by L. J. Smith
Nick continued to talk down the flames, overpowering the fire with his will. Through the lessening black smoke, Cassie took inventory of the bodies rolling and coughing, or lying unconscious on the ground. She ran toward Max but was distracted by a low rumble, then a loud crack.
She stopped short.
The ceiling overhead began falling down in pieces all around her—slowly at first, then in a rapid avalanche of cracked plaster and splintered wooden beams.
Cassie covered her head with her hands and turned around just in time to see Nick knocked down by the falling debris. Max had also been buried, out of sight. No one made a sound.
Cassie looked up, thinking she might actually see blue sky, so much of the ceiling had come down. And there they were: Adam, Diana, Faye, and the rest of her friends, hovering in the air. They were levitating, safely among the only standing rafters left to the auditorium’s roof.
Cassie closed her eyes and searched her mind for a spell. She steadied her breath and called to the dark pit that resided in her belly.
She felt herself flush with heat from the inside out, and that ominous feeling from deep within rose up. She knew that it was her dark magic—the only magic that would be strong enough to overpower the ancestors. Cassie gave herself over to it, allowing the spell to come to her: Cadens obruta, consurget.
Like vomit, the words spewed from her mouth. “Cadens obruta, consurget!”
As Cassie raised her arms, the fallen wreckage rose with them.
“Consurget!” she shouted.
All the wood and beams and broken shards of plaster that had rained down over Cassie’s head flew back up from the floor toward the ceiling.
Her friends ducked and dodged the oncoming wave of debris. Shafts of plywood and metal shot up at them like arrows.
“Duratus!” Cassie called out, and they were unable to move. They were swiftly becoming buried from the ground up, pinned to the ceiling with more and more rubble.
No longer trapped beneath the wreckage, Nick climbed to his feet. He wiped the shadow of plaster and ash from his eyes.
“Check on Max,” Cassie said.
But Max, too, had climbed back up to a standing position. His face was battered and his lip leaked blood, but aside from that he appeared unharmed. He brushed the white dust and dirt from his clothes.
Nick touched a swelling bruise above his eyebrow. “How long do you think they’ll be trapped up there?” he asked.
Somewhere in the distance, outside the school building, Cassie could hear a siren coming closer. “Long enough for us to get out of here.” She turned to Max. “What do you say we get right to work on that exorcism spell?”
“I’d say we’re overdue,” Max said, making his way through the ruined auditorium toward the exit.
Chapter 10
Max leaned both his skinned elbows on the tabletop as he hovered over the page of Black John’s Book of Shadows they were trying to translate. He and Nick were banged up from the auditorium, with fat lips and puffy bruises purpling their faces, but neither of them showed any pain—tough guys that they were.
Max pointed at an odd triangular shape. “This symbol is a triskelion within a circle,” he said. “I recognize it from somewhere.”
Cassie and Nick had gone directly to Max’s house from the auditorium so they could study the book together. They were shut up in his room with the door locked and Black John’s book open between them.
Cassie took her eyes away from the symbol momentarily to watch Max pull a few cardboard boxes out from beneath his bed. There were many boxes under there, Cassie noticed. The ones visible appeared to be filled with old maps and yellowed papers, coins and amulets. One was stacked full with leather journals. That was the box Max dug through.
He pulled out an ancient-looking book.
“Is that your own Book of Shadows?” Nick asked.
“Pretty much. Well, the hunter version of it anyway,” Max said. “Same idea.”
The book was delicately bound, and when he opened it, dust fell from its spine. By the writing and markings covering its pages, Cassie could tell it had been passed down for generations.
In a few minutes, Max found the page he was looking for. “Here,” he said.
Nick took the book from Max’s hands. “I don’t believe it. It’s the same triangle shape.” He placed the two books side by side.
The symbols were identical.
“My ancestors tried exorcism as a way to fight off witches,” Max said. “That’s what this page in my book talks about.”
The text Max pointed to was partially written in what Cassie recognized as Latin. The rest was composed of an ancient language she couldn’t identify.
“It didn’t work for them,” Max said. “But they did know about this symbol.”
“Which means this page of my father’s book must contain information about performing an exorcism,” Cassie said, finally catching up to Max’s train of thought. “Otherwise why else would the symbol be printed on it?”
“Exactly. It’ll still take some time to translate,” Max said. “But it’s good to know we’re on the right track. This section of your father’s book is definitely the area we should be focusing on. The entire exorcism spell might be right here on this page.”
Cassie’s pulse raced. She felt as though she’d been shaken awake. “You’re the best,” she said to Max. “You know that?”
Max looked away, not meeting her eyes. “I’m only doing what I can to make sure more people don’t get hurt.”
“That’s as good a reason as any,” Nick said, seeming to appreciate Max in a whole new way. He gave him a brotherly smack on the back.
Cassie copied the page with the symbol on it from her father’s book onto a fresh sheet of paper. Max would still hold on to the book for safekeeping, but now Cassie had a copy of what she needed to continue working on.
