第 22 页

Deborah walked like a stalking huntress, following the black marks down the twisting hallways to the old

wing of the house, the one built by the original witches in 1693.

Oh, God, it looked like fire in here. The red light was everywhere and the air burned Cassie's skin.

Deborah stopped and Cassie almost ran into her. She struggled to see over Deborah's shoulder, but her

eyes were sore and streaming.

She felt Nick behind her, his hand gripping her shoulder hard. Cassie tried to make her eyes focus,

squinting into the thick red light.

She could see her grandmother! The old woman was lying in front of the hearth, by the long wooden

table she had worked at so often. The table was on its side, and herbs and drying racks were scattered

on the floor. Cassie started toward her grandmother, but there was something else there, something her

mind didn't want to take in. Nick was holding her back, and Cassie stared at the thing bending over the

old woman.

It was burned, black, hideous. It looked as if its skin was hard and cracked. It had the shape of a man,

but Cassie couldn't see eyes or clothes or hair. When it looked up at them she got a brief, terrifying

impression of a skull shining silver through the blackness of its face.

It had seen them now. Cassie felt as if she and Nick and Deborah were welded together; Nick was still

holding her, and she was clutching Deborah. She wanted to run, but she couldn't, because there was her

grandmother on the floor. She couldn't leave her grandmother alone with the burned thing.

But she couldn't fight, either. She didn't know how to fight something like this. And Cassie could no

longer feel any connection to the elements; in this horrible oven of a room she felt as if she were cut off

from everything outside.

What weapons did they have? The hematite in Cassie's pocket wasn't cool anymore; when she thrust her

hand in to touch it, it burned. No good. Air and Fire and Earth were all against them. They needed

something this creature didn't control.

"Think of water," she shouted to Nick and Deborah. Her voice was stifled in the oppressive blistering air.

"Think of the ocean- cold water-ice!"

As she said it, she thought herself, trying to remember what water was like. Cool. . . blue. . . endless.

Suddenly she remembered looking over the bluff when she'd first come to her grandmother's house,

seeing a blue so intense it took her breath away. The ocean, unimaginably vast, spread out before her.

She could picture it now; blue and gray like Adam's eyes. Sunlight glinted off the waves, and Adam's

eyes were sparkling, laughing ....

Wind rattled the windows in their casements, and the faucet in the sink began to shake. It burst a leak

somewhere at its base and a thin stream of white water sprayed up. Something burst in the dishwasher,

too, and water gushed on the floor. Water was hissing out of the pipe under the sink.

"Now!" Deborah shouted. "Come on, get him now!"

Cassie knew it was wrong even as Deborah said it. They weren't strong enough, not nearly strong

enough to take this thing on directly. But Deborah, always heedless of danger, was lunging forward, and

there was no time to scream a warning or make her stop. Cassie's heart failed her and her legs went

weak in the middle of the rush toward the black thing.

there was no time to scream a warning or make her stop. Cassie's heart failed her and her legs went

weak in the middle of the rush toward the black thing.

The door hung open, rattling in the wind. The red light died. Through the doorway Cassie could see the

cool silver-blue of moonlight.

She dragged in a deep breath, grateful just to be able to breathe without hurting.

"We did it!" Deborah was laughing. She pounded Nick on the arm and back. "We did it! All right! The

bastard ran!"

It left, Cassie thought. It left, deliberately. We didn't win anything.

Then she turned sharply to Nick. "My mother! And Laurel and Melanie-they're out there-"

"I'll go check them. I think it's gone for now, though," he said.

For now. Nick knew the same thing she did. It wasn't defeated; it had withdrawn.

On trembling legs, Cassie went and knelt by her grandmother on the floor.

"Grandma?" she said. She was afraid the old woman was dead. But no, her grandmother was breathing

heavily. Then Cassie was afraid that if the wrinkled eyelids opened, the eyes underneath would stare

blankly like a doll's- but they were opening now, and they saw her, they knew her. Her grandmother's

eyes were dark with pain, but they were rational.

"Cassie," she whispered. "Little Cassie."

"Grandma, you're going to be all right. Don't move." Cassie tried to think of anything else she'd heard

about injured people. What to do? Keep them warm? Keep their feet elevated? "Just hang on," she told

her grandmother, and to Deborah she said, "Call an ambulance, fast!"

"No," her grandmother said. She tried to sit up and her face contracted with pain. One knobby-knuckled

hand clutched at the thin robe over her nightgown. Over her heart.

"Grandma, don't move," Cassie said frantically. "It's going to be all right, everything's going to be all right.

. ."

"No, Cassie," her grandmother said. She was still breathing in that tortured way, but her voice was

surprisingly strong. "No ambulance.

There's no time. You need to listen to me; I have something to tell you."

"You can tell me later." Cassie was crying now, but she tried to keep her voice steady.

"There won't be a later," her grandmother gasped, and then she settled back, her breathing careful and

slow. She spoke distinctly, kneading Cassie's hand in her own. Her eyes were so dark, so anguished-and

so kind. "Cassie, I don't have much time left, and you need to listen. This is important. Go to the fireplace

and look on the right-hand side for a loose brick. It's just about the level of the mantel. Pull it out and

bring me what's inside the hole."

Cassie stumbled to the hearth. A loose brick-she couldn't see; she was crying too hard. She felt with her

fingers, scraping them on the roughness of mortar, and something shifted under them.

Cassie stumbled to the hearth. A loose brick-she couldn't see; she was crying too hard. She felt with her

fingers, scraping them on the roughness of mortar, and something shifted under them.

Her fingertips found something smooth. She eased it closer with her nails, then grasped it and pulled it

out.

It was a Book of Shadows.

