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out of the room. They could hear her footsteps going rapidly down the stairs, then the slam of the science building's front door.

Cassie, Adam, and Diana looked at one another. Adam shook his head.

"We're in trouble," he said.

"Oh, so is that what we figured out at this meeting?" said Deborah.

Diana leaned her forehead against her hand wearily. "We need her," she said. "She is the coven leader, and we need her on our side, not on his. We'd better go talk to her."

Slowly, the Club members got up. Outside, it was too bright, and Cassie squinted. Seventh period had just ended and people were flooding out of the school exits. Cassie scanned the crowds but couldn't see Faye.

"She's probably gone home," Diana was saying. "We'll have to go after her .. ."

Cassie didn't hear the rest. Among the milling students in the parking lot she had suddenly glimpsed a familiar face. A strange familiar face, one that didn't belong here, one that she had to rack her brains to identify. For God's sake, where had she seen that turned-up nose, that straw-colored hair, those cold hazel eyes before? It was someone she'd known quite well, someone she'd been used to looking at day after day, but that she'd been only too happy to forget about when she came to New Salem.

A feeling of heat and humidity overcame Cassie. A memory of sand underfoot, sweat trickling down her sides, suntan lotion greasy on her nose. A sound of lapping waves and a smell of overheated bodies and a sense of oppression.

Cape Cod.

The familiar girl was Portia.

Chapter Four

"Hey, watch out, Cassie," Chris said, running into her as she stopped in her tracks. "What's wrong?"

"I just saw someone." Cassie could feel how wide her eyes were as she stared into the crowd. Portia had disappeared in a sea of bobbing heads. "A girl I knew this summer . . ." Her voice trailed off as her mind boggled at the task of explaining Portia to the Circle.

But Adam had seen her too. "A witch hunter," he said grimly. "The one whose brothers carried a gun. They're seriously into it - not just as a hobby, but as an obsession."

"And they've come here?" Deborah scoffed. Cassie looked back and forth between the dark-haired girl and Adam; obviously witch-hunting was something these people had encountered before. "They ought to know better."

"Maybe it was a mistake - or an accident. Maybe her parents moved and she was just transferred here or something," Laurel said, ever the optimist.

Cassie shook her head. "Portia doesn't make mistakes," she murmured. "And I pity the accident that tries to happen to her. Adam, what are we going to do?" She was almost more upset by this than she had been by the knowledge that Black John was loose somewhere in New Salem. That terror was mind-numbing, too much to deal with rationally. Fear of Portia was more familiar, and Cassie felt herself being sucked toward an old pattern of helplessness. She'd never been able to deal with Portia; she came out of every encounter tongue-tied and humiliated, defeated. Cassie shut her eyes.

I am not like that anymore. I won't be like that, she thought. But dread churned in her stomach.

"We'll deal with her," Adam was beginning bleakly when Doug leaned in, his tilted blue-green eyes sparkling.

"Hey, she's an enemy, right? Black John the Witch Dude said he wanted to help us destroy our enemies, right? So - "

"Don't even think about it," Melanie cut in swiftly. "Don't, Doug. I mean it."

Doug hunched his shoulders, but he looked at his twin sideways under his lashes.

"Bad magic," Chris muttered, staring into the distance.

Cassie looked at Adam.

"Never," Adam said reassuringly. "Don't worry, Cassie. Never."

Cassie was living with Diana now. "Obviously you can't stay in that house alone," Diana had said, and that afternoon she and Laurel and Melanie helped Cassie move her things. Adam and Deborah came too, for protection, pacing around the house restlessly, and most of the other Club members stopped by for one reason or another. Only Faye was conspicuously absent. No one had seen her since she'd disappeared from school.

The house itself wasn't too badly damaged, aside from the strange burned places on the floor and some of the doors. The official story, as decided on by the adults who'd come last night to take Cassie's grandmother's body away, was that there had been a fire and Mrs. Howard had been frightened into a heart attack. The Club hadn't