The Power

by Lisa J. Smith

  – that's me – gives a box to the youngest member – that's you, Cassie. You have to go bury the box somewhere without looking at what's inside it. It's supposed to be a dark and perilous journey you go on, but I think Nick's right and you'd better stick around here. Just take it off the road somewhere and bury it."

  "And that's all?" Cassie looked at the box Diana had given her. It was made of some light-colored wood, carved all over with tiny, intricate figures: bees and bears and fish. Something inside it rattled. "I just bury it?"

  "That's all," Diana said, handing Cassie the last item from the white bag: a small trowel.

  "The point is that you don't look inside it. That's why it's called the trust festival; it's a celebration of trust and responsibility and friendship. Someday later we'll come back and dig it up."

  "Okay." Carrying the box and trowel, Cassie stepped outside the circle and walked away from the group, leaving the little dancing points, of flame behind.

  She didn't want to bury the box close to the road. For one thing, the soil was hard and strewn with gravel; it wouldn't be easy to dig here; she'd just be scratching at the surface.

  Besides, this close someone might see the ground had been disturbed and dig the box up before its time.

  Cassie kept walking east. She could hear the whispering of the sea from that direction and feel a faint, salty breeze. She climbed over some large rocks, and the beach stretched out before her, deserted and somehow eerie. Lacy white waves were lapping quietly at the shore.

  A yellow moon, just over half full, was rising above the ocean. The mourning moon, Cassie remembered. It was just the color of Faye's eyes. In fact, it looked like a jaundiced, ancient eye, and Cassie had the uncomfortable sense of being spied on as she stuck the trowel into the cold dry sand and began to dig.

  That was deep enough. The sand scooped out by the trowel was caked now, and she hoped the moisture wouldn't ruin Diana's box. As Cassie put the wooden box in the hole, moonlight glinted off the brass hasp. It wasn't locked. For just an instant, she had the temptation to open it.

  Don't be stupid, she told herself. After all you and Diana have been through, if you can't do a little thing like bury a box without looking inside...

  Nobody would know, the voice in her mind countered defensively.

  I would know, Cassie told the voice. So there. She dumped sand on the box decisively, scooping with both the trowel and her hand to cover it faster.

  It was sometime while she was covering the box that she noticed the blackness.

  It's just a shadow, she thought. The moon was high enough now to throw a long shadow behind an outcrop of rock which was closer to the water than Cassie. Cassie watched it out of the corner of her eye as she smoothed the sand over the buried box. There, now you'd never know anything was hidden here. The shadow was stretching closer, but that was just because the moon was rising . . .

  Wrong, Cassie thought. She stopped in the middle of brushing sand off her hands and looked at it.

  Shadows get shorter as the moon gets higher. Just like the sun, she thought. But this one was definitely closer to her.

  The whispering of the ocean was suddenly loud.

  I should have listened to Diana. I should have stayed near the group, Cassie thought.

  Slowly and casually, she glanced over her shoulder. The rocks she'd climbed over seemed far away, and there was no sign of the circle of candles behind them. No sound either, except the waves. Cassie felt exposed and very much alone.

  Don't act scared. Get up and go, she told herself. Her heart was knocking against her ribs.

  As she stood, the shadow moved.

  Oh God. There was no way to pretend that was normal. The shadow wasn't even attached to the rock anymore. It was just a blackness on the sand, flowing like water, moving toward her. It was alive.

  Go, go! Cassie's mind screamed at her. But her legs wouldn't obey. They were locked, paralyzed. She wasn't going anywhere.

  Cassssie. Her head jerked up; she looked for the person who had spoken. But it wasn't a person. It was the waves.

  Cassssssie.

  I want to get out of here, Cassie thought. Her legs still wouldn't move.

  The blackness flowed like tar, rippling toward her. It divided, pouring itself on either side of her, encircling her.

  Cassssssie.

  The shadow was whispering to her with Black John's voice. It eddied around her, a formless darkness like smoke. As she looked down at it, Cassie seemed to see snakes in it, and black beetles, all crawling loathsome things. It was around her, but it didn't want to kill her. It wanted to get into her mind.

