The Secret Circle: The Initiation (16 page)

And then it was Nick's turn.

Cassie felt something inside her tighten. It wasn't that she was attracted to him, exactly, but… she couldn't help feeling a slight inner tremor when she looked up at him. He was so handsome, and the coldness that surrounded him like a thin layer of dark ice seemed only to enhance his looks. He'd stood back and observed the entire ceremony tonight with such detachment, as if none of it affected him one way or another.

Even his embrace was noncommittal. Sexless. As if he were merely going through the motions while thinking of something else. His arms were strong, though—well, of course, thought Cassie. Any guy who had an—arrangement—with Faye would have to be strong.

Suzan smelled of perfume, and when she kissed Cassie's cheek, Cassie felt sure she left a smudge of cherry-colored lipstick. Hugging her was like hugging a scented pillow.

Finally, Faye came. Her heavy-lidded eyes were gleaming enigmatically, as if she were aware of Cassie's discomfiture and enjoying it.

All Cassie was aware of was Faye's height and how much she herself wanted to run. She had a panicked conviction that Faye was going to do something awful…

But Faye simply murmured, as she stepped back, "So the little white mouse is tougher than she looks. I was betting you wouldn't even last through the ceremony."

"I'm not sure I did," Cassie muttered. She desperately wanted to sit down and gather her thoughts. So much had happened so fast… but she was in. Even Faye had accepted her. That fact could not be changed.

"All right," Diana said quietly. "That's it for the initiation ritual. Normally after this we'd have a party or something, but…" She looked at Cassie and lifted her hands. Cassie nodded. Tonight, a party could hardly be less appropriate. "So I think we should formally dispel the Circle, but go on and have a regular meeting. That way we can get Cassie caught up on what she needs to know." There were nods around the circle and a collective breath released. Diana picked up a handful of sand and poured it over the line drawn on the beach. The others followed suit, each pouring a handful and smoothing it down so that the circle's outline was blurred, erased. Then they distributed themselves among the still-lighted candles, some sitting on the sand, others on out-thrusts of rock. Nick remained standing, a cigarette in his mouth.

Diana waited until everyone was quiet, looking at her, then she turned to Cassie. Her face was grave and her green eyes were earnest. "Now that you're one of us," she said simply, "I think it's time to tell you what we are."

Cassie's breath caught. So many bizarre things had happened to her since she'd come to New Salem, and now she was about to hear the explanation. But strangely, she wasn't sure she needed to be told. Ever since they'd brought her here tonight, all sorts of things had been arranging themselves in her mind. A hundred little oddities that she'd noticed about New Salem, a hundred little mysteries that she'd been unable to solve. Somehow, her brain had begun putting them together, and now…

She looked at the faces around her, lit by moonlight and flickering candlelight.

"I think," she said slowly, "that I already know." Honesty compelled her to add, "Some of it, at least."

"Oh, yes?" Faye raised her eyebrows. "Why don't
you
tell
us
, then?" Cassie looked at Diana, who nodded. "Well, for one thing," she said slowly, "I know you're not the Mickey Mouse Club."

Chuckles. "You'd better believe it," Deborah muttered. "We're not the Girl Scouts, either."

"I know…" Cassie paused. "I know that you can light fires without matches. And that you don't use feverfew just in salads."

Faye examined her nails, looking innocent, and Laurel smiled ruefully.

"I know that you can make things move when they're not alive."

This time it was Faye who smiled. Deborah and Suzan exchanged smug glances, and Suzan murmured,

"Sssssss…"

"I know everybody's afraid of you at school, even the adults. They're afraid of anyone who lives on Crowhaven Road."

"They're going to be more afraid," said Doug Henderson.

"I know you use rocks for spot remover—"

"Crystals," murmured Diana.

"—and there's something more than tea leaves in your tea. And I know"—Cassie swallowed and then went on, deliberately—"that you can push somebody without touching them, and make them fall." There was a silence at this. Several people looked at Faye. Faye tilted her chin back and looked at the ocean with narrowed eyes.

