on the ground. "It's too bad Nick was in such a hurry to get away," he said. "If he'd stayed, he might have seen this." He reached inside with both hands and pulled out a skull.
Chapter Fourteen
It was the size and shape of a human skull, but it seemed to be made entirely of crystal. The moonlight reflected through it, inside it. It had grinning crystal teeth, and its hollow eye sockets seemed to be staring directly at Cassie.
There was a frozen instant, and then Faye grabbed for it.
"Uh-uh," Adam said, holding it away from her. "No."
"Where did you get that?" said Faye. Her voice was no longer lazy, but full of barely contained excitement.
Even through her numbness Cassie felt a twinge of apprehension at her tone, and she saw the swift glance Adam exchanged with Diana. Then he turned to Faye. "On an island."
"Which island?"
"I didn't know you were so interested. You never seemed to be before."
Faye glared. "One way or another I'll find out, Adam."
"There's nothing else where I found it. Believe me, this was the only one of the Master Tools hidden there."
Faye took a breath and then relaxed and smiled. "Well, the least you can do is give us all a chance to look at it."
"No," said Diana. "Nobody even touches it yet. We don't know anything about this except that it was used by the old coven - by Black John himself. That means it's dangerous."
"Do we know for sure this is the crystal skull Black John wrote about?" Melanie asked, her voice quiet and rational.
"Yes," Adam said. "At least, it fits the description in the old records exactly. And I found it in a place just like the place Black John described. I think it's the real thing."
"Then it needs to be cleared and purified and studied before any of us work with it," Diana said. She turned to Cassie. "Black John was one of the leaders of the original coven," she said. "He died not long after New Salem was founded, but before that he took the coven's most powerful tools and hid them. For safekeeping, he said - but really because he wanted them for himself. For personal gain and revenge," she said, looking at Faye meaningfully. "He was an evil man, and anything he touched is going to be full of negative influences. We're not going to use it until we're sure it's safe."
If Black John had had anything to do with this skull, he must have been bad, Cassie thought. In some way she couldn't explain, she could feel darkness emanating from it. If she hadn't been so heartsick and dizzy, she would have said so - but surely everyone else could see for themselves.
"The old coven never found the lost Master Tools," Laurel was saying. "They searched, because Black John had left some clues about where he might have hidden them, but they didn't have any luck. They made new tools, but none were ever as powerful as the originals."
"And now we've found one," Adam said, with a flash of excitement in his blue-gray eyes.
Diana lightly touched the back of his hand as it held the skull. She smiled up at him, and the message between them was clearer than words: pride and triumph shared. This was their project, something they'd been working on for years, and now they had succeeded at last.
Cassie clenched her teeth against the pain in her breastbone. They deserve a chance to be alone and enjoy it, she thought. With brittle, forced cheerfulness she said, "You know, I'm getting tired. I think maybe it's time..."
"Of course," Diana said, instantly concerned. "You must be exhausted. We all are. We can talk more about this at the meeting tomorrow."
Cassie nodded, and nobody else made any objections. Not even Faye. But as Diana was instructing Melanie and Laurel to walk Cassie up the beach to her house, Cassie accidentally met Faye's gaze. There was an odd, calculating expression in those golden eyes that would have bothered her if she hadn't been beyond caring by now.
At home, every light was blazing, even though the first streaks of dawn hadn't yet appeared over the ocean. Melanie and Laurel walked Cassie inside, and they found her mother and grandmother both sitting up in the parlor - a stiff old-fashioned room at the front of the house. The two women were wearing nightgowns and robes. Cassie's mother's hair was loose down her back.
Cassie saw at once by their faces that