by L. J. Smith
Faye sprang up from the bed and took charge of the floor. “Nick is absolutely right,” she said. “And fortunately I’ve learned some things during my Oscar-worthy performance as a double agent.”
She held her head high as she waited for everyone to begin listening intently. “Eternal life is what the ancestors have been after all along,” she said. “First they needed to be resurrected. Scarlett did that for them, but she also tried to set herself up as their leader. And that was her fatal mistake. They don’t think she’s even worthy of being a Blak. Cassie’s the one they wanted. She’s the stronger sister.”
Faye paused to let her words sink in. “The ancestors are only using Scarlett to get eternal life, but as soon as they have it, they plan to betray her.”
“Untrustworthy demons, go figure,” Sean called out.
Faye began prowling the room like a panther. “They don’t like the idea that Scarlett tried to situate herself as their boss. They see her as a greedy young girl, a know-it-all.”
Faye went for her bag and carefully pulled out the small glass bottle she had told Cassie about. It was corked tightly with a rubber stopper. “Once the ancestors perform the eternal-life spell, they’re going to smash this bottle to the ground, stripping Scarlett of her powers forever.”
She held the bottle up high for everyone to see.
“I went along with their plan,” she said. “I didn’t say anything because then they’d turn on me, too. But I can promise you that Scarlett has no idea how much the ancestors resent her.”
“She’s got it coming,” Deborah said.
Chris agreed. “We should let them hurt her. It’s what she deserves.”
Cassie thought back to the scene of Scarlett and all the ancestors having dinner together at the warehouse. Scarlett had been so content in that moment, foolishly so.
“All Scarlett wants is to feel connected,” Cassie shouted out. “To have these ancestors be her family. That’s why she’s so blind to their deception—she wants to believe in the best of them.”
“Well, poor Scarlett,” Doug said, pretending to wipe away tears.
“Don’t you see?” Cassie said. “That’s our in.”
Cassie reached out for the glass bottle. “I’m going to go talk to Scarlett and show her this.”
Faye handed it over without argument.
“Why can’t we all go?” Melanie asked.
But Cassie only repeated herself, examining the tiny but dangerous bottle in the palm of her hand. “I’m going to talk to her, sister to sister.”
CHAPTER 24
Cassie glanced at the time on her cell phone. She was sitting on a green wooden bench watching kids play on a jungle gym. Mothers pushed their toddlers on a squeaky swing set. She’d arranged to meet Scarlett here at the public park to talk, but it had been almost an hour and she was still waiting. She checked the time on her cell phone again and mentally rehearsed her speech. But it was all beginning to feel like a wasted effort if Scarlett wouldn’t be there to hear it.
The group of children Cassie had been watching were ushered away, immediately replaced with a new set—uniformly loud and rambunctious, and equally doted upon by protective parents and nannies. Sometimes Cassie looked at children like these, with their heedless innocence and their unconditional love, and she wondered, Was I ever like that?
But the thing was, she wasn’t. That version of childhood had never been available to her.
Kind of like sisterhood, she thought. Self-pitying or not, Cassie had been shortchanged on both. And here she was, still not having learned her lesson, still trying for what she could never have.
Just as Cassie was about to give up, Scarlett appeared beside her. Maybe she’d been watching out of sight, testing Cassie to see how long she could keep her waiting before she’d give up and go home. She was wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and her favorite brown bowler hat. There was no apology for arriving more than an hour late.
“Have you been sitting here awhile?” she asked. “You’ve got a little sunburn on your nose. With your fair skin, Cassie, you should really be more careful of the sun.”
Cassie’s patience had been worn thin. With Scarlett and her oversize attitude hovering in her face now, she had the urge to lash out at her. All the mental preparations of the past hour had slipped right away, all the rehearsing of every perfect word had been replaced by a tingling in her gut and the itch to knock Scarlett right back down to size.
“Before you start shooting your mouth off,” Scarlett said, “just know that you can’t convince me to leave my Circle. Even though you’ve got Faye on your side right now, we’ll get someone else to cross over.”
