Secret Circle - The Captive Part 4

"He's usually so good about waiting just off campus until I get out of school. I don't know why-" Adambroke off. "Raj, get down," he muttered in a changed voice. "Now!" he said, and snapped his fingers.The lapping tongue withdrew, but the German shepherd stayed by Ca.s.sie's side as she walked over to the steps. She patted the dog's head.

"Raj usually hates new people," Sean observed as Ca.s.sie and Adam sat down. "So how come he always likes you so much?"

Ca.s.sie could feel Faye's mocking eyes on her and she shrugged uncomfortably, staring down into her lunch sack. Then something occurred to her: one of those witty comebacks she usually only thought of the next day.

"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 n.o.body'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 Ca.s.sie followed her gaze to a window on the second floor of the red-brick building. Then Ca.s.sie looked down the hill, to the bottom where Kori had been found.

There was a pause, and then Diana said, "Oh, my G.o.d."

"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?"

Ca.s.sie 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Ca.s.sie 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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 1 haven't figured out who to ask yet. And 1 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 Ca.s.sie that afternoon. They were driving home from school with Diana and Melanie.

"Oh . . ." Ca.s.sie was taken aback. "1 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," Ca.s.sie 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."

"1 probably won't see it," Ca.s.sie 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, Ca.s.sie. Look, let's go to my house right now and talk about guys you can ask."

"No, I've got to go straight home," Ca.s.sie 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 Sat.u.r.day. "Please just drop me off at my house."

In silence that was bewildered and a little hurt, Diana complied.

All that week, Ca.s.sie 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 eelgra.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Ca.s.sie 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 Ca.s.sie, 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 Ca.s.sie.

Sunset.

She went cruising on without a backward look. Ca.s.sie stared after her.Ca.s.sie knew what she meant. By sunset, either Ca.s.sie brought the skull to Faye, or Faye told Diana.I have to find it, Ca.s.sie 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.

Ca.s.sie was exhausted and terrified, and she was giving up hope.

Then, as the sky was darkening, she saw the ring of stones.

She'd pa.s.sed 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, Ca.s.sie 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. Ca.s.sie 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 thansimply 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 Ca.s.sie 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? Ca.s.sie'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 Ca.s.sie, still on her knees, spun around to look.

"I had complete faith in you, Ca.s.sie. And now my faith is justified.""How did you know?" Ca.s.sie 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," Ca.s.sie 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, Ca.s.sie," Faye said. And as she stood there on a little dune above Ca.s.sie, tall and stunning in black pants and a loose-knit scarlet top, Ca.s.sie knew it was true. "I'm taking the skull now. You can run to Diana if you want, but you'll be too late."

Ca.s.sie 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, Ca.s.sie 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," Ca.s.sie 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 Ca.s.sie. 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.

Ca.s.sie 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.

Ca.s.sie'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 pa.s.sion, red jasper for stability. And one black onyx for surrendering to your shadow self." She smiled strangely at Ca.s.sie, 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."

Ca.s.sie 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 Ca.s.sie. She was gazing down as she slowly peeled the wet, sandy white cloth away to reveal the glittering dome of the crystal skull. As

Ca.s.sie 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. "h.e.l.lo there." She was gazing into the empty eyesockets as if looking at a lover. She