Free The Hunt by L. J. Smith

said.
    Faye snickered and whispered something under her breath to Deborah and Suzan.
    Diana turned to her. “I’m the only one who can easily do it,” she said. “We all know that.”
    â€œBut you could be putting yourself in danger,” Faye said mockingly. Then her face took on a spiteful weightiness. “If given the chance, Max will mark you just like he did me.”
    Diana shrugged. “I’m not going to do any magic around him. Besides if I can get into his bedroom, I might be able to find out where he keeps his relic.”
    â€œYou’re not going anywhere near his bedroom,” Faye shot back.
    Laurel cleared her throat. “I’ve made some progress digging up information about the relics,” she said. With a nod from Cassie, she took the center of the floor and explained to the Circle that the relics originated around 1320, shortly after Pope John XVII authorized the Inquisition to persecute witchcraft as a type of heresy.
    â€œAn accused witch created and spelled the relics in return for her life,” Laurel said. “She christened the owners of these magical stones and taught them the killing curse.”
    â€œOf course they needed a witch to do their dirty work for them,” Sean called out. “Wimps.”
    Laurel pursed her lips at the interruption. “Soon the Inquisition led to a wave of witch-hunting,” she continued, “during which the relics were sighted throughout France, Italy, and Germany. But many of them were destroyed during the peak of the hunts, which occurred in the late 1500s till around 1630. And by the time the hunt reached Salem in the 1690s, only a dozen or so relics—and even fewer hunter families—had survived.”
    Laurel focused her eyes on Diana specifically. “It’s now believed there are only six relics still active.”
    Diana was looking straight down at the floor. In almost a whisper she said, “That’s all?”
    Laurel glanced at Faye. “So it may be worth it for Diana to search Max’s bedroom if it means we can bring that number down to five.”
    â€œFive, six, seven hundred, what difference does it make?” Nick called out. “We still don’t have a way to beat them. Can we talk for a moment about Scarlett? She wants to kill Cassie, to get her spot in the Circle, and she has our Master Tools. She almost got the best of us last night, and she’ll come back again. If we can’t usemagic on her, then we need to be ready to destroy her with our bare hands.”
    Deborah patted Nick on the shoulder. “Well, it goes without saying that my cousin can use some anger management right about now.”
    Until this point, everyone had been so engrossed in the discussion that no one had noticed Chris trying to squeeze his six-foot-tall body into the tiny confines of the dumbwaiter carved into the kitchen wall. But the racket he was creating finally captured the group’s attention.
    â€œI can do it,” he said. “Doug, push my feet in for me. And then launch me upstairs.”
    Doug did as he was told, laughing. He shoved Chris’s feet deeper into the box with one hand. His other hand hovered over the wooden lever that would send the dumbwaiter flying up the chute that led to the kitchen above them.
    â€œChris,” Cassie yelled. “That’ll never hold you. It’s not an elevator. Get out before you break it.”
    â€œDon’t mess with that thing,” Faye called out to him. “It’s our favorite way to have Cassie wait on us from upstairs.”
    â€œBut I can do it,” Chris said again. “I’m not as big as I look.”
    Cassie’s patience had worn thin and a peculiar angersurged through her. Her face and hands grew hot with rage. “I said, get out of there!”
    Before she could get control of herself, she marched over to Doug and forcefully shoved him away from the lever. Her strength