THE SECRET CIRCLE 1 - The Initiation

by L. J. Smith

  "Be quiet!" Laurel said sharply. "Listen!"

  Cassie heard it as soon as the voices died down; the quiet crunch of gravel at the roadside. It was noticeable only against the deathly quiet of the autumn twilight.

  "Somebody's coming," Chris Henderson said. He and Doug were poised for a fight.

  They were all hideously on edge, Cassie realized. The crunch of footsteps sounded as loud as firecrackers now, grating against her taut nerves. She saw a dim shape beside the road, and then saw Adam move forward, so that he was in front of both Diana and her. I'm going to have to talk to him about that, she thought irrelevantly.

  There was a pause in the footsteps, and the dim shape came toward them. Adam and the Henderson brothers looked ready to rush it. Quarrel forgotten, Deborah looked ready too. Sean was cowering behind Faye. Cassie's heart began to pound.

  Then she noticed a spot of red like a tiny burning coal floating near the figure, and she heard a familiar voice.

  "If you want me, you got me. Four against one ought to be about fair."

  With a whoop, Chris Henderson rushed forward. "Nick!"

  Doug grinned, while managing to look as if he might still jump the approaching figure. Adam relaxed and stepped back.

  "You sure, Adam? We can settle this right here," Nick said as he reached the group, the end of his cigarette glowing as he inhaled. Adam's eyes narrowed, and then Cassie saw the daredevil smile he'd worn at Cape Cod when a bunch of guys with a gun had been chasing him. What is wrong with him, what's wrong with everybody tonight? she wondered. They're all acting crazy.

  Diana put a restraining hand on Adam's arm. "No fighting," she said quietly.

  Nick looked at her, then shrugged. "Kind of nervous, aren't you?" he said, surveying the group.

  Sean emerged from behind Faye. "I'm just high-strung."

  "Yes, you ought to be—from a tree," Faye said contemptuously.

  Nick didn't smile, but then, Nick never smiled. His face was handsome, but cold. "Well, maybe you have a reason to be nervous—at least some of you," he said.

  "What's that supposed to mean? We came here looking for the dark energy that escaped last night," said Adam.

  Nick went still, as if struck by a new idea, then his cigarette glowed again. "Maybe you're looking in the wrong place," he said expressionlessly.

  Diana's voice was quiet. "Nick, will you please just tell us what you mean?"

  Nick looked around at them all. "I mean," he said deliberately, "that while you've been scurrying around here, a crew's been up at Devil's Cove pulling rocks off old Fogle."

  Fogle? Cassie couldn't place the name. And then suddenly she saw it in her mind's eye—on a brass plate in a wood-paneled office. "Our principal?" she gasped.

  "You got it. They say he got caught in an avalanche."

  "An avalanche?" demanded Laurel in disbelief. "Around here?"

  "How else do you explain the two-ton chunk of granite that was on top of him? Not to mention all the smaller stuff."

  There was a moment of shocked silence.

  "Is he…" Cassie couldn't finish the question.

  "He wasn't looking so well when they got that chunk off him," Nick said, and then, with less sarcasm, "He's been dead since last night."

  "Oh, God," Laurel whispered. There was another silence, just as shocked and even longer this time. Cassie knew they were all seeing the same thing: A crystal skull surrounded by a protective ring of candles—and one of the candles going out.

  "It was Faye's fault," Sean began in a whine, but Faye interrupted without looking at him. "It was his fault."

  "Wait, wait," said Diana. "We don't know the dark energy had anything to do with it. How could it have, when we know it came here and then stopped?"

  "I don't think that's much comfort," Melanie said in a low voice. "Because if it wasn't the dark energy, who was it?"

  There was a sort of strange shifting in the group, as if everyone was standing back and looking at all the others. Cassie felt a void in the pit of her stomach again. The principal was—had been—an outsider, who hated witches. And that meant they all had a motive—especially anybody who blamed the outsiders for Kori Henderson's death. She looked at Deborah, and then at Chris and Doug.

  Most of the rest of the coven was doing the same. Doug glared back, then gave a wild, defiant grin.

  "Maybe we did do it," he said, eyes glittering.

  "Did we?" said Chris, looking confused.

  Deborah just looked scornful.

  There was another silence, then Suzan spoke in a petulant voice. "Look, it's too bad about Fogle, but do we have to stand here forever? My feet are killing me."

  Adam seemed to shake himself. "She's right; we should get out of this place. There's nothing we can do here." He put an arm around Diana, and gestured everybody else ahead. Cassie lingered. There was something she wanted to say to Diana.

  But Diana was moving now, and Cassie didn't have a chance. With the Henderson brothers in the lead, the group was taking a different route than the one they had taken in, cutting toward the northeast corner of the cemetery. As they approached the road, Cassie noticed the ground was rising. There was a strange mound of grassy earth near the chain-link fence on this side; she almost tripped when she reached it. But even stranger was what she saw when they had passed it and she looked back.

  The front of the mound was faced with stone slabs, and there was an iron door, maybe two feet square, set between them. The door had an iron hinge and a padlock on it, but it couldn't have opened anyway. Pushed right up against it was a large, irregular hunk of cement. Grass was growing up around the cement, showing it had been there a while.

  Cassie's hands were icy cold, her heart was thudding, and she was dizzy. She tried to think, noticing with only part of her mind that she was passing by newer gravestones now, marble slabs with writing not worn smooth by time. She was trying to figure out what was wrong with her—was it just reaction to all the events of the past day and night? Was that why she was shaking?

  "Cassie, are you okay?" Diana and Adam had turned around. Cassie was grateful for the growing darkness as she faced both of them and tried to get her mind clear.

  "Yeah. I just—felt weird for a minute. But wait, Diana." Cassie remembered what she had wanted to say. "You know how you were asking me about my feelings before… well, I have a feeling about Mr. Fogle. The dark energy had something to do with it, I'm almost sure. But…" She stopped. "But I don't know. There's something strange going on."

  "You can say that again," Adam said, and he reached for her arm to get her moving once more.

  Cassie evaded him and shot him a reproachful glance while Diana was looking into the distance. He looked at his own hand, startled.

  There was something strange going on, something stranger than any of them realized, Cassie thought. "What is that thing back there, with the iron door?" she asked.

  "It's been there for as long as I can remember," Diana said absently. "Something to do with storage, I think."

  Cassie glanced back, but by now the mound was lost in darkness. She hugged herself, tucking her hands under her clasping arms to warm them. Her heart was still thudding.

  I'll ask Grandma Howard about it, she decided. Whatever it was, it wasn't a storage shed.

  Then she noticed that Diana was toying with something around her neck as she walked, lost in thought. It was a fine golden chain, and at the end of it dangled a key.