“We've got to stop it,” Adam said.
Suzan was fiddling with a button on her blouse. “How?”
This silence was long and uncomfortable. Adam and Diana were looking at each other, seeming to have some grim unspoken conversation. The Henderson brothers were also telegraphing something to each other, but they didn't look as if they minded having something murderous and evil loose in the immediate community. In fact, on the whole they looked pleased.
“Maybe it'll get whoever got Kori,” Chris offered at last.
Diana stared at him. “Is that what you think?” Then her face changed. “Is that what you were thinking when we were reaching into it? Is that what you were willing?”
“We were supposed to just try and read the last imprints,” Melanie said, her voice as angry as Cassie had ever heard it.
The Henderson brothers looked at each other and shrugged. Deborah's expression was somewhere between a scowl and a grin. Suzan was still fiddling. Nick, face expressionless, stood up.
“Looks like that's all for tonight,” he said.
Diana exploded.
“You're damn right it is!” she cried, astounding Cassie. She snatched up the skull in her two hands. “Now this is going to a safe place, where it belongs. Where it should have gone in the first place. I should have known you were all too irresponsible to deal with it.” Hugging the skull to her, she strode out of the garage.
Faye was instantly alert, like a cat who sees the flicker of a mouse's tail. “I don't think that was a very nice way to talk to us,” she said throatily. “I don't think she trusts us, do you? Hands up-how many people here want to be led by someone who doesn't trust them?”
If looks could maim, the one Melanie threw Faye would have left her a basket case. “Oh, get stuffed, Faye,” she said in her classy accent. “Come on, Laurel,” she added, and got up to follow Diana toward the house.
Cassie, not knowing what else to do, followed them. Behind her she heard Adam saying to Faye in a low, tightly controlled voice, “I wish you were a guy.”
And Faye's laughing, husky answer: “Why, Adam, I didn't know your tastes ran that way!”
Diana was putting the skull back in the Pyrex dish when Adam came in behind Cassie. He went to Diana and put his arms around her.
She leaned against him a moment, eyes shut, but didn't hold him in return. And after that moment she moved away.
“I'm all right. I'm just angry with them, and I've got to think.”
Adam sat on the bed, running a hand through his hair. “I should have kept it a secret from them,” he said. “It was my own stupid pride-“
“Don't,” said Diana. “It would have been wrong to keep something from the Circle that belongs to them.”
“More wrong than to let them use it for stupid, malicious reasons?”
Diana turned away and leaned against the cabinet.
“Sometimes,” Adam said quietly, “I wonder about what we're doing. Maybe the Old Powers should just be left asleep. Maybe we're wrong to think we can handle them.”
“Power is only Power,” Diana said tiredly, not turning. “It's not good or bad. Only the way we use it is good or bad.”
“But maybe nobody can use it without ending up using it badly.”
Cassie stood and listened, wishing she were anywhere else. She was aware that in some terribly civilized way, Diana and Adam were having a fight. She met Laurel's eyes and saw that the other girl was just as uncomfortable.
“I don't believe that,” Diana said finally, softly. “I don't believe that people are that hopeless. That evil.”
Adam's expression was bleak and longing, as if he wished he could share her belief.
Cassie, watching his face, felt a stab of pain, and then a wave of dizziness. She shifted, looking for a place to sit down.
Diana immediately turned around. “Are you all right? You're white as a ghost.”
Cassie nodded and shrugged. “Just a little dizzy-I guess maybe I should go home…”
The anger had drained out of Diana's eyes. “All right,” she said. “But I don't want you out there by yourself. Adam, would you walk her back? The beach way is faster.”
Cassie opened her mouth in reflexive horror. But Adam nodded quickly.
“Sure,” he said. “Although I don't want to leave you alone…”
“I want Melanie and Laurel to stay,” Diana said. “I want to start to purify this skull properly, with flower essences”-she looked at Laurel-“and other crystals.” She looked at Melanie. “I don't care if it takes all night; I want to get it set up. And I want to start now. This minute.”
The two girls nodded. So did Adam. “All right,” he said.
And Cassie, who had been standing with her mouth open, suddenly thought of something and nodded too. Her hand automatically patted her front jeans pocket to feel the hard little lump there.
So that was how she found herself walking on the beach alone with Adam.
There was no moon that night. The stars shone with a fierce, icy brilliance. The waves roared and hissed on the shore.
Not romantic. Raw. Primitive. Except for the faint lights of houses above on the cliff, they might have been a thousand miles from civilization.
They were almost all the way to the narrow path up the bluff to Number Twelve when he asked her. She'd known in her heart that she couldn't avoid it forever.
“Why didn't you want anyone to know that we'd met before?” he said simply.
Cassie took a deep breath. Now was the time to see what kind of actress she was. She was very calm; she knew what had to be done, and somehow, she would do it. She had to do it, for Diana's sake-and his.