The one from her dream, the one with the red leather cover. Cassie took it back to her grandmother and

knelt again.

"He couldn't make me tell where it was. He couldn't make me tell anything," her grandmother said, and

smiled. "My own grandmother showed me that was a good place to hide it." She stroked the book, then

her age-spotted hand tightened on Cassie's. "It's yours, Cassie. From my grandmother to me to you. You

have the sight and the power, as I did, as your mother does. But you can't run away like she did. You

have to stay here and face him."

She stopped and coughed. Cassie looked at Deborah, who was listening intently, and then back at her

grandmother. "Grandma, please. Please let us call the ambulance. You can't just give up-"

"I'm not giving anything up! I'm giving it all to you. To you, Cassie, so you can carry on the fight. Let me

do that before I die. Otherwise it's all been meaningless, everything." She coughed again. "It wasn't

supposed to be like this. That girl-Faye-she fooled me. I didn't think she would move this fast. I thought

we would have more time-but we don't. So, now listen."

She drew a painful breath, fingers holding Cassie's so hard it hurt, and her dark old eyes stared into

Cassie's. "You come from a long line of witches, Cassie. You know that. But you don't know that our

family has always had the clearest sight and the most power. We've been the strongest line and we can

see the future- but the others don't always believe that. Not even our own kind."

Her eyes lifted to look at Deborah. "You young people, you think you come up with everything new,

don't you?" Her seamed old face wrinkled in a laugh, although there was no sound. "You don't have

much respect for old folks, or even for your parents. You think we lived our lives standing still, don't

you?"

She's wandering, Cassie thought. She doesn't know what she's saying. But her grandmother was going

on.

"Your idea about getting out the old books and reviving the old traditions-you think you were the only

ones to come up with that, don't you?"

Cassie just shook her head helplessly, but Deborah, brows drawn together in a scowl, said, "Well,

weren't we?"

"No. Oh, my dears, no. In my day, when I was a little girl, we played with it. We had meetings

sometimes, and those of us with the sight would make notes of what we saw, and those with the healing

touch would talk about herbs and things. But it was your parents' generation who got up a real coven."

"Our parents?" Deborah said in disbelief. "My parents are so scared of magic they practically puke if you

mention it. My parents would never-"

"That's now," Cassie's grandmother said calmly, as Cassie tried to hush Deborah. "That's now. They've

forgotten-they made themselves forget. They had to, you see, to survive. But things were different when

they were young. They were just a little older than you, the children of Crowhaven Road. Your mother

was maybe nineteen, Deborah, and Cassie's mother was just seventeen. That was when the Man in

Black came to New Salem."

"That's now," Cassie's grandmother said calmly, as Cassie tried to hush Deborah. "That's now. They've

forgotten-they made themselves forget. They had to, you see, to survive. But things were different when

they were young. They were just a little older than you, the children of Crowhaven Road. Your mother

was maybe nineteen, Deborah, and Cassie's mother was just seventeen. That was when the Man in

Black came to New Salem."

"You don't want to know. I know. I understand. But you have to listen, both of you. You have to

understand what you're up against."

With another cough, Cassie's grandmother shifted position slightly, her eyes going opaque with memory.

"That was the fall of 1974. The coldest November we'd had in decades. I'll never forget him on the

doorstep, kicking the snow off his boots. He was going to move into Number Thirteen, he said, and he

needed a match to light the wood he was carrying. There was no other kind of heat in that old house; it

had been empty since he'd left it the first time."

"Since what?" Cassie said.

"Since 1696. Since he'd left the first time to go to sea, and drowned when his ship went down." Her

grandmother nodded without looking at Cassie. "Oh, yes, it was Black John. But we didn't know that

then. How much suffering could have been prevented if we had . . . but there's no use thinking about

that." She patted Cassie's hand. "We lent him matches, and the girls and young men on the street helped

him rebuild that old house. He was a few years older than they were, and they looked up to him. They

admired him and his travels- he could tell the most marvelous stories. And he was handsome-handsome

in a way that didn't show his black heart underneath. We were all fooled, all under his spell, even me.

"I don't know when he started talking to the young people about the old ways. Pretty soon, I guess; he

worked fast. And they were ready to listen. They thought we parents were old and stodgy if we opposed

them. And to tell the truth, not many of us objected very strongly. There's good in the old ways, and we

didn't know what he was up to."

The shivers were racing all over Cassie's body by now, but she couldn't move. She could only listen to

her grandmother's voice, the only sound except for the thin hiss of water in that quiet kitchen.

"He got the likeliest of the young ones together and paired them off. Yes, that's about the size of it,

although we parents didn't know then. He made matches, giving this girl to this boy, and this boy to that

girl, and somehow he made it all seem reasonable to them. He even broke up pairs that had planned to

marry-your mother, Deborah, was going to marry Nick's dad, but he changed that. Switched her from

one brother to the other, and they let him. He had such a grip on them they would have let him do

anything.

"They did the marriages in the old way, handfasting. Ten weddings in March. And we all celebrated, like

the idiots we were. All those young people so happy, and never a quarrel between them, we thought;

how lucky they were! They were just like one big group of brothers and sisters. Well, the group was too

big for one coven, but we didn't think about that.

"It was good to see the respect they had for the old ways, too. They had the Beltane fire in May and at

midsummer they gathered Saint-John's-wort and mistletoe. And in September I remember all of them

laughing and shouting as they brought the John Barleycorn sheaf in to represent the harvest. They didn't

know what the other John was planning.

"We knew by then the babies were coming soon, and that was another reason to celebrate. But it was in

October that some of the older women started to worry. The girls were all so pale and the pregnancies

seemed to take so much out of them. Poor Carmen Henderson was flesh and bones except for her belly.