The Captive Page 0,64

carry on the fight. Let me do that before I die. Otherwise it's all been meaningless, everything." She coughed again. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. That girl-Faye-she fooled me. I didn't think she would move this fast. I thought we would have more time-but we don't. So, now listen."

She drew a painful breath, fingers holding Cassie's so hard it hurt, and her dark old eyes stared into Cassie's. "You come from a long line of witches, Cassie. You know that. But you don't know that our family has always had the clearest sight and the most power. We've been the strongest line and we can see the future- but the others don't always believe that. Not even our own kind."

Her eyes lifted to look at Deborah. "You young people, you think you come up with everything new, don't you?" Her seamed old face wrinkled in a laugh, although there was no sound. "You don't have much respect for old folks, or even for your parents. You think we lived our lives standing still, don't you?"

She's wandering, Cassie thought. She doesn't know what she's saying. But her grandmother was going on.

"Your idea about getting out the old books and reviving the old traditions-you think you were the only ones to come up with that, don't you?"

Cassie just shook her head helplessly, but Deborah, brows drawn together in a scowl, said, "Well, weren't we?"

"No. Oh, my dears, no. In my day, when I was a little girl, we played with it. We had meetings sometimes, and those of us with the sight would make notes of what we saw, and those with the healing touch would talk about herbs and things. But it was your parents' generation who got up a real coven."

"Our parents?" Deborah said in disbelief. "My parents are so scared of magic they practically puke if you mention it. My parents would never-"

"That's now," Cassie's grandmother said calmly, as Cassie tried to hush Deborah. "That's now. They've forgotten-they made themselves forget. They had to, you see, to survive. But things were different when they were young. They were just a little older than you, the children of Crowhaven Road. Your mother was maybe nineteen, Deborah, and Cassie's mother was just seventeen. That was when the Man in Black came to New Salem."

"Grandma..." Cassie whispered. Icy prickles were going up and down her spine. This room, which had been so hot, was making her shiver. "Oh, Grandma, please..."

"You don't want to know. I know. I understand. But you have to listen, both of you. You have to understand what you're up against."

With another cough, Cassie's grandmother shifted position slightly, her eyes going opaque with memory. "That was the fall of 1974. The coldest November we'd had in decades. I'll never forget him on the doorstep, kicking the snow off his boots. He was going to move into Number Thirteen, he said, and he needed a match to light the wood he was carrying. There was no other kind of heat in that old house; it had been empty since he'd left it the first time."

"Since what?" Cassie said.

"Since 1696. Since he'd left the first time to go to sea, and drowned when his ship went down." Her grandmother nodded without looking at Cassie. "Oh, yes, it was Black John. But we didn't know that then. How much suffering could have been prevented if we had... but there's no use thinking about that." She patted Cassie's hand. "We lent him matches, and the girls and young men on the street helped him rebuild that old house. He was a few years older than they were, and they looked up to him. They admired him and his travels- he could tell the most marvelous stories. And he was handsome-handsome in a way that didn't show his black heart underneath. We were all fooled, all under his spell, even me.

"I don't know when he started talking to the young people about the old ways. Pretty soon, I guess; he worked fast. And they were ready to listen. They thought we parents were old and stodgy if we opposed them. And to tell the truth, not many of us objected very strongly. There's good in the old ways, and we didn't know what he was up to."

The shivers were racing all over Cassie's body by now, but she couldn't move. She could only listen to her grandmother's voice, the only sound except for the thin hiss of water in that quiet kitchen.

"He