The Power Page 0,21

and shrugged.

"Anyway, this morning I waited outside her house, and she went back to meet him. They had a booth at the back, though, not near a window. So I went inside, but I really couldn't see what was going on. I think she gave him something, but I don't know what."

"Wonderful," Suzan said, and Deborah glared at her.

"I mean, wonderful that she's - what do you call it? In league with him. Is anybody going to eat that doughnut?" Suzan daintily shook off powdered sugar and bit in.

Laurel murmured something about white sugar being worse than rat poison, but she didn't have the energy to say more.

"It's good," Suzan said indistinctly. "The only thing it's missing is cream filling."

"I think we'd better go talk with the old ladies," Cassie said. "With Adam's grandmother, I mean, and Laurel's grandmother and Melanie's great-aunt."

"Today's a good day," Melanie volunteered. "Every Sunday afternoon they get together and have lunch at our place: a kind of tea, you know, with sandwiches and little cakes and stuff."

"That's right," Cassie said. "My grandmother used to go too."

"Cakes?" said Suzan, looking interested. "Why didn't you say so? Let's go."

"Right - no, wait," Diana said. She looked around the group. "Look, it's probably pointless to ask this, but did any of you take the piece of hematite out of Cassie's room?" Everyone stared at her, then at each other. Everyone except Cassie and Laurel. Heads were shaken, and all the faces wore the same look of puzzlement.

"Somebody took the hematite?" Deborah asked. "The piece you found at Number Thirteen?" Cassie nodded, unobtrusively studying the other members of the Circle. Adam was frowning, the Henderson brothers looked blank. Sean looked nervous, but then Sean always looked nervous. Melanie seemed troubled, Nick was slowly shaking his head, and Suzan was shrugging.

"I didn't think anybody would admit to it," Diana said. "But I suspect that's because the person who took it isn't here. She's at Perko's Koffee Kup." Diana sighed. "All right. Let's go to Number Four."

Cassie had been getting quite familiar with Melanie's house since her mother had been taken to stay there. The house was in the Federal style, very similar to Cassie's grandmother's, but in much better repair. The white clapboard walls were freshly painted and everything inside had a shipshape, tidy look. Great-aunt Constance was sitting in the front parlor with old Mrs. Franklin, Adam's grandmother, and Laurel's Granny Quincey. She didn't look at all pleased to see the eleven of them crowding in the parlor door.

"Great-aunt Constance? Can we talk to you?"

The elderly woman turned a cool, disapproving eye on Melanie. She was thin and regal, and in her high-cheekboned face Cassie could detect some resemblance to Melanie's classic beauty. Her hair was still very dark, but maybe she dyed it.

"Are you here to see your mother?" she said, spotting Cassie in the group. "She's fast asleep right now; I really don't think she should be disturbed."

"Actually, Aunt Constance, we came to talk to you," Melanie said. She looked at the other women in the parlor. "To all three of you."

A line appeared between Great-aunt Constance's eyebrows, but the short plump woman sitting on the sofa said, "Oh, let them in, Connie. Why not? There you are, Adam. What kept you out so late last night, hm?"

"I didn't realize you noticed, Grandma," Adam said.

"Oh, I notice more than people think," Mrs. Franklin chuckled, picking up a cookie and popping it into her mouth. Her gray hair was piled untidily on her head in braids, and there was a disorganized air about her that contrasted with the austere white and gold parlor. Cassie liked her.

"What's going on, Laurel?" a quavery voice asked, and Cassie looked at Granny Quincey, a tiny woman with a face like a dried apple. She was actually Laurel's great-grandmother, and she was so little and light she looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away.

"Well - " Laurel looked at Adam, who spoke up.

"Actually, it has something to do with what my grandmother asked me. What I was out doing last night. And it has to do with something that happened a long time ago, right around the time all of us kids were born."

Great-aunt Constance was really frowning now, and Granny Quincey's lips were pursed together. Old Mrs. Franklin was chuckling, but she was looking around the room in a way that made Cassie wonder if she'd really heard her grandson.

"Well?" Great-aunt Constance said sharply. "Explain yourself."

Adam glanced back