The Temptation (The Secret Circle 6)

“Cassie,” he said, like an apology.

He wrapped himself around her, and his heart beat evenly and steady against her chest. She’d never felt so thankful for anything in all her life.

From the moment their eyes met, neither of them could turn away. The world had gone still, and only the two of them remained. It wasn’t possible to squeeze his body close enough.

He kissed her on her trembling mouth, and she was swept away.

When she returned to her surroundings, a little dazed, she noticed that the whole group had climbed to their feet.

The gentle composure of Diana’s features had returned. Melanie’s cool strength reentered the sharp angles of her face. And Laurel’s pixielike air had settled back into her smile. Faye ran her hands down her neck and torso, feeling herself returned. Cassie looked at each of her friends, finding that every one of them had come back to being the person she loved.

They were saved.

Cassie glanced at the cemetery gate and caught sight of Max walking away. He’d seen enough, Cassie assumed. All he could manage for now.

Adam wrapped himself around Cassie again. She breathed him in, not even realizing how much she’d missed the little things about him, like the smell of his skin and the feel of his hand flat upon her back. Now that he had returned, she felt the full force of the loss of him. It was like a dream to be in his arms again, too good to be true.

Then she glanced at Nick.

He tried to force a smile at her before looking away.

Cassie felt a pang of guilt. In her heart she knew getting Adam back had come at the expense of what she’d had with Nick, but this moment was too powerful to be spoiled, too perfect.

As Nick continued staring straight down at the ground, Cassie wanted to go to him, to scream out, We did it! But she couldn’t.

Adam was holding her so tightly now. He rested his chin on top of Cassie’s head the way he always used to do. He spoke in a quiet, sorrowful voice.

“I was in there the whole time,” he said. “I was screaming at this spirit to stop. That he was hurting you, Cassie . . .”

“I know,” Cassie said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m just so glad you’re okay.” He held Cassie tighter. “I wanted to come through for you, but I just couldn’t. The demon was too strong.”

Diana and the others then entered into the fold of Cassie and Adam’s hug. But Nick stayed to the outside. It was a bittersweet moment. She wanted him near her, too.

Scarlett, Cassie realized, was also keeping to herself, not rejoicing in the least.

Cassie called to her. “Get in here! We couldn’t have done this without you!”

But Scarlett made no motion toward the group. She stared at them oddly and then glanced upward.

The sky above the cemetery had filled with storm clouds. Ravens flocked from the nearby trees, and the resident stray cats fled. Cassie felt her relief tiptoe away, replaced by a tightening, choking fear.

There was movement in the shadows around them, a stirring of shrubs. Cassie realized they were not alone. Footsteps and dim shapes approached them, and she could hear the sound of breath—of breathing. Then Cassie noticed a wicked grin sneak onto Scarlett’s face.

Chapter 14

Figures emerged from the shadows around the Circle, creeping out from behind the cover of trees and tombstones. Cassie could see they were bodies. People. And they were wearing ancient garb that was half-rotted away. Cassie watched them and shuddered, understanding immediately that these were the demons that had possessed her friends for the past week, returned to their corporeal form. Her ancestors had been truly resurrected now.

Cassie stayed close to her Circle. Instinctively, they packed in tightly to one another as a unit. They all knew. Adam reached for Cassie’s hand.

Cassie turned to Scarlett, who smiled with the satisfaction of someone who has had the pleasure of watching her plan unfold perfectly.

“Scarlett was one step ahead of us the whole time,” Nick whispered. “Again.”

“What can we do?” Deborah let out a heavy breath. “We don’t even know if they’re dead or alive.”

“They look pretty alive to me,” Laurel said.

As the figures of Cassie’s long-dead ancestors grew nearer, she thought back to all that Timothy had told her about these relatives. She recognized Black John’s sister, Alice, immediately. The rope burn from her hanging in the witch trials had chafed and bruised a chokerlike ring across her throat. Other than that, she looked just like she did in the drawing, but slighter and with even gloomier eyes. Her pain was more palpable in three-dimensional form than it was on paper. She may have been the saddest girl Cassie had ever seen.

“I say we run,” Sean said. “Get out of here while we have the chance.”

Diana was eyeing Alice with a fearful curiosity. “No,” she said. “We have to stand our ground.”

Cassie lost track of Scarlett in the approaching crowd, but she recognized another ancestor—the man Timothy had said lived his life as a priest corrupting the Church. Absolom. He was the one who had copied the forbidden text of the exorcism rite into the Book of Shadows, and Cassie knew he was the ancestor who had possessed Adam.

Absolom appeared younger than he was in the drawing Timothy had showed her, but she was sure it was him. He wore the black garb and white collar of a priest, and he stood with the posture of a man used to an audience.

Adam couldn’t take his eyes off him. He was enraptured by Absolom’s saintly yet demonic presence, his wickedness cloaked in righteousness.

“Don’t show them any fear,” Nick said. But all of Cassie’s friends were trembling.

One of the female ancestors had drawn in close to Faye, sizing her up. Cassie could identify who she was most easily because she had been so badly burned. Beatrix. The flesh on her face and arms was browned and stiff, all mottled and blistered. Her hands were gruesomely charred, each finger reminding Cassie of burnt meat on a skewer. But even so, Cassie could see that Beatrix was beautiful. The shape of her nose and lips demanded attention despite their disfigurement, and she carried herself with confidence and grace, like a dancer. Her eyes and hair were so dark Cassie imagined they’d blackened to that gloomy hue in the fire that had consumed her.

