The Power

by Lisa J. Smith

  "Sure, but why?" Sally asked impatiently.

  "I don't know. I'm going to find out. Sally, if I need to see you again, will you be in the cafeteria at lunch?"

  "Yes, but you can't talk to me there. Portia's been looking at me strangely ever since that night in the clearing – I think she's suspicious. Her brothers went away mad, and she didn't believe a word you said about Brunswick. If she catches me with you, I'm dead."

  "You may be dead if I don't talk with you," Cassie said. "Go on, get out of here, I'll leave in a minute."

  Cassie reached the old science building at a run. Waiting on the second floor was the rest of the Club – minus Faye and Sean, who hadn't been informed of the meeting. The plan had been to nab Sean right after lunch, even if they hadn't learned anything about Black John's plans by then.

  "But we do know something," Cassie said breathlessly, sitting down on a crate. "Listen."

  She told them what Sally had said.

  "Well, that explains it," Deborah put in when Cassie finished. "I just saw him and Faye walk out of the building, and the secretary said they'd be gone all afternoon. So they're going out to wreck a school bus. Cool."

  "But why?" Cassie said. "I mean, it looks like he wants to block the bridge, but what's the point?"

  It was Adam who answered. He'd been sitting by Doug, with one of the earphones from Doug's Walkman pressed to his ear.

  "The point," he said, "is to keep everybody on the island. There's just been an update on the news – anybody remember that hurricane they were talking about the last couple days?

  The one that they were afraid was going to hit Florida, but then it turned north while it was still out in the Atlantic?"

  There was head-shaking around the group – most of them hadn't been too interested in the news lately – but Melanie said, "I thought they downgraded that to a tropical storm."

  "Yeah, they figured it was just going to dissipate out in the ocean. Look, I know a little about hurricanes. This one isn't supposed to be a threat, because they're assuming it's going to turn northeast at Cape Hatteras. That's what hurricanes usually do when they hit the low-pressure trough around there. But we all know what happens when they don't." He looked around the group grimly, and this time there were nods from everyone but Cassie.

  "When they don't turn at Cape Hatteras, they come barreling straight up here," Adam said to her, then. "Like the one in 1938, and the one a few years ago ... and the one in 1976."

  The silence was absolute. Cassie glanced from side to side at the faces in the dim room.

  "God," she whispered, feeling dizzy.

  "Yes," said Adam. "Winds a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and walls of water, forty feet high. Now, they're still saying this storm is going to turn – they just mentioned on the radio that it's supposed to stay well off the Atlantic seaboard. But" – he looked around again, deliberately – "anybody want to take bets?"

  Laurel jumped up. "We've got to stop Black John. If that bridge is blocked, everybody on the island is in danger."

  "Too late," Deborah said briefly. "He's already gone. Remember? I saw him leave ten minutes ago."

  "And everybody's not just in danger, everybody's dead," Melanie said. "That storm a couple years ago just nicked New Salem, but this one could wipe us out."

  Cassie looked at Adam. "How fast is it coming?"

  "I don't know. Could be fifty miles an hour, could be seventy. If it doesn't turn at Cape Hatteras, they'll issue a hurricane warning – but it'll be too late by then, especially if the bridge is blocked. It could get to us in maybe seven, eight hours. More or less."

  "Around the time of the eclipse?" Cassie asked.

  "Maybe. Maybe a little later."

  "But before it hits us, it'll hit Cape Cod and Boston," Diana whispered. "It will kill people there." She looked stunned and dazed at the idea.

  "Then there's only one thing to do," Cassie said. "We've got to stop it before it hits land at all. We've got to make it dissipate, or turn back out to the ocean, or whatever. Or we've got to make him do it. And before that we've got to warn people on our own – tell them to do whatever you do in a hurricane – "

  "Evacuate," Adam said dryly, "which may not be possible, even in boats. Listen to that wind." He paused and Cassie heard not only the wind but a pattering on the boarded-up windows. Rain.

  "If they can't get out, they'll have to dig in," Chris said. "Anybody up for a hurricane party?"

  "It's not funny," Nick said sharply, and Cassie said, "All right, then – tell people to do that.

