"What do you think he'll do?" asked Suzan.
"Something unfriendly," said Laurel.
Cassie was proud of them. They were scared;
she knew them well enough to know that fear was what was behind Deborah's restless pacing and Melanie's stillness, but none of them were running away or backing down. Doug cracked bad jokes, and Chris made paper airplanes. Nick sat tense and silent, and Adam kept Doug's headphones on, listening to the news on the radio.
At six o'clock the storm stopped.
Cassie's ears, used to the drumming of rain and the clattering and banging and howling of wind, felt suddenly empty. She looked and saw the others were all sitting alert.
"It can't be over," Suzan said. "Unless it missed us?"
"It's still out in the Atlantic," Adam said. "They think it should hit land in about an hour. This is just the calm before the storm."
"Cassie?" said Diana.
"I think he's making his move," Cassie said, trying to sound calm. And then every muscle in her body tightened.
Cassandra.
It was his voice in her mind. She looked at the others and saw they'd heard it too.
Bring your coven to the end of Crowhaven Road. To Number Thirteen, Cassandra. I'm waiting for you.
Cassie's fingers clenched on a piece of unfolded laundry lying nearby. She tried to concentrate on the power of the Master Tools, on the warmth where they touched her. Then she pushed with her mind, forming words.
We're coming. Say hello to Faye.
She let out her breath. Doug grinned at her. "Pretty good," he said.
It was sheer bravado, and they all knew it, but it made Cassie feel better. She inconspicuously wiped her wet palms on the laundry and stood up. "Let's go," she said.
Diana had been right; wearing the symbols of the coven leader and the white shift, she didn't feel cold. Outside, the sky was clear and the earth was silent except for the sound of the waves. Yes, the calm before the storm, Cassie thought. It was a very uneasy calm, ready to erupt into violence again at any moment.
Melanie said, "Look at the moon."
Cassie's stomach lurched.
It looked like a crescent moon, a silver disk with a bite out of it. But Cassie sensed the wrongness there. It wasn't a crescent moon; it was a full moon being invaded, overshadowed. She was watching darkness fall on a bright world.
She thought she could actually see the shadow moving, covering more of the white surface.
"Come on," she said.
They walked up the wet street, making for the headland. They passed Suzan's house with its Grecian pillars, a gray bulk against the moonlight. They passed Sean's house, just as dark. Water gurgled down the sides of the road in little rivers. They passed Cassie's house.
They reached the vacant lot at Number Thirteen.
It looked just the way it had when they had celebrated Halloween here by making a bonfire and calling up Black John's spirit. Empty, deserted. Barren. There was nobody here.
"Is it a trick?" Nick asked sharply. Cassie shook her head uncertainly. The little voice inside wasn't telling her anything. She looked eastward at the moon, and felt another shock.
It was visibly smaller, the crescent very thin now. The shadow was not black or gray, but a dull copper-brown color.
"Ten minutes until totality," Melanie said.
"About half an hour until the hurricane reaches land," said Adam.
A fresh wind blew around them. Cassie's feet, in the thin white shoes Diana had brought for her, were damp.
They stood uncertainly. Cassie listened to the waves crashing at the base of the cliff. Her senses were alert, searching, but nothing seemed to be happening. Minutes dragged by and her nerves stretched more and more taut.
"Look," Diana whispered.
Cassie looked at the moon again.
The dull brownish shadow was swallowing up the last fingernail-thin edge of brightness. Cassie watched it go, like a candle winking out. Then she gasped.
The sound was involuntary and she was ashamed of it, but everyone else was gasping too. Because the moon hadn't just gone dark, like a new moon, and it wasn't even the coppery-brown color. As it was covered by shadow it turned red, a deep and ominous red, like old blood. High in the sky, perfectly visible, it glowed like a coal with unnatural light.
Then someone choked and Sean made a squealing noise.
Cassie turned quickly, in time to see it happening. On the empty lot before them, something was appearing. A rectangular bulk was taking shape, and as Cassie watched, it became more and more solid. She could see a steeply pitched roof, flat clapboard walls, small windows irregularly placed. A door made of heavy planks. It looked like the old wing of her grandmother's house, the original dwelling from 1693.
It shone with a dull light, like the blood-red moon.
"Is it real?" Deborah whispered.
Cassie had to wait a moment to get the breath to speak. "It's real now," she said. "Right now, for a few minutes, it's real."
"It's horrible," Laurel whispered.
Cassie knew what she was feeling, what the whole coven was feeling. The house was evil, in the same way that the skull was evil. It looked twisted, askew, like something out of a nightmare. And it gripped all of them with an instinctual terror. Cassie could hear Chris and Doug breathing hard.
"Don't go near it," Nick said tightly. "Everybody stay back until he comes out."
"Don't worry," Deborah assured him. "Nobody's going near that."
Cassie knew better.
The inner voice, silent just a few moments ago, was telling her clearly now what she had to do. What it wasn't telling her was how to get up the courage to do it.
She looked behind her, at the rest of them standing there. The Club. The Circle. Her friends.