The rest of the squealing herd hurried up the length of the ancestors’ legs. They bit at their faces, gnawed on the soft, chewy lobes of their ears.
Absolom shrieked and abandoned his spell, thrashing. Beatrix released Scarlett and struggled to shake her limbs free of the teeth-clenching vermin. She flailed like a person on fire.
Samuel scrambled to pick up a broken metal rod from the ground, a remnant of the house’s foundation. He swung it hard and wide in an arc, like a baseball bat, but was successful in fighting off the rats for only a moment before being overcome. He soon fell beneath a hungry, squealing mountain of fur and tails, just like the others.
Cassie rushed to Scarlett. She listened for her breath and felt for her pulse. She was alive, but barely. Cassie strived to concentrate in spite of her surroundings, to recall a spell to restore Scarlett’s energy. She placed her hands over her body and waited for the words to come. When they did, she whispered them softly: “Recuperabit, reddere, renovare.”
Scarlett groaned, then opened her eyes, and the color returned to her cheeks. She took a deep breath and climbed to her feet.
“Oh, my god,” she said, at the horrible sight of the ancestors.
They’d managed to ward off the rats, so they were no longer being devoured, but the damage had been done. Thomas’s clothes had been chewed through to pieces. His skin showed through the shredded cloth, bloody and oozing. All of the ancestors’ skin was pockmarked and pus-filled. The whites of their eyes had yellowed, and their breathing was slack.
Charlotte bent over and coughed, and a black sludge poured out of her mouth.
Cassie noticed the tips of Alice’s fingers were blackening, and so were her lips.
“What’s happening to them?” Scarlett asked.
Absolom and Beatrix were next to double over and retch putrid mucus into a dark, wet pile on the ground.
“The Black Death,” Cassie said.
The rats banded together in a tight pack, eyes ablaze, their mouths foaming with blood. They scurried back to their wooden box, twitching and satisfied.
“Those weren’t just any rats.” Cassie threw the top back over the box and observed the ancestors writhing in pain, heaving, spitting, their limbs rotting to deadened stumps.
“The bubonic plague just came back to bite them,” Cassie said to Scarlett. It looked worse than she’d ever imagined.
But the ancestors weren’t giving up that easily. They crawled across the dirt to clasp hands. They were pooling their energy.
Cassie wouldn’t put it past them to overcome even this. “We have to finish the spell,” she said. “Get everyone together.”
Scarlett helped Diana and Faye up to standing position. Adam, Sean, and the Hendersons rose of their own accord.
Cassie hurried over to Nick. He’d lost a lot of blood, and his skin felt cold to the touch, but his eyes were open. He tried to talk, but Cassie quieted him.
“Just relax,” she said. “You’re going to be okay.” She held her hands over his injury and searched her mind for the right spell.
“I don’t need magic.” Nick’s voice was raspy but forceful. “I only need you.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.
Cassie could see that the injury to his leg was serious. Nick was in shock. Magic was the only chance of saving him.
Cassie hovered her free hand over the spear of metal impaled through the flesh, and silently cast a spell: Periculosum metallic tutum esse liberum.
The hole in Nick’s leg opened like a mouth, releasing the metal beam to the air. It rose and fell to his side, into the red pool of his blood.
“I’m okay,” Nick insisted. “I can get up. Don’t waste your energy on me. You have a spell to cast.”
Resanesco, Cassie thought. Resanesco.
Nick stirred as the wound stitched itself sealed, cleanly. Still squeezing Cassie’s hand, he lifted his head just high enough to catch a glimpse of his injury.
“It’s not even as bad as I thought,” he said.
Cassie inhaled a thankful breath. Nick would be okay. She was about to help him up when a new string of words entered her mind.
Let him feel the love I have for him, and let it be enough. She said them to herself silently, just as she had the others.
“Thank you, Cassie,” Nick said, rolling over onto his side. “But I’m really fine.”
“Hurry up!” Scarlett called out. She’d managed to get everyone else in formation. The ancestors were still trying to regain their strength.
Cassie helped Nick to his feet and led him to the Circle. When they stepped into place, the fire began to smolder. Gray smoke rose from its source, darker and darker, until it formed a coal-black cloud overhead.
Cassie picked up her father’s book from its place on the ground. She held it up high for all her friends to see. Then she held it over the fire and allowed the spell to come:
I cast you out, unclean spirit, in the name of goodness.
All sources of light and truth, we appeal to you and your sacred boundless power.
Be gone, darkness. Leave us a dwelling place of light.
We renounce you, all symbols of darkness, demons, and all evil.The fire hissed and sizzled. Red-hot embers shot up like sparkles from the flames.
For a moment Cassie had a thought: What if she didn’t drop the book into the fire? What if the infected rats had accomplished enough to weaken the ancestors? Maybe they were soon to die anyway. Then Cassie and her Circle could have the best of both worlds—she could keep the book without her relatives trying to control it.
One by one, the ancestors climbed to their feet and struggled toward the circle’s perimeter. Their sickened eyes were furious and helpless as they watched and waited for what Cassie would do next. Blood dripped from their noses and ears.
The book called to Cassie. It screamed her name. She pulled it back slightly from the heat of the flames. This book was her past, she thought. It was her last and final connection to her father and to her lineage.
It felt like a living precious diamond in her hands. A one-of-a-kind power. Could she really just cast it away? Destroy it forever?
No. She couldn’t.
She took one giant step back from the fire and hugged the book tightly, embracing it over her heart. It had a heartbeat, too, she realized—its own. And their two hearts beat together as one.
