The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (32 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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“Must be my new perfume. Eau de pot roast,” she said, and Laurel and Diana giggled. Even Suzan smirked.
“All right, let’s get down to business,” Diana said then. “I brought us out here to make sure nobody’s listening. Anybody have any new ideas?”
“Any one of us
could
have done it,” Melanie said quietly.
“Only
some
of us had any reason to,” Adam replied.
“Why?” said Laurel. “I mean, just because Mr. Fogle was obnoxious wasn’t a reason to murder him. And quit grinning like that, Doug, unless you really did do something.”
“Maybe Fogle knew too much,” Suzan said unexpectedly. Everyone turned to her, but she went on unwrapping a Hostess cupcake without looking up.
“So?” said Deborah at last. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well . . .” Suzan raised china-blue eyes to look around at the group. “Fogle always got here at the crack of dawn, didn’t he? And his office is right up there, isn’t it?” She nodded, and Cassie followed her gaze to a window on the second floor of the red-brick building. Then Cassie looked down the hill, to the bottom where Kori had been found.
There was a pause, and then Diana said, “Oh, my God.”
“What?” Chris demanded, looking around. Deborah scowled and Laurel blinked. Faye was chuckling.
“She’s saying he might have seen Kori’s murderer,” Adam said. “And then whoever killed her, killed him to keep him from talking. But do we
know
he was here that morning?”
Cassie was now staring from the second-story window to the chimney that rose from the school. It had been cold the morning they found Kori dead, and the principal had a fireplace in his office. Had there been smoke rising from the chimney that morning?
“You know,” she said softly to Diana, “I think he
was
here.”
“Then that could be it,” Laurel said excitedly. “And it would mean it couldn’t have been one of us who killed him—because whoever killed him killed Kori, too. And none of us would have done
that
.”
Diana was looking vastly relieved, and there were nods around the Circle. A little voice inside Cassie was trying to say something, but she pushed it down.
Nick, however, had his lip curled. “And who besides one of us would have been able to drop an avalanche on somebody?”
“Anybody with a stick or a crowbar,” Deborah snapped. “Those rocks on the cliff at Devil’s Cove are just piled up any old way. An outsider could’ve done it easy. So it’s back to the question of which of them did it—if we have to ask anymore.” There was a hunting light in her face, and Chris and Doug were looking eager.
“You leave Sally alone until we figure this out,” Diana said flatly.
“And Jeffrey,” Faye added throatily, with a meaningful look. Deborah glared at her, then at last dropped her eyes.
“Now that we’ve got
that
solved, I have a real problem to talk about,” Suzan said, brushing crumbs off the front of her sweater, an interesting process which Sean and the Hendersons watched avidly. “Homecoming is in less than two weeks, and I haven’t figured out who to ask yet. And I haven’t even got any
shoes
. . .”
The meeting degenerated, and shortly after that the bell rang.
 
“Who are you going to ask to Homecoming?” Laurel asked Cassie that afternoon. They were driving home from school with Diana and Melanie.
“Oh . . .” Cassie was taken aback. “I haven’t thought about it. I—I’ve never asked a guy to a dance in my life.”
“Well, now’s the time to start,” Melanie said. “Usually the outsiders don’t ask us—they’re a little scared. But you can have any guy you want; just pick him and tell him to show up.”
“Just like that?”
“Yep,” Laurel said cheerfully. “Like that. Of course, Melanie and I don’t usually ask guys who’re together with somebody. But Faye and Suzan . . .” She rolled her eyes. “They
like
picking guys who’re taken.”
“I’ve noticed,” Cassie said. There was no question about whom Diana went to dances with. “What about Deborah?”
“Oh, Deb usually just goes stag,” said Laurel. “She and the Hendersons hang out, playing cards and stuff in the boiler room. And Sean just goes from girl to girl to girl; none of them like him, but they’re all too scared not to dance with him. You’ll see it there; it’s funny.”
“I probably won’t see it,” Cassie said. The idea of walking up to some guy and ordering him to escort her was simply unthinkable. Impossible, even if she was a witch. She might as well tell everybody now and let them get used to it. “I probably won’t go. I don’t like dances much.”
“But you
have
to go,” Laurel said, dismayed, and Diana said, “It’s the most fun—really, Cassie. Look, let’s go to my house right now and talk about guys you can ask.”
“No, I’ve got to go straight home,” Cassie said quickly. She had to go home because she had to look for the skull. Faye’s words had been ringing in the back of her mind all day, and now they drowned out Diana’s voice.
All the time you need—until Saturday
. “Please just drop me off at my house.”
In silence that was bewildered and a little hurt, Diana complied.
 
