The Secret Circle: The Complete Collection (5 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 didn’t answer. She didn’t want to see the trees in the fall because she didn’t want to
be
here.
They passed through Boston and drove up the coast—up the
north shore
, Cassie corrected herself fiercely—and Cassie watched quaint little towns and wharves and rocky beaches slip by. She suspected they were taking the scenic route, and she felt resentment boil up in her chest. Why couldn’t they just get there and get it over with?
“Isn’t there a faster way?” she said, opening the glove compartment and pulling out a map supplied by the car rental company. “Why don’t we take Route 1? Or Interstate 95?”
Her mother kept her eyes on the road. “It’s been a long time since I drove up here, Cassie. This is the way I know.”
“But if you cut over here at Salem . . .” Cassie watched the exit go by. “Okay, don’t,” she said. Of all places in Massachusetts, Salem was the only one she could think of that she wanted to see. Its macabre history appealed to her mood right now. “That’s where they burned the witches, isn’t it?” she said. “Is New Salem named for it? Did they burn witches there, too?”
“They didn’t burn anyone; they hanged them. And they weren’t witches. Just innocent people who happened to be disliked by their neighbors.” Her mother’s voice was tired and patient. “And Salem was a common name in colonial times; it comes from ‘Jerusalem.’”
The map was blurring before Cassie’s eyes. “Where
is
this town, anyway? It’s not even listed,” she said.
There was a brief silence before her mother replied. “It’s a small town; quite often it’s not shown on maps. But as a matter of fact, it’s on an island.”
“An
island
?”
“Don’t worry. There’s a bridge to the mainland.”
But all Cassie could think was: An
island
. I’m going to live on an island. In a town that isn’t even on the map.
The road was unmarked. Mrs. Blake turned down it and the car crossed the bridge, and then they were on the island. Cassie had expected it to be tiny, and her spirits lifted a little when she saw that it wasn’t. There were regular stores, not just tourist shops, clustered together in what must be the center of town. There was a Dunkin’ Donuts and an International House of Pancakes with a banner proclaiming
GRAND OPENING
. In front of it there was someone dressed up like a giant pancake, dancing.
Cassie felt the knot in her stomach loosen. Any town with a dancing pancake couldn’t be all bad, could it?
But then her mother turned onto another road that rose and got lonelier and lonelier as the town fell behind.
They must be going to the ultimate point of the headland, Cassie realized. She could see it, the sun glinting red off the windows on a group of houses at the top of a bluff. She watched them get closer, at first uneasily, then anxiously, and finally with sick dismay.
Because they were
old
. Terrifyingly old, not just quaint or gracefully aged, but
ancient
. And although some were in good repair, others looked as if they might fall over in a crash of splintering timbers any minute.
Please let it be that one, Cassie thought, fixing her eyes on a pretty yellow house with several towers and bay windows. But her mother drove by it without slowing. And by the next and the next.
And then there was only one house left, the last house on the bluff, and the car was heading toward it. Heartsick, Cassie stared at it as they approached. It was shaped like a thick upside-down T, with one wing facing the road and one wing sticking straight out the back. As they came around the side Cassie could see that the back wing looked nothing like the front. It had a steeply sloping roof and small, irregularly placed windows made of tiny, diamond-shaped panes of glass. It wasn’t even painted, just covered with weathered gray clapboard siding.
The front wing had been painted . . . once. Now what was left was peeling off in strips. The two chimneys looked crumbling and unstable, and the entire slate roof seemed to sag. The windows were regularly placed across the front, but most looked as if they hadn’t been washed in ages.
Cassie stared wordlessly. She had never seen a more depressing house in her life. This
couldn’t
be the one.
“Well,” said her mother, in that tone of forced cheerfulness, as she turned into a gravel driveway, “this is it, the house I grew up in. We’re home.”
Cassie couldn’t speak. The bubble of horror and fury and resentment inside her was swelling bigger and bigger until she thought it would explode.
