation she’d had with her mother the night before. She paced herself, carefully building up to the description of the symbol she saw on Constance’s forehead before everything went black during the resuscitation spell.
“Did any of you see it?” she asked.
Everyone shook their head.
“How do you know it wasn’t just a hallucination?” Faye asked, with a tinge of malice. “Or your overactive imagination?”
“Because Cassie has the sight,” Diana said. “Tell us, Cassie, what exactly did the symbol look like?”
“Well,” Cassie glanced quickly at Melanie before she spoke, “I thought it looked like a hexagon with two bent- up
U
-shapes inside it. But my mother corrected me.”
“It was a
W
,” Melanie said, almost to herself. “Great-Aunt Constance was killed by a witch hunter.”
The room shuddered.
“This is bad,” Melanie said, shaking her head. “I’ve read about that symbol.”
Adam sat beside Melanie on the sofa. “Do you think this means there’s someone in town targeting us?”
Melanie nodded, too numb to cry. “And not amateurs like the Bainbridge family, either. These guys are the real thing. They’re descendants of an ancient clan of hunters.”
Adam’s jaw tightened, and his eyes sharpened to an intense navy blue. “The hunter could be anyone.”
“Or hunters,” Diana said. “There could be more than one.”
Laurel sat down on the couch on the other side of Melanie and reached for her hand. “We have to be careful.”
“That’s right,” Adam said, jumping up to pace the room, nearly bumping his head on various hanging fowl as he marched back and forth. “And we have to stick together. More than ever. Is that understood?” He stood still and eyed each member of the group individually.
Then his gaze rested on Faye.
To Cassie’s surprise, Faye had no snide remarks this time. She simply nodded. But this out-of-character response worried Cassie more than if Faye had been her inappropriate, obnoxious self. If Faye was frightened, they were in serious trouble.
Diana glanced at the door. The people inside the house were getting louder, and one muffled voice was asking for Melanie.
“I have to get back inside,” Melanie said.
Diana nodded. “You should. Melanie, I’m sorry to leave, but I’m going to run home. I know I’ve seen a protection spell in my Book of Shadows somewhere. I’ll look into it and see what I can do.”
“That’s a good idea,” Melanie said, standing now but still holding on to Laurel’s hand.
Hesitantly, they all began filing out of the garage, but Nick hung back, and Cassie took advantage of the opportunity to talk to him alone. She reached for his arm and started talking before he could say anything.
“I know you’ve been avoiding the group because of me,” she said. “And I want you to stop doing that.”
Nick turned away, but she forced him to look at her. “Listen to me. We have to stay close now. We’re in serious danger.”
He squinted his mahogany eyes at her as if she were a foreign object.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” Cassie said desperately. “Please.”
“Well, thank you for your concern.” He said it sharply, like it was intended to cut her, but Nick always resorted to sarcasm when he started to feel something. It meant she’d gotten through to him, at least a little bit. She’d take what she could get for now.

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