The Power Page 0,36

dance, and the piece of hematite she'd found at Number Thirteen. She hadn't kept any of them long. The chalcedony she'd had to give back to Adam, the quartz had been lost that same night at the burying .ground, and the hematite had been stolen. She just hoped nothing was going to happen to this amethyst.

Clouds had gathered in the night, and the sky was steely-gray as Diana drove them to school that morning. And school these days was about as bleak as the weather. Hall monitors, wearing badges and wintry expressions, stood in every corridor waiting for someone to break the rules. Which usually didn't take very long; there were so many rules that it was impossible not to break one or two just by being alive.

"We almost got sent up for wearing a noisemakin' device," Chris said as they were walking down the hall at lunchtime.

Cassie tensed. "What did you do?"

"Bribed him," Doug said with a wicked grin. "We gave him a Walkman."

"My Walkman," Chris said, aggrieved.

"I wonder what the penalty for bribing a hall monitor is?" Laurel mused as they reached the cafeteria.

Cassie opened her mouth, but the words froze on her lips. Through the glass windows of the cafeteria she could see something that wiped all thought from her mind.

"Oh God," said Laurel.

"I don't believe it," Diana whispered.

"I do," Adam said.

In the very center of the cafeteria was a wooden structure that Cassie recognized from her history books. It was made in two parts, which when closed held a person's wrists and neck securely in place, protruding through holes from the other side.

The stocks.

And they were occupied.

There was a guy inside them, a big husky guy Cassie recognized from her algebra class. He'd danced with her at Homecoming, and he'd been overly familiar with his hands. He liked to talk back to teachers, too. But she'd never seen him do anything deserving of this.

"He won't get away with it," Diana was saying, her green eyes blazing with intensity.

"Who, the principal?" Deborah asked. She and Suzan and Nick were standing by the cafeteria door, waiting for the others. "He already has. He was taking some parents on a guided tour a few minutes ago and they came through here ... he showed it to them, for God's sake. Said it was part of a 'tough love' program. Said other schools made troublemakers stand on tables so everybody could look at them, but that he thought the stocks were more humane because you could sit down. He almost made it sound reasonable. And they were just nodding and smiling - they ate it up."

Cassie felt queasy. She was thinking of the Witch Dungeon at Salem, where she and Chris and Doug had scuttled through narrow corridors lined with tiny dark cells. The stocks gave her the same sick feeling in her stomach. How can people do this to other people? she thought.

" - passing it off as part of our heritage," Nick was saying, his lip curled in disgust, and Cassie knew he felt the same way.

"Can we talk about it while we eat?" Suzan asked, shifting from one foot to the other. "I'm starving."

But as they made their way toward the back room - the private domain of the Club for the last four years - a short figure with rusty hair stepped in front of them.

"Sorry," Sally Waltman smirked. "That room is for hall monitors only, now."

"Oh, yeah?" said Deborah.

Two guys with badges appeared from nowhere and stood on either side of Sally.

"Yeah," one of them said.

Cassie looked through the glass windows of the back room - there was no crowd of hangers-on standing in front of it today - and saw Portia's tawny head. She was surrounded by girls and guys who were looking at her admiringly. They all wore badges.

"You'll just have to sit somewhere else," Sally was telling the Club. "And since there aren't enough seats at any one table, you'll have to break your group up. What a shame."

"We'll go outside," Nick said shortly, taking Cassie's arm.

Sally laughed. "I don't think so. No more eating out front. If you can't find a place to sit in here, you stand."

Cassie could feel Nick's muscles cord. She held on to his arm tightly. Diana had a similar hold on Adam, whose blue-gray eyes were like chips of steel, fixed on the guys beside Sally.

"It's not worth it," Diana said quietly, with forced calm. "It's what he wants. Let's go stand over there."

Sally looked disappointed