The papers crinkled as she stuffed them deep into her bag. “This was the best thing to happen to me all day,” she said.
Max squinted at her and allowed himself a half-smile. “On a day like today, that’s really not saying much.”
“Good point,” Cassie said, and laughed.
Enjoying a sense of accomplishment, Cassie and Nick stepped in the front door to Cassie’s house. They each carried a brown bag from the grocery store filled with ice cream and potato chips and assorted other goodies to fuel their night’s work translating the spell. Then Cassie heard a crunching beneath her shoes.
“Shattered glass,” Nick said. “Could only mean one thing.”
They both dropped their bags on the floor and then noticed the path of overturned chairs leading to Cassie’s mother. She was tied to the one chair upright in the kitchen, gagged and unable to speak.
“Untie her,” Cassie said. “I’ll check upstairs.”
Cassie heard Diana, Adam, and Faye ripping apart her bedroom before she saw them. Everything they touched, they left tattered and torn.
“You’re wasting your time,” Cassie said from the doorway. “The book isn’t here.”
Diana was the first to look up. “Tell us where it is, or we’ll burn this whole house down.”
“We’re good at burning things,” Faye said. “As you know.”
“And I’m good at putting fires out,” Cassie said. “As you know.”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “She’s becoming less fearful,” he said. “Let’s show her why that’s a mistake.”
Together, Adam and Faye stared Cassie down. She fell to her knees, gasping for air—but she had anticipated this attack. This time she was ready.
When she’d tapped into her dark magic earlier in the day, it had left a resonance. A tingle of that power remained on the tip of her tongue and fingers. She urged it to come again, more easily this time. The words uttered themselves: Audire sonum malum.
Suddenly Adam, Faye, and Diana all covered their ears with their hands. They wailed. Whatever spell had come to Cassie hit the spirits like a screeching alarm.
Her friends backed away, crouched over, trying to escape the sound blaring inside their own heads. They could barely drag themselves to the doorway.
Cassie stepped aside, allowing them to stumble by her and down the stairs. She followed them, guiding them with her spell, past Nick and her mother in the kitchen and out the way they came in.
Cassie pursued them until the blur of their doubled-over bodies disappeared down the block, lost to the sunshine. Then she rushed to her mother, who was untied but sitting in the same chair, drinking a glass of water.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I only wish I could have stopped them.”
Nick surveyed the damage their visitors had done to the front door and windows. “I can replace the glass and repair the door,” he said. “But they’ll probably just break through it again.”
Cassie’s mother appeared unreasonably calm considering what she’d just been through. She rubbed at the tender rope burns on her arms and wrists, but she spoke loudly and clearly. “We have to take stronger precautions.”
“Nick and I have been trying to research a guarding spell to protect the house,” Cassie said. “But we haven’t been able to find one that would work on a demon.”
“I know one,” her mother said matter-of-factly. “I still remember the spell your grandmother used when she built the secret room.”
She gave Cassie a somber look. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had to worry about demon spirits entering the house.”
Nick had been pushing some broken glass into a small pile near the door. When he looked up, he asked, “Does that include me? Do I count as a demon or a human?”
Cassie’s mother blushed, feeling Nick’s shame for him. “You’ll be fine here as long as the spirit doesn’t take full possession of your body.”
Nick returned his focus to the pile of glass. “Then that should be no problem,” he said. “As long as I’ve got Cassie pulling for me, there’s no way that’ll happen.”
Cassie looked at Nick’s face and saw so much weariness there, but also extraordinary strength. She wasn’t sure what she would have done without him.
Chapter 11
Cassie and Nick were sprawled on the couch, watching a movie to unwind. They’d treated themselves to a day home from school, so she and Nick could make the necessary repairs to the house after yesterday’s attack. But they’d finished the job in record time, leaving the rest of the afternoon for just the two of them. The movie was a romantic comedy, one Cassie had seen before and loved—yet she couldn’t help watching Nick as much as she watched the film.
She wasn’t searching him for a sign of the demon any longer. This was different, looking more for the comfort Nick’s face brought her. His dark eyes and strong jaw, the way he could focus on her in such a way that made her feel like the only person in the world, or at least the only one that mattered. And he was warm. Always, like a heated rock to curl up beside.
While watching the screen, Nick subconsciously ran his fingers up the length of Cassie’s arm, from her wrist to her elbow, and back down again.
Or maybe it wasn’t subconsciously.
Cassie felt the sensation in her whole body. She knew she should pull her arm away, but instead she found herself closing her eyes to better enjoy it.
From the sound of the movie alone, she recognized the scene of the hero getting to kiss his dream girl for the first time. When she reopened her eyes, she found Nick watching her as he continued stroking her arm.
Finally, she pulled away from him.
Nick clicked off the TV and leaned in closer.
Cassie felt her face get hot. Was he going to kiss her? She could tell he wanted to. His breath was heavy, needy, close to her ear.
“Nick, no,” Cassie said.
He exhaled with frustration and looked down. “Because of Adam?”
Cassie nodded.
