It left, Cassie thought. It left, deliberately. We didn't win anything.
Then she turned sharply to Nick. "My mother! And Laurel and Melanie-they're out there-"
"I'll go check them. I think it's gone for now, though," he said.
For now. Nick knew the same thing she did. It wasn't defeated; it had withdrawn.
On trembling legs, Cassie went and knelt by her grandmother on the floor.
"Grandma?" she said. She was afraid the old woman was dead. But no, her grandmother was breathing heavily. Then Cassie was afraid that if the wrinkled eyelids opened, the eyes underneath would stare blankly like a doll's- but they were opening now, and they saw her, they knew her. Her grandmother's eyes were dark with pain, but they were rational.
"Cassie," she whispered. "Little Cassie."
"Grandma, you're going to be all right. Don't move." Cassie tried to think of anything else she'd heard about injured people. What to do? Keep them warm? Keep their feet elevated? "Just hang on," she told her grandmother, and to Deborah she said, "Call an ambulance, fast!"
"No," her grandmother said. She tried to sit up and her face contracted with pain. One knobby-knuckled hand clutched at the thin robe over her nightgown. Over her heart.
"Grandma, don't move," Cassie said frantically. "It's going to be all right, everything's going to be all right. . ."
"No, Cassie," her grandmother said. She was still breathing in that tortured way, but her voice was surprisingly strong. "No ambulance.
There's no time. You need to listen to me; I have something to tell you."
"You can tell me later." Cassie was crying now, but she tried to keep her voice steady.
"There won't be a later," her grandmother gasped, and then she settled back, her breathing careful and slow. She spoke distinctly, kneading Cassie's hand in her own. Her eyes were so dark, so anguished-and so kind. "Cassie, I don't have much time left, and you need to listen. This is important. Go to the fireplace and look on the right-hand side for a loose brick. It's just about the level of the mantel. Pull it out and bring me what's inside the hole."
Cassie stumbled to the hearth. A loose brick-she couldn't see; she was crying too hard. She felt with her fingers, scraping them on the roughness of mortar, and something shifted under them.
This brick. She dug her fingernails into the crumbled mortar around it and worked it back and forth until it came out. She dropped it and reached into the cool dark hollow now exposed.
Her fingertips found something smooth. She eased it closer with her nails, then grasped it and pulled it out.
It was a Book of Shadows.
The one from her dream, the one with the red leather cover. Cassie took it back to her grandmother and knelt again.
"He couldn't make me tell where it was. He couldn't make me tell anything," her grandmother said, and smiled. "My own grandmother showed me that was a good place to hide it." She stroked the book, then her age-spotted hand tightened on Cassie's. "It's yours, Cassie. From my grandmother to me to you. You have the sight and the power, as I did, as your mother does. But you can't run away like she did. You have to stay here and face him."
She stopped and coughed. Cassie looked at Deborah, who was listening intently, and then back at her grandmother. "Grandma, please. Please let us call the ambulance. You can't just give up-"
"I'm not giving anything up! I'm giving it all to you. To you, Cassie, so you can carry on the fight. Let me do that before I die. Otherwise it's all been meaningless, everything." She coughed again. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. That girl-Faye-she fooled me. I didn't think she would move this fast. I thought we would have more time-but we don't. So, now listen."
She drew a painful breath, fingers holding Cassie's so hard it hurt, and her dark old eyes stared into Cassie's. "You come from a long line of witches, Cassie. You know that. But you don't know that our family has always had the clearest sight and the most power. We've been the strongest line and we can see the future- but the others don't always believe that. Not even our own kind."
Her eyes lifted to look at Deborah. "You young people, you think you come up with everything new, don't you?" Her seamed old face wrinkled in a laugh, although there was no sound. "You don't have much respect for old folks, or even for your parents. You think we lived our lives standing still, don't you?"
She's wandering, Cassie thought. She doesn't know what she's saying. But her grandmother was going on.
"Your idea about getting out the old books and reviving the old traditions-you think you were the only ones to come up with that, don't you?"
Cassie just shook her head helplessly, but Deborah, brows drawn together in a scowl, said, "Well, weren't we?"
"No. Oh, my dears, no. In my day, when I was a little girl, we played with it. We had meetings sometimes, and those of us with the sight would make notes of what we saw, and those with the healing touch would talk about herbs and things. But it was your parents' generation who got up a real coven."
"Our parents?" Deborah said in disbelief. "My parents are so scared of magic they practically puke if you mention it. My parents would never-"
"That's now," Cassie's grandmother said calmly, as Cassie tried to hush Deborah. "That's now. They've forgotten-they made themselves forget. They had to, you see, to survive. But things were different when they were young. They were just a little older than you, the children of Crowhaven Road. Your mother was maybe nineteen, Deborah, and Cassie's mother was just seventeen. That was when the Man in Black came to New Salem."