Cassie could tell he’d been expecting her.
“Mr. Dent,” she said from across the long hall of stone-gray squares.
“Who is this stranger?” he asked defensively.
“Two members of my Circle,” Cassie said. “Adam Conant and Diana Meade.”
“No. Him!” Timothy shouted, cutting Cassie off. He was pointing his long, wrinkled finger at Max.
Max held his breath. He backed away toward the door they’d entered through. Cassie understood that Timothy must somehow sense that Max was a witch-hunter.
She reached out and grabbed Max’s wrist to keep him from going back to the car.
“He’s one of us,” she said to Timothy. “He’s a former hunter, but he’s proven his loyalty to our Circle. Without him, it wouldn’t have been possible to get my friends back from the demons.”
Timothy eyed Max for a few seconds, then the three of them as a group. “Well, I’m glad to know the exorcism spell worked,” he said, letting his guard down for the first time since they’d arrived. “For what reason are you here?”
Cassie stepped forward, and the others followed. Timothy was wearing the same black short-sleeved dress shirt Cassie had last seen him in. Again, it was streaked with dust. Does he ever wash his clothes? she wondered.
“We need your help,” Cassie said.
Timothy scoffed. “I figured that much.”
“I was able to perform the exorcism,” Cassie replied. “But the ancestor spirits returned to their corporeal form. Now they’re free in New Salem and trying to secure a twelfth member to bind their Circle.”
Timothy’s gray eyes went still, but they revealed no surprise. He turned toward his office.
Cassie assumed they were expected to follow him. The four of them entered the double glass doors in a straight line and found places to sit down.
Timothy scrambled through a number of cabinets and file drawers, stacking a few books and folders upon his desk before falling into his brown leather chair.
“As I feared, Absolom must have altered the exorcism,” he said. “He recrafted it to a resurrection.”
“So we did exactly what he wanted us to do,” Adam said.
Timothy gave a nod to Cassie. “She did, yes.”
“I did what you told me to!” Cassie shot back.
Timothy squinted his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Please, no shouting. Your voice goes right through me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Justinian the Great?” Cassie said.
Timothy’s eyes opened wide. His mouth fanned to a crooked, toothy smile. “You’ve been doing your homework. Good for you.”
“He was the man who began my family’s Book of Shadows,” Cassie said. “The one you told me was determined to attain eternal life.”
“Yes, I told you he sold his soul,” Timothy said. “I told you when he died, his bloodline and his book were cursed.”
“You didn’t tell me his name,” Cassie said. “Why?”
“His name doesn’t matter.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Cassie persisted.
Timothy’s face reddened.
“You can’t only tell me half the story,” Cassie said. “You’re either willing to help us or you’re not. If your hatred for my father is what’s preventing you from—”
“His name changed!” Timothy shouted.
Cassie was startled by his anger. They all were.
Timothy pointed to a portrait on the wall behind his desk. “Justinian the first,” he said. “He’s the source. Are you happy?”
Cassie gazed at the crowned man, decorated in the riches of an emperor. A circle enclosed his head like a saint’s halo.
“He was determined to attain eternal life,” Timothy said. “But he still died. And when he managed to rise from the dead, he died again. And the final time he resurrected himself, you and your Circle killed him.”
Cassie’s heart went still. “Do you mean—”
Timothy brushed down his few white hairs that flared up during his brief rage. “Your father was the source, Cassie,” he said more calmly. “But all your ancestors have left of him is that book. His drive for eternal life lives on in them. It’s their quest now.”
Cassie allowed herself a few seconds to think, to adjust. She could see the shock of her own face reflected on the faces of her friends. “Does my mother know?” she asked.
Timothy shook his head. “Not even your grandmother knew. It’s taken me my whole life to figure it out.”
“It makes sense,” Cassie said. “The way the book clings to me.”
“Mr. Dent,” Diana said, “Cassie overheard the ancestors talking about a spell.” But before she could say anything more, Timothy cut her off.
“It’s an eternal-life spell. That’s what the ancestors have come back for. But lucky for you they need a bound Circle, and it has to be done beneath a full moon.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Max said sarcastically.
Cassie took one last look at the awful painting of Justinian I. “So what do we do now?” she asked. “Can they be stopped?”
“I’m not sure,” Timothy said. “I was on the trail of figuring out this spell when I was stripped of my powers sixteen years ago.”
He leaned in uncomfortably close to Cassie. “When your father stripped me of my powers sixteen years ago.”
His breath smelled of fried onions.
“If you can manage to burn Black John’s book using this spell,” he continued, mercifully backing away, “it will destroy the book’s dark magic and the demons that came out of it. Including the demon that originated in Justinian the Great.”
Timothy unrolled a parchment scroll upon his desk and weighted it down to keep it from flapping closed. It contained the tiny, carefully handwritten text of his spell.
“The ancestor spirits are bonded to the book just like you are, Cassie,” Timothy said. “But for them, it’s their life force.”
Cassie scrutinized the scroll’s painstaking text.
Adam grabbed a magnifying glass from Timothy’s desk and honed in on a few specifics. “If the Circle uses this spell to burn the book before the eternal-life spell happens,” Adam asked, “we’ll be free from these demons forever?”
Timothy closed one eye and nodded. “If you do it right, all the dark magic that grew out of the book will be eliminated.”