  She could feel it trying. A pressure as it swirled around her feet. All she could think was, thank God I don't still have the hematite.

  1 should have listened; why didn't I listen? she thought then. The girls wouldn't miss her for a while. Too long. She wanted to scream, but her throat was as paralyzed as her legs. She could only stand there and watch the rippling blackness swirl around her feet.

  Push with your mind, she thought, but she was too frightened. She couldn't scare away this darkness the way she had the doberman. She wasn't strong enough.

  Please help me, she thought.

  And then, in a rush, it was all she was thinking. Oh please somebody help me, somebody please come, I can't get out of this myself, oh pleasesomebody –

  Cassssssie, the whisper came. The waves and the darkness and the watching moon all seemed to be saying it.

  Help me ...

  "Cassie!" It was a shout, not a whisper, and behind it Cassie heard a dog barking. At the sound, Cassie's mind was flooded with images of safety, of comfort. She looked around frantically. Her legs still wouldn't move.

  "I'm here!" she shouted back. Even as she called, she felt herself released. The black was edging away, retreating to the rock. Merging with the real shadow there.

  "Cassie!" The voice was familiar, loved.

  "I'm here," Cassie called again, stumbling toward it. The visions of comfort and safety and closeness were still whirling inside her, pulling her. She followed them. Just as she reached the rocks, strong arms caught her up, held her tightly. She felt the warmth of a human body against her.

  Over Nick's shoulder, she met Adam's eyes.

  The moon was shining full in his face, turning those eyes odd colors, blue-violet like the bottom of a flame. Like the sky before some strange storm. She thought she could see silver reflecting in his pupils. Raj bounded up beside him, still barking. The German shepherd's tail was waving frantically as he headed for Cassie. Adam caught him by the ruff and held him back.

  "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" Nick said in her ear.

  "No. I'm all right," she whispered. She didn't know what she was saying.

  "You shouldn't have gone off by yourself,"

  Nick said angrily. "They shouldn't have let you do it."

  "It's okay, Nick." She hung on to him with all her strength and buried her face in his shoulder just as Adam turned, leading the reluctant Raj away. Then she clung there, knowing he could feel her shaking.

  "Cassie." He stroked her back soothingly.

  Cassie pulled back slightly. Adam was gone. She looked at Nick in the moonlight, at the clean carven handsomeness of his features with their hint of coldness. Except his eyes weren't cold now.

  Passion, she thought and brought up Faye's red candle in her mind. Then she kissed him.

  She'd never really kissed anybody besides Adam, but she guessed she knew how to do it well enough. Nick's mouth was warm, and that was nice. She felt how startled he was, and then instantly felt the surprise swept away by something deeper, sweeter. She felt him kissing her back.

  She kissed not to think. Kissing was good for that. Suzan had been dead wrong about Nick.

  He wasn't an iguana. Little lines of fire ran along Cassie's nerves, tingling her fingers. She felt warm all over.

  Eventually, they both broke it. Cassie looked up at him, her fingers still intermeshed with his
.

  "Sorry," she said unsteadily. "I was just scared."

  "Remind me to get you scared frequently," Nick said. He looked slightly dazed.

  "We'd better go back. Black John was here."

  She had to give Nick credit; he didn't yell "What?" and shake her. He cast a quick, hunting look around, switching his grip on her so that he was holding her arm with his left hand and his right hand was free.

  "He's gone now," she said. "There was a shadow that came out from that rock, but it's not there anymore."

  "After this, nobody goes out alone," Nick said, guiding her toward the rocks they had to climb to get back to the crossroads.

  "I think he was trying to get into my mind," Cassie told the others when they were all back at Adam's house again. She sat beside Nick, holding tightly to his hand. "To influence me, or.

  take me over, or whatever. I didn't know how to stop him. If you guys hadn't come, he would have done it."

  "Nobody should be out by themselves anymore," Nick said, with a hard glance at Diana. It was unlike Nick to say anything at meetings, but now his voice was decisive, not to be argued with.