Cassie surveyed the remaining ancestors, whom she didn’t recognize. They ranged in age and appearance, but none were very old. Aside from the fact that life spans were shorter in the past, Cassie understood that most of her relatives had also been hunted and killed for being witches. Not one of them had passed forty years old, by the looks of them.

One of the male ancestors wiggled his dirty fingers and swung his mud-encrusted arms forward and back. He was dressed in the clothes of a peasant, or possibly a farmworker. Cassie recognized him from the album Timothy had given her. His name was Samuel, and he was from the Providence Plantation—one of the original thirteen colonies—which, after the American Revolution, became Rhode Island.

The woman standing nearest him was wearing a Civil War–era day dress with red and white stripes that would have been charming if it weren’t half-decomposed. In the Blak family album she was described as a Southern belle: Charlotte Blak of Louisville, Kentucky.

Another man, whom Cassie recognized as Thomas Blak from England in the seventeenth century, wore a torn gray riding habit with matching breeches. He took off his hat and examined it.

But it was Alice who most captivated Cassie. She could hardly take her eyes off Alice’s pouty-lipped scowl. And she noticed that Alice had the same effect on Diana. Timothy had warned Cassie not to be fooled by Alice’s looks. He’d told her that Alice was so obsessed with dark magic that some said she was more evil than Black John himself. But now that Alice had appeared in the flesh, with her heartbreaking gaze and her longing, with her girlish hair nestled into a braided bun, Cassie felt like she understood her—who she really was.

“It’s good to be back,” Alice said. Her voice was startlingly deep. It was a voice vacant of all emotion, concave, as if Alice herself believed her words to be utterly worthless even as she said them.

“Better than good,” Absolom announced, with a cadence that thundered over the group. He spoke with an accent Cassie couldn’t decipher. “Triumphant.”

Beatrix nodded. Her face cracked into a distasteful grin. “This town is ours for the taking,” she said. She raised her burned hands and aimed them at Cassie and her friends, poised to cast a spell.

“Not yet,” Alice said, stepping between Beatrix and the Circle. She rested her terrible eyes on Cassie. “First we get stronger.”

Scarlett emerged from the back of the crowd then, shoving her way to the front. “I can help,” she said. “I’ve prepared a place for us.”

Beatrix eyed Scarlett like she was a fly to be shooed. “Can I at least destroy this one?” she asked Alice.

Alice shook her head. “Show us this place,” she said to Scarlett, and then she positioned her thin hand on Beatrix’s back. “We’ll destroy them all in good time.”

Adam took a step forward, as if he were preparing to fight them.

“No,” Cassie said, pulling him back.

She tried to keep her Circle corralled behind her as Alice and the others retreated to wherever Scarlett was leading them.

“We can’t just let them go,” Adam said.

“Conant’s right,” Nick said. “They’re weak right now; this might be our only chance.”

“You’re all weak right now, too,” Cassie said. “And so am I after performing that spell.”

She looked around at the surrounding graves and headstones with their skulls and grim reaper etchings, and then at her father’s massive chambered crypt. She looked into the faces of her dear friends, thankfully returned to her, and at the backs of her resurrected ancestors in the distance. “We’ll have our chance to fight them,” Cassie said. “This is only the beginning.”

Chapter 15

The Circle walked straight to Cassie’s house, barely talking. Maybe they were traumatized, or just exhausted. Cassie held Adam’s hand, but much of the joy from their initial embrace had vanished. Once again triumph had led immediately to setback, this one possibly far worse than the first.

But it was a minor victory not lost on Cassie when each of her friends was able to cross the property line to her house unhindered. Cassie hadn’t been sure she’d ever see that wish realized. She glanced at Nick to share in the appreciation of the small blessing, and he half-smiled in response.

The group congregated in Cassie’s living room, and it was just like old times, everyone lying about. Adam hovered close to Cassie on the couch—but for a change, Nick wasn’t keeping a little off to the side. He sat down right beside Cassie, sandwiching her between himself and Adam.

“I’m going to text Max,” Nick said. “He deserves to know what’s going on.”

“You two have become friends?” Diana blurted out.

Cassie offered Diana a reassuring glance.

“Would he really come here?” Diana asked. “I wouldn’t blame him if he never wanted to see me again.”

“He’s been really helpful these past few days,” Nick said, without looking up from his phone.

“But he may not be ready to forgive the rest of us,” Diana said. “Me especially.”

Cassie feared Diana might be right. Max was still feeling torn. Cassie understood how that felt, with Adam on one side of her and Nick on the other.

No sooner had Cassie come to this conclusion than there was a knock at the door. Diana straightened her posture at the sound.

“It’s Max,” Cassie said, recognizing his light brown hair and lacrosse jacket through the window. She opened the door and invited him in. He stood stiffly in the doorway, eyeing the group before taking the first step toward them. Nobody spoke. Everyone in the Circle was watching Diana, and Diana was watching Max.

“Hi,” was all he said. It was the shortest, most noncommittal word he could have offered Diana, but it was something. Diana rose from where she was seated but restrained herself from running to him.

Max’s eyes filled with emotion. He looked at her now with a long, measured glance. The goodness and purity that shone back at him from Diana was undeniable.

Max took another careful step forward and slightly opened his arms.

Diana nearly collapsed into his embrace. The air around them crackled with electricity. Cassie could feel their connection as if it were her own with Adam. The whole group must have felt it, because everyone’s shoulders settled and their jaws relaxed.

Max became conscious of his audience. He blushed and looked at Cassie and Nick. “So I guess it’s safe to say the evil spirits are gone once and for all.”