Cassie silently counted backward from a hundred to remain calm.
Scarlett joined Cassie on the bench and observed the kids at play. “What a bunch of brats,” she said flippantly. “I never want kids.”
“I asked you here today to warn you,” Cassie said, giving no credence to Scarlett’s attempt at levity. “It’s not our Circle that’s against you, it’s your own.”
Scarlett rolled her dark eyes. “Here we go,” she said.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Cassie insisted. “The ancestors plan to strip you of your power once they have eternal life.”
“And you know this how, exactly?” Scarlett asked, giddy with sarcasm.
“They confided in Faye,” Cassie said. “Once they have what they need, they won’t hesitate to dispose of you.”
“No.” Scarlett shook her head. “I don’t believe you. They’re my family. They’re our family, Cassie. If only you’d let yourself see it.”
Cassie thought again of Scarlett’s dinner with the ancestors. How hard she was trying to build a home out of that dilapidated warehouse—a kitchen, a living room, a treasured dining table and chairs from discarded, long-forgotten castoffs. Maybe the two of them weren’t so different. They both had so much empty space to fill within them.
“You and I are each other’s family,” Cassie said. “They’re nothing more than our selfish, evil ancestors who don’t care about us.”
She could see Scarlett was having a hard time accepting this brutal truth. “Think about it,” she said. “They’ve been dead for centuries. They have no humanity left in them. Imagine being stripped of your power—or worse. Is that a gamble you want to take?”
Scarlett opened her mouth indignantly and then closed it again. “You’re lying.”
“If I’m lying, then why do I have this?” Cassie opened her bag and carefully pulled out the glass bottle.
Scarlett froze at the sight of it.
“Faye took this from the warehouse,” Cassie said. “That’s your hair, your blood.”
Scarlett took the bottle from Cassie and examined it. Her dyed red locks were unmistakable.
“I understand the importance of building a family,” Cassie said. “But they’re using you, Scarlett, and you deserve better than that.”
Scarlett cupped the bottle gently with both hands and brought it into her lap. For a moment the sound of a child’s laughter drowned out every other sound. It was immediately followed by another child’s crying.
All the meanness escaped Scarlett’s face. “But they’re so much more powerful than we are, Cassie. Even if I join your side, there’s no stopping them.”
“Yes, there is.” Cassie felt the crushing sense of helplessness she’d been experiencing for days slightly rise, but it was a tenuous moment. This is it, she thought. Don’t mess this up now.
“I have a spell,” she said, “that we can use to burn our father’s Book of Shadows and destroy everything that’s come from it. Including the ancestors. We’ll be free of all of it forever.”
“Where’d you get this spell?” Scarlett asked defensively, but Cassie sensed a tinge of hope in her voice.
“From an old witch,” Cassie answered. “Our father stripped him of his power years ago. It’s a spell he created.”
“And you trust him?” Scarlett asked.
“It’ll be dangerous; he told me as much. It’s never been performed before. But I believe it’ll work—with your help.”
“You believe or you hope?” Scarlett asked.
“Both, I guess,” Cassie answered.
She joined Scarlett in staring forward for a moment. “Timothy knows a lot about our family. If this spell wasn’t something our father feared, he wouldn’t have had to strip him of his magic.”
Together Cassie and Scarlett watched two toddlers in matching blond pigtails each pulling on the arm of a plastic doll. Both girls were hysterical, tears the size of winter hail tumbling from their eyes. Seconds before, the toy had just been lying on the grass, ignored. Their father had to step in to mediate. He yanked the doll from both their hands, tossed it out of sight, and then distracted his daughters from their grief by guiding them, hands held, to the monkey bars. Just like that, their anguish was forgotten. The tears were still wet on their cheeks as their faces brightened.
Cassie turned to Scarlett. It wasn’t lost on either of them that they’d missed out on something crucial in not having a proper father or sister.
