The Temptation (The Secret Circle #6)(20)
Author: L.J. Smith

The wind stirred, making a rushing sound through the air. It carried with it a strange sense of change.

Cassie stared down into the fire, and it suddenly seemed to be everywhere. Far and wide, hers was the only screaming voice now. It echoed from within the center of the flames. I’m in the fire, Cassie thought. I am it.

When it exploded, an ashy mist rose like a mushroom cloud, throwing Cassie skyward.

She landed flat with her arms wide open to her sides. There was an unnatural warmth to her face and a heaviness in the air. She sat up, blinked her eyes, and looked around.

Only her Circle remained. All else was gone: the ancestors, the book, even the fire.

They’d done it. In her soul, Cassie knew they had won.

The Circle gathered around her, bending, leaning.

“Cassie?” Adam said. He was staring at her strangely. So was Diana.

“Are you okay?” one of them said, just before everything went soft and gray, and all Cassie saw was darkness.

Cassie reopened her eyes to the Circle huddled around her. Adam was holding her hand.

She sat up slowly, weak and woozy. “I feel different,” she said. “Do any of you feel different?”

Adam told her to keep calm, that the spell must have been too much for her.

“Nobody else feels different?” she asked. “Scarlett?”

Scarlett’s face appeared airy and open. “I do,” she said. “I feel good.”

But Cassie didn’t feel good. There was a new void in herself, an emptiness. She felt powerless.

She got up on her feet and focused her energy on a small round rock upon the ground. It was the simplest spell she could think of, to try and make it rise. She focused every ounce of energy she had on that little pebble, and nothing happened. It didn’t budge.

“Timothy warned us that there would be consequences,” she said.

“Cassie, what are you talking about?” Adam asked.

“There needed to be a sacrifice,” Cassie said. “And it was me. I’ve lost my magic.”

CHAPTER 26

“Let’s just get you home, Cassie,” Adam said. “Everyone else can take care of cleaning up.”

Cassie didn’t have the strength to decline, so she made a motion toward the bluff. Adam put his arm around her shoulders and guided her along. Cassie didn’t offer much more than a nod good-bye to her friends, but they seemed to understand.

Only Scarlett ran after them. “Wait,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

Cassie stopped and turned.

Adam tensed up. “Can’t it wait?”

“I’m sorry, but it can’t.” Scarlett spoke almost directly to the ground. “The cord that you saw, Cassie. The one between Adam and me. It was just a ruse.”

Cassie felt her heart skip a beat.

“A ruse?” Adam said for both of them.

Scarlett nodded. “It was a visualization spell that I cast. It wasn’t real. I was just trying to tear Cassie down however I could.”

Cassie let this truth settle over her like ash. It felt like both a final moment of destruction and a cleansing rebirth. Scarlett continued talking.

“I realize now that it was the darkness controlling me all along,” she said. “I was out of control. And I’m so ashamed.”

Cassie closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t decipher if the trembling in her chest was happiness or anger or sadness. She’d had so many doubts about Adam these past weeks because of something that was a lie.

“I don’t know what to say,” she mumbled. “I need some space right now, Scarlett.”

Cassie ventured toward the beach. She heard Adam tell Scarlett to head back to the others, to help clean up. Then he chased after Cassie.

He caught her by her hand, pulled her in toward him, but at the sight of her face he faltered.

Why wasn’t she smiling?

Cassie turned to the water. Only a gentle wind was blowing, but it felt to her like a frigid gust beating against her skin.

“I knew it,” Adam said to the back of her head. “I told you. I never doubted for a second that you were my one and only soul mate.”

But Cassie did have doubts. She’d been so fooled by a fake cord that she almost let Adam go.

She wanted to feel moved now, to be calmed. But everything hurt too much.

She’d heard her father’s voice calling out from the book, warning her not to turn her back on her past. He told her that destroying the book would destroy who she really was. And it had.

Her power was gone. She’d surrendered it to the flames—and she knew! She had known, somewhere deep inside herself, that this would happen. It was a decision she had made. If I have power without love, she’d thought, I have nothing. If evil was what she was, who she was . . . she chose to sacrifice it all to the fire.

Now she had to live with that choice forever.

Adam held Cassie from behind, by the shoulders. “Aren’t you the slightest bit relieved the cord was just a trick?”

She was, but it seemed almost beside the point under these new circumstances. Love without power, she thought. If I have love without power, do I still have nothing?

“I’ve lost my magic, Adam,” she said, turning to face him. “Do you not understand that?”

Adam averted his eyes.

“Now our Circle is unbound.” Cassie found herself frantically worrying aloud. “And you might need to replace me. A loss of magic would probably have different terms than death, so it might not necessarily have to be a replacement of bloodline.”

Adam cautiously placed his hand upon Cassie’s shoulder. “Calm down,” he said. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Maybe there’s a way we can get your powers back.”

He brought Cassie in for a warm, firm embrace. “And I hope you know that I will stand by your side, no matter what happens.”

Of course Adam would. Cassie didn’t doubt that for a second. But he was refusing to acknowledge certain facts. A powerless witch was a liability.

She pulled away from Adam’s hug and looked out at the ocean spanning in front of her. She thought of Timothy, on his own and driven mad by not being able to practice witchcraft. That was the lonely, discouraged fate of a powerless witch—they were better off alone, better off isolated than to drag everyone around them under with their frustration.

Cassie wouldn’t say so out loud, but she wondered if there might be a better place for her than New Salem after all.

She turned and began walking toward her house again. Adam loyally trailed behind her, having given up on trying to make her talk, on trying to get her to look on the bright side. But he followed her the whole way home.

For the first time since they’d met, Cassie knew that Adam couldn’t understand what she was going through. He could never comprehend how sometimes love, even true love, just wasn’t enough.

