The Temptation

Within seconds, Cassie was up to her ankles in water, then up to her knees. She looked down and could see the clouded tops of her feet, tinted green and submerged.



But she still held tight to the book. The slithering things rose up from Faye’s skin, on her face and neck, up her hands to her elbows. They squirmed like flesh-hungry maggots.



The water continued to rise over the tops of Cassie’s shivering thighs. No longer able to support herself, she began to slide through it—swept in by a current. The lighter furniture in her bedroom floated and spun along with her, like driftwood in an angry river.



Finally, Cassie’s head went under. She struggled, kicking her limbs and fighting to breathe, gasping at the surface, until she remembered to relax—as she would have done in the ocean if caught in a riptide. She buoyed herself up with the book, letting the water flow freely around her, and soon she was able to right herself and begin to float.



The book fed her a line: non magis pulvia, non magis aqua.



She said the words quietly, but they were enough.



The rain stopped falling. Cassie repeated the words again, and the raging water, which had threatened her life a moment before, began to sink down, as if a stopper had been pulled on its drain.



Cassie held tight to the book as the deluge disappeared, and it whispered something else to her: reformidant et regredi.



Somehow Cassie knew to aim this spell directly at Faye. She screamed it out as loud as she could.



“Reformidant et regredi!”



Faye shrieked with what sounded to Cassie like sincere pain as she shrank back down to size. She no longer radiated that blinding iridescence onto the room.



Cassie repeated the spell again, and Faye began to retreat. The storm water she’d conjured had become nothing but a damp memory, and her power was clearly depleted. It was only then that Cassie became aware of someone pounding on her bedroom door. Nick was frantically turning the handle and jiggling the lock, yelling for Cassie, asking if she was okay.



Faye glanced at the door and back at Cassie. Then just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone. If not for the damage left in her wake, Cassie would have believed she’d imagined the whole encounter.



A moment later Nick broke through the door.



“I’m okay,” Cassie said.



Nick was wound up, breathing heavily. “Who was it?” he asked.



“Faye,” Cassie said, and then corrected herself. “Beatrix.”



Nick looked around Cassie’s soaked and trashed bedroom, then down at the book she was still hugging close to her chest.



“You need to find a better place to hide that thing,” he said. “And it wouldn’t hurt for us to try to put a protective spell on the house.”



Cassie stepped over a broken lamp and placed her hand on Nick’s heart. She waited until she felt it slow to a regular rhythm. “You came to my rescue,” she said. “Again.”



Nick blushed and moved toward Cassie’s bed. “Come sit with me a minute.”



He closed his eyes to center his energy, and called out a simple spell. “Power of Air, make dry this room. Water damage be undone.”



The wooden surfaces of Cassie’s furniture lightened in color as they dried. Her bedspread crinkled like it had just come back from the laundry.



Pleased with his success, Nick plopped down and waited for Cassie to join him, but she couldn’t relax just yet. She began putting her bedroom back together as quietly as she could. She righted the nightstands and gathered her papers from every corner of the floor.



“Faye couldn’t command the book,” Cassie said, as she cleaned. “But with all that power she could have easily killed me to get it. She could have destroyed the entire house and everyone inside it with barely the blink of an eye.”



“But she didn’t,” Nick said. “So the book was obviously not all she was after.”



“She must want me alive for some reason,” Cassie said. “Maybe the ancestors even need me alive.”



She joined Nick on the bed, finally. “Do you think that’s just my own wishful thinking? That they don’t want me dead?”



Nick wrapped his strong arms around her. “I think you’re special, Cassie, and they know that.”



“But they may come after you,” Cassie said. “Or my mom. Luckily she took a pill to help her sleep tonight. Can you imagine her reaction if she’d been the one to break through my door instead of you? The shock alone may have killed her.”



She thought for another minute. “They’ll probably go after Max, too. He’s the last hunter left in New Salem.”



“Max is pretty tough,” Nick said. “He can take care of himself. But if you’re worried about it, you should warn him. Go talk to him tomorrow. I can keep a close watch on your mom and begin researching a protective spell.”



Nick’s presence quieted Cassie’s aching loneliness. His friendship meant the world to her at the moment. “I don’t want you to go back downstairs,” she said.



Nick pointed to the plush chair in the corner of the room. “Why don’t I sleep right there tonight?” he asked. “The closer we are, the better it is for both of us.”



“But you’ll be so uncomfortable,” Cassie said.



Nick grabbed a pillow and the extra blanket off the edge of Cassie’s bed. “I’ll be just fine.”



Cassie could feel her eyes closing. “If you’re sure,” she said, already drifting off. At last she would be able to get some sleep.



Chapter 7



Cassie walked down Crowhaven Road the next morning alert to her surroundings, ready for anything. If the ancestors were following her and sensed the book hidden deep in her bag—if they jumped her, mauled her—she was prepared to fight.



She knocked gently on the red wooden door she hadn’t thought she’d ever come within ten feet of. Her knuckles on the door’s surface made a dense muffled sound, not hollow like she’d thought it would. It was solid oak.



She looked around apprehensively and waited.



Max opened the door a few inches and poked his head outside. Then he instantly began to shut it in Cassie’s face. She had expected this reaction, so she was ready with a spell to hold the door open.



“Aperire non clausa,” she said softly but firmly.