Scarlett choked back tears, and Cassie realized a hard knot was forming in her own throat as well. She had to strive to keep herself dry-eyed.
“I guess you’re all I have left, Cassie,” Scarlett said. “You’re my only chance of saving myself. How’s that for pathetic?”
Cassie reached for Scarlett’s hand and squeezed it in her own. “We’re each other’s only chance, Scarlett. Pathetic or not.”
CHAPTER 25
In the dark of night, the group walked upward, past all the other houses on Crowhaven Road, including Cassie’s house at Number Twelve. When they reached the highest point, it looked just as Cassie remembered it. Timothy’s spell called for performing the book-burning outdoors, on grounds that would have had some significance to Black John, so here they were at the ultimate point on the headland, where Black John’s ruined house used to sit, Number Thirteen. It was the last place Cassie ever wanted to be. She walked to the cliff’s edge and stared down at the waves below.
The Circle stepped over and around the bits of foundation left over from the razed house. Cassie had brought three things with her: Black John’s Book of Shadows, a sack containing the Master Tools, and the wooden boxes Timothy had given her.
Scarlett, Faye, Diana, and Adam kneeled down closest to Cassie as she unclasped the larger box’s brass latches and lifted its heavy top.
Cassie unpacked its contents: robes, crystals, incense, and candles; a black-handled dagger, a spade, and some wooden logs. Then she found a tiny vial of clear liquid that could have been holy water but she understood was a potion. Lining the bottom of the box was a yellowed piece of paper that contained detailed pictorial instructions on how to prepare the spell, but no words. Probably so anyone from any time, a speaker of any language, could read and understand it. Timothy had thought of everything.
“These robes are handmade,” Laurel said. “They’re beautiful.” They were pagan ritual robes of various styles, from many different centuries. Black, red, green, purple. There were twelve of them in all, one for each member of the Circle.
Once everyone else had put one on, there was one robe left. It was white with gold trim. The creases in its pristine cloth were crisp and sharp.
“That one’s yours, Cassie,” Diana said. “It goes to the spell master leading the ritual.”
Cassie felt lofty and proud as she slipped one arm, and then the other, through the robe’s soft cotton sleeves. Faye reached for the black-handled dagger.
“An Athame,” she said, sliding the blade from its sheath. “It’s so old, and solid. And sharp.”
“A what?” Sean asked.
Laurel took the dagger from Faye’s hands and examined it. “The Athame knife is reserved for special ceremonies and rituals,” she said. “It’s used for summoning or banishing spirit entities.”
Deborah reached for the knife, but Laurel wouldn’t give it up.
“If it’s a proper Athame,” she continued, “when it’s used to draw the circle at the beginning of a ritual, it can cast away negative energies like a shield.”
“Well, it had better be a proper Athame then, because that’s exactly what we’re going to need,” Scarlett said. She flipped through the different forms of incense that came out of the box. “Golden copal, dragon’s blood, pine and cedar,” she said. “This Timothy guy didn’t leave anything out.”
Melanie gathered together a multicolored heap of crystals. They were all different shapes and sizes. She pointed out a stack of flesh-colored candles. “Those are incredibly rare,” she said. “Made with tallow, the fat from cows or sheep.”
Nick picked up the wooden spade. “I’ll do the digging,” he said. “For the fire pit.”
Cassie observed the medieval-looking tool in his hand. It resembled an axe, with a T handle, pointed toward the tip.
Adam reached for the logs, which were seasoned oak, and the vial of liquid that would be used as lighter fluid. “I’ll help,” he said to Nick. The two of them calculated what would be the center point of the foundation.
Diana, Faye, and Cassie each put on one of the Master Tools.
Cassie looked up at the almost-full moon. It looked like an oddly formed egg, an imperfect oval. She listened to the waves crashing at the base of the cliff they stood upon. In her arms she clutched the book. It felt warm against her skin, needy and alive, like a loving child.
It isn’t real, she told herself. The affection she felt emitting from the book wasn’t love; it was darkness, temptation, the embodiment of everything she had to fight against.
