Chapter 34

Jason sat on the floor with his back against the side of his bed, brooding and drowsing. Pages from Elizabeth's journal lay strewn about him, the Book tucked under his left hand.

His mother had kept "family night" going for far longer than he had wished, so much so that he had to miss Cassie's call. His mother had jumped on the phone as soon as it had rung, and she only grudgingly took a short message. He was to call her back later that night.

Audrey had then proceeded to tell Jason her opinion on teenagers calling each other "incessantly" and at "inappropriate" times. Only a protest from his father had stopped her from imposing a phone ban. Jason wanted to be thankful, but he could muster only suspicion for anything his father did for him.

Gratitude continued to escape him even when his father had intervened yet again just before Jason had retreated to his room. Audrey had admonished Jason to get to bed and not even think about staying up after making his belated phone call. Henry had chided her for treating Jason like a ten-year-old.

"He's responsible enough to know when to go to bed," Jason's father had said. "Unless you need me to get out all his report cards with the strings of A's on them to prove it."

Jason had studied his father's Aura through every confrontation. The patterns had become more methodical and coldly calculating. He could only assume that his father's apparent benevolence was working towards the man's own personal agenda.

Jason picked himself up and rubbed at a sore spot in his back. He had yet to call Cassie; he felt wrong going to her empty-handed.

He yawned and peered at the Book before grabbing the phone. After dialing the number, he fell into his chair before the computer and clicked over to the email he had received from Heather earlier that evening and stared at it.

"Hello?" came Cassie's sleepy voice at the other end. "Oh, is that you, Jason?"

"Sorry if I woke you," Jason said. He clenched his jaw against another yawn.

"No, it's fine, I was staying up to see if you called. I really needed to tell you what happened at the cemetery."

Jason listened. He swiveled away from the screen, a stunned look on his face. "Cassie, are you absolutely sure it's not Stephanie buried there?"

"Positive, Jason. What Richie 'heard' made no sense if Stephanie is buried there, but it makes perfect sense if it's someone else. She's alive, Jason, and she's probably somewhere in Haven, since my connection to people never extends beyond that."

Jason wiped his face with his hand. "This is nuts."

"That's not the half of it. If Ned's right in what he said about Gina Caligano, then the same thing is happening again! Mann is after Gina in the same way he went after Stephanie."

Jason wanted to protest that the dates didn't work, but he finally knew better than to apply his "old logic" to any situation in Haven. "There's one thing that still doesn't fit. You saw Stephanie in the flesh, so to speak. From what I gleaned from Mrs. Radson and some journal entries, that was the result of Presence, which normally comes from leftover energy of the deceased."

"There must be some other explanation for it. What concerns me more is how often this has happened before in Haven. Remember Richie's vision with Mrs. Sovert at the church? It makes more sense now if this is something that happens every year. It was very clear that Mrs. Sovert knew something about this."

Jason rubbed his eyes. "All right. I'll get on this. I'll see if anything else odd has happened around Halloween from 1985 to the present."

"Ned already did some looking. He didn't find a thing."

"I'm not going to look on the internet. I'm going to look in the school records."

Cassie sighed. "Melinda is not the only one that gets nervous when you do that."

Jason turned to his computer and opened a new browser tab, where he loaded the main webpage of Haven High. "Then don't look, because this is going to be the biggest break-in yet."

"Why?"

Jason paused as he used a browser plugin he had authored himself to run a pre-scripted set of exploits that would get him into the personnel system server. "Cassie, a typical high school produces mountains of paperwork. Grades, attendance records, truancy reports, medical records, student transfers, detention records, you name it. I have to grab all of them."

"But if Ned didn't find anything on the internet--"

"I'm working under the assumption that what happened with Stephanie was just the one we heard about," said Jason. "Mann made a mistake of some kind. Like Ned said, someone did a lot to make everyone forget about Stephanie Fowler."

"But if he did make a mistake that time -- and he's been covering it up perfectly since then -- you might not find anything in the records, either."

"Maybe. But Victor Mann can't be all-powerful or he wouldn't be so clandestine. If he had enough power to wipe every single possible record from existence, he would have just steamrolled over us. No, there has to be a limit to his abilities. We already know who his next victim is going to be, for instance. I can't imagine he intended us to find out about that."

Jason did not think anything about the silence on the other end of the line as his hacking tools reported success, leaving him logged in with administrator access on the central personnel system server. He started crafting a command to find the files he wanted.

"I'm going to try to get into Gina's dreamscape tonight," Cassie said in a hollow voice.

Jason paused. "Are you sure you want to do that?"

"I have to if I'm going to help her. Stephanie begged me to stop this from happening again."

