The Power Page 0,19

window seat, surrounded by a whirling crowd of rainbows. Now Diana was sitting at the desk with a pile of papers in front of her.

"So what happened?" she said, turning around.

Cassie could feel the heat in her cheeks. "I - we - we decided that we would give it a try. Being - well, sort of being together, I mean."

Diana's lips parted. She looked into Cassie's eyes, as if searching for something there. "You what?" she said, and then she caught herself. She looked at Cassie for another long moment. "I see," she said slowly.

"You're not mad?" Cassie was trying to figure out what was going on behind those emerald-green eyes.

"Mad? How could I be mad at you? I'm just - surprised, that's all. But don't worry about it. Nick's a nice guy, and I know you won't hurt him. You know how special he is."

Cassie nodded, but she was startled to hear her own words on Diana's lips. She hadn't known Diana knew.

"No, I think it's a good thing," Diana said firmly, pushing the papers out of the way.

Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. Then she looked at the papers Diana had been examining when she came in. They were old and yellowing, covered with thick strokes of black writing in columns. The writing had some odd curlicues in it and little punctuation that Cassie could see, but it was legible.

"What are these?"

"Black John's personal papers. Letters and things - we gathered them all up when we started looking for the Master Tools. I was looking through them to see if maybe I could find some weakness that we can use against him, to fight him. That's how we found out where to look for the crystal skull in the first place; he wrote a letter about it to one of Sean's ancestors and we found it in Sean's attic. Not giving the exact location of the island, of course, but giving some clues."

"I didn't realize he would trust anybody enough to give them clues."

"He didn't. Apparently, he was planning to go back and get the skull, either to use it or to put it somewhere safer, but he died before he could do it."

"He drowned," Cassie murmured, turning over a small rectangular paper in her fingers. It was printed Massachusetts-Bay Colony, 8 dollars. Good grief, it was money, money from the 1600s.

"You said that before," Diana said, eyeing Cassie thoughtfully. "I wondered then how you knew."

"What? Oh, I guess one of you told me." Cassie tried to think. "Maybe Melanie."

"Melanie couldn't have told you. None of us could have, Cassie, because none of us ever knew it. You're the first person who's suggested he died at sea."

"But . . ." Bewildered, Cassie searched her mind, trying to think where she'd come up with the idea. "But then how . . ." Suddenly she knew. "My dreams," she whispered, backing up to the bed. "Oh, Diana, he's been in my dreams. I dreamed about drowning, about being on a ship that was going down. But it wasn't me, it was him. It was Black John."

"Cassie." Diana came over and sat down beside her. "Are you sure it was him?"

"Yes. Because it happened again today, when I saw him at the cemetery. I looked into his eyes - and then I felt myself falling. Drowning. There was salt water all around me, and it was cold. I could taste it."

Diana put her arms around Cassie's heaving shoulders. "Don't think about it anymore."

"I'm all right," Cassie whispered. "But why would he make me go through that? Why would he put it in my head? Is he trying to kill me?"

"I don't know," Diana said, her voice unsteady. "Cassie, I told you before, you don't have to stay here - "

"I do, though." Cassie thought of her grandmother, and words echoed in her mind. There's nothing frightening in the dark, if you just face it.

The ocean was dark, dark as midnight underwater, and cold as hematite. But I can face that, Cassie thought. I refuse to be afraid of it. I refuse. She pushed the fear away from her and slowly felt the trembling inside her steady.

My line has the sight and the power, she thought. I want to use that power to stand up to him. To face him.

She drew away from Diana. "I think you've got the right idea tonight," she said, nodding at the papers on the desk. "You go through those, and your Book of Shadows, and