"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, brushing 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 I haven't figured out who to ask yet. And I 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 Cassie that afternoon. They were driving home from school with Diana and Melanie.
"Oh..." Cassie was taken aback. "I 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," Cassie 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."
"I probably won't see it," Cassie 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, Cassie. Look, let's go to my house right now and talk about guys you can ask."
"No, I've got to go straight home," Cassie 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 Saturday. "Please just drop me off at my house."
In silence that was bewildered and a little hurt, Diana complied.
All that week, Cassie 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 eelgrass 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 Saturday 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 Cassie stood in the doorway, it turned and cruised slowly by her house. It was Faye's Corvette ZRI, and Faye was in it, one languid arm drooping out of the window.
As she went by Cassie, 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 Cassie.
Sunset.
She went cruising on without a backward look. Cassie stared after her.
Cassie knew what she meant. By sunset, either Cassie brought the skull to Faye, or Faye told Diana.
I have to find it, Cassie 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. Cassie was exhausted and terrified, and she was giving up hope.
Then, as the sky was darkening, she saw the ring of stones.
She'd passed 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, Cassie 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. Cassie 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 than simply getting her hands on it.
Now that she was actually holding it, now that the possibility was before her... she couldn't do it.