It was cold on the point of the headland. They sat on bits of the foundation of the razed house, while Deborah and Faye built a bonfire in the center. Other people were bringing provisions out of the cars. Cassie had expected everyone to be solemn, but the Circle was in a party mood, excited by the night, laughing and joking, defying the danger of what they were going to do in an hour or so. Cassie found herself enjoying the celebration, not thinking about the future.
There was lots of food. Dried pumpkin seeds ("Without salt," Laurel said), pumpkin bread and gingerbread baked by Diana, boxes of chocolate- and orange-frosted doughnuts from Adam, a bowl of mixed Halloween candy provided by Suzan, soft drinks and spiced cider, and a large paper bag of Chris's that rattled.
"Nuts! Yeah! For virility!" Doug yelled to the other guys, with an uncouth gesture.
"Hazelnuts symbolize wisdom," Melanie said patiently, but the Henderson brothers just sneered.
And there were apples: winesaps, greenings, macintoshes. "Apples for love and death," Diana said. "Especially at Halloween. Did you know they were sacred to the goddess Hera?"
"Did you know the seeds contain cyanide?" Faye added, smiling oddly. She'd been smiling oddly at Cassie ever since Cassie had emerged from behind the streamer curtain with Adam at the dance. Now, leaning over to take a piece of gingerbread, she murmured in Cassie's ear, "What happened back there when he followed you? Did you blow your chance?"
"It isn't nice to fool around with guys who're taken," Cassie whispered tiredly, as if explaining to a five-year-old.
Faye chuckled. "Nice? Is that what you want for your epitaph? 'Here lies Cassie. She was... nice'?"
Cassie turned her head away.
"I know an apple spell," Laurel was saying to the group. "You peel an apple in one long spiral, then throw the peel over your shoulder, and if it doesn't break, it forms the initial of your true love."
They tried this, without much success. The peelings kept breaking, Suzan cut herself on Deborah's knife, and when Diana did manage to throw a peeling over her shoulder, it only formed a spiral.
"Well, that's sacred to the goddess at least," Laurel said, frowning. "Or to the Horned One," she added mischievously, looking at Adam.
Cassie had been deliberately breaking her apple peels; the whole fortune-telling thing made her uneasy. And not just because Melanie mentioned cheerfully, "They used to execute witches for this kind of divination on Halloween."
"I've got another one," Laurel said. "You throw a nut in the fire, say a pair of names, and see what happens. Like Suzan and David Downey," she added impishly. "If the nut pops, they're meant for each other. If it doesn't, they're doomed."
"If he loves me, pop and fly; if he hates me, burn and die!" Suzan quoted dramatically as Laurel tossed a hazelnut in. The round little nut just sizzled.
"Laurel and Doug," Chris snickered, throwing in another.
"Chris and Sally Waltman!" Doug countered.
"Cassie and Nick!"
Deborah tossed that one in, grinning, but Faye was noticeably unsmiling.
"Adam..." she said, holding a nut up high between long red nails and waiting until she had everyone's attention. Cassie stared at her, poised on the edge of her brick. ". . . and Diana," Faye said finally, and flicked the hazelnut into the flames.
Cassie, mesmerized, watched the nut where it lay on glowing embers. She didn't want to look at it; she had to.
"There are lots of other Halloween traditions," Laurel was going on. "It's time to remember old people, people who're coming to the winter of their lives-or that's what my Granny Quincey says."
Cassie was still staring at that one hazelnut. It seemed to be jiggling-but was it going to pop?
"It's getting late," Adam said. "Don't you think we should get started?"
Diana brushed pumpkin-bread crumbs off her hands and stood. "Yes."
Cassie only took her eyes off the fire for an instant, but in that instant, there was a sound like gunfire. Two or three nuts had exploded at once, and when Cassie looked back she couldn't see the one Faye had thrown. It had popped-or she'd lost track of it. She couldn't tell which.
A heartbeat later it flashed through her mind to wonder about Deborah's nut-for Cassie and Nick. But she couldn't tell what had become of that one, either.
"All right, now," Diana said. "This is going to be a different kind of Circle. It's going to be more powerful than anything we've ever used before, because we need more protection than we've ever needed before. And it's going to take everybody's help." She followed this with an earnest glance at Faye, who replied with a look of utmost innocence.
Cassie watched Diana draw a circle inside the ruined foundation with her black-handled knife. The bonfire was at the center. Everyone was serious now, their eyes following the path of the knife as it cut through the soil, making an almost perfect ring with a single gap at the northeast corner.
"Everyone get inside, and then I'll close it," Diana said. They all filed inside and sat along the inner perimeter of the ring. Only Raj was left on the outside, watching anxiously and whining a little in his throat.
"After this," Diana said, closing the gap with a sweep of the knife, "no one leaves the protection of the circle. What we're summoning up inside will be dangerous, but what'll be hanging around outside will be even worse."
"How dangerous?" Sean said nervously. "What's inside, I mean."
"We'll be safe as long as we don't go near the fire or touch it," Diana said. "No matter how strong a spirit it is, it won't be able to part from the fire we use to summon it. All right," she added briskly, "now I'm going to call on the Watchtower of the East. Powers of Air, protect us!"