When he was gone, my friends turned to each other excitedly.

"What kind of a party is this?" Tamara wondered out loud.

"I wonder if there'll be a keg or something," Bree said.

"I think I'm going out of town this weekend," Janice said, looking half disappointed, half relieved.

The four of us watched as Cal approached Bree's other friends, who were hanging out on the benched at the edge of the school grounds. After talking to them, he headed to the stoners clustered by the doors to the cafeteria. The funny thing was, he looked just like each crowd he spoke to. When he was with the brains, like me and Tamara and Janice, he was totally believable as a gorgeous, brilliant, deeply inquisitive scholar type. When he was with Bree's friends, he looked cool, casual, and hip: a trendsetter. And when he was standing next to Raven and Chip, I could totally imagine him as a stoner, smoking pot every day after school. It was amazing how comfortable he was with everyone.

On one level I envied it since I'm comfortable with only a small group of people, my good friends. In fact, my two closest friends, Bree and Robbie, I've known since we were babies and our families lived on the same block. That was before Bree's family moved into a huge modern house with a view of the river and long before we'd split up into different cliques. Bree and I were two of the only people at our school who managed to be close despite belonging to different groups.

Cal was…universal, in a way. And even though I was nervous, I wanted to go to that party.

CHAPTER 3 The Circle

"Roam not at night, for sorcerers use all phases of the moon for their craft. Be you safe at home till the sun lights the sky and drives evil to its lair again."