All other sound drifted up and away. Only the book existed to Cassie now. And then he spoke to her.
“Cassandra, my one and only,” he said. Him. Her father.
His voice was like a poison that seized Cassie’s throat.
“Don’t disappoint the long line of witches that brought you here,” he said. “The witches that made you. They are all you have.”
Cassie’s pulse quickened. She couldn’t catch her breath.
“All their knowledge is yours,” he said. “Their power is yours. Don’t throw it away.”
Everything began to spin. Cassie lost all sense of up from down, left from right. Her own body felt like nothing. An empty shell.
“Don’t turn your back on your past,” her father said. “Destroying that book will destroy who you really are.”
Who am I? Cassie thought.
I am Cassandra Blake, child of Alexandra and John, beloved daughter, loving friend.
I am power.
But I can surrender that power to the flames.
If I have power without love, I have nothing.
Something inside Cassie’s mind clicked. If evil was what she really was, who she really was, then so be it. Let evil be destroyed. Let light triumph over darkness once and for all.
A feeling of warmth enveloped her like daybreak.
She shouted the final words of the spell: “Depart, evil spirits. Leave this good and innocent world!”
Cassie lifted the book up and heaved it into the fire. “Depart, Father!” she screamed out. “Depart!”
Her father’s cry rang out for all to hear.
The ancestors could do nothing to stop her. The moment the book hit the flames their bodies stiffened, and as it burned, they burned.
Flames penetrated the ancestors’ chests as if the fire started in their hearts and spread upward and out from there. Their mouths softened as they wailed. Noses liquefied, eyes dissolved. The ground beneath their melting bodies broiled and withered. Alice moved her head from side to side on her shoulders. Her face took on a mournful expression as she stretched her neck and cried out. The grief-stricken sound seemed to ricochet off the moon.
The fire pit popped.
The book glowed orange like a lit coal. From its flame-engulfed pages, Cassie’s father’s scream went quiet. It was their final requiem. Scarlett, Cassie noticed, had begun to tremble. A darkness drained from her eyes and mouth like a black, smoky mist.
The wind stirred, making a rushing sound through the air. It carried with it a strange sense of change.
Cassie stared down into the fire, and it suddenly seemed to be everywhere. Far and wide, hers was the only screaming voice now. It echoed from within the center of the flames. I’m in the fire, Cassie thought. I am it.
When it exploded, an ashy mist rose like a mushroom cloud, throwing Cassie skyward.
She landed flat with her arms wide open to her sides. There was an unnatural warmth to her face and a heaviness in the air. She sat up, blinked her eyes, and looked around.
Only her Circle remained. All else was gone: the ancestors, the book, even the fire.
They’d done it. In her soul, Cassie knew they had won.
The Circle gathered around her, bending, leaning.
“Cassie?” Adam said. He was staring at her strangely. So was Diana.
“Are you okay?” one of them said, just before everything went soft and gray, and all Cassie saw was darkness.
Cassie reopened her eyes to the Circle huddled around her. Adam was holding her hand.
She sat up slowly, weak and woozy. “I feel different,” she said. “Do any of you feel different?”
Adam told her to keep calm, that the spell must have been too much for her.
“Nobody else feels different?” she asked. “Scarlett?”
Scarlett’s face appeared airy and open. “I do,” she said. “I feel good.”
But Cassie didn’t feel good. There was a new void in herself, an emptiness. She felt powerless.
She got up on her feet and focused her energy on a small round rock upon the ground. It was the simplest spell she could think of, to try and make it rise. She focused every ounce of energy she had on that little pebble, and nothing happened. It didn’t budge.
“Timothy warned us that there would be consequences,” she said.
“Cassie, what are you talking about?” Adam asked.
“There needed to be a sacrifice,” Cassie said. “And it was me. I’ve lost my magic.”
Chapter 26
“Let’s just get you home, Cassie,” Adam said. “Everyone else can take care of cleaning up.”
Cassie didn’t have the strength to decline, so she made a motion toward the bluff. Adam put his arm around her shoulders and guided her along. Cassie didn’t offer much more than a nod good-bye to her friends, but they seemed to understand.
Only Scarlett ran after them. “Wait,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”
Cassie stopped and turned.
Adam tensed up. “Can’t it wait?”
“I’m sorry, but it can’t.” Scarlett spoke almost directly to the ground. “The cord that you saw, Cassie. The one between Adam and me. It was just a ruse.”
Cassie felt her heart skip a beat.
“A ruse?” Adam said for both of them.
Scarlett nodded. “It was a visualization spell that I cast. It wasn’t real. I was just trying to tear Cassie down however I could.”
Cassie let this truth settle over her like ash. It felt like both a final moment of destruction and a cleansing rebirth. Scarlett continued talking.
“I realize now that it was the darkness controlling me all along,” she said. “I was out of control. And I’m so ashamed.”
Cassie closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t decipher if the trembling in her chest was happiness or anger or sadness. She’d had so many doubts about Adam these past weeks because of something that was a lie.
“I don’t know what to say,” she mumbled. “I need some space right now, Scarlett.”
Cassie ventured toward the beach. She heard Adam tell Scarlett to head back to the others, to help clean up. Then he chased after Cassie.
He caught her by her hand, pulled her in toward him, but at the sight of her face he faltered.
Why wasn’t she smiling?
Cassie turned to the water. Only a gentle wind was blowing, but it felt to her like a frigid gust beating against her skin.
“I knew it,” Adam said to the back of her head. “I told you. I never doubted for a second that you were my one and only soul mate.”