She set the book down for the moment, inside Timothy’s now-empty box, and focused on her friends as they prepared the spell.
Laurel held the instructions with both hands as Melanie laid out the proper formation of crystals to enhance the flow of energy from the ground to the air. Sean, Chris, and Doug lit the candles and incense, cleansing the space with swinging censers.
Nick’s hands and arms grew filthy as he dug a deep circular pit into the ground. Adam and Deborah lined it with a crosshatch of logs.
Diana came into view, beautiful and majestic in her sunlight-colored robe and sparkling diadem. Faye gleamed in red beneath the moon, with the garter tight around her leg.
Cassie imagined what she looked like in her white and gold robe, with the silver bracelet shining upon her arm. She wished she could see herself in this imperative moment, as she and her friends were on the brink of rewriting the course of their history—their future.
Cassie gripped the dagger’s cool handle and stabbed it into the hard, dry dirt. She drew a deep circle around the ruined foundation, encircling the wood-filled pit with a wide ring.
Silently, everyone stepped inside to the inner perimeter of the circle, and Cassie closed it shut.
Adam handed Cassie the vial of clear fluid. Cassie lifted its cap and poured its contents out over the logs. Next Adam handed her a lit match. She held it up to her eyes for only a second before letting it slip from her fingers.
The fire blazed into flames not unlike wild demons newly unleashed from the ground.
Cassie turned toward the eastern sky and held up both her arms. “I call on the Watchtower of the East,” she shouted. “Powers of Air, protect us.”
In a few seconds a gentle breeze blew through her hair and around the circle, fueling the fire with new life.
Next Cassie turned southward. “I call on the Watchtower of the South,” she said. “Powers of Fire, protect us.”
She closed her eyes and felt the heat of the high flames on her face.
Then Cassie turned again. “I call on the Watchtower of the West,” she said. “Powers of Water, protect us.”
The waves in the distance below them crashed loudly upon the shore, and the strong briny smell of the ocean rose up to fill their lungs.
Finally, Cassie faced north. “Watchtower of the North,” she said. “
Powers of Earth, protect us.”
The ground beneath their feet suddenly began to quake. The book rumbled. Cassie could feel herself breathing hard. The circle she’d cut into the soil with the dagger split from the rest of the foundation, leaving them standing on an island of ragged dirt.
Then she gazed into the flames that flailed from deep within the pit, and harnessed her energy. This was it. She closed her eyes.
But then someone gasped, and someone else choked.
Cassie opened her eyes and quickly turned around. Alice was charging toward them, and close behind her the rest of the ancestors advanced across the empty lot like an army of ghosts.
“They must have followed me,” Scarlett said.
Cassie’s friends were gasping for air. Sean, Chris, and Doug were the first to collapse, but all of them except Cassie and Scarlett were gripping their necks, suffocating.
Scarlett raised her hands and performed a spell to restore their breath. But by then the ancestors had reached the Circle, close enough to knock Sean, Chris, and Doug out with an even stronger suffocation spell.
Adam and Nick launched an attack, a binding spell to constrain the ancestors’ strength, but Absolom shielded it easily, with the help of Thomas and Samuel. They retaliated with a hard stare that threw both Adam and Nick violently onto the ground. Adam hit the dirt with a thud and was immediately knocked unconscious. Nick landed gruesomely on a protruding beam from the ruined foundation of the house. It stabbed straight through his upper thigh, impaling the flesh like a thick, rusty skewer. He cried out in pain. The sight of his blood weakened Cassie at the knees.
Alice targeted Diana and Deborah. Melanie and Laurel tried to protect them with a defense spell, but all four of them dropped lifelessly beneath Alice’s open hand.
Faye lifted her hands and focused her energy on Alice. She managed to steer Alice back, away from her friends, but only long enough to attract Charlotte’s attention.
Charlotte gestured toward Faye and sent her flying backward into the air. Cassie and Scarlett were the only two Circle members left standing.