He waddled back around his desk, mumbling. “I was robbed of my power just before I had the chance to perform this spell, and no one else would try it. They were too wary of the consequences. And not a single one of them would lend me their power, either. Not a single witch in all of New Salem.”
“I get the sense you’re still not telling us the whole story,” Diana said. “Why wouldn’t anyone try the spell? What consequences were they afraid of?”
Timothy’s eyes flared at Diana’s forwardness.
Cassie shot her a look to be quiet. The last thing they needed was for Timothy to kick them out now.
“All magic has consequences,” he said curtly. “It’s the simple law of cause and effect.”
“Of course,” Adam said. “We understand that.” He picked up the parchment scroll and began rolling it back into its container. “This is exactly what we need.”
“You need more than just that, young man.” Timothy pulled a set of dull metal keys from his desk drawer and shuffled over to an iron cabinet within the wall that resembled a bank vault. He unlocked it, opened the enormous door, and disappeared for a moment inside.
He reappeared carrying a large wooden box. “You must burn Black John’s book,” he said. “But you need a complete Circle to do it. You will also need everything in here.”
He handed the box to Max. “It’s heavier than it looks,” he said. “But you have big muscles.”
Max half-smiled, unsure what to do with the box for a moment, before deciding to set it down on his chair.
It was sealed tightly shut with tarnished brass latch closures, but it didn’t appear to be locked.
“Go on, open it,” Timothy said.
Max lifted the top off the box and began digging through it. It was filled with neatly folded ceremonial robes, crystals, incense, and candles.
As Cassie, Diana, and Adam examined its contents, Timothy disappeared into the vault again. He returned carrying a similar, smaller wooden box that he handed to Cassie.
Cassie set the box down upon Timothy’s desk and reached for both latches.
“No, not now,” Timothy said urgently. “Don’t open this one until you have no other choice. It’s the only way.”
Cassie looked at Adam, then Diana and Max. “But what’s inside?” she asked Timothy.
“I hope you can do what I failed to years ago,” Timothy said. He either didn’t hear her question or simply chose to ignore it.
Cassie had a bad feeling about this.
Chapter 20
Cassie stood surrounded by the faces of her friends as Coach Kaelin’s whistle echoed from the football field. It was the next day at school, and the Circle was having a meeting under the bleachers. Max was among them. He and Diana sat side by side on the ground, fiddling with each other’s fingers, unable to suppress smiles in spite of the dire circumstances. If only the Circle could induct Max as their twelfth member, Cassie thought. A hunter initiation, imagine that.
Adam looked up at Cassie, waiting for her to break the news of what they’d learned from Timothy to the rest of the group. He’d barely taken his eyes off her since they’d left Concord, understanding without her having to tell him that this new revelation about her father’s history was weighing on her. Would she never truly be rid of him? But as Timothy said, it was the ancestors who were the Circle’s problem—they were the ones on the brink of attaining immortality, closer than Cassie’s father had ever gotten, in all his wretched lifetimes.
Nick had on a dark pair of sunglasses so Cassie couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel that he was looking at her. She pretended not to notice. Truth be told, she’d been avoiding him as she and Adam were becoming more and more inseparable. It wasn’t the most mature way of dealing with her conflicted feelings, but for now it was the best she could do.
“We’ve learned that the ancestors are after more than just revenge,” Cassie said to the group.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Faye called out.
“A few of us went to see a man my mother told me about,” Cassie replied. “He’s devoted his life to studying my family. And he told us that the ancestors’ plan is to perform an eternal-life spell. That’s why they need a twelfth member.”
She passed her eyes over each of them. Cassie had all the faith in the world in her Circle, but these dark ancestors had a lot to offer. Limitless power. Everlasting life. And after losing so many loved ones to the hunters recently, she wouldn’t blame anyone for being tempted.
“But if we secure a twelfth member before they do,” Cassie said, “and perform a spell to burn my father’s book, the ancestors will be destroyed forever.”
“No sweat,” Doug said mockingly.
Nick turned away for a moment and slid his sunglasses down. “Do you hear that?”
Cassie listened. There was a whistling coming from the trees. “The wind?” she asked. And then her ears popped as if free-falling on a roller coaster.
The whole Circle flinched, jerking their necks back. It was a shared sensation, whatever was happening.
Cassie’s vision hazed; the surrounding world went fuzzy.
“I can’t see,” Sean said. “What’s going on?”
An image appeared before Cassie’s eyes, as if in a dream. It was a room, an elaborate ballroom, with marble pillars and a gilded gold ceiling. It was crowded with people dressed in fancy clothes, dancing and laughing, drinking champagne from long-stemmed glass flutes. Cassie was overcome with a sense of well-being, by the gentle energy of their rich joviality—until the shock of a shattering glass broke the scene. Everyone began to scream. The lights flickered, and the edges of the image darkened, like an aging photograph. No, Cassie realized—like a photograph burning slowly over a flame. The ornate ballroom, the revelatory guests, the once strong pillars, crumpled and blackened until they disappeared to ash.
Then came a voice. Absolom’s booming tongue. “Tonight,” he said, “New Salem burns.”
Cassie snapped awake. Her ears popped a second time, and her vision cleared.
Nick came into view, looking around with his sunglasses suspended in his fingers. Adam and Diana blinked, adjusting their eyes.