The Secret Circle:

Out of the Darkness

The Secret Circle and its characters aren't mine – they belong to L. J. Smith and HarperCollins Publishers.

Chapter Fourteen

It was lunchtime. Sean was sitting in the back room, eating his lunch and half listening to Laurel, Diana, Cassie, and Melanie argue about which trees the environmental stewardship club should plant in front of the school. Adam was listening to their discussion. Doug and Chris were arguing about the supplies they needed for some project they were planning. Sean tried to ignore them; he didn't want to know what they planned to do with aluminum granules, potassium chlorate, sodium nitrate, and copper chloride. Faye and Suzan and Deborah were sitting at the other end of the table, talking quietly about something.

The door opened.

"Get out." The voice was low and menacing. A tall boy wearing a Letterman jacket stepped inside, scowling, followed by two other boys and a girl.

The members of the Club stared silently at the outsiders. Nobody moved.

"Get out now – or we'll make you," the first boy said.

"Will you?" Faye asked, her eyebrows raised inquisitively. "How interesting."

"Yes. We will," the tall boy said. "We won't be treated like second-class citizens by witch scum like you. Get out, I said!" He stepped inside the back room.

Faye's eyes blazed in fury. "You despicable outsider!" she said. "You get out! This is our school – it's our town." She stalked around the table and across the room to stand in front of the trio at the door. Her glowing golden eyes didn't leave the tall outsider – and her expression was murderous.

Uh oh. Sean didn't know what she was planning, but he knew that it couldn't be good. Somebody had to stop her – but nobody was moving. Nobody was saying anything.

Nobody had stopped him when Black John and the dark energy had controlled him – and people had died. He couldn't let that happen again. He couldn't stop Faye – he knew that. But he had to do something.

"Um, you could … why don't you eat here tomorrow, instead?" he asked the outsiders.

The tall boy looked down at him. "Shut up, shrimp."

Sean rolled his eyes.

Diana spoke up. "Sean's suggestion is fair," she said. "We will finish our lunch here today. You may sit here tomorrow. We'll find someplace else." Her gaze was steady as she looked at the tall outsider.

"Are you crazy?" Faye asked furiously. "This is our room." Her words were directed to Diana, but she didn't look away from the outsider.

Neither did Diana.

The outsider's gaze was wavering uncertainly between Diana's calm, courteous gaze and Faye's murderous glare.

"Faye, it … it's just a room," Sean said. "A lunch-room in a high school cafeteria. You'll be graduating in five months! It's not worth it."

The glow slowly faded from Faye's eyes. An odd look crossed her face for just a moment as she looked at Sean. She hesitated, looking from the Circle members to the outsiders still standing in the doorway, and back. Finally she nodded. "All right. I won't … do anything to them. This time." She glared at the tall outsider for another moment and turned her back on them.

"Go ahead and find another place to eat today," Diana said. "We will find another place tomorrow." She waited, still watching the outsider.

"No. You've had your turn. Now it's ours."

Sean looked up, suddenly noticing how quiet the cafeteria had become.

"Is there a problem?" the new principal's alto voice rang out clearly from where she stood behind the group of outsiders who surrounded the door to the back room.

"Yes. These … people … are sitting in the back room. They always sit there. The rest of us want a turn, too," the outsider said. He was head and shoulders taller than the principal, and outweighed her by well over a hundred pounds, yet his previously low, menacing voice was nearly a whine.

"We've promised that we'll find another place to eat tomorrow, ma'am," Diana told Mrs. Jackson politely.

Mrs. Jackson gazed intently at each member of the Circle. No one said anything. She turned to the outsiders. "I am sure you students are quite capable of working this out on your own," she said to the tall outsider. She waited.

He looked away first. He turned to Diana. "Okay. You win. You can eat here today. But if you're here tomorrow …"

The threat in his tone was unmistakable, but Diana ignored it. "We will find someplace else tomorrow," she said firmly. "I give you my word."

The tall outsider turned and walked away. The other three followed. But they did not look happy about it. And the looks they gave the members of the Club were … not friendly.

Diana thanked the new principal politely.

Mrs. Jackson nodded. "You're quite welcome." She opened her mouth to say something else, and stopped. She looked at the Circle members once more, as if she were memorizing their faces. "Good day," she said. She turned and walked away.

Sean knew, without a doubt, that she would be in the cafeteria at lunchtime the next day. And she would remember who had been sitting in the back room, and who had stood outside.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Deborah asked, glaring at Sean and Diana. "We could have taken them, and you just gave in to them."

"We didn't give in; we made a compromise," Cassie said, glancing at Sean and smiling at him. Her smile was genuine – not the "I'm being polite because it's the right thing to do" smile she usually gave him.

He returned her smile.

"We avoided trouble – with the outsiders and with the new principal," Adam said. "Which is exactly what we should have done."

Deborah, Doug, Faye, Suzan, Cassie, and Diana broke into argument. Had they given in? Was the Club entitled to special privileges? Even if it wasn't, should they have refused to allow the outsiders to sit in the back room on principle, because of how they'd asked? Or should the Club instead go out of their way to accommodate the outsiders' wishes, as a way of atoning for the way many of the Club members had treated the outsiders for so long?

They were still arguing when the bell rang. Grudgingly, Faye and the others agreed to honor Diana's promise to find another place to eat lunch the next day, leaving the room for the outsiders.

* * *

Once again, outsiders and Circle members seemed to be waiting for something to happen. No outsider was directly confronting any member of the Club; even the insults had come to an end, at least for the time being. But when Sean looked up from the cafeteria table where he, Suzan, and the Hendersons were eating, he couldn't help but flinch at the pure hatred he saw in the glances of the outsiders who had confronted the Club in the back room.

The outsiders were waiting, but they wouldn't wait for long.