“Yes,” Faye whispered.
The sound shocked Cassie out of her trance. Don't be crazy, she told herself. Her fantasy about the flame collapsed. This was what happened when you didn't get any sleep. When the stress became unbearable and you got to the end of your resources. She was going insane.
Tears flooded her eyes, fell down her cheeks.
“Oh, she's just a baby after all,” Faye said, and there was savage disgust in her voice. Disgust and something like disappointment. “Come on, baby, can't you cry any harder than that? If you cry hard enough, maybe you can put it out.”
Still sobbing, Cassie tossed her head back and forth as the blazing paper stabbed closer. So close that tears fell on it and sizzled. Cassie was no longer thinking; she was simply terrified. Like a trapped animal, a desperate, pathetic trapped animal.
Dead meat dead meat dead meat dead meat…
“What are you doing? Let go of her-now!”
The voice came out of nowhere, and for an instant Cassie didn't even attempt to locate it. Her whole being was focused on the fire. It flared up suddenly, dissolving almost instantaneously into soft gray ash. Faye was left holding only a stump of charred paper cone.
“I said let her go!” Something bright came at Deborah. But not bright like fire. Bright like sunlight. Or moonlight, when the moon is full and so dazzling you can read by it.
It was her.
The girl, the girl from the yellow house, the girl with the shining hair. Utterly dumbfounded, Cassie stared as if seeing her for the first time.
She was almost as tall as Faye, but unlike Faye in every other respect. Where Faye was voluptuous, she was slender; where Faye was dressed in red, she was dressed in white. Instead of a wild black mane like Faye's, her hair was long and straight and shimmering-the color of the light streaming in the window.
And of course she was beautiful, even more beautiful this close than she had been at a distance. But it was a beauty so different from Faye's it was hard to think of it as the same thing. Faye's beauty was stunning but scary. Her strange golden eyes were fascinating, but they also made you want to run away.
This girl looked like something from a stained-glass window. For the first time Cassie saw her eyes, and they were green and clear, brilliant, as if light were behind them. Her cheeks were faintly flushed with rose, but it was natural color, not makeup.
Her breast was heaving with indignation, and her voice, though clear and musical, was filled with anger.
“When Tina told me she'd delivered that note for you, I knew there was something going on,” she said. “But this is unbelievable. For the last time, Deborah, let her go!”
Slowly, reluctantly, the grip on Cassie's arms loosened.
“Look at this… you could have hurt her,” the fair-haired girl raged on. She had a Kleenex out and was wiping ash-and tears-off Cassie's cheeks. “Are you all right?” she asked, her tone gentling.
Cassie could only look at her. The shining girl had come to rescue her. It was like something out of a dream.
“She's frightened to death,” the girl said, turning on Faye. “How could you, Faye? How could you be so cruel?”
“It just comes naturally,” Faye murmured. Her eyes were hooded, sullen. As sullen as Deborah's face.
“And you, Suzan-I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how wrong it is?”
Suzan mumbled something, looking away.
“And why would you want to hurt her? Who is she?” She had a protective arm around Cassie now as she looked from one of the senior girls to another. None of them answered.
“I'm Cassie,” Cassie said. Her voice wobbled at the end, and she tried to steady it. All she could feel was the girl's arm around her shoulder. “Cassie Blake,” she managed to finish. “I just moved here a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. Howard is my grandmother.”
The girl looked startled. “Mrs. Howard? At Number Twelve? And you're living with her?”
Fear darted through Cassie. She remembered Jeffrey's reaction to hearing where she lived. She would die if this girl responded the same way. Wretchedly, she nodded.
The fair-haired girl whirled back on Faye. “Then she's one of us! A neighbor,” she added sharply as Faye's eyebrows shot up.
“Oh, hardly,” Faye said.
“She's only half-“ Suzan began.
“Shut up!” said Deborah.
“She's a neighbor,” the fair-haired girl repeated stubbornly. She looked at Cassie. “I'm sorry; I didn't know you'd moved in. If I had-she threw an angry glance at Faye-“I'd have stopped by. I live down at the bottom of Crowhaven Road, Number One.” She gave Cassie another protective squeeze. “Come on. If you want, I'll take you home now.”
Cassie nodded. She would have happily followed if the girl had told her to jump out a window.
“I forgot to introduce myself,” the girl said, stopping on the way to the stairs. “My name's Diana.”
“I know.”
Diana had a blue Acura Integra. She stopped in front of it and asked Cassie if she wanted to get anything from her locker.
With a shudder, Cassie shook her head.
“Why not?”
Cassie hesitated. Then told her. Everything.
Diana listened, arms folded, toe tapping with increasing speed as the story went on. Her green eyes were beginning to shine with an almost incandescent fury.
“Don't worry about it,” was all she said at the end. “I'll call and have the custodian clean out the locker. For now, we need to get you out of here.”
She drove, telling Cassie to leave the Rabbit.
“We'll take care of it later.” And Cassie believed her. If Diana said it would be taken care of, it would be taken care of.
In the car, all Cassie could do was stare at a strand of long, shining hair falling over the emergency brake. It was like sunlight-colored silk. Or sunlight-and-moonlight colored, rather. For an instant, in the back of Cassie's mind, a thought popped up about someone else who had hair that was more than one color, but when she grasped after it, it was gone.
She didn't quite dare to touch the strand of hair, although she wanted to see if it felt like silk too. Instead she tried to listen to what Diana was saying.
”… and I don't know what gets into Faye sometimes. She just doesn't think. She doesn't realize what she's doing.”