The Hunt

by L. J. Smith

  Cassie reached for Nick’s hand. It was a bold move, but she felt like under the circumstances it was worth the try.

  For once he didn’t pull away from her. Cassie opened her mouth to assure him that she would be there for him the way he was for her—but then a loud, pounding noise rattled the floor beneath them.

  Nick jumped with alarm.

  “It’s okay,” Cassie said. “It’s only Faye and a broom handle. She finds the use of it ironic.”

  Nick tried to play it cool, but Cassie knew he was embarrassed about being so easily startled, that the cracks beneath his cool exterior were starting to show.

  “It’s Faye’s special signal,” she said casually. “When she bangs on the ceiling with the broom, it means she’s in dire need of attention.”

  “When doesn’t Faye need attention?” Nick ran his fingers through his hair and allowed himself to laugh. “So where is this secret room anyway?”

  Cassie smiled. “Follow me.”

  She led Nick downstairs to the old bookshelves and cast the spell to reveal the hidden door. Faye and Laurel were waiting expectantly inside. They’d microwaved popcorn, baked cupcakes, and had music playing.

  “I’ve been marked,” Nick said, surveying the scene. “It’s not my birthday.” But he still reached for a pink-frosted cupcake and took a hearty bite.

  The room had changed quite a bit since Cassie had last seen it. Faye and Laurel each infused it with their own character. Laurel’s side of the room was draped with green plants, herbs, and flowers. Piles of thick books were stacked as high as the eye could see, many of them for the research she was doing on the hunters. Faye’s side was adorned with red tapestries and velvety pillows. She’d also created a small altar that housed candles and incense and various concoctions.

  “You’ll have to carve out a space of your own,” Cassie said to Nick. “At your own risk.”

  “I’ll be just fine.” Nick tossed his duffel bag down and shoved the last bite of cupcake into his mouth. “I don’t need much.”

  “We’ve got an air mattress for you to sleep on,” Faye said. “But if you get lonely, there’s lots of extra room in my bed.”

  “Gross,” Laurel shouted. “Not with me here there isn’t.”

  “That’s my cue to leave.” Cassie let Nick get settled in and went upstairs to wait for the rest of the Circle to arrive for their meeting. As everyone trickled in, Cassie directed them downstairs. It was Adam she was really waiting for, but he was last to arrive, which was rare.

  When he finally rambled up the walk, he appeared more disheveled than normal. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair was uncombed. There were dark circles beneath his eyes that made it look like he hadn’t slept all night. Cassie hoped it wasn’t yesterday’s conversation about the cord weighing him down.

  “Before we go downstairs,” Adam said, “I want to show you something.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieved a squeezable pink plastic tube.

  “My lip gloss?” Cassie asked.

  Adam nodded. “Not just any lip gloss. This fell out of your pocket the night of our first kiss. And this …”

  Adam pulled a tiny square of paper from the same pocket. “This is the movie ticket stub from our official first date.”

  Next Adam held up his cell phone. “Saved on here,” he said, “is the first time you said I love you to me on my voice mail. And these are only the beginning, Cassie. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

  “You’re in great danger of becoming a hoarder?” Cassie grinned.

  Adam laughed. “Maybe, but it’s because everything and anything that reminds me of you, I have to save forever. If that doesn’t prove that I’m head-over-heels in love with you, I don’t know what will.”

  All the tension and fear Cassie built up overnight about their relationship had just floated up and away. She wanted to jump into Adam’s arms and lose the afternoon in his embrace. But there was no time for that now. Their friends were waiting. All Cassie could do at the moment was kiss Adam with her whole being, and hope her love for him shined through, that their connection was palpable, before leading him downstairs to join the others.

  “The hunters and Scarlett are way too close for comfort,” Melanie was saying when Adam and Cassie entered the secret room.

  Everyone was gathered in a circle except for Chris and Doug, who were stirring around in the kitchen like hyperactive children. Deborah agreed with Melanie. “We need to get closer to the hunters, to have full surveillance on them, since they’re obviously watching us.”