  "I agree," said Melanie. "Moreover, I think we should do something to defend ourselves, to put up some kind of shield against him."

  "What did you have in mind?" Adam asked her. He was sitting on the arm of Diana's chair, his face calm, his voice steady.

  "Some kind of crystal might help. Amethyst, maybe. It should help us to focus and fight against him, against any psychic attack. Of course, if anyone were simultaneously wearing another crystal that he could use against them – like hematite – it wouldn't do any good."

  Melanie was looking at Faye.

  Faye made an impatient gesture. "As I've already told my interfering cousin, I don't have any stupid hematite. I don't have to steal other people's crystals."

  "All right; we won't argue," Diana said. "Melanie, do you have enough amethysts at your place? Or can you lend us some, Laurel? I think we should get them ready immediately, so everybody can wear them home tonight."

  "Yes, and keep them on all the time," Melanie said. "When you take a bath, when you go to sleep, at school, whatever. But wear them under your clothes; don't let him see the crystals, if possible. They'll be more effective that way."

  "What a way to end a party," Doug groused, as he picked up his jacket.

  "Think of it as a party favor," Nick replied unsympathetically. "A memento." He squeezed Cassie's fingers quickly with a sideways glance, as if to say he knew what he would be remembering.

  Cassie felt warmed by that. But as they were leaving for Melanie's house she asked casually, "By the way, why did you guys come after me?"

  "Yeah, did you get bored with the party or something? Found out you couldn't deal all by yourselves, so you had to find us girls?" Deborah put in, her dark eyes flashing at Chris.

  Chris looked at her oddly. "No, we were dealin' fine. It was Adam who told us to come. He said Cassie was in trouble."

  NINE

  Cassie's piece of amethyst was quite large. It was a pendant, hanging from the claws of a silver owl with outspread wings, and it felt cool against Cassie's chest under her blue and white sweater. She checked in Diana's mirror to make sure it didn't make a bump and then touched it nervously. Cassie had had three stones so far: the chalcedony rose Adam had given her, the quartz necklace Melanie had put around her neck at the Homecoming dance, and the piece of hematite she'd found at Number Thirteen. She hadn't kept any of them long. The chalcedony she'd had to give back to Adam, the quartz had been lost that same night at the burying .ground, and the hematite had been stolen. She just hoped nothing was going to happen to this amethyst.

  Clouds had gathered in the night, and the sky was steely-gray as Diana drove them to school that morning. And school these days was about as bleak as the weather. Hall monitors, wearing badges and wintry expressions, stood in every corridor waiting for someone to break the rules. Which usually didn't take very long; there were so many rules that it was impossible not to break one or two just by being alive.

  "We almost got sent up for wearing a noisemakin' device," Chris said as they were walking down the hall at lunchtime.

  Cassie tensed. "What did you do?"

  "Bribed him," Doug said with a wicked grin. "We gave him a Walkman."

  "My Walkman," Chris said, aggrieved.

  "I wonder what the penalty for bribing a hall monitor is?" Laurel mused as they reached the cafeteria.

  Cassie opened her mouth, but the words froze on her lips. Through the glass windows of the cafeteria she could see something that wiped all thought from her mind.

  "Oh God," said Laurel.

  "I don't believe it," Diana whispered.

  "I do," Adam said.

  In the very center of the cafeteria was a wooden structure that Cassie recognized from her history books. It was made in two parts, which when closed held a person's wrists and neck securely in place, protruding through holes from the other side.

  The stocks.

  And they were occupied.

  There was a guy inside them, a big husky guy Cassie recognized from her algebra class.

  He'd danced with her at Homecoming, and he'd been overly familiar with his hands. He liked to talk back to teachers, too. But she'd never seen him do anything deserving of this.

  "He won't get away with it," Diana was saying, her green eyes blazing with intensity.

  "Who, the principal?" Deborah asked. She and Suzan and Nick were standing by the cafeteria door, waiting for the others. "He already has. He was taking some parents on a guided tour a few minutes ago and they came through here ... he showed it to them, for God's sake. Said it was part of a 'tough love' program. Said other schools made troublemakers stand on tables so everybody could look at them, but that he thought the stocks were more humane because you could sit down. He almost made it sound reasonable. And they were just nodding and smiling – they ate it up."

