The Power Page 0,60

witch, isn't she?" Sally yelled back in her raucous voice. "You telling me witches don't know these things? They know more about nature than you ever will! Now come on!"

"Sally, have you lost your mind?" The thin angry voice came from the door of the back room, where Portia was standing in front of a group of students with badges, her face chalky with fury. "You're a hall monitor - " "Not anymore! I said move, you guys!" "This is completely against regulations! I'm going to tell Mr. Brunswick - "

"You do that, cupcake," Sally shouted back. "I/ you can find him! Now for the last time, people, get moving! Who are you going to listen to, her or me?"

The hall monitors behind Portia hesitated for an instant, then, as a group, they surged forward to obey Sally. Portia stumbled back as they pushed around her, leaving her the sole inhabitant of the room. Cassie's last glimpse of her showed her standing there, rigid, furious, and utterly alone.

Sally began to shout more instructions to the cafeteria workers, and Cassie turned to go. But as Cassie reached the door, each of the girls paused a moment, and looked back at the other across the room.

"You going to be okay?" Sally said. Cassie knew the "you" didn't just mean Cassie. It meant the whole Circle.

"Yes."

"Okay. Good luck."

"You too. Good-bye, Sally."

It wasn't much of a brilliant cultural exchange, Cassie thought, running toward the parking lot to meet Diana. But it was a truce, witch with outsider. More than a truce.

And now, she thought, I've got to put them out of my mind - all the outsiders. Sally will take care of her people; we have to take care of ours.

It was raining hard now, and it seemed to get worse as she and Diana drove toward Crow-haven Road. Gusts of wind swayed Diana's car as they pulled into Adam's driveway.

Right behind them, Adam's jeep was pulling in. "They've got Sean," Cassie said, twisting to look. She and Diana hurried to help.

Nick and Doug were holding the smaller boy in the backseat. They marched him to the door the way Portia's brothers had marched Cassie. It seemed a little incongruous; Sean was so small - but then Cassie looked into those shiny, darting black eyes.

"You'd better get the hematite off him quick," she said.

Nick pulled Sean's sweater up - and there it was, the engraved belt Cassie had seen that first week of school. Adam unbuckled it and threw it on the floor, where it lay like a dead snake. "Where's the other piece?" he asked Sean roughly.

Sean just fought to get free, panting, his eyes wild. It took all three of the guys to hold him, and if Chris, Deborah, and Laurel hadn't arrived at that moment, he might actually have gotten away. Working together, the boys and Deborah managed to strip off his sweater and shirt. Underneath, where the other members of the Circle had been wearing amethysts, Sean was wearing a small leather pouch. Adam shook it gingerly and Cassie's piece of hematite fell out.

"Thief!" Deborah said, shaking a fist in Sean's face. Sean stared at her blankly, still panting, terrified.

"He probably didn't even know he had it," Melanie intervened. "He's been under Black John's influence from the beginning. Somebody take that hematite out and bury it. Laurel, is the herbal bath ready?"

"Ready!" came Laurel's shout from the downstairs bathroom, over the sound of running water. "Get him in here."

The Circle had been planning this purification ritual ever since they'd found out about Sean, and everyone knew his or her part. The boys dragged Sean into the bathroom while Laurel stood just outside the door. "I don't care if his clothes are off or on," Cassie heard her calling. "Just get him in the tub."

Deborah scooped up the hematite in a dustpan and went to bury it, and Diana rapidly completed an herbal charm she took from her backpack. She charged the canvas pouch of herbs with Earth, Water, Air, and Fire by sprinkling salt on it, flicking water from a glass on it, breathing on it, and passing it over a lit candle which had been sitting ready on the coffee table.

"Okay, it's done," she said. "Melanie, what about you?" Melanie looked up from laying a ring of white stones on the floor. "I'm done too. By the time we're finished with Sean, he'll be so pure we won't know him anymore."

Cassie wanted to look something up in her Book