 

H
er mother was still talking in that falsely bright way, but Cassie could only hear snatches of the words. “. . . original wing actually Pre-revolutionary, one-and-a-half stories . . . front wing is Postrevolutionary Georgian . . .”

It went on and on. Cassie clawed open the car door, getting an unobstructed view of the house at last. The more she saw of it, the worse it looked.
Her mother was saying something about a transom over the front door, her voice rapid and breathless. “. . . rectangular, not like the arched fanlights that came later—”
“I hate it!”
Cassie cried, interrupting, her voice too loud in the quiet air, startlingly loud. She didn’t mean the transom, whatever a transom was. “I
hate
it!” she cried again passionately. There was silence from her mother behind her, but Cassie didn’t turn to look; she was staring at the house, at the rows of unwashed windows and the sagging eaves and the sheer monstrous bulk and flatness and horribleness of it, and she was shaking. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen, and I
hate
it. I want to go home. I want to go home!”
She turned to see her mother’s white face and stricken eyes, and burst into tears.
“Oh, Cassie.” Mrs. Blake reached across the vinyl top of the car toward her. “Cassie, sweetheart.” There were tears in her own eyes, and when she looked up at the house, Cassie was astounded at her expression. It was a look of hatred and fear as great as anything Cassie felt.
“Cassie, sweetheart, listen to me,” she said. “If you really don’t want to stay—”
She stopped. Cassie was still crying, but she heard the noise behind her. Turning, she saw that the door to the house had opened. An old woman with gray hair was standing in the doorway, leaning on a cane.
Cassie turned back. “Mom?” she said pleadingly.
But her mother was gazing at the door. And slowly, a look of dull resignation settled over her. When she turned to Cassie, the brittle, falsely cheery tone was back in her voice.
“That’s your grandmother, dear,” she said. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”
“Mom . . .” Cassie whispered. It was a despairing entreaty. But her mother’s eyes had gone blank, opaque.
“Come on, Cassie,” she said.
Cassie had the wild idea of throwing herself into the car, locking herself in, until someone came to rescue her. But then the same heavy exhaustion that had descended over her mother seemed to wrap around her as well. They were here. There was nothing to be done about it. She pushed the car door shut and silently followed her mother to the house.
The woman standing in the doorway was ancient. Old enough to be her great-grandmother, at least. Cassie tried to detect some resemblance to her mother, but she could find none.
“Cassie, this is your Grandma Howard.”
Cassie managed to mutter something. The old woman with the cane stepped forward, fixing her deep-set eyes on Cassie’s face. In that instant a bizarre thought flashed into Cassie’s mind:
She’s going to put me in the oven
. But then she felt arms around her, a surprisingly firm hug. Mechanically she lifted her own arms in a gesture of response.
Her grandmother pulled back to look at her. “Cassie! At last. After all these years.” To Cassie’s discomfiture she went on looking staring at Cassie with what seemed like a mixture of fierce worry and anxious hope. “At last,” she whispered again, as if speaking to herself.
“It’s good to see you, Mother,” Cassie’s mother said then, quiet and formal, and the fierce old eyes turned away from Cassie.
“Alexandra. Oh, my dear, it’s been too long.” The two women embraced, but an indefinable air of tension remained between them.
“But we’re all standing here outside. Come in, come in, both of you,” her grandmother said, wiping her eyes. “I’m afraid the old place is rather shabby, but I’ve picked the best of the rooms for you. Let’s take Cassie to hers.”
In the fading red light of the sunset the interior seemed cavernous and dark. And everything did look shabby, from the worn upholstery on the chairs to the faded oriental carpet on the pine-board floors.
They went up a flight of stairs—slowly, with Cassie’s grandmother leaning on the banister—and down a long passage. The boards creaked under Cassie’s Reeboks and the lamps high on the walls flickered uneasily as they passed. One of us ought to be holding a candelabra, Cassie thought. Any minute now she expected to see Lurch or Cousin It coming down the hall toward them.
