Free Cast Into Darkness by Janet Tait Page B

under the hood, was a faint purple glimmer. Victor had almost certainly tampered with it. He’d have to walk instead. Setting off down the road, he kept to the narrow side where the trees provided him with natural camouflage. The more distance he put between himself and Hamilton land, the harder it would be for them to trace his teleport spell.
    So much for the direct method. He’d have to come up with another way to get the stone.
    His heartbeat slowing to normal, he ran through the options as he left the edge of the Hamiltons’ tree-covered estate and reached the outskirts of the little town of Paumanok. One thought kept returning to his mind.
    Kate. She had the stone. She trusted him. There must be a way to use her to retrieve it.
    By the time he’d slipped across the old wooden bridge leading into town, he knew what he had to do. But the certainty that his plan would work didn’t settle his nerves or lead to his usual pre-op calmness.
    Instead, Kate’s eyes, gazing up at him as she lay against the pillow last night, kept intruding on his thoughts, like a haunting melody that wouldn’t stop playing.
    Kate reached the small clearing a few minutes before 9:00 p.m. Thick with a few old oaks and a dozen tall, gray-barked catalpas, the grove stood past the Sanctum at the far western edge of the estate, near the perimeter wall that ran up against Paumanok Road. Back when she and Brian had been kids, they would run to the grove to escape the pressure of studying. The other students attending the family’s school with them were more interested in playing on the beach and sneaking over the wall into the nearby town of Paumanok. So she and her brother had the little stand of trees all to themselves.
    Fireflies hovered around her, darting in and out of the grove. The lightning-struck oak they called the Old Bear still loomed over the clearing. She wondered if anything remained in their secret hiding place under its roots.
    The swing survived, hanging above a new growth of blackberry bushes, their aroma sweet in the night air. The thick rope looping the wooden seat around the branch above looked too frayed to hold Kate’s weight, but the big deadfall below provided a good bench. Kate brushed off the dirt and fallen catalpa bean pods and sat to wait for Brian.
    She rubbed her fingers against the tree trunk’s rough bark. Brian had missed dinner. And so had Dad—delayed at the office by another one of the hundreds of emergencies that always seemed to come up. Victor had run through, muttered something about reinforcing the security grid at the western wall, and teleported out. Not that she’d missed his company. But Hayley and Grayson sat around the oak dining table and talked magic, and there didn’t seem to be anything for her to do but play with her peas and fret until nine o’clock came around.
    She reached into the pocket of her shorts and let the stone slide through her fingers. At its cool, soothing touch she jerked her hand back out. The damned thing would probably cause her to lose more time. The last thing she wanted.
    Crickets droned above the quiet grove. No Brian. She checked her watch—quarter after nine. He’d better show. And after all she’d been through, he’d better tell her where he’d gotten the stupid thing and what made it such a supersecret, “don’t tell Dad” big deal.
    A hand touched her shoulder. She jumped. “Brian! Don’t scare me like that.”
    He stood next to her, wearing a blue Hamilton T-shirt with the double-H logo, but she could see only his face and part of his chest. As she watched, the rest of him appeared, as if she were watching an old-fashioned Polaroid picture develop before her eyes. She’d seen the effects of a cloak spell before, but why did he feel the need to hide in his own home?
    He put a finger to his lips, then whispered, “Sorry I’m late.” After sitting down next to her, he scrunched up his eyes and his body stilled. His fingers tapped out the points of a