  Do whatever they can. And we'd better get back to Crowhaven Road – "

  "With Sean," Adam cut in swiftly. "I'll get him and meet everybody at my house. Let's do it, people."

  They left their uneaten lunches – except Suzan, who snagged hers and ran after the others –

  and headed for the school.

  FOURTEEN

  "So you have to go now," Cassie said, trying to get her breath, speaking not only to Sally but to everyone in the cafeteria. "Forget school, forget everything. Leave. Get out if you can, and if you can't – well, do whatever you can to protect yourselves." She stopped. "Look, it's true. Sally, tell them."

  The rusty-haired girl had been staring at Cassie, eyes wary, poised on her chair as if to bolt from this social pariah. Now she stared at Cassie another moment, then nodded once, as if to herself. Taking a deep breath, she stood.

  "Okay, you heard it," she said in clear, strident tones that carried through the room. "We're going to have a hurricane. Everybody tell somebody, and tell them to tell somebody else.

  Come on, get moving."

  A boy stood up. "I saw on TV last night that the storm isn't coming anywhere near us. How does she know – "

  "She's a witch, isn't she?" Sally yelled back in her raucous voice. "You telling me witches don't know these things? They know more about nature than you ever will! Now come on!"

  "Sally, have you lost your mind?" The thin angry voice came from the door of the back room, where Portia was standing in front of a group of students with badges, her face chalky with fury. "You're a hall monitor – " "Not anymore! I said move, you guys!" "This is completely against regulations! I'm going to tell Mr. Brunswick – "

  "You do that, cupcake," Sally shouted back. "I/ you can find him! Now for the last time, people, get moving! Who are you going to listen to, her or me?"

  The hall monitors behind Portia hesitated for an instant, then, as a group, they surged forward to obey Sally. Portia stumbled back as they pushed around her, leaving her the sole inhabitant of the room. Cassie's last glimpse of her showed her standing there, rigid, furious, and utterly alone.

  Sally began to shout more instructions to the cafeteria workers, and Cassie turned to go.

  But as Cassie reached the door, each of the girls paused a moment, and looked back at the other across the room.

  "You going to be okay?" Sally said. Cassie knew the "you" didn't just mean Cassie. It meant the whole Circle.

  "Yes."

  "Okay. Good luck."

  "You too. Good-bye, Sally."

  It wasn't much of a brilliant cultural exchange, Cassie thought, running toward the parking lot to meet Diana. But it was a truce, witch with outsider. More than a truce.

  And now, she thought, I've got to put them out of my mind – all the outsiders. Sally will take care of her people; we have to take care of ours.

  It was raining hard now, and it seemed to get worse as she and Diana drove toward Crowhaven Road. Gusts of wind swayed Diana's car as they pulled into Adam's driveway.

  Right behind them, Adam's jeep was pulling in. "They've got Sean," Cassie said, twisting to look. She and Diana hurried to help.

  Nick and Doug were holding the smaller boy in the backseat. They marched him to the door the way Portia's brothers had marched Cassie. It seemed a little incongruous; Sean was so small – but then Cassie looked into those shiny, darting black eyes.

  "You'd better get the hematite of
f him quick," she said.

  Nick pulled Sean's sweater up – and there it was, the engraved belt Cassie had seen that first week of school. Adam unbuckled it and threw it on the floor, where it lay like a dead snake. "Where's the other piece?" he asked Sean roughly.

  Sean just fought to get free, panting, his eyes wild. It took all three of the guys to hold him, and if Chris, Deborah, and Laurel hadn't arrived at that moment, he might actually have gotten away. Working together, the boys and Deborah managed to strip off his sweater and shirt. Underneath, where the other members of the Circle had been wearing amethysts, Sean was wearing a small leather pouch. Adam shook it gingerly and Cassie's piece of hematite fell out.

  "Thief!" Deborah said, shaking a fist in Sean's face. Sean stared at her blankly, still panting, terrified.

  "He probably didn't even know he had it," Melanie intervened. "He's been under Black John's influence from the beginning. Somebody take that hematite out and bury it. Laurel, is the herbal bath ready?"