  “I can get us closer to Max,” Diana said.

  Faye snickered and whispered something under her breath to Deborah and Suzan.

  Diana turned to her. “I’m the only one who can easily do it,” she said. “We all know that.”

  “But you could be putting yourself in danger,” Faye said mockingly. Then her face took on a spiteful weightiness. “If given the chance, Max will mark you just like he did me.”

  Diana shrugged. “I’m not going to do any magic around him. Besides if I can get into his bedroom, I might be able to find out where he keeps his relic.”

  “You’re not going anywhere near his bedroom,” Faye shot back.

  Laurel cleared her throat. “I’ve made some progress digging up information about the relics,” she said. With a nod from Cassie, she took the center of the floor and explained to the Circle that the relics originated around 1320, shortly after Pope John XVII authorized the Inquisition to persecute witchcraft as a type of heresy.

  “An accused witch created and spelled the relics in return for her life,” Laurel said. “She christened the owners of these magical stones and taught them the killing curse.”

  “Of course they needed a witch to do their dirty work for them,” Sean called out. “Wimps.”

  Laurel pursed her lips at the interruption. “Soon the Inquisition led to a wave of witch-hunting,” she continued, “during which the relics were sighted throughout France, Italy, and Germany. But many of them were destroyed during the peak of the hunts, which occurred in the late 1500s till around 1630. And by the time the hunt reached Salem in the 1690s, only a dozen or so relics—and even fewer hunter families—had survived.”

  Laurel focused her eyes on Diana specifically. “It’s now believed there are only six relics still active.”

  Diana was looking straight down at the floor. In almost a whisper she said, “That’s all?”

  Laurel glanced at Faye. “So it may be worth it for Diana to search Max’s bedroom if it means we can bring that number down to five.”

  “Five, six, seven hundred, what difference does it make?” Nick called out. “We still don’t have a way to beat them. Can we talk for a moment about Scarlett? She wants to kill Cassie, to get her spot in the Circle, and she has our Master Tools. She almost got the best of us last night, and she’ll come back again. If we can’t use magic on her, then we need to be ready to destroy her with our bare hands.”

  Deborah patted Nick on the shoulder. “Well, it goes without saying that my cousin can use some anger management right about now.”

  Until this point, everyone had been so engrossed in the discussion that no one had noticed Chris trying to squeeze his six-foot-tall body into the tiny confines of the dumbwaiter carved into the kitchen wall. But the racket he was creating finally captured the group’s attention.

  “I can do it,” he said. “Doug, push my feet in for me. And then launch me upstairs.”

  Doug did as he was told, laughing. He shoved Chris’s feet deeper into the box with one hand. His other hand hovered over the wooden lever that would send the dumbwaiter flying up the chute that led to the kitchen above them.

  “Chris,” Cassie yelled. “That’ll never hold you. It’s not an elevator. Get out before you break it.”

  “Don’t mess with that thing,” Faye called out to him. “It’s our favorite way to have Cassie wait on us from upstairs.”

  “But I can do it,�
� Chris said again. “I’m not as big as I look.”

  Cassie’s patience had worn thin and a peculiar anger surged through her. Her face and hands grew hot with rage. “I said, get out of there!”

  Before she could get control of herself, she marched over to Doug and forcefully shoved him away from the lever. Her strength caught him by surprise, causing him to stumble backward.

  Chris, in his struggle to climb out of the dumbwaiter before Cassie could reach him, slipped out headfirst and hit the floor with a thump.

  A few silent seconds passed before he screamed out in pain, clutching his left arm.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Doug said. “You broke my brother.”

  “Seriously, Cassie,” Sean said. “You didn’t have to humiliate him like that.”

  “I barely touched him,” Cassie screamed out.

  “He’s in pain,” Diana said.

  “Duh.” Doug helped Chris to his feet. “I think his arm is broken.”

