The Initiation Page 0,55
she could just gather her thoughts properly. She still had that nagging feeling that there was something she was missing, something obvious that she was overlooking and should be asking about. But what?
"There's a certain amount of debate over the ethics of love potions and love spells," Melanie was saying, her gray eyes not entirely approving. "Some people feel it violates a person's free will, you know. And a spell misused can rebound on the person who casts it - threefold. Some people don't feel it's worth the risk."
"And other people," Laurel said mock solemnly, her brown eyes sparkling, "say that all's fair in love and war. If you know what I mean."
Cassie bit her lip. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on that nagging worry, another thought was pushing it out of her mind.
Or, not a thought so much as a hope, the sudden glimpse of a possibility.
Love potions. And finding things out. Something to find him and bring him to her. Was there such a spell? She seemed to feel in her bones that there was.
To find him... the boy with the blue-gray eyes. Warmth pooled in Cassie's stomach and her palms tingled. The very possibility seemed to lift her on wings. Oh, please, if she could only ask one thing...
"Supposing," she said, and was relieved to hear her voice sound normal, "you wanted to, say, find somebody you'd met and lost track of. Somebody you - liked, and wanted to see again. Would there be any kind of a spell for that?"
Laurel's brown eyes sparkled again. "Now, is this a boy-type person we're supposing about here?" she said.
"Yes." Cassie knew she was blushing again.
"Well - " Laurel glanced at Melanie, who was shaking her head in a resigned way, then turned back to Cassie. "I'd say something like a simple tree spell. Trees are attuned to things like love and friendship, anything that grows and brings life. And fall is a good time to use things you harvest, like apples. So I'd do an apple spell. In one, you take an apple and split it. Then you take two needles - ordinary sewing needles - and put one through the eye of the other and bind them together with thread. Then put them inside the apple and close it up again. Tie it so it stays closed. Then tie it back on the tree and say some words to tell the tree what you want."
"What kind of words?"
"Oh, a poem or something," Laurel said. "Something to invoke the power of the tree and help you visualize what you're asking for. It's best to make it rhyme. I'm not good at making up that kind of thing, but, like: 'Friendly tree, friendly tree, bring my special friend to me.' "
No. Not quite, Cassie thought, a thrill going through her. Laurel's words were changing in her mind, transforming, expanding. She seemed to hear a voice, bell clear and yet remote.
Bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Find him, bind him, now to me.
Shoot and seedling, root and bough,
Threads of love entwine us now.
Her lips moved soundlessly with the words. Yes, she knew somehow in the very core of her that that was right. That was the spell... but would she really dare to use it?
Yes. For him, I'd risk anything, she thought. She stared down at her fingers as they absently combed through the sand. Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow I'll do it. And then afterward I'll spend every minute of every day watching and hoping. Waiting for the time when I see a shadow and look up and it's him, or when I hear footsteps and turn and see him coming. Or when -
What happened next was so startling and unexpected that Cassie almost screamed.
A wet nose thrust under her hand.
What stopped her from screaming was something like heart failure; the shriek got to her throat, and then she actually saw the dog and everything went fuzzy. Her recoiling hand fell limply back. Her lips opened and closed silently. Through a blur and a mist she stared at the liquid brown eyes and the short, silky-bristly hairs on the muzzle. The dog stared back at her, mouth open and laughing, as if to say, "Aren't you happy to see me?"
Then Cassie raised her eyes to look at the dog's master.
He was looking down at her, as he had that day on the beach in Cape Cod. The moonlight tangled in his red hair, turning some strands to flame