  "Ready!" came Laurel's shout from the downstairs bathroom, over the sound of running water. "Get him in here."

  The Circle had been planning this purification ritual ever since they'd found out about Sean, and everyone knew his or her part. The boys dragged Sean into the bathroom while Laurel stood just outside the door. "I don't care if his clothes are off or on," Cassie heard her calling. "Just get him in the tub."

  Deborah scooped up the hematite in a dustpan and went to bury it, and Diana rapidly completed an herbal charm she took from her backpack. She charged the canvas pouch of herbs with Earth, Water, Air, and Fire by sprinkling salt on it, flicking water from a glass on it, breathing on it, and passing it over a lit candle which had been sitting ready on the coffee table.

  "Okay, it's done," she said. "Melanie, what about you?" Melanie looked up from laying a ring of white stones on the floor. "I'm done too. By the time we're finished with Sean, he'll be so pure we won't know him anymore."

  Cassie wanted to look something up in her Book of Shadows, but there was another priority first.

  "We have to warn the parents around here," she said, "the ones who're at home, who don't .

  work. Is somebody doing that?"

  "I'll go to my house," Chris said. "Both of my parents are home."

  "My mom works," Deborah said. "That just leaves Faye's mom," said Diana. "I'll go tell her," Suzan offered, surprising Cassie. "She knows me, she might take it best from me."

  "And the crones," Cassie said. "I mean," she amended quickly, "Adam's grandmother and Granny Quincey and Aunt Constance."

  "They're at my house; they came over this morning," Melanie said. "Something to do with your mom, I think, Cassie. But I can't leave this circle." "I'll go," Cassie said.

  Diana flashed a smile at her. "I think crones is a good name for them," she said. "It's what they are, and I think Granny Quincey, anyway, would be proud to be crone to our coven."

  So would my grandma, I bet, Cassie thought, and she plunged outside again.

  There was a strange smell out here, a smell like low tide, like crawling and decaying things. Cassie ran to the edge of the cliff, taking the back route along the bluff to Melanie's house, and she saw that the ocean was dark and wild. The water was neither blue nor green nor gray, but a sludgy, oily color that seemed to be a mixture of all three. Specks of foam were flying on the wind, and there was white froth everywhere.

  Above, the clouds took on fantastic shapes, boiling and changing as if molded by unseen hands. The rain drove into Cassie's face. It was a savage and awe-inspiring scene.

  No one answered her knock at the door of Number Four. Cassie wasn't sure anybody inside could hear it over the wind and rain. "Aunt Constance?" she shouted, opening the door and peering inside. "Hello?"

  She started toward the room that had been given to her mother, and then stopped, turned back guiltily, and wiped her sandy, muddy Reeboks on the mat. Even so, she dripped water on the spotless, mirror-polished hardwood floor as she hurried to the bedroom. The door was barely ajar, and a strange brightness flickered inside.

  "Hello? ... Oh, my God!" Cassie poked her head around the door and froze. The room was lit entirely by dozens of white candles. Around the bed were three figures, three women whose appearance was so strange and fantastic that for a moment Cassie didn't recognize them.

  One was tall and thin, another was short and plump, and the third was tiny and doll-like.

  They all had long hair: the tall one's was black and thick, longer than Diana's, the plump one's was silvery-gray and untidy, waving down past her shoulders, and the tiny one's was gauzy and white like floating wisps of seafoam. And they were naked.

  Cassie's eyes were popping. "Great-aunt Constance?" she gasped to the one with long black hair.

  "Who did you expect?" Melanie's aunt said sharply, her meticulously tweezed eyebrows drawing together. "Lady Godiva? Now go away, child, we're busy."

  "Don't be unkind to her," said the plump woman, whom Cassie was now able to identify as Adam's grandmother. She smiled at Cassie, entirely unself-conscious.

  "We're trying something to help your mother, dear," the tiny figure, Laurel's Granny Quincey, added. "It's a sky-clad ritual, you see; that's why we're naked. Constance had her doubts, but we convinced her."

