"What if it's still here, somewhere... waiting?" she said.
"I doubt it," Melanie said, her voice as level and uninflected as usual. "It couldn't hang around without being stored somehow; it would just evaporate. It either came here and did something, or-" Again, though, she could only finish her sentence with a shrug.
"But what could it do here? I don't see any signs of damage, and I feel..." Still frowning, Diana caught the circling peridot in her left hand and held it. "This place feels confused- strange-but I don't sense any harm the dark energy has done. Cassie?"
Cassie tried to search her own feelings. Confusion-as Diana said. And she felt dread and anger and all sorts of churned-up emotions-but maybe that was just her. She was in no state to get a clear reading on anything.
"I don't know," she had to say to Diana. "I don't like it here."
"Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that we don't see any burns the dark energy could have left, or sense anything it's destroyed or hurt," Diana said.
Deborah's voice was impatient. "Why are you asking her, anyway?" she said with a jerk of her dark head toward Cassie. "She's hardly even one of us-"
"Cassie's as much a part of the Circle as you are," Adam interrupted, unusually curt. Cassie saw the arch, amused glance Faye threw him and wanted to intervene, but Diana was agreeing heatedly with Adam, and Deborah was bridling, glaring at both of them. It looked as if an argument would break out.
"Be quiet!" Laurel said sharply. "Listen!" Cassie heard it as soon as the voices died down; the quiet crunch of gravel at the roadside. It was noticeable only against the deathly quiet of the autumn twilight.
"Somebody's coming," Chris Henderson said. He and Doug were poised for a fight.
They were all hideously on edge, Cassie realized. The crunch of footsteps sounded as loud as firecrackers now, grating against her taut nerves. She saw a dim shape beside the road, and then saw Adam move forward, so that he was in front of both Diana and her. I'm going to have to talk to him about that, she thought irrelevantly.
There was a pause in the footsteps, and the dim shape came toward them. Adam and the Henderson brothers looked ready to rush it. Quarrel forgotten, Deborah looked ready too. Sean was cowering behind Faye. Cassie's heart began to pound.
Then she noticed a spot of red like a tiny burning coal floating near the figure, and she heard a familiar voice.
"If you want me, you got me. Four against one ought to be about fair."
With a whoop, Chris Henderson rushed forward. "Nick!"
Doug grinned, while still managing to look as if he might jump the approaching figure. Adam relaxed and stepped back.
"You sure, Adam? We can settle this right here," Nick said as he reached the group, the end of his cigarette glowing as he inhaled. Adam's eyes narrowed, and then Cassie saw the daredevil smile he'd worn at Cape Cod, when four guys with a gun had been chasing him. What was wrong with him, what was wrong with everybody tonight? she wondered. They were all acting crazy.
Diana put a restraining hand on Adam's arm. "No fighting," she said quietly.
Nick looked at her, then shrugged. "Kind of nervous, aren't you?" he said, surveying the group.
Sean emerged from behind Faye. "I'm just high-strung."
"Yes, you ought to be-from a tree," Faye said contemptuously.
Nick didn't smile, but then Nick never smiled. As always, his face was handsome but cold. "Well, maybe you have a reason to be nervous-at least some of you," he said.
"What's that supposed to mean? We came here looking for the dark energy that escaped last night," said Adam.
Nick went still, as if struck by a new idea, then his cigarette glowed again. "Maybe you're looking in the wrong place," he said expressionlessly.
Diana's voice was quiet. "Nick, will you please just tell us what you mean?"
Nick looked around at them all. "I mean," he said deliberately, "that while you've been scurrying around here, a crew's been up at Devil's Cove, pulling rocks off old Fogle."
Fogle? Cassie couldn't place the name. And then suddenly she saw it in her mind's eye-on a brass plate in a wood-paneled office. "Our principal?" she gasped.
"You got it. They say he got caught in an avalanche."
"An avalanche?" demanded Laurel in disbelief. "Around here?"
"How else do you explain the two-ton chunk of granite that was on top of him? Not to mention all the smaller stuff."