"I know an apple spell," Laurel was saying to the group. "You peel an apple in one long spiral, then throw

the peel over your shoulder, and if it doesn't break, it forms the initial of your true love."

They tried this, without much success. The peelings kept breaking, Suzan cut herself on Deborah's knife, and when Diana did manage to throw a peeling over her shoulder, it only formed a spiral.

"Well, that's sacred to the G.o.ddess at least," Laurel said, frowning. "Or to the Horned One," she added

mischievously, looking at Adam.

Ca.s.sie had been deliberately breaking her apple peels; the whole fortune-telling thing made her uneasy.

And not just because Melanie mentioned cheerfully, "They used to execute witches for this kind of divination on Halloween."

"I've got another one," Laurel said. "You throw a nut in the fire, say a pair of names, and see what

happens. Like Suzan and David Downey," she added impishly. "If the nut pops, they're meant for each

other. If it doesn't, they're doomed."

"If he loves me, pop and fly; if he hates me, burn and die!" Suzan quoted dramatically as Laurel tossed a hazelnut in. The round little nut just sizzled.

"Laurel and Doug," Chris snickered, throwing in another.

"Chris and Sally Waltman!" Doug countered.

"Ca.s.sie and Nick!"

Deborah tossed that one in, grinning, but Faye was noticeably unsmiling.

"Adam . . ." she said, holding a nut up high between long red nails and waiting until she had everyone's attention. Ca.s.sie stared at her, poised on the edge of her brick. ". . . and Diana," Faye said finally, and flicked the hazelnut into the flames.

Ca.s.sie, mesmerized, watched the nut where it lay on glowing embers. She didn't want to look at it; she had to.

"There are lots of other Halloween traditions," Laurel was going on. "It's time to remember old people, people who're coming to the winter of their lives-or that's what my Granny Quincey says."

Ca.s.sie was still staring at that one hazelnut. It seemed to be jiggling-but was it going to pop?

"It's getting late," Adam said. "Don't you think we should get started?"

Diana brushed pumpkin-bread crumbs off her hands and stood. "Yes."

Ca.s.sie only took her eyes off the fire for an instant, but in that instant, there was a sound like gunfire. Two or three nuts had exploded at once, and when Ca.s.sie looked back she couldn't see the one Faye had thrown. It had popped-or she'd lost track of it. She couldn't tell which.

A heartbeat later it flashed through her mind to wonder about Deborah's nut-for Ca.s.sie and Nick. But she couldn't tell what had become of that one, either.

"All right, now," Diana said. "This is going to be a different kind of Circle. It's going to be more powerful than anything we've ever used before, because we need more protection than we've ever needed before. And it's going to take everybody's help." She followed this with an earnest glance at Faye, who replied with a look of utmost innocence.

Ca.s.sie watched Diana draw a circle inside the ruined foundation with her black-handled knife. The bonfire was at the center. Everyone was serious now, their eyes following the path of the knife as it cut through the soil, making an almost perfect ring with a single gap at the northeast corner.

"Everyone get inside, and then I'll close it," Diana said. They all filed inside and sat along the inner perimeter of the ring. Only Raj was left on the outside, watching anxiously and whining a little in his throat.

"After this," Diana said, closing the gap with a sweep of the knife, "no one leaves the protection of the circle. What we're summoning up inside will be dangerous, but what'll be hanging around outside will be even worse."

"How dangerous?" Sean said nervously. "What's inside, I mean."

"We'll be safe as long as we don't go near the fire or touch it," Diana said. "No matter how strong a spirit it is, it won't be able to part from the fire we use to summon it. All right," she added briskly, "now I'm going to call on the Watchtower of the East. Powers of Air, protect us!"

Standing facing the dark eastern sky and ocean, Diana held a burning stick of incense and blew it eastward across the circle. "Think of air!" she told the coven members, and at once Ca.s.sie not only thought of it, but felt it, heard it. It started as a gentle breeze blowing from the east, but then it began to gust. It became a blast, a roaring wind beating in their faces, blowing Diana's long hair backward like a banner. And then it diverted, flowing around the circ.u.mference of the circle, enclosing them.

Diana took a burning stick out of the fire and moved to stand in front of Ca.s.sie, who was seated at the southernmost edge of the circle. Waving the stick over Ca.s.sie's head, she said, "Now I'm calling on the Watchtower of the South. Powers of Fire, protect us!"

She didn't need to say, think of fire. Ca.s.sie could already feel the heat radiating on her back, could picture the pillar of flame bursting up behind her. It raced around like sparks across gunpowder, to form a circle of wildfire just outside the circle of wind.

It's not real, Ca.s.sie reminded herself. They're just symbols we're visualizing. But they were awfully concrete-looking symbols.

Diana moved again. Dipping her fingers in a paper cup, she sprinkled water across the western perimeter, between Sean and Deborah. "I'm calling on the Watchtower of the West. Powers of Water, protect us!"

It surged up, a phantom gla.s.s-green wave, cresting higher and higher. The swell flowed around to encompa.s.s the circle with a wall of water.