  "And we need to get on with it," Great-aunt Constance said, gesturing with the wooden cup she was holding. Granny Quincey was holding a bunch of herbs, and Adam's grandmother, a silver bell. Cassie looked at the bed, where her mother lay as motionless as ever. Something about the light in the room made that sleeping face look different, just as it made the three women look different.

  "But there's a hurricane coming," Cassie said. "That's why I'm here; I came to warn you."

  The women exchanged glances. "Well, if there is, there's no help for it," Adam's grandmother sighed.

  "But – "

  "Your mother can't be moved, dear," Granny Quincey said firmly. "So you go along and do what you have to, and we'll try to protect her here."

  "We're going to fight Black John," Cassie said. The simple statement seemed to hang in the air after she'd said it, and the three old women looked at each other again.

  Great-aunt Constance opened her mouth, frowning, but Granny Quincey interrupted her.

  "There's no one else to do it, Constance. They have to fight."

  "Then be careful. You tell Melanie – and all of them – to be careful," Aunt Constance said.

  "And you stick together. As long as you stick together you'll have a chance," said Adam's grandmother.

  And that was that. The women turned back to the bed. Cassie stood for one more moment looking at the candles – so white, with their flames even whiter, a golden white like Diana's hair – and at the myriad ghostly shadows on the ceiling and walls. Then she left. As she quietly shut the door, all the candle flames danced wildly, and she had a last glimpse of the three women in the room, arms raised, beginning a kind of dance too. The silver bell chimed softly.

  She hadn't noticed the wind inside the room, but now she did. Everything outside that door seemed colder and noisier, and the dim light coming in through the windows looked gray and wintry. Cassie had an impulse to go back into the golden room and hide there, but she knew she couldn't.

  She walked back to Adam's house, Number Nine, with the wind pushing her all the way.

  She was the last one back. The Circle was in Adam's living room, sitting around Sean, who was sitting within the circle of quartz crystals. Sean's face was very pink and scrubbed-looking, his hair was wet and spiky, and he was wearing clothes too big for him. Adam's, Cassie guessed. Around his neck was the canvas pouch full of herbs Diana had prepared. He looked dazed and terrified, but he didn't seem to be trying to get away.

  "Were they there? Did you find them?" Diana asked Cassie.

  Cassie nodded. She didn't quite want to tell Diana how she had found them. She didn't know how Melanie and Adam and Laurel would feel about their elderly relatives dancing naked around a
sickroom. They might think there was something wrong with it; they might not understand about the golden light.

  "They said they'd stay where they were," she said. "Granny Quincey said my mom couldn't be moved, and that they were trying to help her. They said we should be careful, and Adam's grandmother told us to stick together."

  "Good advice," Adam said, looking at Sean. "And that's just about the point we've gotten to, here. Are we going to stick together or not?"

  "We tried asking him about the murders," Laurel informed Cassie in a low voice, "but he doesn't remember anything – doesn't know what we're talking about. We had to convince him that it wasn't a joke. He believes us now, but he's scared to death."

  "So here's the choice, Sean," Adam was saying. "You can stand with us, or you can spend the rest of the day locked in the cellar where you can't make trouble."

  "Or," Diana said softly, "you can go to him, to Black John. It's his right," she added quickly, as some of the others began to protest. "He has to make the decision."

  Sean's frightened eyes roved all around the room. Cassie felt sorry for him, sitting surrounded, with everyone looking at him. When he spoke, his voice was squeaky but definitive. "I'll stand with you guys."

  "Good boy," Laurel said approvingly, and Deborah thumped him on the back so hard he nearly fell over. The Hendersons said nothing, simply looked at him out of their strange blue-green eyes, and Cassie had the feeling they might never forgive him for what had happened to Kori, even if it hadn't been his fault. But at least for now, the Circle stood together.

  Except...

  Cassie looked at Adam, and they both looked at Diana. Diana nodded.

  "Now's the time," she said. "This is Faye's last chance – let's hope she takes it."

  Cassie didn't have much hope, but she picked up the cordless phone lying on a pile of unfolded laundry on the couch. "What's her beeper number?"

  Diana unfolded a scrap of paper and read it off. "After it rings, press pound and then dial Adam's number," she instructed.

  Cassie did and turned off the phone. She waited. Nothing happened.