"I'll kill him!" Doug shouted, jumping up. Nick and Deborah grabbed him, but by then Chris was shouting too, lunging for the door. Adam and Melanie wrestled him to the ground.
"It wasn't him; it wasn't Sean," Cassie shouted. "Listen to me, you guys! It was Black John; he's the one who killed Kori. If I'm right, Sean probably doesn't even remember it! He was just a - a container for the dark energy to use."
"God," Laurel said. "God - remember the skull ceremony in Diana's garage? The time the second bunch of dark energy was released? Sean and Faye started fighting, the candle went out, and the dark energy escaped. Sean said Faye started it, and we all believed him. But Faye said Sean was trying to break the circle. What if she was right?"
"I'll bet she was right," Cassie said. "Black John's been with us all the time. Whatever Sean saw, he saw. And when enough dark energy was released from the skull - which Black John arranged to happen whenever he could - then it worked with Sean to commit the murders."
"It would have been easy to get Mr. Fogle over to Devil's Cove, too," Suzan said. "Sean could have pretended he had something bad to tell about somebody else in the Club. I used to do that all the time; tell the principal things about - " She glanced at Diana. "Well - that was in the old days. Anyway, Sean could have asked Fogle to meet him under the rocks and then - foom." She made a pushing gesture. "Good-bye, Mr. Fogle."
"Can we let you up now?" Adam asked Chris, and "Can we trust you to act sensible?" Deborah asked Doug.
There were incoherent snarls from the Henderson brothers, and when they were released they sat up with flushed faces and blue-green eyes as bright as gas flames.
"We're gonna get that bastard," Doug said quietly.
"If it's the last thing we do," said Chris, equally quiet. Cassie hoped they meant Black John.
"But what about Jeffrey?" Diana asked Cassie.
Cassie shrugged. "I don't know how Sean could have gotten him down to the boiler room - "
"By saying you were down there, maybe," Laurel said.
" - but if he did, he could have just come up behind him and strangled him with the rope - no, Sean's too short. Oh, I don't know how he could have done it - "
"By getting Lovejoy to sit down or lean over," Nick said, his voice crisp and low. "That's what I'd have done, anyway, if I were trying to strangle somebody that much taller. And look, if Sean had that dark energy inside him somehow, he could have had outrageous strength. He must have had, to be able to put the noose around Lovejoy's neck and haul him up over that pipe afterward."
Cassie felt sick. "It's true - I didn't see either Sean or Jeffrey at the dance for a while before the murder. Then all of a sudden Sean appeared on the dance floor, coming toward me. So I ran to the boiler room ... and found Jeffrey."
"I think we need to talk to Sean," said Diana.
"No," Adam said, with surprising vehemence. "That's just what we shouldn't do. If we talk to him now, Black John will realize we know. But if we don't say anything, if we play along with Sean and pretend we don't know, we can feed him disinformation. Tell him things that aren't true, for him to pass along to Black John."
"Like tell him we don't know when Black John is going to move," Deborah said, her dark eyes beginning to snap. "Tell him we're terrified of Black John - we don't know how to use the Master Tools - we're unprepared . . ."
"Or that we're all fighting among ourselves," suggested Laurel. "We can't agree on anything. We're deadlocked."
"Right! And then that night we'll actually be ready for him. When's the eclipse, Melanie?" Adam said.
"Around six forty in the evening. That's what I'd say we have to look out for. The moon in shadow."
"The moon in shadow," Cassie repeated softly. "I think I can understand why he would choose that time." He's a shadow himself, she thought.
"And until then all we have to do is pretend to be completely disorganized, terrified, and argumentative," said Melanie.
"Shouldn't be too hard," Suzan said, raising an eyebrow.
"There's somebody I think we should talk to," Cassie said, "without giving away any of our secrets. I think one of us should talk to Faye."
"And I think you're elected," Nick said. "I can't think of anybody better for the job." He winked at Cassie, but it was a grim wink.
"We need you."
"I'm sure," Faye said lazily, examining herself in the mirror. She was trying her hair in different ways: twisted back, on top of her head, at the nape of her neck. Cassie hadn't been in Faye's bedroom since the night Faye had set a ring of red stones around the crystal skull and released the dark energy that had eventually killed Jeffrey. The room was as opulent and luxurious as ever: the wallpaper patterned with lush jungle orchids, the bed piled with cushions, the stereo system packed with expensive extras. Faye's vampire kittens once again twined sinuously around Cassie's ankles.
But there was a different atmosphere here than before. The red candles were gone from the dresser tops; in their place were stacks of paperwork. On the bedspread along with the cordless phone was a beeper. An appointment book was sitting in front of the mirror, and the clothes strewn carelessly about were of the sultry office-girl kind Faye had taken to wearing.
The room felt - pressured. Type-A lifestyle. More like Portia than Faye.
"I suppose you know that Portia Bainbridge and Sally had me kidnapped two days ago," Cassie said.
Faye shot her an amused glance in the mirror. "And I'm sure you know you only had to open your pretty little mouth and yell, and Daddy would have been right there to help."