The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (11 page)

Read The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection Online

Authors: L. J. Smith

Tags: #Young Adult, #Fantasy, #Romance, #Vampires, #Juvenile Fiction, #Teenage Girls, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Love & Romance, #Witchcraft, #Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Social Issues, #Young Adult Fiction, #love, #Dating & Sex, #Massachusetts

BOOK: The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection

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Cassie stared at the dark circles under the shut eyes. Her mother looked sick. And more than that, fragile. Vulnerable. So
young
.

“Mom . . .” Her voice was pleading but hollow. Her mother stirred, a twinge of pain crossing her face. Then she was still again.

Cassie felt the numbness sink in a little deeper. There was nobody to help her here.

She turned and left the room.

In her own bedroom, she put the chalcedony piece in her jewelry box and didn’t touch it again. So much for luck.

The creaking and rattling of the house kept her up that night, too.

On Thursday morning, there was a bird in her locker. A stuffed owl. It stared at her with shining round yellow eyes. A custodian happened to be passing by, and she pointed it out to him mutely, her hand shaking. He took it away.

That afternoon, it was a dead goldfish. She made a funnel of a sheet of paper and scooped it out. She didn’t go near her locker for the rest of the day.

She didn’t go near the cafeteria, either. And she spent lunch in the farthest corner of the library.

It was there that she saw the girl again.

The girl with the shining hair, the girl she’d given up on ever meeting. It was hardly surprising that Cassie hadn’t seen her at school before this moment. These days Cassie slunk around like a shadow, walking through the halls with her eyes on the ground, speaking to no one. She didn’t know why she was at school at all, except that there was nowhere else to go. And if she
had
seen the girl, she’d probably have run the other way. The thought of being rejected by
her
as Cassie was rejected by everyone else at school was unbearable.

But now Cassie looked up from her table at the back of the library and saw a brightness like sunlight.

That hair. It was just as Cassie remembered, impossibly long, an impossible color. The girl was facing the circulation desk, smiling and talking to the librarian. Cassie could
feel
the radiance of her presence from across the room.

She had the wildest urge to leap up and run to the girl. And then . . .
what
? She didn’t know. But the urge was almost beyond her control. Her throat ached, and tears filled her eyes. She realized she was on her feet. She would run to the girl, and then—and then. . . . Images flooded Cassie’s mind, of her mother hugging her when she was young, cleaning out a skinned knee, kissing it better. Comfort. Rescue. Love.

“Diana!”

Another girl was hurrying up to the circulation desk. “Diana, don’t you know what time it is? Hurry up!”

She was pulling the girl with the shining hair away, laughing and waving at the librarian. They were at the door; they were gone.

Cassie was left standing alone. The girl had never even glanced her way.

On Friday morning Cassie stopped in front of her locker. She didn’t want to open it. But it exerted a bizarre fascination over her. She couldn’t stand
feeling
it there, wondering what was in it and not knowing.

She dialed the combination slowly, everything too bright.

The locker door opened.

This time she couldn’t even scream. She felt her eyes opening, straining as wide as the stuffed owl’s. Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp. Her stomach heaved. The smell . . .

Her locker was full of hamburger. Raw and red like flesh with the skin torn off, darkening to purple where it was going bad from lack of refrigeration. Pounds and pounds of it. It smelled like . . .

Like meat. Dead meat.

Cassie slammed the locker shut, but it bounced off some of the hamburger that was oozing out the bottom. She whirled and stumbled away, her vision hazing over.

A hand grabbed her. For an instant she thought it was an offer of support. Then she felt her backpack being pulled off her shoulder.

She turned and saw a pretty, sullen face. Malicious dark eyes. A motorcycle jacket. Deborah tossed the backpack past Cassie, and automatically Cassie whirled, following it.

On the other side she saw shoulder-length blond hair. Slanted, slightly mad blue-green eyes. A laughing mouth. It was one of the roller-blade guys—the Henderson brothers.

“Welcome to the jungle,” he sang. He threw the backpack to Deborah, who caught it, singing another line.

Cassie couldn’t help turning around and around between them, like a cat chasing a fur mouse on a string.

Tears flooded her eyes. The laughter and singing rang in her ears, louder and louder.

Suddenly a brown arm thrust into her field of vision. A hand caught the backpack in midair. The laughter died.

She turned to see through a blur of tears the cold, handsome face of the dark-haired guy who had stood with Faye that morning two days ago . . . could it really be only two days ago? He was wearing another T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the same worn-in black jeans.

“Aw, Nick,” the Henderson brother complained. “You’re wrecking our game.”

“Get out of here,” Nick said.

“You get out,” Deborah snarled from behind Cassie. “Doug and me were just—”

“Yeah, we were only—”

“Shut up.” Nick glanced at Cassie’s locker, with globs of meat still seeping out of it. Then he thrust the backpack at her. “
You
get out,” he said.

Cassie looked into his eyes. They were dark brown, the color of her grandmother’s mahogany furniture. And like the furniture, they seemed to reflect the overhead lights back at her. They weren’t unfriendly, exactly. Just—unimpassioned. As if nothing much touched this guy.

“Thank you,” she said, blinking back the tears.

Something flickered in those mahogany-dark eyes. “It’s not much to thank me for,” he said. His voice was like a cold wind, but Cassie didn’t care. Clutching the backpack to her, she fled.

It was in physics class that she got the note.

