“Book of Shadows” is episode eight of season one of First Wave.
A girl in a cheerleader’s outfit walks up to the door of a house and knocks on it. She tells the man who answered that they are having a bake sale to raise money to buy new cheerleader uniforms. The man says he isn’t opposed to something sweet in the middle of the afternoon. He buys some cookies and tells the girl he’d like to see her out of that old uniform soon. Really? Both his comments could be taken different ways. The man heads into his back garden and is eating the cookies and reading the paper. The girl, as she walks away, is saying that the goddess is alive and demons are afoot, holding a necklace as she does. The man starts suffering stomach pains and there are lights moving under his skin.
Protesters are outside the county courthouse in Salem, Oregon. Cade has been led there by a quatrain; a high school student, Diana Black, is being charged with multiple murders of prominent citizens who ate her cookies. Diana claims she’s a witch; Cade thinks she’s an alien. Diana’s attorney needed an investigator and Cade is it.
The DA is saying that Diana lured three people into buying her poisoned cookies and that she’s a deluded, dangerous woman, consumed by the black art of witchcraft. Diana’s attorney protests at that; witchcraft is a benevolent religion, recognised by the World Council of Churches in 1988. The judge has both approach the bench. He will not allow a modern witch hunt. The DA says that being a witch motivated Diana’s actions. Witchcraft is satanic worship; the defence says it follows nature, not Satan. Cade clears his throat and the attorney heads over. He shows her something in a book. An old case that supports the defence’s statement. The prosecution is treading on First Amendment privileges and the defence will ask for a mistrial if this continues. The judge agrees with the defence.
Cade speaks to Diana and tells her he’s here to help. She doesn’t need help. Cade says the town is on a witch hunt and think they’ve found one. According to Diana, the ingredients in the cookies are harmless on people; those who died were not people. They were demons. Diana got the ingredients from a book. She says Cade doesn’t understand. No-one does. What she did was good.
Eddie is outside and he provided the tip to Cade. He says the only connection between the three dead is that they were all civic leaders in the town. He thinks the aliens are targeting town leaders. Eddie has a list of what was in the cookies. Cade says they are not in toxic doses. Besides, hundreds ate them, only three died.
Next up is a member of Diana’s coven. She reminisces about how she, and two other girls, were playing truth or dare when one asked Diana for a light. Diana was asked to tell something no-one else knew, and she said she was a witch. The girl believed Diana had special powers when she used a knife – an athame – and coffee stirred into the sand to cause a storm and the sprinklers came on. Diana, to the defence, says that wasn’t a coincidence; she made it happen. Witchcraft is about rooting out evil and the others are looking to persecute her. Not the jury; the other demons like those who died.
Eddie has found that the organs of the three dead people do not match the age of their bodies. Someone is also watching Cade.
Another member of the coven is being asked about the truth or dare. She’d said her boyfriend was abusive. Diana told her that her problems would be over soon. Later that day, she tried breaking up with him. He told her that she didn’t break up with him; he breaks up with her. And he isn’t going to. He starts pawing her, saying how hot she makes him, when he catches fire. The girl found Diana’s lighter at her feet. The boy suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Diana’s reaction to this ‘terrible tragedy’ was to say the boy was hot and bothered and got what he deserved. The girl says what they are doing to Diana is totally wrong. The potion just came from that stupid book at the historical society.
Cade and Eddie realise something, which the moving lights under the man’s skin at the beginning suggested; Diana isn’t an alien – those she killed, her ‘demons,’ are. Somehow, she’s found a way of killing aliens that’s harmless to humans. Something the aliens would probably like to find out more about. And so would Cade.