CHAPTER 27

Cassie was slumped in the leather recliner in the corner. She hadn’t even wanted to attend this meeting, but coming and zoning out seemed easier than formulating a decent excuse to miss it. She stared at the modern artwork that decorated the walls of Diana’s living room. Abstract lines in black and gray and beige. Completely bereft of emotion, like she felt at the moment. Dead inside.

The group discussed their situation—an unbound Circle and a powerless Cassie—in hushed tones. What Cassie noticed in their quiet voices wasn’t compassion so much as pity. None of them could even look at her.

“We have to figure out what the heck to do now,” Scarlett said.

Max was seated beside Diana on the couch. “There must be a spell you all can do. Isn’t there a spell for just about everything?”

Laurel shook her head. “Not everything.”

“So we have an unbound Circle,” Sean said. “So what? We’ve already beaten all our enemies.”

Deborah cracked her knuckles. “There will always be more enemies.”

“That’s not the point,” Adam called out. “Cassie will never feel like herself again without her power. And she deserves to . . .” He paused, and his cheeks flushed. “Well, she deserves to feel like herself. I’d give her all my power if only I could.”

“If only,” Melanie said. “I would, too.”

“That’s it.” Diana had a stroke of inspiration that brought her right off the couch.

“Cassie,” she said, turning to her. “Timothy muttered something that time we saw him that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. About no one being willing to give him their power after he’d lost his.”

“I remember that, too,” Adam said.

Cassie did recall Timothy’s comment, but she hadn’t thought much about it at the time. “So?” she said.

“That means power can be transferred from one witch to another.” Diana sprinted to her bedroom to retrieve her Book of Shadows.

She returned to the room a minute later, flipping through its pages so quickly, Cassie feared the delicate old paper might get torn. “I think I saw a spell like that once.”

Diana was nearly frantic with new hope, but Cassie felt hardly any. If Timothy, who was brilliant and old and wise, hadn’t figured out how to get his powers back after all these years, how could Cassie expect to?

“This is it,” Diana said, finally finding what she was looking for. “It’s a variation of a binding spell.”

Everyone leaned forward as Diana silently read over the text.

“A group of witches can pool their energy and life force together,” she said, looking up. “And offer it to another witch.”

“So this is a way for Cassie to get her power back?” Scarlett asked.

Diana read over the text again. “She’d be given a small amount of power from everyone willing to bind themselves to her.”

She glanced at Cassie. “Timothy’s problem was that no one was willing to give up any power to him.”

Melanie spoke up before the group could prematurely celebrate. “It’s a lot to ask,” she said. “Anyone who participates would be choosing to make themselves weaker so Cassie can become stronger.”

“Just a tiny bit weaker, though, right?” Faye asked.

“We’re already bound to each other through the Circle,” Adam said. “Shifting some of that to Cassie might not make a big difference.”

Diana crossed the room to Cassie’s recliner. She sat on its wide leather arm. “I’m willing to give it a try,” she said. “But it might take even more than our Circle to gather enough magic to get Cassie back to normal.”

“We can ask the elders,” Laurel said. “My grandma Quincey and Adam’s grandmother, old Mrs. Franklin. And don’t forget about Cassie’s mom.”

“There are all of our parents,” Diana said. “The ones who are still alive.”

Faye tensed at this idea. “Our parents haven’t performed magic in almost twenty years. They’d rather go on pretending they don’t have powers.”

“We’ve come this far without their help,” Sean said. “We don’t need to start asking for it now.”

“I agree.” Deborah was as resentful of their parents’ generation as Faye was. “Between the eleven of us and the old crones, we’ll give Cassie all that we can. Our parents could never be counted on to come through.”

The room fell silent at last, and all eyes turned to Cassie for her reaction.

But Cassie’s feelings seemed to be on a delay, like someone had carved out the parts of her brain responsible for emotion. She couldn’t risk the disappointment that could come with getting her hopes up.

“Nobody should feel obligated to participate in this spell.” Cassie forced herself to the edge of her chair. “I can’t ask that of you, not when I’ve put you all through so much already.”

Nick, Cassie noticed, had remained quiet during the whole discussion. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Melanie cleared her throat and raised her voice. “I believe this calls for a vote,” she said, taking the center of the floor.

“All in favor,” Melanie said, “raise your—”

“No!” Cassie called out. “I don’t want there to be a vote. Whoever wants to do it should just show up. And whoever doesn’t, no judgment.”

She stood up too quickly and immediately felt dizzy. “Until then, I really need to go home. I’m sorry.”

She traversed the room to the screen door and stepped down Diana’s stone porch steps. No one chased after her. Even Adam had let her go.

Cassie pushed open the front door to her house to find all the lights turned off. The interior of the old rooms seemed cavernous in the dark, and the wooden floorboards creaked with each step Cassie took to the stairs. She headed up the narrow flight, holding tight to the banister, until she reached her mother’s bedroom door. Gently, she knuckled a soft knock.

A groggy voice replied, “Cassie?”

“Can we talk?” Cassie asked, turning the knob.

Her mother sat up. Cassie climbed into bed with her, deep into the folds of her warm, tangled sheets, as if she were a child. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actively sought her mother’s affection this way.

Perhaps because she’d been woken from a sound sleep, her mother asked no questions, she only stroked Cassie’s hair and listened.

Cassie explained everything that had happened as a result of destroying her father’s book, how the Circle had defeated the ancestor spirits, but Cassie had lost her power in the process. She told her mother about the spell her friends were going to try.

“They want to offer me some of their power,” Cassie said. “But it seems so impossible.”

“The spell might not work,” her mother clarified. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Cassie did know that, but hearing it now, uttered so plainly from her mother’s lips, brought tears to her eyes.