Cassie woke up at five the next morning, on the dot, without her alarm. It was like her body was so attuned to the day's mission that manmade technologies of convenience, like clocks, were deemed unnecessary. She felt one with the elements today, no longer at their mercy.
She got up from bed and dressed ceremonially, like a Spartan warrior preparing for battle. She wrapped herself in the white shift Diana had given her and proudly snapped the silver cuff-bracelet onto her upper arm, the leather garter around her thigh, and the sparkling diadem upon her head. She was ready to go save her sister.
Cassie made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She had to borrow her mother's car, but she couldn't exactly tell her mother she needed it so she could battle the witch hunters and save the sister she was never told about. So she'd have to take it without asking. That seemed to be the theme of this entire mission: Take what you need to get the job done and explain later. And she would. All would be revealed later, to her mother, to Diana, Faye, Adam, everyone. For now, Cassie couldn't allow any guilt to creep up and distract her - she had to focus solely on getting to Cape Cod.
But as Cassie drove farther away from Crowhaven Road and then farther away from New Salem, a sickness inside her began to form. Nerves, she figured, and she told herself her began to form. Nerves, she figured, and she told herself she had every right to feel nervous; this was a dangerous act. The hunters had black magic on their side.
The Master Tools will not let me down in my moment of need, Cassie thought. And that reminded her of the chalcedony rose she had hidden within her pocket.
It was the good-luck piece Adam gave her long ago in case she was in trouble - she'd brought it with her just in case. After everything they'd been through and disagreed over these past few weeks, Cassie still believed in Adam and had faith in their bond. Did they need a rare crystal to connect them at this point in their relationship? No, of course not. Maybe Cassie only brought the chalcedony piece out of superstition, but even so, it calmed her to stroke its rugged surface. The stone felt alive in her grasp the way it did when Adam had first given it to her. Hold on to it tight, he'd told her, and think of me. She did that now and felt her courage grow.
But crossing over the county line into the town of Sandwich, Cassie's fear heightened to a new level. The decaying sign alerting that she'd arrived read: INCORPORATED 1639, reminding Cassie of the deep-rooted history of the place as the oldest town in Cape Cod. The Tools themselves seemed to react to the setting all on their own.
Cassie could swear they were warming to her body, growing hotter by the second as she followed the course she'd mapped out to Hawthorne Street.
She should have a plan of attack, she realized, for when she encountered the hunters. She knew the witch-hunter curse by heart, and the Tools would surely come to her aid, but now that the reality of the situation was setting in, questions began to form in Cassie's mind. She didn't know how many hunters there would be. Was there a limit to how many she could take down with the one curse? And what if Scarlett was in even worse shape when she arrived than in Cassie's dream? There was a fear lurking in the back of Cassie's mind that Scarlett could have already been killed.
Again, Cassie felt for the chalcedony rose. But even with the crystal's comfort, when the house at 48 Hawthorne Street came into view, her whole being flooded with fear. It was just as she'd imagined it in her nightmares, identical to the image that came to her during the location spell. It was a broken-down beach cottage with driftwood-gray siding, and it was near the end of a long, desolate, sandy lane, with a large body of water on one side and tidal marshes on the other. There was no other house in sight.
The terrible feeling in Cassie's gut grew. The acid from her stomach crept up her throat, filling her mouth with a sickening taste. Every inch of her body screamed for her to turn around and drive back home. But she knew she couldn't allow her fear to get the best of her now. Not when she'd come this far.
With determination, she got out of the car and treaded across the long grass toward the house, but after only a few steps she froze. She tried to continue forward and couldn't.
There was some kind of magical barrier protecting the house's perimeter, similar to the one Faye used to guard the hidden garter. But that would be easy enough for Cassie to penetrate while wearing the Tools. She touched each relic individually, adjusting them into place, and silently called on their collective power. It wasn't her imagination, the Tools did feel hot to her touch, she was sure of it.