The next morning, Cassie arrived at Diana's house with coffee and fresh muffins. Diana looked a little unsteady accepting the bag of baked goods from Cassie, unsure of what to make of her kind gesture. Since they'd last disagreed and Cassie stormed out of their Circle meeting, they'd avoided each other. So it was only fair for Diana to be a little suspicious of such an abrupt and dramatic change of heart.
"Will you join me for a moment at the kitchen table before the others arrive?" Diana asked Cassie.
Cassie sat, pulled one of the coffees closer to her, and listened.
Diana nibbled on the end of a corn muffin. "I was up all night researching spells to reverse a mark," she said. "To save Laurel."
"And?"
"Nothing has been perfect yet, but it's promising. I'm hoping to figure out a way of combining an uncrossing spell with a healing spell."
All Cassie could think about was the diadem, but she forced herself to nod encouragingly at Diana.
"Let me know if there's anything I can do to help," Cassie said. She knew she needed to give Diana more to regain her trust.
"I know I've been acting a bit heated lately," Cassie
"I know I've been acting a bit heated lately," Cassie continued. "And I shouldn't have walked out of the last meeting that way, when it's so important for us to stick together."
Diana's eyebrows lifted, and Cassie could sense her heart filling with hope.
"And I want to help keep the Circle together, at its strongest," Cassie said. "I truly believe that together we are strong enough to defeat the hunters."
Diana tilted her chin at Cassie just as Adam appeared at her side door.
The sight of Cassie made his tense, watchful face loosen. Then his eyes briefly met Diana's, and a flicker of understanding passed between them.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," Adam said. "But I have to admit, it's nice to see you two talking." Diana smiled at Adam, fully convinced the air between her and Cassie had been cleared. She gave up on her muffin and reached for Cassie's hand.
"I'm so glad you've come around," she said. "We're going to go after these hunters here on our own turf." Her emerald eyes pooled with tears. "That's how I can be sure my sister is safe."
Adam joined them at the table, grabbing a coffee, not wanting to be left out of their conversation. "And remember, Cassie," he said, "Scarlett is a powerful witch, as powerful as you. Maybe even more powerful." He stirred his coffee.
"You have to trust that she can take care of herself." Soon the rest of the group began trickling in. Deborah arrived with Melanie and a panicked Laurel. Nick, looking icily handsome, stepped in behind her. They were followed by Chris and Doug, and a slinking, half-asleep Sean.
Finally, Faye arrived with Suzan, who nearly knocked her over in a rush toward the plate of muffins.
For a few minutes, everyone fussed around the kitchen table, drinking and eating. The group's chatty conversation had a different quality than usual. Cassie felt a chil coming off them, a new kind of fear. And she sensed a darkness within herself, as if with this latest threat, she'd been pushed farther out to the periphery of the group for good.
It was easy for Cassie to slip away unnoticed. She swiftly grabbed her purse and made her way to the bathroom without anyone missing a beat. Then she kept walking. She knew the diadem was hidden in Diana's room. All she had to do was find it. And the door to Diana's room was open, practically inviting her inside.
She paused at the threshold. There was no undoing this once she stepped inside. She had to be sure she was willing to suffer the consequences later on. But remembering her nightmares and the sound of Scarlett screaming was all it took to convince her to take that critical step through the doorway.
Cassie had grown so accustomed to the elegance of Diana's room. At one time it struck her as an oddly adult room for a teenager to have, but today it seemed perfect for Diana.
Now, if she were Diana, where would she have hidden the diadem?
Cassie let her eyes hover around the room and pass over each piece of antique-looking furniture. She gazed at the window seat and the many hanging prisms in front of it.
The morning sun struck them full on, reflecting tiny rainbows on the opposite side of the room. Bursts of multicolored light swayed back and forth upon the goddess prints above Diana's bed.
Cassie grinned. The goddess prints. She knew Diana, her sworn sister, so well; she didn't even need to resort to magic to realize exactly where the diadem was hidden.
There were six prints in all. Five of them were similar, black-and-white and slightly old-fashioned. They were the Greek goddesses Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Artemis, the huntress; Hera, the queen of the gods; Athena, the goddess of wisdom; and Persephone, the goddess of all growing things. But the last print was different from the others. It was in color, and was larger and more modern. It was a young woman beneath a starry sky, with a crescent moon shining down on her long, flowing hair. It was the goddess Diana. And she wore the same white garment Diana wore at Circle meetings as well as a garter on her thigh and a silver cuff-bracelet on her upper arm. And, most importantly, on her head was a thin circlet with a crescent moon, horns upward. The diadem.
Of course, Cassie thought. It was almost too obvious.
Cassie rested her hand against the print and then gently lifted it up off the wall. Just as she suspected, the wall behind the frame had been hollowed out, and there it was.
Resting within that secret cave of torn plaster and Sheetrock was a silver document box.
Cassie reached for it hungrily and unsealed its top. And there, quietly seated within the confines of that silver box, was the shimmering diadem in all its glory.
Quickly Cassie shoved the diadem deep into her bag and replaced the box snugly back into the wall. She rehung the print over the hole and straightened it to just the way she'd found it.
The entire terrible act took less than five minutes to complete. The antique furniture still sat in place, and the prisms still shot colorful rainbows around the room. All appeared just as she'd found it. But the diadem in her bag felt charged - it felt alive. She could sense its power quaking at her side.
Cassie returned to the group innocently, shoving her bag onto the seat of one of the kitchen chairs and then pushing it beneath the table. The group had relocated to the living room, where they were sprawled across the couch and the floor, surrounding the center table. Everyone was looking at Cassie now, and they were peculiarly silent.
Cassie held her breath. Perhaps she'd taken longer than she thought.
"What happened, did you fall in?" Doug Henderson called out, and everyone laughed.
"Sorry." Cassie exhaled with relief. "I was fixing my makeup."
Adam scolded Doug with his eyes and then invited Cassie to sit beside him on the couch. The meeting was about to begin.
Cassie smiled harmlessly and went to Adam. She took his warm strong hand in hers and waited for Diana to rise and begin speaking. She felt not a single ounce of guilt for what she'd just done. This was so unlike her, but she knew that if she were in danger, Scarlett would do the same for her. The group would understand once it was all over, once she single-handedly rescued Scarlett and defeated the hunters with the power of the Master Tools at her command. Then they would see that she was right all along, and that even her stealing the Master Tools from her fell ow leaders was a necessary evil. A necessary evil, that was a concept Cassie had never really thought about before, but that had to be what this was.
She glanced over at her bag in the kitchen and could swear there was an energy surrounding it, a force of white strength and vigor. She hoped no one else noticed. All she needed to do now was get the garter from Faye.