Lastly, Diana moved north, facing Adam and scattering salt across the northern line. "Watchtower of the North," she said, in a voice that wavered slightly and showed how much this was taking out of her. "Powers of Earth, protect us!"

The ground rumbled beneath them.

It caught Ca.s.sie off guard, and the rest of the group was even more startled than she was. They weren't used to earthquakes here in New England, but Ca.s.sie was a native Californian. She saw that Sean was about to jump up.

"Deborah, get Sean!" she cried.

In an instant, the biker girl had grabbed Sean and was forcibly holding him from running. The tremors became more and more violent- and then with a sound like a thunderclap, the ground split. A chasm opened all around the circle, spewing up a strong, sulfurous smell.

It isn't real. It isn't real, Ca.s.sie reminded herself. But surrounding her she saw the phantoms of the four elements Diana had invoked, layered one after another. A circle of raging wind, then a ring of fire, then a wall of seawater, and finally a chasm in the earth. Nothing from the outside could pa.s.s those boundaries-and Ca.s.sie wouldn't like to bet on anything from the inside getting out safely, either.

Shakily, Diana walked over to sit down in her place between Nick and Faye. "Okay," she said, almost in a whisper. "Now we all concentrate on the fire. Look into it and let the night do the rest. Let's see if anything comes to talk to us."

Ca.s.sie's eyes shifted to Melanie, beside her. "But if we're protected from everything outside, who's going to be able to come talk to us?" she murmured.

"Something from here," Melanie whispered back, looking down at the barren earth inside the circle. Inside the foundations of the house.

"Oh."

Ca.s.sie gazed into the flames, trying to clear her mind, to be open to whatever might be trying to cross the veil between the invisible world and this one. Tonight was the night, and now was the time.

The fire began smoking.

Just a little at first, as if the wood were damp.

But then the smoke got darker-still transparent, but blacker. It streamed upward and hung in a cloudy ma.s.s above the bonfire.

Then it began to change.

It was twisting, swelling, like thunderheads rolling together. As Ca.s.sie stared, her breath clogging in her

throat, it began to mold itself, to form a shape.

A man-shape.

It seemed to develop from the top down, and it was wearing old-fashioned clothes, like something out of

a history book. A hat with a high crown and a stiff brim. A cloak or cape which hung down from broad shoulders, and a wide, severe linen collar. Breeches tied below the knees. Ca.s.sie thought she could make out square-toed shoes, but at times the lower legs just dwindled into the smoke of the fire. One thing she noticed, the smoke never actually detached from the fire, it always remained connected by a thin trail.

The figure floated there motionless except for eddies within itself.

Then it drifted toward Ca.s.sie.

She was the one who seemed to be facing it straight on. A sudden thought came into her mind. When

Adam had first taken the crystal skull out of his backpack on the beach, it had seemed to be looking directly at her. And again-at the skull ceremony, she remembered. When Diana had pulled the cloth off the skull then, those hollow eyesockets had seemed to be staring right into Ca.s.sie's eyes.

Now this thing was staring at her in the same way.

"We should ask it a question," Melanie said, but even her usually calm voice was unsteady. There was a

feeling of menace about the cloudy shape, of evil. Like the dark energy inside the skull, only stronger.More immediate.Who are you? thought Ca.s.sie, but her tongue was frozen, and anyway, she didn't need to ask. There was no doubt at all in her mind who the shape in front of her was.

Black John.

Then came Diana's voice, clear and carefully calm. "We've invited you here because we've found

something of yours," she said. "We need to know how to control it. Will you talk to us?"

There was no answer. Ca.s.sie thought the thing was moving closer to her-but maybe it was just anillusion."There are terrible things going on," Adam said. "They have to be stopped."No illusion. It was coming closer."Are you controlling the dark energy?" Melanie asked abruptly, and Laurel's voice blended with hers: "You're dead! You've got no right to be interfering with the living."

"What's your problem, anyway?" Deborah demanded.

Too fast, Ca.s.sie thought. Too many people asking questions. The shape was drifting steadily closer.

Ca.s.sie felt paralyzed, as if she were in danger that no one else saw.

"Who killed Kori?" Doug Henderson was snarling.

"Why did the dark energy lead us to the cemetery?" Deborah jumped in.

"And what happened to Jeffrey?" Suzan added.

The trail of smoke connecting the shape to the fire was stretched out thin, and the shape was right in front

of Ca.s.sie. She was afraid to look into that cloudy, indistinct face, but she had to. In its contours she thought she could recognize the face she'd glimpsed inside the crystal skull.

Get up, Ca.s.sie.

The words weren't real words, they were in her mind. And they had some power over her. Ca.s.sie felt herself shift position, begin to rise.

Come with me, Ca.s.sie.

The others were still asking questions, and dimly Ca.s.sie could hear barking far away. But much louder was the voice in her mind.

Ca.s.sie, come.She got to her feet. The swirling darkness seemed to be less transparent now. More solid. It wasreaching out a formless hand.

Ca.s.sie reached out with her own hand to take it.