The Captive Page 0,62

figure into the hallway. Melanie, Laurel, and Deborah converged from different directions.

"We looked in all the rooms on this floor," Melanie said. "There's no one else up here."

"My grandmother-" Cassie began.

"Help us get Mrs. Blake downstairs," Nick said.

At the bottom of the stairs, the black prints turned left and then crossed and recrossed. A thought flashed into Cassie's mind.

"Melanie, Laurel, can you take my mom outside? Out of the light? Will you make sure she's safe?" Melanie nodded, and Cassie said, "I'll be out as soon as I can."

"Be careful" Laurel said urgently.

Cassie saw them leading her mother to the door, then she made herself stop looking. "Come on," she said to Nick and Deborah. "I think my grandma's in the kitchen."

A line of footprints led that way, but it wasn't just that, it was a feeling Cassie had. A terrible feeling that her grandmother was in the kitchen, and that she wasn't alone.

Deborah walked like a stalking huntress, following the black marks down the twisting hallways to the old wing of the house, the one built by the original witches in 1693.

Nick was behind Cassie, and Cassie realized vaguely that they were protecting her, giving her the safest place in line. But there was no safe place in this house now. As they crossed the threshold into the old wing, the red light seemed to get stronger, and the air even thicker. Cassie felt her lungs laboring.

Oh, God, it looked like fire in here. The red light was everywhere and the air burned Cassie's skin. Deborah stopped and Cassie almost ran into her. She struggled to see over Deborah's shoulder, but her eyes were sore and streaming.

She felt Nick behind her, his hand gripping her shoulder hard. Cassie tried to make her eyes focus, squinting into the thick red light.

She could see her grandmother! The old woman was lying in front of the hearth, by the long wooden table she had worked at so often. The table was on its side, and herbs and drying racks were scattered on the floor. Cassie started toward her grandmother, but there was something else there, something her mind didn't want to take in. Nick was holding her back, and Cassie stared at the thing bending over the old woman.

It was burned, black, hideous. It looked as if its skin was hard and cracked. It had the shape of a man, but Cassie couldn't see eyes or clothes or hair. When it looked up at them she got a brief, terrifying impression of a skull shining silver through the blackness of its face.

It had seen them now. Cassie felt as if she and Nick and Deborah were welded together; Nick was still holding her, and she was clutching Deborah. She wanted to run, but she couldn't, because there was her grandmother on the floor. She couldn't leave her grandmother alone with the burned thing.

But she couldn't fight, either. She didn't know how to fight something like this. And Cassie could no longer feel any connection to the elements; in this horrible oven of a room she felt as if she were cut off from everything outside.

What weapons did they have? The hematite in Cassie's pocket wasn't cool anymore; when she thrust her hand in to touch it, it burned. No good. Air and Fire and Earth were all against them. They needed something this creature didn't control.

"Think of water," she shouted to Nick and Deborah. Her voice was stifled in the oppressive blistering air. "Think of the ocean- cold water-ice!"

As she said it, she thought herself, trying to remember what water was like. Cool. . . blue. . . endless. Suddenly she remembered looking over the bluff when she'd first come to her grandmother's house, seeing a blue so intense it took her breath away. The ocean, unimaginably vast, spread out before her. She could picture it now; blue and gray like Adam's eyes. Sunlight glinted off the waves, and Adam's eyes were sparkling, laughing ....

Wind rattled the windows in their casements, and the faucet in the sink began to shake. It burst a leak somewhere at its base and a thin stream of white water sprayed up. Something burst in the dishwasher, too, and water gushed on the floor. Water was hissing out of the pipe under the sink.

"Now!" Deborah shouted. "Come on, get him now!"

Cassie knew it was wrong even as Deborah said it. They weren't strong enough, not nearly strong enough to take this thing on directly. But Deborah, always