A/N: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! Please continue, I love the feedback. This is the first story I'm writing for The Secret Circle so I'm glad you enjoy reading it. Here's the breakdown of everyone's ages.
Phoebe is seventeen going on eighteen and is a senior.
Grey is seventeen going on eighteen and is a senior.
Mark is seventeen going on eighteen and is a senior.
Celeste is seventeen going on eighteen and is a senior.
Margaux is the youngest of the group at sixteen and is a junior.
Nick is the oldest of the group at eighteen going on nineteen and is a freshman at the community college.
Phoebe looked stunned. The last thing she had expected was for Celeste to know about the circle. Like everyone else, she had assumed that Cassie would have left that part out like her mother before her.
"Have you been trained," Grey asked. He was extremely curious about the blond ever since running into her at school that morning. She must know the basics if she knew about the Blackwell house, which meant that she wasn't unprotected like the kids had thought she was.
"Yes. Since I was little," she explained, walking closer to the group. Hands in her pocket, she strutted forward and her boots clicked against the hardwood floors. All of a sudden she wasn't the sweet, naïve girl that they had made her out to be in their heads. Celeste seemed powerful and competent.
"My mother didn't want me to be blindsided like she was when my Grandmother was killed in the fire that Charles started. I've always known, since I was little. Mom's main concern was making sure I learned the craft in a controlled environment."
"Did Jane know," Phoebe asked.
"Grandma Jane knew," Celeste confirmed. "She would come out during the summers and help Mom train me."
"Why did your Mom take you to Long Island," her cousin asked. "Wasn't she originally from California?"
"I guess Mom wanted to be near Grandma Jane and the circle, just in case anything ever came up. Besides, Long Island also has a history of Witch Trials and I guess Mom wanted to be somewhere of significance."
"So where is your mom," Margaux asked. "She just let you come here all alone? Doesn't sound that great to me," she remarked.
Celeste looked at Margaux, her lips pulling back into a slick smile and her eyes narrowing. "My mom is a professor of female literature and occult practices. She's on study abroad with an anthropology team right now in Europe, but don't worry. Mom will be taking sabbatical next semester to come here," rubbing it in the younger girl's face that her mother was still around.
Margaux grimaced as if she had been sucker punched. She didn't like this girl; who was she to come into the circle and act like she owned it? She didn't care if Celeste was a Blake. As far as she was concerned this was Phoebe's circle to run.
"Besides," Celeste continued, "Long Island has a huge wiccan community so Mom was able to build a support group there instead of having to hide our practicing."
"So Cassie is coming back," Adam said. The kids turned to see Margaux's dad standing in the entrance.
"Dad, what are you doing here?"
"Well, I just came from having dinner with all of your parents," he explained. Looking around, he noticed one of the kids missing. "Where's Nick?"
"Not here," Margaux pointed out rudely. She was still kind of pissed that he was ditching the circle just when the new girl was coming around. "Why did you come here?"
"Well, we all agreed that we need to take your training to the next level. You all know the basics but you guys don't do much circle magic, so we're going to start meeting with you as a whole."
"Starting when," Phoebe asked, apparently the only one who was eager about this.
"Well, Diana wanted to wait to tell you guys until next week but Jake pushed for this weekend."
In the past two decades Adam and Jake had spent most of their time avoiding each other and simply putting up with one another when they had to interact for the circle. While Jake had proved himself to the circle, changing his ways and seemingly becoming a better person, Adam had stopped hating him for their shared past and had started hating him for loving the same woman as he had.
After losing Diana, Adam had tried to take his Dad's advice to not go against fate. Something had drawn him to Cassie but her friendship with Diana had kept them apart just long enough for her to develop feelings for Jake. It was like their parents all over again, with Cassie choosing the member of the circle that held the most potential for darkness other than herself.
"But the senior ball is this weekend," Phoebe said. "It's the first dance of senior year that sets up all of the senior activities."
"I still need to find a dress," Margaux told her best friend.
