The Temptation (The Secret Circle 6)

“Where’d you get this spell?” Scarlett asked defensively, but Cassie sensed a tinge of hope in her voice.

“From an old witch,” Cassie answered. “Our father stripped him of his power years ago. It’s a spell he created.”

“And you trust him?” Scarlett asked.

“It’ll be dangerous; he told me as much. It’s never been performed before. But I believe it’ll work—with your help.”

“You believe or you hope?” Scarlett asked.

“Both, I guess,” Cassie answered.

She joined Scarlett in staring forward for a moment. “Timothy knows a lot about our family. If this spell wasn’t something our father feared, he wouldn’t have had to strip him of his magic.”

Together Cassie and Scarlett watched two toddlers in matching blond pigtails each pulling on the arm of a plastic doll. Both girls were hysterical, tears the size of winter hail tumbling from their eyes. Seconds before, the toy had just been lying on the grass, ignored. Their father had to step in to mediate. He yanked the doll from both their hands, tossed it out of sight, and then distracted his daughters from their grief by guiding them, hands held, to the monkey bars. Just like that, their anguish was forgotten. The tears were still wet on their cheeks as their faces brightened.

Cassie turned to Scarlett. It wasn’t lost on either of them that they’d missed out on something crucial in not having a proper father or sister.

Scarlett choked back tears, and Cassie realized a hard knot was forming in her own throat as well. She had to strive to keep herself dry-eyed.

“I guess you’re all I have left, Cassie,” Scarlett said. “You’re my only chance of saving myself. How’s that for pathetic?”

Cassie reached for Scarlett’s hand and squeezed it in her own. “We’re each other’s only chance, Scarlett. Pathetic or not.”

Chapter 25

In the dark of night, the group walked upward, past all the other houses on Crowhaven Road, including Cassie’s house at Number Twelve. When they reached the highest point, it looked just as Cassie remembered it. Timothy’s spell called for performing the book-burning outdoors, on grounds that would have had some significance to Black John, so here they were at the ultimate point on the headland, where Black John’s ruined house used to sit, Number Thirteen. It was the last place Cassie ever wanted to be. She walked to the cliff’s edge and stared down at the waves below.

The Circle stepped over and around the bits of foundation left over from the razed house. Cassie had brought three things with her: Black John’s Book of Shadows, a sack containing the Master Tools, and the wooden boxes Timothy had given her.

Scarlett, Faye, Diana, and Adam kneeled down closest to Cassie as she unclasped the larger box’s brass latches and lifted its heavy top.

Cassie unpacked its contents: robes, crystals, incense, and candles; a black-handled dagger, a spade, and some wooden logs. Then she found a tiny vial of clear liquid that could have been holy water but she understood was a potion. Lining the bottom of the box was a yellowed piece of paper that contained detailed pictorial instructions on how to prepare the spell, but no words. Probably so anyone from any time, a speaker of any language, could read and understand it. Timothy had thought of everything.

“These robes are handmade,” Laurel said. “They’re beautiful.” They were pagan ritual robes of various styles, from many different centuries. Black, red, green, purple. There were twelve of them in all, one for each member of the Circle.

Once everyone else had put one on, there was one robe left. It was white with gold trim. The creases in its pristine cloth were crisp and sharp.

“That one’s yours, Cassie,” Diana said. “It goes to the spell master leading the ritual.”

Cassie felt lofty and proud as she slipped one arm, and then the other, through the robe’s soft cotton sleeves. Faye reached for the black-handled dagger.

“An Athame,” she said, sliding the blade from its sheath. “It’s so old, and solid. And sharp.”

“A what?” Sean asked.

Laurel took the dagger from Faye’s hands and examined it. “The Athame knife is reserved for special ceremonies and rituals,” she said. “It’s used for summoning or banishing spirit entities.”

Deborah reached for the knife, but Laurel wouldn’t give it up.

“If it’s a proper Athame,” she continued, “when it’s used to draw the circle at the beginning of a ritual, it can cast away negative energies like a shield.”

“Well, it had better be a proper Athame then, because that’s exactly what we’re going to need,” Scarlett said. She flipped through the different forms of incense that came out of the box. “Golden copal, dragon’s blood, pine and cedar,” she said. “This Timothy guy didn’t leave anything out.”

Melanie gathered together a multicolored heap of crystals. They were all different shapes and sizes. She pointed out a stack of flesh-colored candles. “Those are incredibly rare,” she said. “Made with tallow, the fat from cows or sheep.”

Nick picked up the wooden spade. “I’ll do the digging,” he said. “For the fire pit.”

Cassie observed the medieval-looking tool in his hand. It resembled an axe, with a T handle, pointed toward the tip.

Adam reached for the logs, which were seasoned oak, and the vial of liquid that would be used as lighter fluid. “I’ll help,” he said to Nick. The two of them calculated what would be the center point of the foundation.

Diana, Faye, and Cassie each put on one of the Master Tools.

Cassie looked up at the almost-full moon. It looked like an oddly formed egg, an imperfect oval. She listened to the waves crashing at the base of the cliff they stood upon. In her arms she clutched the book. It felt warm against her skin, needy and alive, like a loving child.

It isn’t real, she told herself. The affection she felt emitting from the book wasn’t love; it was darkness, temptation, the embodiment of everything she had to fight against.

She set the book down for the moment, inside Timothy’s now-empty box, and focused on her friends as they prepared the spell.

Laurel held the instructions with both hands as Melanie laid out the proper formation of crystals to enhance the flow of energy from the ground to the air. Sean, Chris, and Doug lit the candles and incense, cleansing the space with swinging censers.

Nick’s hands and arms grew filthy as he dug a deep circular pit into the ground. Adam and Deborah lined it with a crosshatch of logs.

