T*Witches 3: Seeing Is Deceiving (9 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE NIGHTMARE

Three white orbs filled the archway: the snowman?! In her confusion, Cam thought it had walked and opened the door itself. But that wasn’t —

“Grab her!” a voice coming from the snowman hissed. It was a voice she’d heard before.

Cam hadn’t planned what to do next. She focused her blazing eyes on the Styrofoam snowman, trying to see inside it. She hadn’t meant to scorch it — but suddenly, tendrils of smoke encircled the snowman and the acrid odor of charred Styrofoam swirled around them and began to seep swiftly into the gym beyond.

“Dumb move, Cam!” Shane didn’t bother to hide his panic, as the smoke began to thicken.

“Stupid servant boy!” That voice again, thin and reedy. “Why are you wasting time? Just get her!” With that, a form leaped out from behind the snowman: a man with a swizzle-stick mustache, sparse wishy-washy whiskers on a pointy chin. Cam felt like everything about him was insubstantial, a bundle of bones inside a sack of skin. Fear rippled down her spine. She’d heard this creature before.

It was …?! That warlock! The one who could shape-shift into a giant lizard. The one Ileana had called Fredo. Cam remembered because at the time it had sounded to her like “a-fraid-o.” He’d tried before to capture the twins. That time, their fierce protector Ileana had been there.

Now Cam was on her own.

He lunged at her, but she was too fast and too clever. Pulling a move perfected on the soccer field, Cam faked to the left, then ducked under his right arm and dashed out the door — she headed straight into the middle of the packed dance floor, which was hazy now, gradually filling with smoke.

Racing, Cam blew by shocked kids, who stopped, startled, in mid-dance.

“Get Mrs. Hammond!!” she yelled, blasting toward their principal, who was one of the chaperones.

The acrid smoke was heating up the gym. The
smoke alarms sounded. Followed by a wave of widespread panic.

Then, several sudden blasts nearly drowned out the hysterical crowd. Cam whirled around and saw him — Fredo! — over by the buffet! Methodically hurling meatballs up at the ceiling — with such force, he burst every lightbulb, pitching the gym into darkness!

Her own searchlight eyes could see what no one else could: The frustrated, fuming warlock turned to the stage and furiously pitched meatballs at the band. Instantly, their amplifiers sizzled and burst! What was he doing? Blowing up the gym? Cam expected to see flames shooting out from the stage.

Instead, she felt water… slimy, dirty, gunk-filled, rushing up to her ankles. What? Fredo was now standing against the back wall, gripping the main waterpipe with Godzilla-like strength — so hard, it burst. The smell of rotten, sewagelike slime engulfed the room. It was as if some polluted river had overflowed. The faux snow that had covered the floor now mixed with rust from the pipes.

Panic morphed to pandemonium. Marble Bay High’s once enchanted evening was turning into a black and slimy nightmare; the winter wonderland now resembled a giant mosh pit, packed with frightened teenagers screaming, shoving, stampeding through the swampy floor for the doors.

The chaperones mobilized into action. Principal Hammond bounded onto the stage and grabbed the microphone from the bewildered band —

“Stay calm, everyone! Stop right now! The gym is not on fire! The flood will not hurt you. You are safe. Your teachers and chaperones will open the doors and you will file out in a calm manner.”

Principal Hammond’s valiant effort was no match for the rising water and the choking stench in the room. Sobbing, shrieking kids slipped and fell in swampy muck, trying to get out. Cam started to feel herself swallowed up by the crowd, caught in a tangle of swinging arms and legs. Above the din, she thought she heard her friends calling for one another. She had to do something — but what? What good was stunning people, dazzling them into confessing, and setting things afire now? The only thing she could do was see in the dark, and maybe create a beam of light that would lead people to the doorways.

But as she trained her gaze on the largest set of double doors, someone grabbed her. Shane had her by the arm. Adrenaline kicked in and with superstrength, she untangled herself and got away. That’s when she saw Beth, arms flailing wildly, dress soaked, bending down — when she straightened up, Beth had pulled the much shorter Bree up off the floor, saving her from being trampled. Cam bolted over in their direction. She saw Sukari’s
sash, floating in the now knee-high water and felt sick, until she heard Suke’s calm yet commanding voice. “Kristen! Amanda! Stay with me! Hang on!”

He grabbed her from behind. Cam felt an arm wrapped tightly around her waist. “I’ve got you now!”

“Never! You’ll never get me!” she shrieked. Without thinking, she bent forward and sunk her teeth into his arm. It was only when he yelped, “Oww! What are you doing?” that Cam realized she hadn’t foiled a warlock attacker at all, but had bitten her rescuer. Jason’s arm was bleeding just above the wrist.

“Oh, no! Jason! I’m so sorry!”

“What’s wrong with you? We’re getting out of here!” He grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder, and bouldered out the door. To safety.

“It was him! Fredo — lizard boy!”

Hours after Cam had showered and washed her hair, her punky clone came sauntering into their room. Cam blazed through the events of the entire bizarre night at hyperspeed.

But it was Alex who accelerated in record time — from disbelief to shock to outrage. “So the creep is back — to finish what he started!”

“And this time, the scaly toad brought a friend. A hot one.”

Angry at herself, Alex bit her nails, raking raw fingers through her choppy hair. “I should have been there,” she kept repeating.

Instead, she’d spent most of the night in her bedroom, wrapped in one of Sara’s old thin flannel shirts. Plucking at Dylan’s guitar, she’d plopped herself down at Cam’s computer and started composing a song, fighting to keep her mind off sleazy Isaac Fielding.