"You're right," Diana said. "You've learned a lot from just watching—and we've been a little lax with security. But I think you should hear the entire story from the beginning."

"
I'll
tell it," said Faye. And when Diana looked at her doubtfully, she added, "Why not? I like a good story. And I certainly know this one."

"All right," said Diana. "But could you please try to stick to the point? I know your stories, Faye."

"Certainly," Faye said blandly. "Now, let me see, where shall I start?" She considered a moment, head tilted, and then smiled. "Once upon a time," she said, "there was a quaint little village called Salem. And it was just filled with quaint little Puritans—all-American, hardworking, honest, brave, and true—"

"Faye—"

"Just like some people here we all know," Faye said, undisturbed by the interruption. She stood, switching her glorious black mane behind her, clearly enjoying being the center of attention. The ocean, with its endlessly breaking waves, formed a perfect background as she began to pace back and forth, her black silk blouse sliding down just far enough to leave one shoulder bare.

"These Puritans were filled with pure little thoughts—most of them. A few just
may
have been unhappy with their boring little Puritan lives, all work, no play, dresses up to
here"
—she indicated her neck—"and six hours of church on Sundays…"

"Faye," said Diana.

Faye ignored her. "And the
neighbors
," she said. "All those neighbors who watched you, gossiped about you,
monitored
you to make sure you weren't wearing an extra button on your dress or smiling on your way to meeting. You had to be meek in those days, and keep your eyes down, and do as you were told without asking questions. If you were a girl, anyway. You weren't even allowed to play with dolls because they were things of the devil."

Cassie, fascinated despite herself, watched Faye pacing and thought again of jungle cats. Caged ones. If Faye had lived in those days, Cassie thought, she would have been quite a handful.

"And maybe some of those young girls weren't so happy," Faye said. "Who knows? But anyway, one winter a few of them got together to tell fortunes. They shouldn't have, of course. It was
wicked
. But they did it anyway. One of them had a slave who came from the West Indies and knew about fortune-telling. It helped to while away those long, dull winter nights." She glanced sideways under black lashes toward Nick, as if to say that she could have suggested a better way herself.

"But it preyed on their poor little Puritan minds," Faye went on, looking sorrowful. "They felt
guilty
. And eventually one of them had a nervous collapse. She got sick, delirious, and she confessed. Then the secret was out. And all the other young girls were on the hot seat. It wasn't
good
in those days to get caught fooling around with the supernatural. The grown-ups didn't
like
it. So the poor little Puritan girls had to point the finger at somebody else."

Faye held up her own long, tapering, scarlet-tipped finger, trailing it across the seated group like a gun. She stopped in front of Cassie.

Cassie looked at it, then up into Faye's eyes.

"And they did," Faye said pleasantly. She withdrew the finger as if sheathing a sword, and went on.

"They pointed at the West Indian slave, and then at a couple of other old women they didn't like. Women with a bad reputation around the village. And when they pointed, they said…" She paused for dramatic effect, and tipped her face up to the crescent moon hanging in the sky. Then she looked back at Cassie.

"They said…
witch
."

A
ripple went through the group, of agitation, bitter amusement, exasperation. Heads were shaking in disgust. Cassie felt the hairs at the back of her neck tingle.

"And do you know what?" Faye looked over her audience, holding them all spellbound. Then she smiled, slowly, and whispered, "It worked. Nobody blamed them for their little fortune-telling games. Everyone was too busy hunting out the
witches
in their midst. The only problem," Faye continued, her black eyebrows now raised in scorn, "was that those Puritans couldn't recognize a witch if they fell over one. They looked for women who were offbeat, or too independent, or… rich. Convicted witches forfeited their worldly goods, so it could be quite a
profitable
business to accuse them. But all the while the real witches were right there under their noses.

