This review may contain spoilers

Cassie (Britt Robertson) dreams that Jake (Chris Zylka) returns only to find that he doesn't like it when she's angry. Distressed by the witch hunter attacks and the undefined threat caused by her dark magic, Cassie has been hiding at home and telling people that she is sick for two days.

Adam (Thomas Dekker) comes to check up on her and finds her researching dark magic. She ends up confessing that she has dark magic due to her evil Balcoin lineage, but Adam questions Jake as a source of dependable information.

Cassie is also concerned that her grandmother is not behaving normally and has left to see an out of town healer. Adam utters platitudes with respect to Jane's health and suggests consulting Diana's family book about the dark magic issue. Cassie is not ready to share the news with more than Adam just yet and extracts a promise of silence.

Adam fails to keep Cassie's secret and when she catches him telling Diana (Shelley Hennig), her dream repeats, although she stops herself before Adam starts coughing up blood. The entire group is convened, but they handle the situation poorly, making Cassie feel more isolated.

Diana finds Cassie casting a spell to bring Jake back to town. Diana recalls that Jake is a witch hunter, but Cassie feels that he understood the dark magic issue and judges that risking his life to save Adam and herself absolves him of the witch hunter factor. Diana has come to insist that Cassie not stay by herself while Jane is out of town. She is firm in the belief that Cassie's attack on Adam was accidental and unlikely to repeat.

Grandma Kate (Stepfanie Kramer) has come to see Diana and is staying for a couple of days. Diana gleefully informs her grandmother that Dad (Gale Harold) is dating Dawn Chamberlain (Natasha Henstridge). Kate tells us that Dad had a crush on Dawn in high school.

Later, Kate goes to visit Dawn at school. She finds Henry's death so closely followed by the appearance of Jane's neurological problems to be suspicious. Also, Kate does not believe that Dawn has sincere feelings for Charles. She casts aspersions on Dawn's character and assumes a maternal defensive stance. She believes that Dawn is plotting something, although she doesn't know what. Understandably, Dawn wants Kate dead. Foolishly she proposes this to Charles who, in turn, understandably doesn't want to kill his own mother. Even when his mother later tells him that she has tried to kill Cassie and tells him he is weak in the face of temptation, he lets her go.

Trying to jolt Melissa (Jessica Parker Kennedy) out of mourning, Faye (Phoebe Tonkin) drags Melissa into her plans to get individual magic back. Faye had ripped a page out of Cassie's book of shadows that describes a voodoo priest ritual for finding untapped potential, and she has also found a voodoo supplier/practitioner in Chance Harbor via a search engine. At an externally ordinary bungalow, a likewise WASP-y young man (Grey Damon) obligingly casts the spell on Faye that involves drawing a five point star on her left breast in blood, which Melissa finds to be overly intimate. On the morrow, after the spell is supposed to take effect, Faye, bitterly disappointed by the lack of results, returns. When she finds his spell components to be craft supplies, she begins trashing the place. He admits that he has only been pretending to be a voodoo priest, but his grandparents were real practitioners, and he offers to collaborate with Faye whom he knows to be a witch.

When Cassie wakes in the night, Kate soon arrives and claims to sense Cassie's concern over her dark magic. Cassie's father didn't fight the darkness and became evil. Kate knows a spell that can be used to draw out Cassie's dark blood. Diana on the one hand tells Cassie she can trust Kate, but on the other hand doesn't want Kate to know that Diana herself is a practicing witch.

The next evening, Kate takes Cassie alone into the woods. Cassie is ready to be cleansed. Back at home, Diana has come with clean linens for her grandmother's room and happens to glance in Kate's suitcase. When she finds spell paraphernalia, she searches thoroughly and is shocked by mandrake root, a cruet ingredient.

Kate has set up an altar in the woods. A cloth with a quartered circle covers a person sized crate. There is also a knife. It all looks awfully human-sacrifice-y. Things proceed very quickly as Kate casts her spell, knocks Cassie unconscious, and puts her into the crate that sinks into the earth. Kate tells Cassie she can be cured of evil by death, but does not stay to see Cassie calm herself, and gather her chi and a handful of earth to blow the lid off the box with explosive force. Diana and Adam find her after and take her home.

Points Of Interest

1. Faye on the accidentally homicidal Cassie: "It's always the short, quiet ones you have to watch out for."

2. Kate is an elder. Out of the blue, she knows about Cassie's dark magic without being told, but perhaps Jane informed her that the children had bound their circle and were mystically active.

3. Elderberry is the "death tree."

4. Kate's dramatic murder attempt was actually a test to see if Cassie is The One We Have Been Waiting For, the one with the power to tip the balance between good and evil. Wonder which side she's rooting for?

5. Kate uses the phrase "You were involved in ... Jane's demise," so it doesn't look good for Cassie's grandmother.

6. Each witch has a unique power signature detectable by those who know how to look.

7. Cassie enjoyed the feeling of power that allowed her to escape.

8. Perhaps drawn by Cassie's improvised summoning spell, Jake has returned unannounced.

What Worked

A lot of plot happened this episode. It's always more fun when events move along briskly.

Faye's genuine joy that Melissa is asserting herself and becoming something other than Faye's meek shadow, even if that interferes with her plans, is lovely dimensional character building.

Diana was also well rendered here from her warmth and support of Cassie to her ability to read Adam like a book.

The sequence that begins with Cassie's terror over being buried alive and ends with blowing the lid off the makeshift coffin was very nicely directed.

What Didn't Work

Dawn Chamberlain continues to be written like a cartoon villain. Her attempts at machiavellian manipulation are as subtle as a marching band. A successful leader and professional who can handle public school politics should have far more finesse.

Fake voodoo guy, Lee, who I don't remember actually being introduced or called by name in this episode, seems to have been cast purely for his photogenic qualities or potential love interest factors rather than any possibility that he or his progenitors might be actual voodoo practitioners. While one realizes this is fantasy television, it needs to be acknowledged that voodoo is rooted in West African or Haitian religion, or just use a different word.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

"Darkness" stars Britt Robertson, Thomas Dekker, Phoebe Tonkin, Shelley Hennig, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Gale Harold, Natasha Henstridge, Stepfanie Kramer, Grey Damon, Chris Zylka. It was written by David Ehrman and was directed by Chris Grismer.

"The Secret Circle" airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.