  Cassie felt queasy. She was thinking of the Witch Dungeon at Salem, where she and Chris and Doug had scuttled through narrow corridors lined with tiny dark cells. The stocks gave her the same sick feeling in her stomach. How can people do this to other people? she thought.

  " – passing it off as part of our heritage," Nick was saying, his lip curled in disgust, and Cassie knew he felt the same way.

  "Can we talk about it while we eat?" Suzan asked, shifting from one foot to the other. "I'm starving."

  But as they made their way toward the back room – the private domain of the Club for the last four years – a short figure with rusty hair stepped in front of them.

  "Sorry," Sally Waltman smirked. "That room is for hall monitors only, now."

  "Oh, yeah?" said Deborah.

  Two guys with badges appeared from nowhere and stood on either side of Sally.

  "Yeah," one of them said.

  Cassie looked through the glass windows of the back room – there was no crowd of hangers-on standing in front of it today – and saw Portia's tawny head. She was surrounded by girls and guys who were looking at her admiringly. They all wore badges.

  "You'll just have to sit somewhere else," Sally was telling the Club. "And since there aren't enough seats at any one table, you'll have to break your group up. What a shame."

  "We'll go outside," Nick said shortly, taking Cassie's arm.

  Sally laughed. "I don't think so. No more eating out front. If you can't find a place to sit in here, you stand."

  Cassie could feel Nick's muscles cord. She held on to his arm tightly. Diana had a similar hold on Adam, whose blue-gray eyes were like chips of steel, fixed on the guys beside Sally.

  "It's not worth it," Diana said quietly, with forced calm. "It's what he wants. Let's go stand over there."

  Sally looked disappointed as they all started to move to the wall. Then triumph flashed in her eyes.

  "He's in violation already," she said, pointing to Doug. "He's wearing a radio."

  "It's not on," Doug said.


  "It doesn't have to be. Just wearing it is a Type-A offense. Come with me, please." The two guys surged forward to help Doug come.

  "Nick, don't. Wait – " Cassie gasped, getting in front of him. A fight in the cafeteria was all they needed.

  Doug's eyes were glittering wildly. He looked mad enough to hit Sally, not to mention the two guys.

  "Bring him," Sally said in an exultant voice. The guys reached for Doug. Doug's fist jerked back. And then a throaty voice cut through the confusion.

  "What's going on here?" Faye said, her amber eyes smoldering. She was wearing another of the little business suits; this one black and yellow.

  Sally glared at her. "They're refusing to comply with the orders of a hall monitor," she said.

  "And he's wearing a radio."

  Faye reached over and unhooked the Walkman from Doug's belt. "Now he's not," she said.

  "And I'm telling them to go eat somewhere else – outside, maybe. On my authority."

  Sally was sputtering. Faye chuckled and led the Club out of the cafeteria.

  "Thanks," Diana said, and for a moment she and Faye looked each other in the eye. Cassie thought of the candles burning in a circle on the road. A new stage of life – was Faye entering a new stage of life? Coming back to the coven?

  But Faye's next words undeceived her. "You know, there's no reason that you can't eat in the back room," she said. "You can all become hall monitors. That's what he wants – "

  "He wants to take us over," interrupted Deborah scornfully.

  "He wants to join with us. He's one of us."

  "No, he's not, Faye," Cassie said, thinking of the shadow under the rock. "He's nothing like us."

  Faye gave her a strange glance, but all she said was, "There's a hall monitors' meeting in C-207 last period. Think about it. The sooner you join him, the easier things will be." She tossed Doug's Walkman back to him with a negligent gesture and walked away.

  Lunch was uncomfortable; it was cold in the front yard of the school, and nobody but Suzan had much of an appetite. Sean showed up late, after all the excitement was over. They discussed plans to fight Black John, but as always they came back to the single issue of power. They needed power to fight him effectively. They needed the Master Tools.