  “I guess Nick isn’t the only one with anger issues.” Deborah glanced at Cassie and then went to Chris’s other side for support.

  “He’s in pain,” Diana shouted out again. “Do you understand what this means?”

  Cassie thought back to her car accident a few weeks ago, when she walked away unscathed, and she suddenly comprehended Diana’s shock. “The protective spell is broken,” Cassie said.

  A spine-chilling quiet fell over the room as everyone realized what this meant for their safety.

  “Scarlett in the gym last night,” Diana said. “She wasn’t there to ruin our dance. She was destroying the only thing keeping us alive.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “I figured out a way to open my father’s book,” Cassie said to Adam, pulling the gunmetal chest out from under her bed and the key from its hidden compartment in her jewelry box.

  She had asked Adam to stay while the others accompanied Chris to the hospital. Now that the protection spell had been broken, they didn’t have a moment to waste. They needed to end these hunters, once and for all.

  “How?” he asked.

  Cassie showed him the obsidian crystal and explained how it worked as a buffer to the book’s dark energy. Cassie and Adam settled down on her bedroom floor, the book in front of them. Cassie opened it, knowing it would singe her fingers a bit before she could get the crystal in place, and it did. But once the rock had been set down, weighing upon the book’s spine and clearing its energy, the book’s first two pages were visible.

  “This is incredible.” Adam leaned over the book on his hands and knees, closely examining each brushstroke before him. “I recognize a few familiar symbols here. From my hunt for the Master Tools a while ago. Some of these same inscriptions were on Black John’s map.”

  Cassie couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”

  “I’ll look back through my old research and see what I can find. Do you think we can take the book to my house?”

  The idea of the book leaving her bedroom rattled Cassie and she faltered. “I don’t think so,” she stuttered. “You’re better off bringing your research here.”

  “You know, Cassie,” Adam said. “Now that the protection spell is broken, and Scarlett is getting closer, I think it’s time we looped in the rest of the Circle.”

  Cassie shook her head before he could say anything more. “We’ve already discussed this. I told you, I need some time before I tell the Circle I have the book. I’m not going to say it again.”

  “This is some really dark stuff, Cassie.” Adam pointed at the text’s ominous squiggly lines. “Look at it. Decoding this is going to require as many of us working on it as possible. I think it’s worth a shot.”

  “Oh, is that what you think? You think it’s worth a shot?” Cassie realized she was shouting, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Well, here’s what I think,” she said. “I think it’s my book, not yours. And it’s my issue to deal with, not the Circle’s.”

  “You don’t have to yell at me,” Adam said calmly.

  “Sometimes it’s the only way to get you to listen!”

  Adam leaned backward. “We’re dealing with dark magic here, Cassie. A curse of Black John’s that can save the lives of our friends who are marked, not to mention our Circle—but only if we translate it properly.”

  “Exactly. The book is dangerous, Adam. I don’t want anyone to get hurt until I know I have something real that could help them. But if you’re so interested in dabbling in dark magic all of a sudden, maybe you should go find Scarlett.”

  Adam looked stunned. Cassie was, too. She had thought she was feeling better after Adam’s romantic gesture before their meeting. She hadn’t realized last night’s conversation about the cord and Scarlett was still prodding at her heart. But it made her insides ache—even more now that she and Adam were disagreeing—and out it had come before she even knew what she was saying.

  “That’s not what I meant at all.” Adam’s voice cracked with emotion, but he strived to maintain his composure. “How could you even think such a thing? You’re the one who said it was going to be okay last night. You said, ‘Everything will look brighter tomorrow.’ Well, that day is today, Cassie, and I’m still here, loving you.”

  Cassie knew Adam was right. She had tried to assure him Scarlett wouldn’t come between them, and now she was ruining that effort. The heated anger within her was driving him away—she knew she should stop, but it felt like her emotions were beyond her control.