“But these past few days have been . . . and you know how I feel about you, Cassie.”
If only Adam were as strong as Nick, Cassie thought. Why wasn’t his love enough to break through the possession?
“You know how I feel about you, too,” Cassie said.
Nick shook his head. “Not really.”
He tried to reach for Cassie’s hand again, but she didn’t let him. “I think we should get back to work translating the spell.”
She stood up and made her way to the stairs without looking Nick in the eyes.
He followed behind her, sullenly.
Up in her room, Cassie went right to the top drawer of her desk. She opened it roughly and pushed aside the decoy pile of sketchbooks and folders set there to hide the pages she’d copied from her father’s book.
Cassie unfolded the pages carefully upon her desk, straightening out their edges. To the naked eye, they appeared to be blank because of the protective spell she’d cast on them.
Nick plopped down on her bed as she rested her palms upon the papers. She whispered the secret incantation to reveal their text:
Hidden words, dark to pale
I who concealed you, now lift your veil
Gradually the familiar ink-black swirl of Cassie’s handwriting reappeared.
She sat at her desk, bent over the pages, examining the strange triangular symbol that she hadn’t been able to get out of her head since Max pointed it out to her. A triskelion within a circle, Max had called it. Once believed to exorcise evil spirits. Other than that symbol, the text on the page was mostly nonsense to Cassie, a jumble of ink that meant nothing.
She stared at the string of writing before her until the lines all blurred together. There were a few characters she understood, a few dozen ancient words, a handful of symbols. But it was the same characters and words that she understood every time, and the same ones she didn’t understand over and over again. She wasn’t figuring out anything new.
Nick lay on her bed playing a game on his phone.
“Nick,” she said, trying to regain his attention. “I don’t understand why translating these pages has been so difficult.”
Nick tossed his phone down and joined Cassie at her desk, standing behind her, with his hands on the back of her chair. “Well, if you can’t translate it, no one can,” he said, sounding annoyed. “You’re the one who’s bound to the book. And this isn’t even a language.” He smacked the papers with his fingers. “Don’t your translation skills come from within you? From your blood?”
“That’s just it,” Cassie said. “Timothy said Absolom might have doctored the exorcism, which means he probably made it a dark-magic spell. But it must be a level of darkness even I can’t access. I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t do it.”
“Then we’re doomed,” Nick exclaimed, sweeping the papers off Cassie’s desk.
He was sweating, and his chest heaved up and down with his breath.
Could their conversation downstairs have left him upset enough to stir the demon?
He turned around so Cassie couldn’t see his face.
“Nick, come closer,” Cassie said. She put her hand on his back, but he shrugged it off and bent down to pick up the papers from the floor.
“I have it under control,” he said, shaking the papers at her. “It’s just this spell—”
He stared at the writing on the crinkled page in his grip. “It’s . . .”
Suddenly his eyes turned black. His upper lip curled oddly to the left. He began to mumble: Discedere, malum spiritus. Exi, seductor. Relinquere haec innocens corpora.
Cassie tore the papers away from him and smacked her hand onto his heart. It was beating faster than even Adam’s had, that night at the caves.
“Calm down!” she screamed. “Stay with me, Nick.”
He took a few deep breaths, and his heartbeat slowed, thankfully, but his eyes were still darker than their usual mahogany brown.
“I could read it,” he said, with a tremble in his voice. “For a few seconds
I could understand the spell.”
Cassie glanced at the indecipherable text on the paper in her hand and then back at Nick. It all became clear. “Not you,” she said. “The demon inside you.”
Nick wiped the sweat from his brow. “I could read it because I’m possessed?”
Cassie nodded. “Whatever Blak ancestor of mine that’s trying to possess you can decipher the spell.”
They both got quiet as they allowed this new possibility to settle over them: Nick would have to give himself over to the demon in order to translate the spell.
“No,” Cassie said, before Nick even opened his mouth to speak. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s our only hope,” Nick insisted. “I have to give up control to the demon. Then I’ll come back again.”
“But what if you can’t?”
Nick took the papers from Cassie and went to her desk. He let his eyes pass quickly over the text. “I’m strong enough,” he said. “And once the spell is translated, you’ll be able to rid the whole Circle of demons.”
Cassie wanted to believe that Nick would be able to return, that she would be able to bring him back—but she couldn’t really be sure.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said.
But Nick had already opened Cassie’s notebook to a blank page and picked up a pen.
Cassie was terrified of what they were about to attempt, but Nick refused to be deterred. He closed his eyes for a moment, pen in hand, with the spell before him.
“I know I can do it,” he said, and when he reopened his eyes, they were black as marbles.
Cassie stepped back.
Nick sat up, unusually rigid. For a few seconds, he made no sound or movement. Then he began talking in a voice that wasn’t his own, in a language he could have never known—a low, guttural growl. And then he began writing.
Cassie watched from over his shoulder.
Nick’s whole body trembled, his neck twisted in impossible ways, but he continued to move the pen across the paper.
His script was shaky but clearly legible. Across the top of the blank notebook page, he wrote:
