The Secret Circle: The Initiation (8 page)

"Save it, Faye," said the girl who'd just marched down the steps. She was a good head shorter than Faye, and slighter of build, but her arms and legs had a wiry look and her fists were clenched as if she were prepared to do physical battle. "I didn't come out here to chat."

"But we haven't had a good talk in so long… Did you do something to your hair? It's so—interesting." Cassie looked at Sally's hair. It had a rusty cast to it, and looked frizzled and overpermed. As the girl raised a defensive hand to her head Cassie could almost have giggled—if it all hadn't been so horrible.

"I didn't come to talk about my hair, either!" snapped Sally. She had a strident voice that was climbing higher with every sentence. "I came to talk about Jeffrey. You leave him alone!" Faye smiled, very slowly. "Why?" she murmured, and in contrast to Sally's voice hers seemed even lower and more sensual. "Afraid of what he'll do if you're not there to hold his hand?"

"He's not interested in you!"

"Is that what he told you? Hmm. He seemed very interested this morning. He's taking me out Saturday night."

"Because you're
making
him."

"Making him? Are you suggesting a big boy like Jeffrey can't say no when he wants to?" Faye shook her head. "And why isn't he here now to speak for himself? I'll tell you something, Sally," she added, her voice dropping confidentially. "He didn't fight hard this morning. He didn't fight hard at all." Sally's hand drew back as if she wanted to hit the bigger girl, but she didn't. "You think you can do anything, Faye—you and the rest of the Club! Well, it's time somebody showed you that you can't. There are more of us—lots more—and we're getting tired of being pushed around. It's time somebody took a stand."

"Is that what you're planning to do?" Faye said pleasantly. Sally had been circling her like a bulldog looking for an opening, and now the wiry girl had ended on the edge of the landing with her back to the steps leading down.

"Yes!" Sally cried defiantly.

"Funny," murmured Faye, "because it's going to be hard to do that flat on your back." With the last words she flicked her long red fingernails in Sally's face.

She never actually touched Sally's skin. Cassie, who had been watching intently, desperately waiting for an opportunity to flee, felt sure of that.

But it was as if something
hit
Sally. Something invisible. And heavy. The wiry girl's entire body jerked back and she tried frantically to regain her footing on the edge of the landing. Arms flailing, she teetered for an endless instant and then fell backward.

Cassie could never remember what happened then. One minute she was behind her rock, crouching and safe, and the next she had flung herself out across the falling girl's path, knocking her sideways onto the grass. For a heartbeat Cassie thought they were both going to roll all the way down the hill, but somehow or other they didn't. They ended up in a heap, with Cassie underneath.

"Let go! You ripped my
shirt
," a strident voice exclaimed, and an unkind fist planted itself in Cassie's midriff as Sally pushed herself to her feet. Cassie stared up at her, open-mouthed. Talk about gratitude…

"And as for you, Faye Chamberlain—you tried to
kill
me! But you'll get yours, you wait and see!"

"I'll get yours too, Sally," Faye promised, smiling, but the sleepiness in her smile wasn't genuine anymore. She looked as if underneath she were grinding her teeth.

"You just wait," Sally repeated vehemently. "Someday they may find
you
at the bottom of those stairs with a broken neck." With that, she marched to the landing and up the steps, bringing her foot down on each as if she were stamping on Faye's face. She didn't even look back or acknowledge Cassie's existence.

Cassie slowly got up and glanced down the long, winding flight of stairs that led to the foot of the hill. She couldn't have done anything differently, she realized. Sally would have been lucky to break nothing more than her neck before she reached bottom. But now…

She turned to face the three senior girls above her.

They were still standing with careless, unstudied elegance, but underneath their easy demeanor was violence. Cassie saw it in the sullen darkness of Deborah's eyes, and in the spiteful curve of Suzan's lips. But most of all she saw it in Faye.

