"What if somebody runs them over?" Suzan asked pragmatically.
"Well, I guess if we don't see it, it doesn't matter," Diana said. "Wait, though, there's something else I wanted to do. It's not part of the night of Hecate, but it's another Greek thing, the Arretophoria. It means the trust festival." She reached into the white bag again. "The Greek priestesses of Athena used to do this. It's where one of the older members of the group - that's me - gives a box to the youngest member - that's you, Cassie. You have to go bury the box somewhere without looking at what's inside it. It's supposed to be a dark and perilous journey you go on, but I think Nick's right and you'd better stick around here. Just take it off the road somewhere and bury it."
"And that's all?" Cassie looked at the box Diana had given her. It was made of some light-colored wood, carved all over with tiny, intricate figures: bees and bears and fish. Something inside it rattled. "I just bury it?"
"That's all," Diana said, handing Cassie the last item from the white bag: a small trowel. "The point is that you don't look inside it. That's why it's called the trust festival; it's a celebration of trust and responsibility and friendship. Someday later we'll come back and dig it up."
"Okay." Carrying the box and trowel, Cassie stepped outside the circle and walked away from the group, leaving the little dancing points, of flame behind.
She didn't want to bury the box close to the road. For one thing, the soil was hard and strewn with gravel; it wouldn't be easy to dig here; she'd just be scratching at the surface. Besides, this close someone might see the ground had been disturbed and dig the box up before its time.
Cassie kept walking east. She could hear the whispering of the sea from that direction and feel a faint, salty breeze. She climbed over some large rocks, and the beach stretched out before her, deserted and somehow eerie. Lacy white waves were lapping quietly at the shore.
A yellow moon, just over half full, was rising above the ocean. The mourning moon, Cassie remembered. It was just the color of Faye's eyes. In fact, it looked like a jaundiced, ancient eye, and Cassie had the uncomfortable sense of being spied on as she stuck the trowel into the cold dry sand and began to dig.
That was deep enough. The sand scooped out by the trowel was caked now, and she hoped the moisture wouldn't ruin Diana's box. As Cassie put the wooden box in the hole, moonlight glinted off the brass hasp. It wasn't locked. For just an instant, she had the temptation to open it.
Don't be stupid, she told herself. After all you and Diana have been through, if you can't do a little thing like bury a box without looking inside...
Nobody would know, the voice in her mind countered defensively.
I would know, Cassie told the voice. So there. She dumped sand on the box decisively, scooping with both the trowel and her hand to cover it faster.
It was sometime while she was covering the box that she noticed the blackness.
It's just a shadow, she thought. The moon was high enough now to throw a long shadow behind an outcrop of rock which was closer to the water than Cassie. Cassie watched it out of the corner of her eye as she smoothed the sand over the buried box. There, now you'd never know anything was hidden here. The shadow was stretching closer, but that was just because the moon was rising . . .
Wrong, Cassie thought. She stopped in the middle of brushing sand off her hands and looked at it.
Shadows get shorter as the moon gets higher. Just like the sun, she thought. But this one was definitely closer to her.
The whispering of the ocean was suddenly loud.
I should have listened to Diana. I should have stayed near the group, Cassie thought. Slowly and casually, she glanced over her shoulder. The rocks she'd climbed over seemed far away, and there was no sign of the circle of candles behind them. No sound either, except the waves. Cassie felt exposed and very much alone.
Don't act scared. Get up and go, she told herself. Her heart was knocking against her ribs. As she stood, the shadow moved.
Oh God. There was no way to pretend that was normal. The shadow wasn't even attached to the rock anymore. It was just a blackness on the sand, flowing like water, moving toward her. It was alive.
Go, go! Cassie's mind screamed at her. But her legs wouldn't obey. They were locked, paralyzed. She wasn't going anywhere.
Cassssie. Her head jerked up; she looked for the person who had spoken. But it wasn't a person. It was the waves.
Cassssssie.
I want to get out of here, Cassie thought. Her legs still wouldn't move.
The blackness flowed like tar, rippling toward her. It divided, pouring itself on either side of her, encircling her.
Cassssssie.
The shadow was whispering to her with Black John's voice. It eddied around her, a formless darkness like smoke. As she looked down at it, Cassie seemed to see snakes in it, and black beetles, all crawling loathsome things. It was around her, but it didn't want to kill her. It wanted to get into her mind.
She could feel it trying. A pressure as it swirled around her feet. All she could think was, thank God I don't still have the hematite.
I should have listened; why didn't I listen? she thought then. The girls wouldn't miss her for a while. Too long. She wanted to scream, but her throat was as paralyzed as her legs. She could only stand there and watch the rippling blackness swirl around her feet.
Push with your mind, she thought, but she was too frightened. She couldn't scare away this darkness the way she had the doberman. She wasn't strong enough.
Please help me, she thought.
And then, in a rush, it was all she was thinking. Oh please somebody help me, somebody please come, I can't get out of this myself, oh please somebody -