A girl named Tina dropped it on her desk, casually, trying to look as if she were doing nothing of the sort. She went right on walking and took a seat on the other side of the room. Cassie looked at the square of folded paper as if it might burn her if she touched it. Her name was written across the front in handwriting that managed to look pompous and prim at the same time.

Slowly, she unfolded the paper.

Cassie
, it read.
Meet me in the old science building, second floor, after school. I think we can help each other. A friend
.

Cassie stared at it until the writing doubled. After class she cornered Tina.

“Who gave you this to give to me?”

The girl looked at the note disowningly. “What are you talking about? I didn’t . . .”

“Yes, you did. Who gave it to you?”

Tina cast a hunted look around. Then she whispered, “Sally Waltman, all right? But she told me not to tell anybody. I have to go now.”

Cassie blocked her. “Where’s the old science building?”

“Look—”

“Where is it?”

Tina hissed, “On the other side of E-wing. In back of the parking lot. Now let me go!” She broke away from Cassie and hurried off.

A friend, Cassie thought sarcastically. If Sally were really a friend, she’d talk to Cassie in public. If she were really a friend, she’d have stayed that day on the steps, instead of leaving Cassie alone with Faye. She’d have said, “Thanks for saving my life.”

But maybe she was sorry now.

The old science building didn’t look as if it had been used for a while; there was a padlock on the door, but that had been sprung. Cassie pushed on the door and it swung away from her.

Inside, it was dim. She couldn’t make out any details with her light-dazzled eyes. But she could see a stairway. She climbed it, one hand on the wall to guide herself.

It was when she reached the top of the stairway that she noticed something strange. Her fingers were touching something . . . soft. Almost furry. She moved them in front of her face, peering at them. Soot?

Something moved in the room in front of her.

“Sally?” She took a hesitant step forward. Why wasn’t more light coming in the windows? she wondered. She could see only glowing white cracks here and there. She took another shuffling step, and another, and another.

“Sally?”

Even as she said it, realization finally dawned on her exhausted brain. Not Sally. Whoever, whatever was out there, it wasn’t Sally.

Turn around, idiot. Get out of here.
Now
.

She whirled, clumsily, straining her dark-adapting eyes, looking for the deeper blackness of the stairwell—

And light shone suddenly, streaming into her face, blinding her. There was a creaking, wrenching noise and more light burst into the room. Through a window that had been boarded up, Cassie realized. Someone was standing in front of it now, holding a piece of wood.

She turned toward the stairway again. But someone was standing there, too. Enough light shone into the room now that she could see features as the girl stepped forward.

“Hello, Cassie,” said Faye. “I’m afraid Sally couldn’t make it. But maybe you and I can help each other instead.”

Chapter 8

“Y
ou sent the note,” Cassie said flatly.

Faye smiled her slow, terrible smile. “Somehow I didn’t think you’d come if I used my own name,” she said.

And I fell for it, Cassie thought. She must have coached that girl Tina on what to say—and I swallowed it.

“How do you like the little presents you’ve been finding?”

Tears came to Cassie’s eyes. She couldn’t answer. She felt so drained, so helpless—if only she could
think
.

“Haven’t you been sleeping well?” Faye continued, her throaty voice innocent. “You look awful. Or maybe your
dreams
have been keeping you awake.”

Cassie turned to cast a quick look behind her. There was an exit there, but Suzan was in front of it.

“Oh, you can’t go yet,” Faye said. “I wouldn’t
dream
of letting you.”

Cassie stared at her. “Faye, just leave me alone . . .”

“
Dream
on,” said Deborah, and she laughed nastily.

Cassie could make no sense out of this. But then she saw that Faye was holding a sheet of paper. It was smoothed flat, but it had once been tightly crumpled.

Her poem.

Anger blazed through her exhaustion. Blazed so bright that for an instant she was full of energy, lifted by it. She lunged at Faye crying, “That’s
mine
!”

It took Faye by surprise. She reeled back, dodging, holding the poem high out of Cassie’s reach.

Then something caught Cassie’s arms from behind, pinning them.

“Thank you, Deborah,” Faye said, slightly breathless. She looked at Cassie. “I suppose even a little white mouse will turn. We’ll have to remember that. But just now,” she continued, “we’re going to have an impromptu poetry reading. I’m sorry the atmosphere isn’t more—appropriate—but what can you do? This used to be the science building, but nobody comes here much anymore. Not since Doug and Chris Henderson made a little mistake in a chemistry experiment. You’ve probably seen the Henderson brothers—they’re hard to miss. Nice guys, but a little irresponsible. They accidentally made a bomb.”

Now that Cassie’s eyes had adjusted again, she could see that the room was burned out. The walls were black with soot.

“Of course, some people think it’s unsafe here,” Faye continued, “so they keep it locked. But we’ve never let a little thing like that stop us. It is
private
, though. We can make all the noise we want and nobody will hear us.”

Deborah’s grip on Cassie’s arms was painful. But Cassie started to struggle again as Faye cleared her throat and held up the paper.

“Let me see . . . ‘My Dreams,’ by Cassie Blake. Imaginative title, by the way.”

“You don’t have any
right
—” Cassie began, but Faye ignored her. She began reading in a theatrical, melodramatic voice:

“Each night I lie and dream about the one—”

“It’s
private
!” Cassie cried.

“Who kissed me and awakened my desire—”

“Let me
go
!”

“I spent a single hour with him alone—”

“It isn’t
fair
—”

“And since that hour, my days are laced with fire.” Faye looked up. “That’s it. What do you think, Deborah?”