There was only one answer to this, and Cassie fought not to say it. This was no time to come up with a devastatingly witty remark. But at last she gave in, because it was the truth, and because she couldn't think of anything else.
“Long enough,” she said, and shut her eyes in misery.
Faye descended slowly to stand in front of her. “Do you always spy on other people's private conversations?”
“I was here before you came,” Cassie said, with as much spirit as she could manage. If only Faye would stop staring at her like that. Those honey-colored eyes seemed to glow with an eerie, supernatural light. It was focused on Cassie like a laser beam, draining away her will, causing the strength to flow out of her. It was as if Faye wanted her to do something-or wanted something from her. It made her feel so disoriented-so off balance and weak…
And then she felt a sudden surge of strength that seemed to come up from her feet. Or, rather, from the ground beneath them, from the red New England granite that she'd felt buzzing with life earlier. It steadied her, sweeping up and straightening her spine, so that she lifted her chin and looked into those golden eyes without flinching.
“I was here first,” she said defiantly.
“Very good,” murmured Faye, and there was an odd look in her eyes. Then she turned her head. “Anything interesting in her backpack?”
Cassie saw, to her outrage, that Deborah was going through her backpack, throwing things out one by one. “Not much,” the biker said, tossing it on the ground so the rest of its contents scattered down the hillside.
“All right.” Faye was smiling again, a particularly unpleasant smile that made her red lips look cruel. “I think you were right the first time, Deborah. She's dead meat.” She looked at Cassie. “You're new here, so you probably don't understand what kind of mistake you've made. And I don't have time to stand here and tell you. But you'll find out. You'll find out-Cassie.”
She reached out and caught Cassie's chin with long, red-tipped fingers. Cassie wanted to pull away, but her muscles were locked. She felt the strength in those fingers and the hardness of the long, slightly curving nails. Like talons, she thought. The talons of a bird of prey.
For the first time she noticed that the red stone Fay wore at her throat had a star in it, like a star sapphire. It winked in the sunlight, and Cassie found she couldn't take her eyes off it.
Laughing suddenly, Faye released her.
“Come on,” she said to the other two girls. The three of them turned and went up the steps.
The air exploded from Cassie's lungs as if she were a balloon that had just been pricked. She was shaking inside. That had been… That had been absolutely…
Get a grip on yourself!
She's only a teenage gang leader, she told herself. At least the mystery of the Club is solved. They're a gang. You've heard of gangs before, even if you never went to a school with one. As long as you leave them alone and don't cross them from now on, you'll be okay.
But the reassurance rang hollow in her mind. Faye's last words had sounded like a threat. But a threat of what?
When Cassie got back to the house that afternoon, her mother didn't seem to be downstairs. Finally, as she wandered from room to room calling, her grandmother appeared on the staircase. The look on her face made Cassie's stomach lurch.
“What's wrong? Where's Mom?”
“She's upstairs, in her room. She hasn't been feeling very well. Now, there's no need for you to get worried…”
Cassie hurried up the creaking old steps to the green room. Her mother was lying in a grand four-poster bed. Her eyes were shut, her face pale and lightly perspiring.
“Mom?”
The large black eyes opened. Her mother swallowed and smiled painfully. “Just a touch of the flu, I think,” she said, and her voice was weak and distant, a voice to go with the pallor of her face. “I'll be fine in a day or two, sweetheart. How was school?”
Cassie's better nature battled with her desire to spread her own misery around as much as possible. Her mother took a little breath and shut her eyes as if the light hurt her.
Better nature won. Cassie dug her nails into her palms and spoke evenly. “Oh, fine,” she said.
“Did you meet anyone interesting?”
“Oh, you could say that.”
She didn't want to worry her grandmother, either. But during dinner, when her grand-mother asked why she was so quiet, the words just seemed to come out by themselves.
“There was this girl at school-her name's Faye, and she's awful. A female Attila the Hun. And on my very first day I ended up making her hate me…” She told the whole story. At the end of it, her grandmother looked into the fireplace as if preoccupied.
“It will get better, Cassie,” she said.
But what if it doesn't? Cassie thought. “Oh, I'm sure it will,” she said.
Then her grandmother did something surprising. She looked around as if somebody might be listening and then leaned forward. “No, I mean that, Cassie. I know. You see, you have-a special advantage. Something very special…” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
Cassie leaned forward in turn. “What?”
Her grandmother opened her mouth, then her eyes shifted away. There was a pop from the fire, and she got up to poke the wood there.
“Grandma, what?”
“You'll find out.”
Cassie felt a shock. It was the second time today she'd heard those words. “Grandma-“
“You've got good sense, for one thing,” her grandmother said, a new, brisk tone in her voice. “And two good legs, for another. Here, take this broth up to your mother. She hasn't eaten anything all day.”
That night, Cassie couldn't sleep. Either her dread kept her awake so that she noticed more of the creaking, rattling, old-house sounds than she had before, or there were more of the sounds to notice. She didn't know which, and it didn't matter: she kept falling asleep and then jerking back to awareness. Every so often she reached under her pillow to touch the chalcedony piece. If only she could really sleep… so she could dream about him…
She sat bolt upright in bed.
Then she got up, bare feet pattering on the hardwood floor, and went over to unzip her backpack. She took the things she'd re-collected from the hillside out one by one, pencil by pencil, book by book. At last she looked at the array on the bedspread.