It occurred to her, quite incidentally, that these were probably the three most beautiful girls she'd ever seen. It wasn't just that each had perfect skin, free of the slightest trace of teenage blemishes. It wasn't their gorgeous hair: Deborah's dark disordered curls, Faye's pitch-black mane, and Suzan's cloud of reddish gold. It wasn't even the way they set each other off, each one's distinctive type enhancing the others' instead of detracting from them. It was something else, something that came from within. A kind of confidence and self-possession that no girl at sixteen or seventeen should have. An inner strength, an energy. A
power
.

It terrified her.

"Well, now, what do we have here?" Faye said in a throaty voice. "A spy? Or a little white mouse?" Run, Cassie thought. But her legs wouldn't move.

"I saw her this morning," Deborah said. "She was hanging out in front of the bike rack, staring at me."

"Oh, I've seen her before that, Debby," Faye replied. "I saw her last week at Number Twelve. She's a neighbor."

"You mean
she's
—" Suzan broke off.

"Yes."

"Whatever else she is, she's dead meat now," Deborah said. Her petite face was twisted in a scowl.

"Let's not be hasty," Faye murmured. "Even mice may have their uses. By the way, how long were you hiding there?"

There was only one answer to this, and Cassie fought not to say it. This was no time to come up with a devastatingly witty remark. But at last she gave in, because it was the truth, and because she couldn't think of anything else.

"Long enough," she said, and shut her eyes in misery.

Faye descended slowly to stand in front of her. "Do you always spy on other people's private conversations?"

"I was here before you came," Cassie said, with as much spirit as she could manage. If only Faye would stop
staring
at her like that. Those honey-colored eyes seemed to glow with an eerie, supernatural light. It was focused on Cassie like a laser beam, draining away her will, causing the strength to flow out of her. It was as if Faye wanted her to do something—or wanted something
from
her. It made her feel so disoriented—so off balance and weak…

And then she felt a sudden surge of strength that seemed to come up from her feet. Or, rather, from the ground beneath them, from the red New England granite that she'd felt buzzing with life earlier. It steadied her, sweeping up and straightening her spine, so that she lifted her chin and looked into those golden eyes without flinching.

"I was here first," she said defiantly.

"Very good," murmured Faye, and there was an odd look in her eyes. Then she turned her head.

"Anything interesting in her backpack?"

Cassie saw, to her outrage, that Deborah was going through her backpack, throwing things out one by one. "Not much," the biker said, tossing it on the ground so the rest of its contents scattered down the hillside.

"All right." Faye was smiling again, a particularly unpleasant smile that made her red lips look cruel. "I think you were right the first time, Deborah. She's dead meat." She looked at Cassie. "You're new here, so you probably don't understand what kind of mistake you've made. And I don't have time to stand here and tell you. But you'll find out. You'll find out—Cassie."

She reached out and caught Cassie's chin with long, red-tipped fingers. Cassie wanted to pull away, but her muscles were locked. She felt the strength in those fingers and the hardness of the long, slightly curving nails. Like talons, she thought. The talons of a bird of prey.

For the first time she noticed that the red stone Fay wore at her throat had a star in it, like a star sapphire. It winked in the sunlight, and Cassie found she couldn't take her eyes off it. Laughing suddenly, Faye released her.

"Come on," she said to the other two girls. The three of them turned and went up the steps. The air exploded from Cassie's lungs as if she were a balloon that had just been pricked. She was shaking inside. That had been… That had been absolutely…

Get a grip on yourself!

She's only a teenage gang leader, she told herself. At least the mystery of the Club is solved. They're a gang. You've heard of gangs before, even if you never went to a school with one. As long as you leave them alone and don't cross them from now on, you'll be okay.

But the reassurance rang hollow in her mind. Faye's last words had sounded like a threat. But a threat of what?

When Cassie got back to the house that afternoon, her mother didn't seem to be downstairs. Finally, as she wandered from room to room calling, her grandmother appeared on the staircase. The look on her face made Cassie's stomach lurch.

"What's wrong? Where's Mom?"

"She's upstairs, in her room. She hasn't been feeling very well. Now, there's no need for you to get worried…"

Cassie hurried up the creaking old steps to the green room. Her mother was lying in a grand four-poster bed. Her eyes were shut, her face pale and lightly perspiring.

