The Captive Page 0,14

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.

The thought of those hooded golden eyes examining it, of those fingers with their long red nails gripping it, made Cassie feel sick. An image flitted through her mind, of a golden-eyed falcon with its talons extended. A bird of prey.

She couldn't go through with it.

But then what about Diana? Cassie's head bent in exhaustion, in defeat. She didn't know what to do about Diana. She didn't know how to solve anything. All she knew was that she couldn't hand the skull over to Faye.

There was a throat-clearing sound behind her.

"I knew you could do it," Faye said in her husky voice as Cassie, still on her knees, spun around to look. "I had complete faith in you, Cassie. And now my faith is justified."

"How did you know?" Cassie was on her feet. "How did you know where I was?"

Faye smiled. "I told you I have friends who see a lot. One of them just brought me the news."

"It doesn't matter," Cassie said, forcibly calming herself. "You can't have it, Faye."

"That's where you're wrong. I do have it. I'm stronger than you are, Cassie," Faye said. And as she stood there on a little dune above Cassie, tall and stunning in black pants and a loose-knit scarlet top, Cassie knew it was true. "I'm taking the skull now. You can run to Diana if you want, but you'll be too late."

Cassie stared at her a long minute, breathing quickly. Then she said, "No. I'm coming with you."

"What?"

"I'm coming with you." In contrast to Faye, Cassie was small. And she was dirty and disheveled, with sand in every crease of her clothes and under her fingernails, but she was relentless. "You said you only wanted the skull to 'look at it for a while.' That was the reason I agreed to get it for you. Well, now I've found it, but I'm not going to leave you alone with it.