  What Cassie did next surprised them both. She grabbed Adam’s face with her hands and brought his mouth to hers. She kissed him violently, like the life of their relationship depended on it—and maybe it did. Cassie climbed on top of Adam, and he resisted her at first, but as Cassie knew he would, he eventually gave in.

  It had never been this way before. Fast, animalistic. Pulling Adam closer always felt good, but right now everything seemed blurry and confused. Cassie’s intentions were clouded.

  Once they slowed down, Adam drew back and looked into her eyes with concern. “Does this mean we’re okay?”

  “I don’t want to lose you,” Cassie said. Her own voice sounded foreign to her, almost anesthetized.

  “You’re not going to lose me.” Adam began kissing her again, but this time Cassie drew back.

  She regretted the way she’d yelled at Adam and wanted to react to him with warmth now, but she was oddly disconnected. She wasn’t really sure what she was feeling—or if she was feeling anything at all. All she was certain of was that she didn’t want to say or do anything else that might hurt him.

  Cassie sat up and brought her knees in toward her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m just not myself right now. I think you should go.”

  Adam’s face crumpled, a combination of disappointment and confusion, but he simply nodded and got up to gather his things.

  “Okay,” he said. He glanced down at Black John’s book still open on the floor but thought better of mentioning it. “When you’re feeling better, I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  He left, quietly shutting Cassie’s bedroom door behind him.

  The second Cassie heard Adam leave the house, she leapt out of bed. Her father’s book was still splayed open on the floor, held in place by the obsidian crystal. Suddenly it all became clear. Her charge of emotions with Adam just now—she’d felt it before. It was the same surge she felt when she handled her father’s Book of Shadows.

  She got down on her hands and knees and examined the book at eye level. Her fingers trembled with anticipation, still warm from where she’d been singed earlier. The book had some power over her—she understood that now. Each time it burned her hands it affected her mind. It was changing her.

  Cassie thought back to every time she’d lost her temper since she’d first opened the book, every disagreement with the Circle, every frustration with her mother. She’d handled the book just before each time. And what had just happened with Adam … Cassie had
felt how destructive she was being in the moment, but hadn’t been able to stop herself. Cassie reached for the book with both hands and the obsidian crystal slid out of place and onto the floor. The book is the problem, Cassie thought, but also the solution. She flipped through its pages in search of any symbols that struck her as familiar. Minutes passed before she realized she was holding the book without being burned.

  Cassie lifted her fingertips up to her eyes. They were perfectly fine. No new marks, no tingling. It was what she’d been hoping for since she’d first taken the book from the basement. But deep down, she couldn’t ignore the dismal reason the book no longer rejected her hands. As she was turning darker, it was beginning to welcome her. The balance in Cassie was shifting.

  But she couldn’t let that scare her. Now that she’d come this far, abandoning her search for the witch-hunter curse wasn’t a choice. The threat the book posed would just have to be considered an occupational hazard, a risk that came with the job of saving her Circle.

  She continued turning the pages, gaining momentum with every word, absorbing all she could from each dot and stroke. The book’s contents still appeared as an archaic code, and she didn’t understand most of what she took in, yet there were certain symbols she found especially curious, ciphers that seemed to reach out and speak to her. Cassie could feel the meanings of these lines like a bar of classical music; they moved her from the inside out.

  Part of her wanted to run and tell Adam immediately, to show him how peacefully the book lay in her hands. But if touching the book was changing her, she didn’t want anyone else to fall victim to its curse. And she also shouldn’t handle the book more than she had to. Or as much as she wanted to.

  Cassie thought for a moment about her options. She turned back to the book’s first page and carried it over to her desk. She pulled out a spiralbound notebook and took a ballpoint pen in hand. She sat and carefully copied the page, line for line, into her notebook, and then she copied the second page as well. It took nearly an hour to painstakingly duplicate every sign and symbol until she had an exact replica, one that could be translated without any doubt. When she was done, she admired the finished product. Cassie would show it to Adam in the morning and apologize to him for her weird behavior. It wouldn’t solve all their problems, but it was a good start.