Diana came into view, beautiful and majestic in her sunlight-colored robe and sparkling diadem. Faye gleamed in red beneath the moon, with the garter tight around her leg.

Cassie imagined what she looked like in her white and gold robe, with the silver bracelet shining upon her arm. She wished she could see herself in this imperative moment, as she and her friends were on the brink of rewriting the course of their history—their future.

Cassie gripped the dagger’s cool handle and stabbed it into the hard, dry dirt. She drew a deep circle around the ruined foundation, encircling the wood-filled pit with a wide ring.

Silently, everyone stepped inside to the inner perimeter of the circle, and Cassie closed it shut.

Adam handed Cassie the vial of clear fluid. Cassie lifted its cap and poured its contents out over the logs. Next Adam handed her a lit match. She held it up to her eyes for only a second before letting it slip from her fingers.

The fire blazed into flames not unlike wild demons newly unleashed from the ground.

Cassie turned toward the eastern sky and held up both her arms. “I call on the Watchtower of the East,” she shouted. “Powers of Air, protect us.”

In a few seconds a gentle breeze blew through her hair and around the circle, fueling the fire with new life.

Next Cassie turned southward. “I call on the Watchtower of the South,” she said. “Powers of Fire, protect us.”

She closed her eyes and felt the heat of the high flames on her face.

Then Cassie turned again. “I call on the Watchtower of the West,” she said. “Powers of Water, protect us.”

The waves in the distance below them crashed loudly upon the shore, and the strong briny smell of the ocean rose up to fill their lungs.

Finally, Cassie faced north. “Watchtower of the North,” she said. “Powers of Earth, protect us.”

The ground beneath their feet suddenly began to quake. The book rumbled. Cassie could feel herself breathing hard. The circle she’d cut into the soil with the dagger split from the rest of the foundation, leaving them standing on an island of ragged dirt.

Then she gazed into the flames that flailed from deep within the pit, and harnessed her energy. This was it. She closed her eyes.

But then someone gasped, and someone else choked.

Cassie opened her eyes and quickly turned around. Alice was charging toward them, and close behind her the rest of the ancestors advanced across the empty lot like an army of ghosts.

“They must have followed me,” Scarlett said.

Cassie’s friends were gasping for air. Sean, Chris, and Doug were the first to collapse, but all of them except Cassie and Scarlett were gripping their necks, suffocating.

Scarlett raised her hands and performed a spell to restore their breath. But by then the ancestors had reached the Circle, close enough to knock Sean, Chris, and Doug out with an even stronger suffocation spell.

Adam and Nick launched an attack, a binding spell to constrain the ancestors’ strength, but Absolom shielded it easily, with the help of Thomas and Samuel. They retaliated with a hard stare that threw both Adam and Nick violently onto the ground. Adam hit the dirt with a thud and was immediately knocked unconscious. Nick landed gruesomely on a protruding beam from the ruined foundation of the house. It stabbed straight through his upper thigh, impaling the flesh like a thick, rusty skewer. He cried out in pain. The sight of his blood weakened Cassie at the knees.

Alice targeted Diana and Deborah. Melanie and Laurel tried to protect them with a defense spell, but all four of them dropped lifelessly beneath Alice’s open hand.

Faye lifted her hands and focused her energy on Alice. She managed to steer Alice back, away from her friends, but only long enough to attract Charlotte’s attention.

Charlotte gestured toward Faye and sent her flying backward into the air. Cassie and Scarlett were the only two Circle members left standing.

The ancestors surrounded them.

“Our brethren,” Alice said. “We left you for last.”

Beatrix grabbed Scarlett by the neck and pulled her face close to her own. “You, we’ll kill,” she said, “while you”—she signaled to Cassie—“watch.”

Absolom placed his palm over Scarlett’s forehead. He whispered words Cassie didn’t recognize.

“Then you’ll be ours,” Alice said to Cassie. “At last.”

“I maledicentibus vobis in mortem,” Absolom mumbled over Scarlett’s forehead. “I maledicentibus vobis in mortem.”

If not for Beatrix holding Scarlett’s thin body up, she would have slid to the ground. Her wide eyes glassed over, and her neck drooped down. Her face became a mask. Cassie understood what she was witnessing all too well: Scarlett was beginning to die.

Cassie raised her arms to harness her energy, to go inward and find a spell, but Alice’s gaze left her mind blank, powerless. Her spells, even her dark magic, were just out of her own reach.

She surveyed the surrounding area. Her friends lay scattered, unmoving. She couldn’t be sure who was alive, if any.

Then Cassie caught sight of something else. The wooden box Timothy had given her. The one he had said not to open until she had no other choice.

This had to be that moment.

Cassie dashed for the box before Alice or any of the ancestors could stop her. She kneeled down beside it, unlatched its hinges, and lifted its top.

Cassie drew back at the sight of its contents.

Rats. Dead rats, piled on top of one another in a mass grave of matted fur and desiccated tails. One whiff of their putrid scent made Cassie gag. She stood up and backed away from the box. Was this some sick joke? Was Timothy on the ancestors’ side all along?

Cassie glanced back at the ancestors still hovering over Scarlett. Alice watched Cassie, unafraid, unthreatened, confident there was nowhere for her to run to.

Then Cassie heard a squeak, followed by a scratching. She peered cautiously over the top of the wooden box. What seemed like a thousand beady, blinking eyes stared back at her. Their bodies began to twist and move, slinking free from their entanglement. Cassie held her breath as the whole herd of them scurried out over the top of their box and raced for the ancestors.

Their long rodent tails dragged behind them as they charged for whatever exposed skin they found—the vulnerable flesh of ankles and calves. Scratching and clawing, the leader of the pack leapt for the nearest target first: Alice. She lifted her hands in defense, but her fingers only provided an easier-to-reach mark.