Standing facing the dark eastern sky and ocean, Diana held a burning stick of incense and blew it eastward across the circle. "Think of air!" she told the coven members, and at once Cassie not only thought of it, but felt it, heard it. It started as a gentle breeze blowing from the east, but then it began to gust. It became a blast, a roaring wind beating in their faces, blowing Diana's long hair backward like a banner. And then it diverted, flowing around the circumference of the circle, enclosing them.
Diana took a burning stick out of the fire and moved to stand in front of Cassie, who was seated at the southernmost edge of the circle. Waving the stick over Cassie's head, she said, "Now I'm calling on the Watchtower of the South. Powers of Fire, protect us!"
She didn't need to say, think of fire. Cassie could already feel the heat radiating on her back, could picture the pillar of flame bursting up behind her. It raced around like sparks across gunpowder, to form a circle of wildfire just outside the circle of wind.
It's not real, Cassie reminded herself. They're just symbols we're visualizing. But they were awfully concrete-looking symbols.
Diana moved again. Dipping her fingers in a paper cup, she sprinkled water across the western perimeter, between Sean and Deborah. "I'm calling on the Watchtower of the West. Powers of Water, protect us!"
It surged up, a phantom glass-green wave, cresting higher and higher. The swell flowed around to encompass the circle with a wall of water.
Lastly, Diana moved north, facing Adam and scattering salt across the northern line. "Watchtower of the North," she said, in a voice that wavered slightly and showed how much this was taking out of her. "Powers of Earth, protect us!"
The ground rumbled beneath them.
It caught Cassie off guard, and the rest of the group was even more startled than she was. They weren't used to earthquakes here in New England, but Cassie was a native Californian. She saw that Sean was about to jump up.
"Deborah, get Sean!" she cried.
In an instant, the biker girl had grabbed Sean and was forcibly holding him from running. The tremors became more and more violent- and then with a sound like a thunderclap, the ground split. A chasm opened all around the circle, spewing up a strong, sulfurous smell.
It isn't real. It isn't real, Cassie reminded herself. But surrounding her she saw the phantoms of the four elements Diana had invoked, layered one after another. A circle of raging wind, then a ring of fire, then a wall of seawater, and finally a chasm in the earth. Nothing from the outside could pass those boundaries-and Cassie wouldn't like to bet on anything from the inside getting out safely, either.
Shakily, Diana walked over to sit down in her place between Nick and Faye. "Okay," she said, almost in a whisper. "Now we all concentrate on the fire. Look into it and let the night do the rest. Let's see if anything comes to talk to us."
Cassie's eyes shifted to Melanie, beside her. "But if we're protected from everything outside, who's going to be able to come talk to us?" she murmured.
"Something from here," Melanie whispered back, looking down at the barren earth inside the circle. Inside the foundations of the house.
"Oh."
Cassie gazed into the flames, trying to clear her mind, to be open to whatever might be trying to cross the veil between the invisible world and this one. Tonight was the night, and now was the time.
The fire began smoking.
Just a little at first, as if the wood were damp.
But then the smoke got darker-still transparent, but blacker. It streamed upward and hung in a cloudy mass above the bonfire.
Then it began to change.
It was twisting, swelling, like thunderheads rolling together. As Cassie stared, her breath clogging in her throat, it began to mold itself, to form a shape.
A man-shape.
It seemed to develop from the top down, and it was wearing old-fashioned clothes, like something out of a history book. A hat with a high crown and a stiff brim. A cloak or cape which hung down from broad shoulders, and a wide, severe linen collar. Breeches tied below the knees. Cassie thought she could make out square-toed shoes, but at times the lower legs just dwindled into the smoke of the fire. One thing she noticed, the smoke never actually detached from the fire, it always remained connected by a thin trail.
The figure floated there motionless except for eddies within itself.
Then it drifted toward Cassie.
She was the one who seemed to be facing it straight on. A sudden thought came into her mind. When Adam had first taken the crystal skull out of his backpack on the beach, it had seemed to be looking directly at her. And again-at the skull ceremony, she remembered. When Diana had pulled the cloth off the skull then, those hollow eyesockets had seemed to be staring right into Cassie's eyes.
Now this thing was staring at her in the same way.
"We should ask it a question," Melanie said, but even her usually calm voice was unsteady. There was a feeling of menace about the cloudy shape, of evil. Like the dark energy inside the skull, only stronger. More immediate.
Who are you? thought Cassie, but her tongue was frozen, and anyway, she didn't need to ask. There was no doubt at all in her mind who the shape in front of her was.
Black John.
Then came Diana's voice, clear and carefully calm. "We've invited you here because we've found something of yours," she said. "We need to know how to control it. Will you talk to us?"
There was no answer. Cassie thought the thing was moving closer to her-but maybe it was just an illusion.
"There are terrible things going on," Adam said. "They have to be stopped."
No illusion. It was coming closer.