"Mom?"

The large black eyes opened. Her mother swallowed and smiled painfully. "Just a touch of the flu, I think," she said, and her voice was weak and distant, a voice to go with the pallor of her face. "I'll be fine in a day or two, sweetheart. How was school?"

Cassie's better nature battled with her desire to spread her own misery around as much as possible. Her mother took a little breath and shut her eyes as if the light hurt her.

Better nature won. Cassie dug her nails into her palms and spoke evenly. "Oh, fine," she said.

"Did you meet anyone interesting?"

"Oh, you could say that."

She didn't want to worry her grandmother, either. But during dinner, when her grand-mother asked why she was so quiet, the words just seemed to come out by themselves.

"There was this girl at school—her name's Faye, and she's awful. A female Attila the Hun. And on my very first day I ended up making her hate me…" She told the whole story. At the end of it, her grandmother looked into the fireplace as if preoccupied.

"It will get better, Cassie," she said.

But what if it
doesn't
? Cassie thought. "Oh, I'm sure it will," she said. Then her grandmother did something surprising. She looked around as if somebody might be listening and then leaned forward. "No, I mean that, Cassie. I know. You see, you have—a special advantage. Something very special…" Her voice dropped to a whisper.

Cassie leaned forward in turn. "What?"

Her grandmother opened her mouth, then her eyes shifted away. There was a pop from the fire, and she got up to poke the wood there.

"Grandma, what?"

"You'll find out."

Cassie felt a shock. It was the second time today she'd heard those words. "Grandma—"

"You've got good sense, for one thing," her grandmother said, a new, brisk tone in her voice. "And two good legs, for another. Here, take this broth up to your mother. She hasn't eaten anything all day." That night, Cassie couldn't sleep. Either her dread kept her awake so that she noticed more of the creaking, rattling, old-house sounds than she had before, or there were more of the sounds to notice. She didn't know which, and it didn't matter: she kept falling asleep and then jerking back to awareness. Every so often she reached under her pillow to touch the chalcedony piece. If only she could really sleep… so she could dream about
him
…

She sat bolt upright in bed.

Then she got up, bare feet pattering on the hardwood floor, and went over to unzip her backpack. She took the things she'd re-collected from the hillside out one by one, pencil by pencil, book by book. At last she looked at the array on the bedspread.

She was right. She hadn't noticed it at the time; she'd been too worried about Faye's threat. But the poem she'd written that morning and then crumpled up in anger was missing.

Seven

The first person Cassie saw at school the next morning was Faye. The tall girl was standing with a group in front of a side entrance that Cassie had been taking to be inconspicuous. Deborah, the biker, and Suzan, the pneumatic strawberry blond, were in the group. So were the two blond guys who had been roller blading through the halls yesterday. And there were two other guys. One was a short boy with a hesitant, slinking look and a furtive smile. The second was tall, with dark hair and a handsome, cold face. He was wearing a T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves and black jeans like Deborah's, and he was smoking a cigarette. Nick? thought Cassie, remembering the girls' conversation yesterday. The reptile?

Cassie flattened herself against the red brick wall and retreated as quickly and quietly as possible. She went in the main entrance, then hurried to her English class.

Almost guiltily, she reached down to pat her hip pocket. It was stupid to have brought it, but the little piece of chalcedony
did
make her feel better. And of course it was ridiculous to believe that it could bring her luck—but then again, she'd gotten to school this morning without running into Faye, hadn't she?

She found an empty desk in a back corner of the classroom on the opposite side from where Faye had sat yesterday. She didn't want Faye near her—or behind her. Here, she was shielded by a whole cluster of people.

But strangely, soon after she sat down, there was a sort of shuffling around her. She looked up to see a couple of girls moving forward. The guy beside her was moving too.

For a moment she sat quite still, not even breathing.

Don't
be paranoid
.

Just because people move doesn't mean it has anything to do with you. But she couldn't help notice that there was now a wide expanse of empty desks all around her.

Faye breezed in, talking to a stiff Jeffrey Lovejoy. Cassie got a glimpse of her and then quickly looked away.