"Because, you see," Faye said softly, "there really were witches at Salem. Not the poor women—and men—they accused. They didn't even get
one
right. But the witches were there, and they didn't like what was happening. It hit a little too close to home. A few of them even tried to stop the witch trials—but that only tended to arouse suspicion. It was too dangerous even to be a friend of one of the prisoners." She stopped, and there was a silence. The faces surrounding Cassie now were not amused, but cold and angry. As if this story was something that resonated in their bones; not a cobwebby tale from the dead past, but a living warning.

"What happened?" Cassie asked at last, her own voice subdued.

"To the accused witches? They died. The unlucky ones, at least, the ones who wouldn't confess. Nineteen were hanged before the governor put a stop to it. The last public executions took place exactly three hundred years ago… September 22, the fall equinox, 1692. No, the poor accused witches didn't have much luck. But the real witches… well…" Faye smiled.

"The real witches got away. Discreetly, of course. After the fuss was over. They quietly packed up and moved north to start their own little village, where no one would point fingers because everyone would be the same. And they called their little village…" She looked at Cassie.

"New Salem," Cassie said. In her mind, she was seeing the crest on the high school building.

"Incorporated 1693," she added softly.

"Yes. Just one year after the trials ended. So you see, that's how our little town was founded. With just the twelve members of that coven, and their families. We"—Faye gestured gracefully around the group—

"are what's left of the descendants of those twelve families. Their only descendants. While the rest of the riffraff you see around the school and the town—"

"Like Sally Waltman," Deborah put in.

"—are the descendants of the servants. The
help
," Faye said sweetly. "Or of outsiders who drifted in and were allowed to settle here. But those twelve houses on Crowhaven Road are the houses of the original families. Our families. They intermarried and kept their blood pure—most of them, anyway. And eventually they produced
us
."

"You have to understand," Diana said quietly from Cassie's side. "Some of what Faye has told you is speculation. We don't really know what caused the witch hunts in 1692. But we
do
know what happened with our own ancestors because we have their journals, their old records, their spell books. Their Books of Shadows." She turned and picked something up off the sand, and Cassie recognized the book that had been on the window seat the day Diana cleaned her sweater.

"This," Diana said, holding it up, "was my great-great-grandmother's. She got it from her mother, who got it from
her
mother, and so on. Each of them wrote in it; they recorded the spells they did, the rituals, the important events in their lives. Each of them passed it on to the next generation."

"Until our great-grandmothers' time, anyway," said Deborah. "Maybe eighty, ninety years ago.
They
decided the whole thing was too scary."

"Too
wicked
," Faye put in, her golden eyes gleaming.

"They hid the books and tried to forget the old knowledge," said Diana. "They taught their kids it was wrong to be different. They tried to be normal, to be like the outsiders."

"They were
wrong
," Chris said. He leaned forward, his jaw set, his face etched with pain. "We can't be like them. Kori knew that. She—" He broke off and shook his head.

"It's okay, Chris," Laurel said softly. "We know."

Sean spoke up eagerly, his thin chest puffing out. "They hid the old stuff, but we found it," he said. "We wouldn't take no for an answer."

"No,
we
wouldn't," said Melanie, casting an amused glance at him. "Of course, some of us were busy playing Batman while the older ones were rediscovering our heritage."

"And some of us had a little more natural talent than others," Faye added. She spread out her fingers, admiring the long red nails. "A little more natural—flair—for calling on the Powers."

"That's right," said Laurel. She raised her eye-brows and then looked significantly at Diana. "
Some
of us do."

"We all have talent," Diana said. "We started discovering that when we were really young—babies, practically. Even our parents couldn't ignore it. They did try to keep us from using it for a while, but most of them have given up."

"Some of them even help us," Laurel said. "Like my grandmother. But we still get most of what we need from the old books." Cassie thought about her own grandmother. Had she been trying to help Cassie?

Cassie felt sure she had.

"Or from our own heads," said Doug. He grinned a wild and handsome grin and for an instant looked again like the boy who'd gone racing through the hallways on roller blades. "It's instinct, you know? Pure instinct.
Primal
."

"Our parents hate it," said Suzan. "My father says we'll only make trouble with the outsiders. He says the outsiders will
get
us."