The Initiation Page 0,52

story was something that resonated in their bones; not a cobwebby tale from the dead past, but a living warning.

"What happened?" Cassie asked at last, her own voice subdued.

"To the accused witches? They died. The unlucky ones, at least, the ones who wouldn't confess. Nineteen were hanged before the governor put a stop to it. The last public executions took place exactly three hundred years ago... September 22, the fall equinox, 1692. No, the poor accused witches didn't have much luck. But the real witches... well..." Faye smiled.

"The real witches got away. Discreetly, of course. After the fuss was over. They quietly packed up and moved north to start their own little village, where no one would point fingers because everyone would be the same. And they called their little village..." She looked at Cassie.

"New Salem," Cassie said. In her mind, she was seeing the crest on the high school building. "Incorporated 1693," she added softly.

"Yes. Just one year after the trials ended. So you see, that's how our little town was founded. With just the twelve members of that coven, and their families. We" - Faye gestured gracefully around the group - "are what's left of the descendants of those twelve families. Their only descendants. While the rest of the riffraff you see around the school and the town - "

"Like Sally Waltman," Deborah put in.

" - are the descendants of the servants. The help," Faye said sweetly. "Or of outsiders who drifted in and were allowed to settle here. But those twelve houses on Crowhaven Road are the houses of the original families. Our families. They intermarried and kept their blood pure - most of them, anyway. And eventually they produced us."

"You have to understand," Diana said quietly from Cassie's side. "Some of what Faye has told you is speculation. We don't really know what caused the witch hunts in 1692. But we do know what happened with our own ancestors because we have their journals, their old records, their spell books. Their Books of Shadows." She turned and picked something up off the sand, and Cassie recognized the book that had been on the window seat the day Diana cleaned her sweater.

"This," Diana said, holding it up, "was my great-great-grandmother's. She got it from her mother, who got it from her mother, and so on. Each of them wrote in it; they recorded the spells they did, the rituals, the important events in their lives. Each of them passed it on to the next generation."

"Until our great-grandmothers' time, anyway," said Deborah. "Maybe eighty, ninety years ago. They decided the whole thing was too scary."

"Too wicked," Faye put in, her golden eyes gleaming.

"They hid the books and tried to forget the old knowledge," said Diana. "They taught their kids it was wrong to be different. They tried to be normal, to be like the outsiders."

"They were wrong," Chris said. He leaned forward, his jaw set, his face etched with pain. "We can't be like them. Kori knew that. She - " He broke off and shook his head.

"It's okay, Chris," Laurel said softly. "We know."

Sean spoke up eagerly, his thin chest puffing out. "They hid the old stuff, but we found it," he said. "We wouldn't take no for an answer."

"No, we wouldn't," said Melanie, casting an amused glance at him. "Of course, some of us were busy playing Batman while the older ones were rediscovering our heritage."

"And some of us had a little more natural talent than others," Faye added. She spread out her fingers, admiring the long red nails. "A little more natural - flair - for calling on the Powers."

"That's right," said Laurel. She raised her eye-brows and then looked significantly at Diana. "Some of us do."

"We all have talent," Diana said. "We started discovering that when we were really young - babies, practically. Even our parents couldn't ignore it. They did try to keep us from using it for a while, but most of them have given up."

"Some of them even help us," Laurel said. "Like my grandmother. But we still get most of what we need from the old books." Cassie thought about her own grandmother. Had she been trying to help Cassie? Cassie felt sure she had.

"Or from our own heads," said Doug. He grinned a wild and handsome grin and for an instant looked again like the boy who'd gone racing through the hallways on roller blades. "It's instinct, you know? Pure instinct. Primal."

"Our parents hate it," said Suzan. "My father