Dry-mouthed, Cassie stared at Faye. Those honey-colored eyes were warm, glowing. Excited.
“Would you like to see a fire trick?”
Cassie shook her head. There were things worse than humiliation, she was realizing. For the first time this week she was afraid, not for her pride, but for her life.
Faye snapped the piece of paper in her hand, forming it into a loose cone. Flame burst out of one corner at the top.
“Why don't you tell us who the poem is about, Cassie? This boy who awakened you-who is he?”
Cassie leaned away, trying to escape the blazing paper in front of her face.
“Careful,” Deborah said mockingly from behind her. “Don't get too close to her hair.”
“What, you mean this close?” said Faye. “Or this close?”
Cassie had to twist her neck to evade the flame. Little glowing bits of paper were flying off in every direction. The brightness left an afterimage, and she could feel heat on her skin.
“Oops, that was close. I think her eyelashes are too long anyway, Deborah, don't you?”
Cassie was fighting now, but Deborah was astonishingly strong. And the more Cassie struggled, the more the grip hurt.
“Let go of me-“ she gasped out.
“But I thought you liked fire, Cassie. Look into the fire. What do you see?”
Cassie didn't want to obey, but she couldn't help it. Surely the paper should have burned up by now. But it was still blazing. Yellow, she thought. Fire is yellow and orange. Not red like they say.
All her senses were fixed on the flame. Its heat brought a dry tingle to her cheeks. She could hear the crumple of paper as it was consumed; she could smell the burning. And she could see nothing else.
Gray ash and yellow flame. Blue at the bottom like a gas burner. The fire changed shape every second, its radiance streaming endlessly upward. Pouring out its energy…
Energy.
Fire is power, she thought. She could almost feel the charge of the golden flame. It wasn't the. vast quietness of sky and sea, or the waiting solidity of rock. It was active. Power there for the taking…
“Yes,” Faye whispered.
The sound shocked Cassie out of her trance. Don't be crazy, she told herself. Her fantasy about the flame collapsed. This was what happened when you didn't get any sleep. When the stress became unbearable and you got to the end of your resources. She was going insane.
Tears flooded her eyes, fell down her cheeks.
“Oh, she's just a baby after all,” Faye said, and there was savage disgust in her voice. Disgust and something like disappointment. “Come on, baby, can't you cry any harder than that? If you cry hard enough, maybe you can put it out.”
Still sobbing, Cassie tossed her head back and forth as the blazing paper stabbed closer. So close that tears fell on it and sizzled. Cassie was no longer thinking; she was simply terrified. Like a trapped animal, a desperate, pathetic trapped animal.
Dead meat dead meat dead meat dead meat…
“What are you doing? Let go of her-now!”
The voice came out of nowhere, and for an instant Cassie didn't even attempt to locate it. Her whole being was focused on the fire. It flared up suddenly, dissolving almost instantaneously into soft gray ash. Faye was left holding only a stump of charred paper cone.
“I said let her go!” Something bright came at Deborah. But not bright like fire. Bright like sunlight. Or moonlight, when the moon is full and so dazzling you can read by it.
It was her.
The girl, the girl from the yellow house, the girl with the shining hair. Utterly dumbfounded, Cassie stared as if seeing her for the first time.
She was almost as tall as Faye, but unlike Faye in every other respect. Where Faye was voluptuous, she was slender; where Faye was dressed in red, she was dressed in white. Instead of a wild black mane like Faye's, her hair was long and straight and shimmering-the color of the light streaming in the window.
And of course she was beautiful, even more beautiful this close than she had been at a distance. But it was a beauty so different from Faye's it was hard to think of it as the same thing. Faye's beauty was stunning but scary. Her strange golden eyes were fascinating, but they also made you want to run away.
This girl looked like something from a stained-glass window. For the first time Cassie saw her eyes, and they were green and clear, brilliant, as if light were behind them. Her cheeks were faintly flushed with rose, but it was natural color, not makeup.
Her breast was heaving with indignation, and her voice, though clear and musical, was filled with anger.
“When Tina told me she'd delivered that note for you, I knew there was something going on,” she said. “But this is unbelievable. For the last time, Deborah, let her go!”
Slowly, reluctantly, the grip on Cassie's arms loosened.
“Look at this… you could have hurt her,” the fair-haired girl raged on. She had a Kleenex out and was wiping ash-and tears-off Cassie's cheeks. “Are you all right?” she asked, her tone gentling.
Cassie could only look at her. The shining girl had come to rescue her. It was like something out of a dream.
“She's frightened to death,” the girl said, turning on Faye. “How could you, Faye? How could you be so cruel?”
“It just comes naturally,” Faye murmured. Her eyes were hooded, sullen. As sullen as Deborah's face.
“And you, Suzan-I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how wrong it is?”
Suzan mumbled something, looking away.
“And why would you want to hurt her? Who is she?” She had a protective arm around Cassie now as she looked from one of the senior girls to another. None of them answered.