The Initiation Page 0,32

didn't know you'd moved in. If I had - she threw an angry glance at Faye - "I'd have stopped by. I live down at the bottom of

Crowhaven Road

, Number One." She gave Cassie another protective squeeze. "Come on. If you want, I'll take you home now."

Cassie nodded. She would have happily followed if the girl had told her to jump out a window.

"I forgot to introduce myself," the girl said, stopping on the way to the stairs. "My name's Diana."

"I know."

Diana had a blue Acura Integra. She stopped in front of it and asked Cassie if she wanted to get anything from her locker.

With a shudder, Cassie shook her head.

"Why not?"

Cassie hesitated. Then told her. Everything.

Diana listened, arms folded, toe tapping with increasing speed as the story went on. Her green eyes were beginning to shine with an almost incandescent fury.

"Don't worry about it," was all she said at the end. "I'll call and have the custodian clean out the locker. For now, we need to get you out of here."

She drove, telling Cassie to leave the Rabbit.

"We'll take care of it later." And Cassie believed her. If Diana said it would be taken care of, it would be taken care of.

In the car, all Cassie could do was stare at a strand of long, shining hair falling over the emergency brake. It was like sunlight-colored silk. Or sunlight-and-moonlight colored, rather. For an instant, in the back of Cassie's mind, a thought popped up about someone else who had hair that was more than one color, but when she grasped after it, it was gone.

She didn't quite dare to touch the strand of hair, although she wanted to see if it felt like silk too. Instead she tried to listen to what Diana was saying.

"... and I don't know what gets into Faye sometimes. She just doesn't think. She doesn't realize what she's doing."

Cassie's eyes slid cautiously up to Diana's face. In her opinion, Faye knew exactly what she was doing. But she didn't say anything - they were pulling up to the pretty Victorian house.

"Come on," Diana said, jumping out. "Let's get you cleaned up before you go home."

Cleaned up? Cassie found out what she meant when Diana led her into an old-fashioned bathroom on the second floor. Soot stained her gray sweater, her hands, her jeans. Her hair was a mess. Her face was smudged with black and striped with tears. She looked like a war orphan.

"I'll lend you some clothes while we get yours clean. And you can get clean in this." Diana was bustling around, running hot water into a claw-footed bathtub, adding something that smelled sweet and bubbled. She put out towels, soap, shampoo, all with a speed that bewildered Cassie.

"Throw your clothes outside when you get undressed. And you can put this on afterward," she said, hanging a fluffy white bathrobe on a hook on the door. "Okay, you're set."

She disappeared, and Cassie was left staring at the shut door. She looked at the slightly steamy mirror, then at the bathtub. She felt cold and achy inside. Her muscles were trembling from tension. The hot, sweet-scented water looked perfect, and when she climbed in and it rose around her, she let out an involuntary sigh of bliss.

Oh, it was lovely. Just right. She lay and basked for a while, letting the heat soak into her bones and the light, flowery smell fill her lungs. It seemed to clear the last tired cobwebs from her head and refresh her.

She took a washcloth and scrubbed the grime off her face and body. The shampoo smelled sweet too. When she finally got out of the tub and wrapped herself in the big white terrycloth robe, she was clean, and warm, and more relaxed than she could remember being in weeks. She still could scarcely believe this was happening, but she felt filled with light.

The bathroom was old-fashioned, but not in an ugly way, she decided. Pretty towels and jars of colored bath salts and what looked like potpourri made it nice.

She slipped on the soft white slippers Diana had left and padded into the hall.

The door opposite was ajar. Hesitantly she knocked, pushed it open. Then she stopped on the threshold.

Diana was sitting on a window seat, head bent over Cassie's gray sweater on her lap. Above her, in the window, prisms were hanging. The sun was striking them so that little triangles of rainbow fell in the room: bands of violet and green and orangy-red.