The Power Page 0,72

linked, and that's it. There isn't anyone else for either of you, so you're stuck together for this lifetime. Maybe for a lot of lifetimes."

Cassie, still frozen, shifted her eyes to Adam.

He was looking at Diana. "Diana, I can't just ... I mean, I'll always - "

"I'll always love you, too," Diana said steadily. "You'll always be special to me, Adam. But it's Cassie you're in love with."

"Yes," Adam whispered.

Cassie looked down at the rough little stone in her palm. It was sparkling crazily and she felt very dizzy.

"Go on, go over to him," Diana said, pushing her gently.

But Cassie couldn't, so he came to her. He looked a bit dazed, but his eyes were as blue as the ocean in sunlight, and the way he smiled at her made her blush.

"Go on, kiss her," Chris said. Laurel smacked him. The rest of the Circle looked on with great interest.

Adam glared at them and kissed Cassie formally on the cheek. Then, under cover of the groans, he whispered "Later," to her in a way that made her pleasantly nervous.

Can I handle Herne? she wondered, looking up at his hair that was so many colors: dark like garnet and bright like holly berries, threaded with gold in the sunshine. I guess I'm going to have to, she thought. For a lifetime, Melanie had said; maybe a lot of lifetimes.

For some reason that made her look at Faye and Diana.

She didn't know why, and then she had a flash of memory. Sunlight. Golden sunlight, the smell of jasmine and lavender, a laughing voice singing. Kate. Kate's hair had been the impossible fair color of Diana's. But, Cassie realized now, Kate's laughing, teasing eyes had been Faye's.

An ancestress of both of them, Cassie thought. After all, they're cousins; they've got most of their ancestors in common.

But something deep inside her seemed to smile, and she wondered. Was Melanie right; was it possible to have more than one life? Could a soul keep coming back to Earth? And if so, could a soul ever - split?

"I think," she said suddenly to Diana, "that you and Faye are going to have to learn to get along. I think you two . . . need each other." "Of course," Diana said, as if it were something everybody knew. "But why?"

It was probably a crazy theory. Cassie wouldn't tell her about it, or at least not right now. Maybe tomorrow.

"I'm going to do a picture, I believe," Diana was saying thoughtfully, "to add to my collection. What do you think of the Muse, with the moon and stars around her, looking inspired?"

"I think it's a good idea," Cassie said unsteadily.

"What we really have to talk about," said Melanie, "is what we're going to do with the Master Tools now. We have power; the coven has power, and we need to decide what to do with it."

"Naw, what we need to do is party," Doug said. "To make up for all the birthdays that we missed. Chris and me didn't get a real party, and neither did Sean or Laurel..."

"Environmentalist!!," Laurel was saying firmly to Melanie. "That should be our first cause."

"I didn't get a party either," Suzan pointed out, delicately peeling the wrapper off a Twinkie.

Faye examined her nails, jewel-red, in the sunlight. "I know some people I want to hex," she said.

Cassie looked at them all, her coven, laughing and arguing and debating with each other. She looked at Nick, who was leaning back, looking amused, and he caught her eye and winked.

Then she looked at Diana, whose clear green eyes shone at her for a moment. Then, "Yes, environmentalism is good," Diana said, turning to Laurel. "But we have to think about how to improve relations with the outsiders, too ..."

Cassie looked at Adam and found him looking at her. He took her hand, closing it in his own, both of them holding the chalcedony rose.

Cassie looked down at their intertwined fingers, and it seemed that she could see the silver cord again, wrapping around their two hands, connecting them. But not just them. Filaments of the cord seemed to web out and touch the others of the group, linking them together with silver light. They were all connected, all part of one another, and the light shone around them to touch the earth and sky and sea.

Sky and sea, keep harm from me. Earth and fire, bring my desire.

They had. And they would in the future. With her inner vision, Cassie saw that the Circle was part of something bigger, like a spiral that went on and on forever, encompassing everything, touching the stars.

"I love you," Adam whispered.

From the center of the Circle, Cassie smiled.