"Um, you're not going," Adam told her. "You're a junior."
"Mark's going to take me," she said fighting her father.
"Um," Mark said standing up. "I promised my Mom that I would hang out with Celeste. She wasn't registered when the invites went out and since it's her senior year Mom thought it would be nice if I took her."
"And you were going to tell me when," she demanded, hating the blond even more.
"You can still go to the ball," Adam told the others. "We'll start Saturday at noon."
Adam turned to Celeste, "Has your mother given you her book of shadows," he asked. "We all have ours but yours is the most complete."
"No, Mom likes to keep that close to her body, but I started my own," she said and was surprised to see looks of shock on everyone's faces. "What?"
"You started your own book of shadows," Phoebe asked. "Can we do that," she asked Adam.
"I don't see why not," he said. "It's how all of ours were started. I'd really like to see that sometime," he turned to Celeste.
"I'll bring it Saturday," Celeste said.
Adam had left and Phoebe and Grey had left together, leaving Mark, Celeste and Margaux in the abandoned house.
"You're not going to that ball," Margaux told her. "I mean, it's just pathetic to go with your cousin," she swiped at the other girl. "Besides, you don't belong here so what does it matter to you," Margaux asked.
"Hey, that's my cousin," Mark said stepping in.
"Like you really care," Margaux responded. "And what, you choose now to have loyalty to someone? You're choosing the wrong person."
"Yeah, well blood is thicker than water," Celeste said. "Besides, I had to give up my senior year back home to come back here so I'm going to that dance," she stuck up for herself. "It's not like you won't get a chance to go next year."
"If you take her over me, we're over," she told Mark.
The boy stood tall at six foot one, his midnight black hair just a little too long and hitting just below his ears. "Then I guess we're over," he told the sixteen year old. "So long," Mark said and guided Celeste out of the abandoned house.
"Come on," Margaux heard him say. "Mom's ordering take out for your first night here."
Left alone in the abandoned house, Margaux held back her tears. There was no way she was letting that bitch take her place in the circle.
Jake knocked on Nick's door and didn't wait for an answer before entering. Finding his son asleep, he went over to him and nudged him awake.
Nick rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "What?"
"It's only nine o'clock. How long have you been sleeping?"
"Um, since like six o'clock," he answered.
"Okay, get up," he told his son. "You're not gonna be able to sleep later and you have class tomorrow morning."
"Leave me alone," he groaned and rolled over.
Jake leaned down and pulled the blanket, causing Nick to fall on the floor. "Get your ass downstairs. Now."
"Hey! Stop stealing my ice cream," Phoebe said, twisting her body to keep Grey from taking her Scout mint chocolate.
"But it's so good! Here, you can have some of my strawberry," he said trying to swipe some of hers.
"Ew! Who likes strawberry," she asked. "Not you," Phoebe joked, "or you wouldn't be stealing my chocolate!"
"Strawberry is delicious. I can't help it if I'm craving some chocolate," Grey grinned, stopping to pull her close and kiss her.
As she was kissing him, she started to slowly stretch her arm away from his creeping hands. Pulling away, she hopped down the street only stopping to turn and look at him before taking another spoonful of her ice cream.
"Oh, so that's how it's going to be," he asked before sprinting after her.
She screamed and started running, only for him to catch her around the waist.
Diana sat in her office at her home with old scrapbooks spread over her desk. It seemed like yesterday when Cassie had come pounding at her door, completely soaked from the down pour she had run through.
"Cassie, is everything alright," she asked her before ushering her inside.
"I need your help, Diana," the twenty-one year old said. "You're the only one that I could think of coming to. I can't even go to my Grandma," she told her.
"What's wrong," Diana asked, rubbing her hands against her protruding belly.
"I made a really big mistake," the blond told her.
Throwing down a picture that had been taken of them at Diana's engagement party, she couldn't help but wonder if it was wrong of her to have kept her best friend's secret. Then again, she had been asking that question everyday for the past nineteen years.