"But aren't you worried that--"

"Jason, I'm terrified!" Cassie cried. Jason stopped typing. "I-I'm absolutely frightened out of my wits that I'll get into her mind and never get back out if Mann discovers me."

Jason stared at the Book on the floor. The eye seemed to stare at him in mockery.

"I'm afraid that if anyone helps me, they'll be pulled in as well," Cassie said. "I just don't know if this link is strong enough to--"

Jason stood and kicked the Book, sending it tumbling across the floor. "Dammit, I hate this thing," Jason growled.

"Huh?"

"The Book! There's a ton of spells in it for doing what you and Heather want, but they always have some damn condition that we can't or don't want to meet."

"I don't understand, Jason. What about Heather? Is she all right?"

"Yeah, she's fine," Jason said, falling into his chair. He ran his hand through his mussed hair.

"I felt something earlier and warned Melinda about it," said Cassie.

"They're fine," Jason said, his voice more snappish than he had intended. "I don't want to go into the explanation right now, but Heather wants to know if we can use the spells in the Book to tap into the power from the energy lines."

Cassie gasped. "We can't do that."

"Yeah, I know, I know. I wish we could. Shit, Cassie, if we had just a little more power that we could share among all of us, we could get Victor Mann out of Diane's head, we could keep Terri Hollis out of Heather's head, and help you get into Gina's head."

Jason bit his lip in the ensuing silence, and wondered if she were thinking he had finally snapped, that he was going to give into temptation after all this time.

"I don't want to," Jason said into the unnerving quiet. "I don't like what we have to do for some of them. But ... but..."

"We're just going to have to make do, Jason," Cassie said in a flat voice.

Jason cradled the phone between his jaw and shoulder and pulled the Book into his lap.

"Jason?"

"Show me the spell that taps power from an energy line into a shared psychic link."

"Jason! What are you doing?!" Cassie cried above the frantic sound of pages turning.

"There's even a spell here for exactly what we want," Jason said. "Exactly what we want. Anything we could possibly want to do with the energy lines we can do with this Book."

"No, Jason."

Jason stared at the stark black text seared into the parchment pages. "It just ... it just requires a focus, someone that shares the link through whom we can channel the power."

Cassie paused. "And what else does it require?"

Jason let out a slow breath. One hand clutched the pendant that lay under his shirt. It felt warm against his chest. The fingers of his other hand tingled as they brushed the flowing letters of the arcane script. His eyes narrowed as he struggled to interpret the archaic English structure. "We need a ... a young virginal woman. Or at least a virgin as defined by 'not having known a man.' First, she needs to be enslaved..."

"We're not doing that."

"... temporarily while she's to be the focus. Once enslaved, her virginity may be safely taken, but she must remain enslaved until the spell is performed. Once the spell rite begins, each of the others has sex with her in turn, but she doesn't cum until the last. When she does cum, the power is channeled, and she remains enslaved while..."

"We are not doing this!"

" ... channeling the power. The power stops once any of us releases her from enslavement. But she can be made a permanent focus if our collective will decides to keep her as a--"

"You are not using Diane again!"

Jason let go of the pendant and clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. He slammed the Book closed and shoved it off his lap, letting it tumble to the floor with a jarring thud. He took off his glasses and let out a shaky sigh.

"That came out wrong," Cassie said in a small voice.

"No, it didn't," Jason said. He wiped his eyes. "Because that's what it would come to if we used the Book. We'd have to use each other to get at this power. I mean, if I looked hard enough, I might find something that has a condition we can tolerate."

"Jason, if ... if Diane were willing, it might be different, then--" Cassie stopped and let out a frustrated sigh. "Now I'm doing it. I'm trying to justify using this spell."

"It's hard not to when you're scared."

"Are you scared?" Cassie asked.

Jason was unable to answer. All the reasons for his fear sounded selfish to him. He was scared he would make the wrong decision, or that everyone would blame him if they failed, or that he would be forced into a confrontation with his own father.

"Jason, I ... it's late, and I need to get to bed so I can..." She trailed off.

"I understand," Jason said in a voice of forced calm. "All right. I'll see you tomorrow. We'll figure out what we can do about these other problems then."

"Yes, okay. Well ... g-good night," Cassie said in a shaky voice.

"Good night."

Cassie uttered a gasp as her eyes flew open.

She did not stir or bolt. She refused to let the fear follow her to wakefulness. She waited for her heart and breathing to slow, then sat up. The room was still dark. By the clock on her night table, it was nearing two in the morning.

Cassie let out a tremulous breath and dropped her face into her hands as she was struck by the full force of what she had witnessed in Gina's mind. She shivered at the idea that a similar fate had befallen Stephanie before the poor girl had disappeared and was forgotten.

Her cell phone warbled. She jumped out of bed and picked it up. "Hello?"