Captive Read Free Page A

other street in Massachusetts, and she'd been to Kori's funeral down in the town. This one didn't look any different from the others: it was a small, square plot of land cluttered with modest gravestones, many of them worn almost completely smooth with time. But Cassie could hardly make herself follow the others onto the sparse, browning grass between the graves.
    Diana led them straight down the middle of the cemetery. Most of the stones were small, scarcely reaching higher than Cassie's knees. They were shaped like arches, with two smaller arches on either side.
    "Whoever carved these had a gruesome sense of humor," she breathed. Many of the stones were etched with crude skulls, some of them winged, others in front of crossbones. One had an entire skeleton, holding a sun and moon in its hands.
    "Death's victory," Faye said softly, so close that Cassie felt warmth on the nape of her neck. Cassie jumped, but refused to look back.
    "Oh, terrific," said Laurel as Diana slowed.
    The light was dying from the sky. They were in the center of the graveyard, and a cool breeze blew over the stunted grass, bringing a faint tang of salt with it. The hairs on the back of Cassie's neck were tingling.
    You're a witch, she reminded herself. You should love cemeteries. They're probably your natural habitat.
    The thought didn't really make her feel less frightened, but now her fear was mingled with something else-a sort of strange excitement. The darkness gathering in the sky and in the corners of the graveyard seemed closer. She was part of it, part of a whole new world of shadows and power.
    Diana stopped.
    The silver chain was a thin line in the gloom, with a pale blob below it. But Cassie could see that the peridot was no longer swinging like a pendulum. Instead it was moving erratically, round and round in circles. It would swing a few times one way, then slow and swing back the other way.
    Cassie looked at it, then up at Diana's face. Diana was frowning. Everyone was watching the circling stone in dead silence.
    Cassie couldn't stand the suspense any longer. "What does it mean?" she hissed to Laurel, who just shook her head. Diana, though, looked up.
    "Something's wrong with it. It led here- and then it just stopped. But if we've found the place, it shouldn't be moving at all. The stone should just sort of point and quiver-right, Melanie?"
    "Like a good hound dog," Doug said, with his wild grin.
    Melanie ignored him. "That's the theory," she said. "But we've never really tried this before. Maybe it means . . ." Her voice trailed off as she looked around the graveyard, then she shrugged. "I don't know what it means."
    The tingling at the back of Cassie's neck was getting stronger. The dark energy had come here-and done what? Disappeared? Dissipated? Or ...
    Laurel was breathing quickly, her elfin face unusually tense. Cassie instinctively moved a little closer to her. She and Laurel and Sean were the juniors, the youngest members of the Circle, and witch or not, Cassie's arms had broken out in gooseflesh.
    "What if it's still here, somewhere . . . waiting?" she said.
    "I doubt it," Melanie said, her voice as level and uninflected as usual. "It couldn't hang around without being stored somehow; it would just evaporate. It either came here and did something, or-" Again, though, she could only finish her sentence with a shrug.
    "But what could it do here? I don't see any signs of damage, and I feel . . ." Still frowning, Diana caught the circling peridot in her left hand and held it. "This place feels confused- strange-but I don't sense any harm the dark energy has done. Cassie?"
    Cassie tried to search her own feelings. Confusion-as Diana said. And she felt dread and anger and all sorts of churned-up emotions-but maybe that was just her. She was in no state to get a clear reading on anything.
    "I don't know," she had to say to Diana. "I don't like it here."
    "Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is that we don't see any burns the dark