“These lamps—it’s your grandfather’s wiring,” her grandmother apologized. “He insisted on doing so much of it himself. Here’s your room, Cassie. I hope you like pink.”
Cassie felt her eyes widen as her grandmother opened the door. It was like a bedroom setting in a museum. There was a four-poster bed with hangings cascading from the head and foot and a canopy, all made of the same dusty-rose flowered fabric. There were chairs with high carved backs upholstered in a matching rose damask. On a fireplace with a high mantel rested a pewter candlestick and a china clock, and there were several pieces of massive, richly glowing furniture. The whole thing was beautiful, but so grand . . .
“You can put your clothes here—this chest is solid mahogany,” Cassie’s grandmother was saying. “The design is called bombé, and it was made right here in Massachusetts—this is the only area in all the colonies that produced it.”
The colonies?
Cassie thought wildly, staring at the decorative scroll top of the chest.
“And this is your dressing table and your wardrobe . . . Have you looked out the windows? I thought you might like a corner room because you can see both south and east.”
Cassie looked. Through one window she could see the road. The other faced the ocean. Just now it was a sullen lead gray under the darkening sky, exactly matching Cassie’s mood.
“I’ll leave you here to get settled in,” Cassie’s grandmother said. “Alexandra, I’ve given you the green room at the opposite end of the hallway. . . .”
Cassie’s mother gave her shoulder a quick, almost timid squeeze. And then Cassie was alone. Alone with the massive ruddy furniture and the cold fireplace and the heavy draperies. She sat gingerly on a chair because she was afraid of the bed.
She thought about her bedroom at home, with her white pressed-wood furniture and her
Phantom of the Opera
posters and the new CD player she’d bought with her baby-sitting money. She’d painted the bookcase pale blue to show off her unicorn collection. She collected every kind of unicorn there was—stuffed, blown glass, ceramic, pewter. Back home, Clover had said once that Cassie was like a unicorn herself: blue eyed, shy, and different from everyone else. All that seemed to belong to a former life now.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but sometime later she found the piece of chalcedony in her hand. She must have taken it out of her pocket, and now she was clinging to it.
If you’re ever in trouble or danger,
she thought, and a wave of longing swept over her. It was followed by a wave of fury. Don’t be stupid, she told herself sharply. You’re not in danger. And no
rock
is going to help you. She had an impulse to throw it away, but instead she just rubbed it against her cheek, feeling the cool, jagged smoothness of the crystals. It made her remember his touch—how gentle it had been, the way it had pierced her to the soul. Daringly, she rubbed the crystal over her lips and felt a sudden throb from all the places on her skin he had touched. The hand he had held—she could still feel his fingers printed on her palm. Her wrist—she felt the light brush of cool fingertips raising the hairs there. And the back of it . . . She shut her eyes and her breath caught as she remembered that kiss. What would it have felt like, she wondered, if his lips had touched where the crystal touched now? She let her head fall back, drawing the cool stone from her own lips down her throat to rest in the hollow where her pulse beat. She could almost feel him kissing her, as no boy ever had; she could almost imagine that it really was his lips there. I would let you, she thought, even though I wouldn’t let anyone else . . . I would trust you. . . .
But he’d left her. Suddenly, with a shock, she remembered that. He’d left her and gone away, just as the other most important man in Cassie’s life had.
Cassie seldom thought about her father. She seldom allowed herself to. He’d gone away when she was only a little girl, left her mother and her alone to take care of themselves. Cassie’s mother told people he had died, but to Cassie she admitted the truth: he’d simply left. Maybe he was dead by now, or maybe he was somewhere else, with another family, another daughter. She and her mother would never know. And although her mother never spoke about him unless someone asked, Cassie knew that he’d broken her mother’s heart.

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