"Come on," said Adam briefly.
Chris and Doug were just outside the auditorium. They were in the center of a group of outsider students and they were getting ready to fight.
" - not gonna get away with it anymore," one of the outsider boys was caroling triumphantly.
"Oh, yeah?" Chris yelled back.
"Yeah! Your days are over, man! You're gonna get sent to the office."
"Didn't take them long to catch on," Nick murmured in Cassie's ear.
"You're all going to get sent to the office," Adam said, pushing between the outsiders to get to Chris and Doug. He faced them, holding up the handout like a magic talisman. "Fighting's a Type-B offense. You'll all go down for it."
There was a moment of uncertainty, then the outsiders drew back, eyeing each other.
"We'll see you later," they decided finally, and turned down the hall. Doug tried to go after them.
"Any time, any place," he yelled as Nick caught him and held him still. "Leggo of me!" he snarled at Nick.
"We can't afford a confrontation yet," Diana told him. "Good job," she added to Adam.
"It worked - this time," Adam said. "If I'm right about what he's doing, they'll eventually figure out that the rules are mainly against us. They may not get in trouble for fighting, but we will."
To Cassie's vast relief Deborah came around the corner at that moment. "Deb, where have you been?"
"Watching the hall monitors get their orders. They're giving them badges like SS men."
"It is like the Nazis," Cassie said.
"He's organizing a witch hunt," said Adam.
"I wonder if he's done it before," Suzan said.
Cassie started to say, "What do you mean?" but stopped in the middle of it and stared at her. Suzan, who looked so - fluffy, so brainless, who even now was groping in her purse for a compact, had done it again.
"And Faye is working for him - " Diana was saying. Cassie interrupted.
"No, wait, listen. Did you hear what Suzan just said? Don't you get it? I wonder if he's done it before. You know, I'll bet he has."
"In 1692," Adam said slowly. "In Salem. How could we be so stupid?"
"Huh?" said Chris.
"I think they're saying that Black John could have organized the Salem witch hunt," Diana said. "But - "
"Not organized, maybe, but contributed, helped it along," Cassie said. "Made sure it didn't just die out, fed the hysteria. Like he was feeding it today."
"But why?" asked Laurel.
There was a silence, then Adam lifted his head, his frown clearing. His voice was grim. "To get the coven to leave. To follow him. They couldn't hang around in that atmosphere anymore, so they followed him to New Salem, with all their tools - including the Master Tools."
"You told me that he was a leader of the original coven," Cassie said. "But I wonder if he was a leader before the coven moved to New Salem - or only after."
The faces of the Circle members were very sober.
"I think he's trying to do the same thing again," Adam said. "Turn everybody against us so we don't have anywhere else to go - but to him. He's the only one who can defend us."
"He can go to hell," Deborah said, as if this ought to be obvious.
"Yeah, well, I'm sure he doesn't think we're going to come crawling to him right now," Nick murmured. "Things may look a little different in a couple of weeks."
"I think we'd better have a talk with Faye," Diana said.
They lay in wait for Faye by the back entrance of the auditorium, where Deborah thought she was most likely to come out. When she did she had the clipboard on her arm.
"Alone at last," Nick said, and they surrounded her, the eleven of them, forcing her to a stop. Looking at the faces of the Circle members right then, Cassie was reminded of the way Faye, Deborah, and Suzan had looked when they had caught her spying on them in front of the school. Beautiful, focused, and deadly. Dangerous.
Faye looked around at them and tossed her head. It didn't work as well with her hair gathered up in a bun.
"Get out of my way. I have work to do," she said.
"For him?" Adam asked tightly. Diana laid a hand on his arm and spoke herself.
"Faye, we know you can't talk now. But we're going to have a ceremony tonight, because it's the night of Hecate - "
"And our birthday," Chris put in, aggrieved.
" - and we want you to be there."
"You're going to have a ceremony?" Faye said, looking less like a rich man's girl Friday and more like her old self, the black panther. "You can't. I'm the coven leader."
"How can you be the coven leader when you're never even with the coven? We're going to have this ceremony tonight, Faye, at the crossroads of Crowhaven and Marsh Street. With or without you. If you're there, you're welcome to lead it."
Faye looked for backing from Deborah and Suzan, her age-old supporters. But the biker's petite face was set in a hard scowl and Suzan's china-blue eyes were blank. No help was coming from that quarter.
"Traitors," Faye said contemptuously. Her beautiful, sulky mouth pinched, but she said, "I'll be there - to lead the ceremony. Now you'd better get out of here before a hall monitor spots you."
She turned and stalked away.
They all managed to get through that day without serious trouble, although Suzan received a detention for not throwing away a cupcake wrapper. Not for leaving it at a table or anything, just for not throwing it away as soon as she was done eating. It was a Type-A infraction.