All that week, Cassie looked for the skull.
She looked on the beach where her initiation had been held, where stumps of candles and pools of melted wax could still be seen half buried in the sand. She looked on the beach below Diana’s house, among the eelgrass and driftwood. She looked up and down the bluffs, walking on the dunes each afternoon and evening. It made sense that Diana would have marked the place somehow, but with what kind of mark? Any bit of flotsam or jetsam on the sand could be it.
As each day went by she got more and more worried. She’d been so sure she could find it; it was just a matter of
looking
. But now it seemed she’d looked at every inch of beach for miles, and all she’d found was sea wrack and a few old beer bottles.
On Saturday morning she stepped out of the front door to see a bright-red car circling in the cul-de-sac a little past her grandmother’s house. There was no building at the very point of the headland where the road dead-ended, but the car was circling there. As Cassie stood in the doorway, it turned and cruised slowly by her house. It was Faye’s Corvette ZR1, and Faye was in it, one languid arm drooping out of the window.
As she went by Cassie, Faye raised her hand and held up one finger, its long nail gleaming even redder than the car’s paint job. Then she turned and mouthed a single word at Cassie.
Sunset
.
She went cruising on without a backward look. Cassie stared after her.
Cassie knew what she meant. By sunset, either Cassie brought the skull to Faye, or Faye told Diana.
I
have
to find it, Cassie thought. I don’t care if I have to sift through every square inch of sand from here to the mainland. I have to
find
it.
But that day was just like the others. She crawled on her knees over the beach near the initiation site, getting sand inside her jeans, in her shoes. She found nothing.
The ocean rolled and roared beside her, the smell of salt and decaying seaweed filled her nostrils. As the sun slipped farther and farther down in the west, the crescent moon over the ocean glowed brighter. Cassie was exhausted and terrified, and she was giving up hope.
Then, as the sky was darkening, she saw the ring of stones.
She’d passed by them a dozen times before. They were bonfire stones, stained black with charcoal. But what were they doing so close to the waterline? At high tide, Cassie thought, they’d be covered. She knelt beside them and touched the sand in their center.
Moist.
With fingers that trembled slightly, she dug there. Dug deeper and deeper until her fingertips touched something hard.
She dug around it, feeling the curve of its shape, until she had loosened enough sand to lift it out. It was shockingly heavy and covered with a thin white cloth. Cassie didn’t need to remove the cloth to know what it was.
She felt like hugging it.
She’d done it! She’d found the skull, and now she could take it to Faye. . . .
The feeling of triumph died inside her. Faye. Could she really take the skull to Faye?
All the time she’d been looking for it,
finding
it hadn’t been real to her. She hadn’t thought further than simply getting her hands on it.
Now that she was actually holding it, now that the possibility was before her . . . she couldn’t do it.
The thought of those hooded golden eyes examining it, of those fingers with their long red nails gripping it, made Cassie feel sick. An image flitted through her mind, of a golden-eyed falcon with its talons extended. A bird of prey.
She couldn’t go through with it.
But then what about Diana? Cassie’s head bent in exhaustion, in defeat. She didn’t know what to do about Diana. She didn’t know how to solve anything. All she knew was that she couldn’t hand the skull over to Faye.
There was a throat-clearing sound behind her.
“I knew you could do it,” Faye said in her husky voice as Cassie, still on her knees, spun around to look. “I had complete faith in you, Cassie. And now my faith is justified.”
“How did you know?” Cassie was on her feet. “How did you know where I was?”
Faye smiled. “I told you I have friends who see a lot. One of them just brought me the news.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cassie said, forcibly calming herself. “You can’t have it, Faye.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I
do
have it. I’m stronger than you are, Cassie,” Faye said. And as she stood there on a little dune above Cassie, tall and stunning in black pants and a loose-knit scarlet top, Cassie knew it was true. “I’m taking the skull now. You can run to Diana if you want, but you’ll be too late.”
Cassie stared at her a long minute, breathing quickly. Then she said, “No. I’m coming with you.”
“What?”
“I’m coming with you.” In contrast to Faye, Cassie was small. And she was dirty and disheveled, with sand in every crease of her clothes and under her fingernails, but she was relentless. “You said you only wanted the skull to ‘look at it for a while.’ That was the reason I agreed to get it for you. Well, now I’ve found it, but I’m not going to leave you alone with it. I’m going with you. I want to watch.”
Faye’s black eyebrows, curved like a raven’s wings, lifted higher. “So voyeurism’s your idea of fun.”
“No, it’s yours—or your
friends
’, rather,” Cassie said.
Faye chuckled. “You’re not such a spineless mouse after all, are you?” she said. “All right; come. You might find it’s more fun to join in than to watch, anyway.”
 
Faye shut the bedroom door behind Cassie. Then she went and took something out of the closet. It was a comforter, not rose-patterned like the one on the bed, but red satin.
“My spare,” Faye said, with an arch smile. “For special occasions.” She shook it out over the bed, then went around the room lighting candles that gave off pungent, heady scents. Then she opened a velvet-lined box.
Cassie stared. Inside was a jumble of loose stones, some polished, some uncut. They were dark green and amethyst, black, sulfur-yellow, pale pink and cloudy orange.
“Find the red ones,” Faye said.
Cassie’s fingers were itching to get into them anyway. She began to sort through the rainbow clutter.
“Those garnets are good,” Faye said, approving some burgundy-colored stones. “And carnelians, too, if they’re not too orange. Now let me see: fire opal for passion, red jasper for stability. And one black onyx for surrendering to your shadow self.” She smiled strangely at Cassie, who stiffened.
Undisturbed, Faye arranged the stones in a circle on the comforter. Then she turned off the lamp and the room was lit only by the candles.
“Now,” Faye said, “for our guest.”
Cassie thought that was an odd way to put it, and there was a sinking in her stomach as Faye opened the backpack. She’d promised herself that she would keep Faye from doing anything too terrible with the skull—but how?
“Just what are you planning to do with it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Just scrying,” murmured Faye, but she wasn’t paying much attention to Cassie. She was gazing down as she slowly peeled the wet, sandy white cloth away to reveal the glittering dome of the crystal skull. As Cassie watched, Faye lifted the skull up to eye level, cradling it in red-tipped fingers. Reflections of the candle flames danced in the depths of the crystal.
“Ah,” said Faye. “Hello there.” She was gazing into the empty eyesockets as if looking at a lover. She bent forward and lightly kissed the grinning quartz teeth.

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