"Yes, of course," Adam said. "I don't understand what went wrong."
Faye was silent but looked just as confused as the others.
Adam spoke out again. "Is there anything more to the spell, Diana? Does it say anything else in your book?" Diana squinted at the bottom of the page she'd been reading, then turned to the next page, and then turned it back again.
"It's nearly ill egible," she said. "But there's a scrawled line here at the bottom edge." She held her lantern close to the book's tiny wording.
"It says, 'Should nothing result, and this witch hath been true . . .' and then it stops. Whatever it said next got smudged out."
"Smudged out?" Faye grabbed the book from Diana's hands to have a look for herself. "How could something so important be smudged out?"
"It's a three-hundred-year-old book," Adam said in Diana's defense. "It's not that hard to believe." Cassie wondered if she was the only one who saw the symbol appear on Constance's forehead. Or had she imagined it? Over the echoes of Melanie's sobs, she knew it wasn't the right time to ask. Constance was lost to them forever.
It was late by the time Cassie got back home, but her mother was awake, lying on the sofa in her nightgown. She sat upright as soon as Cassie stepped in from outside.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Yes," Cassie assured her, closing and locking the door behind her.
"How's Melanie?"
"She's been better." Cassie pulled her jacket tightly closed, not wanting her mother to see she was wearing the white shift.
"And Constance?"
Cassie hesitated. She realized her mother was eyeing the Master bracelet on Cassie's left wrist. "You know then," Cassie said. "About the resuscitation spell." Her mom nodded and gestured for Cassie to join her on the sofa. "I just figured," she said. "Did it work?" At first Cassie simply shook her head and took off her coat. But she wanted to be able to tell her mom everything, even about the symbol she saw ill uminating Constance's forehead. And for once she did, without holding anything back for her mother's benefit.
Her mother surprised her by listening, really listening this time. She didn't change the subject or become so overwhelmed with fear that Cassie had to worry about her more than herself.
Until she mentioned the symbol she saw appear on Constance's forehead.
"The symbol," Cassie said, "looked like something primal. Like two bent U-shapes inside a hexagon." Cassie noticed the alarmed look that flashed across her mother's face. "What is it?"
Her mother shook her head. "Not two U-shapes," she said. "One. A W."
Cassie didn't understand what she was hearing.
"W, as in Witch," her mother said.
Cassie was breathless. Her mother closed her eyes for a moment and when she reopened them they looked as grim as two black coals.
"I know what went wrong with the spell," she said.
"There's a way a witch can be killed that can never be reversed. But there's only one kind of person who can do it."
"Who?" Cassie asked. "What kind of person?"
"A witch hunter," her mother said.
Chapter 9
Witch hunters go back as far as witches. Just as Cassie was descended from a long line of powerful ancestors, the witch hunters, too, had their lineage. That's what Cassie's mom told her as they walked down Crowhaven Road toward Melanie's house.
They walked side by side, her mother carrying a casserole dish and Cassie holding a few soothing herbs from the garden. Cassie felt her hair lifted by the salty wind coming off the ocean, and she watched the trees fill with that same wind. The birds nesting within the trees began to sing and a strange sort of calm came over her.
"The symbol you saw on Constance's forehead was an ancient mark only a true hunter could make," her mother said. "Something must have brought them to New Salem." Cassie noticed the tiny crocus buds just beginning to poke their heads up from the ground alongside the sidewalk. Spring is still on its way, she thought, even as we're being hunted and killed. "I wish whatever brought them to New Salem would leave," she said.
Melanie's house was so crowded when they arrived that they could barely get through the door. It appeared that everyone who'd been at the spring festival and seen Constance collapse had come now to pay their respects to the old woman. The first familiar face Cassie saw belonged to Sally Waltman. What was she doing here? Had she come with Portia? Were Portia's brothers, Jordan and Logan, here, too?
A million worst-case scenarios raced through Cassie's mind. Were they hoping to turn Constance's wake into a celebration? Jordan and Logan were longtime enemies of the Circle, and Cassie wouldn't put it past them to gloat publicly over the death of a witch. But when Sally met Cassie's eyes and approached her with an outstretched hand, she recognized that Sally had come alone, with only good intentions.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, and for Melanie's loss," she said. She looked a little nervous to be there. She fidgeted with her dress and played with her rust-colored hair.
"Thank you," Cassie said hesitantly.
Sally continued, speaking almost directly to Cassie's hesitation. "I know I don't belong here," she said, "and that your friends don't even like me, but Constance always greeted me warmly when I'd see her in town, and she was a nice lady, and I guess I just wanted to stop by to pay my respects."
Sally took a breath and Cassie gently patted her on the back. It was true, the Circle didn't like Sally very much, and she and Cassie would probably never really be friends, but since last fall when they'd overlooked their differences and worked together to get through Black John's hurricane, they'd had an understanding. Sally was the closest thing the group had to an Outsider ally, and that was nothing to take lightly.
"It was good of you to come," Cassie said. "Really. This was a nice gesture, and I know Melanie appreciates it." That seemed to put Sally at ease. Her small, wiry body relaxed.
"Speaking of Melanie," Cassie's mother said. "We should probably go find her."
"Of course," Sally said, and Cassie and her mother elbowed through the crowd as politely as they could until they located Melanie.
The group had Melanie surrounded like an army of black-clad secret-service agents. Most days Cassie forgot how intimidating the Circle could appear to others, and how superior they looked compared to average kids their age. It wasn't only their genetics that set them apart; it was also their attitude. But, Cassie wondered, don't they ever grow weary of striving to appear so infinitely strong to the outside world? Sometimes vulnerability was appropriate, and this was one of those times.