No matter how hard Max tried, he couldn’t force the door closed. He looked furious.



“I came here to warn you,” Cassie said. “You might be in serious danger.”



“I have nothing left to lose,” Max said.



Cassie peeked inside the door and saw an older man and woman in the kitchen.



“Who are they?” Cassie asked.



“Family friends,” Max said. “My new guardians, now that I’m parentless.”



“They could be in danger, too,” Cassie said. “Please, Max. Just hear me out, and then I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”



Maybe it was the regret in her eyes or the desperation of her voice. It was impossible to know for sure what convinced him, but Max stepped aside and allowed Cassie to enter.



Once inside, she closed the door behind them.



The house itself was modest but clean, less extravagant than Cassie had imagined. It was the house of a family that moved around a lot, filled with mismatched furniture, most likely from a thrift store or the cheap local shops. Some things were still in brown boxes stacked in the corner of the living room, and hardly anything was hung on the flat beige walls. The house was all function, no decoration.



Cassie followed Max up a narrow carpeted stairway to his bedroom. The moment he opened its door, Cassie sensed how much it differed from the rest of the monotone house.



Max had painted the space a soothing light blue, and he’d taken great care to adorn the walls with pictures. One wall was a grid of shelves crowded with shiny sports trophies and awards. It was neat and clean, not a speck of dust anywhere.



Cassie could tell Max had gone out of his way to make his bedroom comfortable—to make it feel like his own, like home.



On a long rectangular dresser were a variety of photographs set in frames. Cassie ambled toward them. The largest one was of Max’s parents, each holding one of his hands when he was just a toddler. They appeared to be at a park. Surrounding that photo were portraits of him and various friends at different ages, and landscapes of other places he’d lived. Other countries. Max had once petted a baby Bengal tiger. He’d jumped from the top of a cascading waterfall. He’d climbed mountains. Cassie picked up the most majestic of the mountain photos, the one of Max red-faced and bundled in gear at the peak of a snowy summit.



“That’s the top of Mount Kilimanjaro,” he said. “It’s the highest mountain in Africa.”



Cassie set the frame back in place and looked at Max in a new way. “What a life you’ve lived,” she said.



There was so much more going on beneath the surface of Max than she’d ever imagined. No wonder Diana fell so hopelessly in love with him.



“May I sit down?” she asked.



Max nodded but remained standing. Cassie explained, to the best of her abilities, what had really happened that night in the caves. She described how Scarlett had deceived the Circle, and she told Max that anything for which he blamed Diana wasn’t her fault. Finally, Cassie broke the news about how Diana and the rest of the Circle were now possessed.



“The spirit that has control over Diana might try to use Diana’s love for you as a sort of weapon,” she said. “That’s what I came here to warn you about.”



Max finally allowed himself to sit down across from Cassie. He took a deep breath. “I really don’t want anything to do with this,” he said. “I’d rather forget this whole thing ever happened.”



“I get that, believe me,” Cassie said. “I’m so sorry you got dragged into all this.”



Max’s eyes filled with a sadness Cassie couldn’t identify. It wasn’t for his father, or even for Diana. It was older than that: a long-standing sadness he held inside, tinged with a sense of responsibility.



“What are the spirits after?” he asked.



“I’m not entirely sure. Revenge would be my guess. Most of them were killed by Outsiders for being witches. And I know they want my father’s Book of Shadows.”



Cassie had been carrying the book with her, thinking it was safer with her than at home, unprotected. She pulled it out of her bag.



Max eyed the book apprehensively. “What do they need it for?”



Cassie considered what could occur if the spirits did get hold of the book. “I honestly have no idea what they’d be capable of,” she said. “What I do know is that all dark magic can be traced back to the early days of this book. And to these ancestor spirits.”



“Dark magic,” Max repeated.



Cassie nodded. “The magic your family line devoted their lives to stopping.”



Warily, Max took the book from Cassie’s hands and examined it. “If you need to keep this book hidden from the spirits, you should leave it here.” He paused. “If you think it’ll keep New Salem any safer, I mean.”



“Max, they’re going to come after you,” Cassie said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They’ll want to destroy any threats, and you’re the last hunter left in town.”



“But they’re not coming after me for the book,” Max said. A half-grin snuck across his face. “They wouldn’t expect you to give it to a witch-hunter for safekeeping.”



Cassie realized he was right. The ancestors would never think to search for the book at Max’s house. She also realized that his sense of duty, the oath he took as a hunter to protect non-witches from dark magic, now made him her ally—in spite of everything.



“That’s a brave offer,” Cassie said. She tried to convey with her eyes her appreciation and her trust in him. A witch and a hunter joining forces was no small feat. “The only problem is that I need to continue studying the book, to find a spell that will save my friends. If I don’t figure out a way to get the demons out of their bodies by the next full moon, their souls will be lost forever.”



Max’s slight smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. Cassie could tell his heart ached at the thought of Diana being lost this way.



“You need to perform an exorcism,” he said. “I can help you with that.”



A glimpse of sunlight seemed to fill the room. Of course. As a hunter, Max might know more about fighting evil spirits than Cassie ever could.



“Thank you,” Cassie said. “Diana would be—”



“Don’t thank me,” Max said abruptly. “And don’t even say her name to me. I’m doing this for the safety of this town and the innocent people in it. Not for you or Diana.”