In no way was he her father. Yet he might well have a legal claim to her, one even the righteous David Barnes couldn’t fight. She’d called Lucinda, who confirmed that Ike had been spotted in Crow Creek; someone had seen him at Sara’s grave. Desperately, Alex had sent an e-mail to Mrs. Bass at the Crow Creek library. Maybe the librarian, a childhood friend of her mom’s, could help testify or something in the upcoming hearing. Then, feeling jumpy, she’d taken a walk. The night was crisp, and it helped clear her head.

She’d been completely unprepared when she’d turned the corner onto the Barnes’ block and found Cam’s thoughts in her head — as if they’d been sitting on the curb, unable to travel farther, waiting for her to get there.
Where are you?
Cam was screaming telepathically.
Get your butt home! Mayday, sister!!

Cam’s sense of foreboding had been on target all along, Alex admitted to herself. They were in danger, and
not just from some sneaky thief. I’ve been stubborn and selfish, Alex began to beat herself up, too busy wearing my outsider badge of honor to see what’s going on right under my nose.

“Don’t do that,” Cam said, absentmindedly reading Alex’s mind.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t make this about you. The introspection meter is on ‘time expired.’ We’ve got to deal. Now.”

“Cam?” Alex sank into the desk chair. She was almost afraid to ask.

She didn’t have to. Cam answered, “Shane so has that ‘believe in me’ thing going on. But was I tempted? Neh-
vuh
! Even though you weren’t sending messages to me, I still heard you. You said, ‘Not like this.’”

“I should have —”

“Karsh,” Cam cut in. “That’s who
should
have been there. He’s our tracker. Our protector. He’s supposed to be inside our heads, guiding us, helping us.”

Alex bit her lip and said what they were both thinking, “If not him, then her.”

Ileana.

Neither twin would give it a voice, but the fear was shared, and it was real.
What if Karsh or Ileana don’t come? We can’t fight Thantos, or the ones he sends, on our own.

They had to make contact. By any means necessary.

In tandem, they rolled up their pj sleeves — so alike, but so different, Cam’s thick, comfortable designer duds; Alex’s cozy hand-me-down — and got to work. Shooing Alex off the swivel chair, Cam plunked down at the computer and started a new document. She titled it “Making Contact.”

Incantations,
she wrote first.

Alex, standing beside her, shook her head. “Been there, rhymed that.”

“Maybe our spell reeked?” Cam ventured.

Alex shrugged. “No worse than before.”

Next Cam typed:
Dad
. “We have to talk to Dad. Maybe he can get to Karsh. Besides, he knows something’s up, Als. I can’t read his mind, but it was written all over his face when I came home. He has a strong hunch that what happened was no accident.”

Alex leaned over Cam’s shoulder and backspaced
Dad
. “We can neither confirm nor deny. To involve him is to involve Emily. To ask would be to tell — everything. We can’t.”

Frustrated, Cam whirled in her chair. “We haven’t tried hard enough!”

“Or …” Alex said thoughtfully, “smart enough.”

“Meaning …?”

“Put your sun necklace on, Cam,” Alex, who was wearing her moon charm, cut in.

“Why couldn’t Ileana just give us her phone number!” Cam said, walking over to her bureau and picking up the amulet. The moment she clasped it on, the familiar
ping
of an incoming IM came from the computer. It was only from Kristen. But it might as well have been a shared thought balloon over the twins’ heads.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

E-mail!

You think Ileana has e-mail?
Cam began to feel doubtful.

She is, as you would say, very circa now. Even if she’s … not from around here,
Alex thought hopefully.

But she’s a witch.

“And we’re not?” Alex said out loud. “Come on, Cami, put on your cyber-thinking cap. We can do this.”

What would her address be?
Cam tried to think.

Alex shrugged. “Shane told you where they live.”

“It’s a start,” Cam agreed and wrote:
©coventryisland.com

Nodding, Alex added, “So, her obvious address could be:
[email protected]
.”

Cam typed a quick message.
Ileana, we need you! Write back now!
But as soon as she pressed
SEND
, a
DOES NOT RECOGNIZE ADDRESS
box came up. She tried
[email protected]
,
but that wasn’t it, either.

Alex looked thoughtful. “If not a name, maybe a personality trait.” Cam grinned and tried:
gogoddess.com.
When that didn’t work, she typed,
imagoddessandyourenot.com.

Cam and Alex locked eyes, identical silver-gray orbs, stormy irises outlined in inky black, and erupted in a spontaneous burst of brilliance. Had they looked out the window, they might have seen the first rays of sunlight overlaying the fast fading of the waning moon. Alex nudged Cam out of the way and typed:
[email protected]
.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SUNDAY IN SALEM

Ileana fidgeted with her hammered-gold cuff bracelet, twirling it impatiently as she waited under the imposing stone statue. Nathaniel Hawthorne! What would the famous author of
The Scarlet Letter
and
The House of Seven Gables
think if he knew he’d be immortalized for all eternity as a pigeon perch. The statue stood in the town square of his birthplace, a site famous — or rather, infamous — for another, more sinister reason.

Behind heart-shaped pink-tinted sunglasses, her smoky charcoal eyes flitted nervously. She felt almost as conspicuous as Hester Prynne. Compulsively, she drew her midnight-blue traveling cape tightly around her
waist — and then, plucking at the tie and undoing it, let it billow around her.

This town always gave her the creeps. She had no idea why Brice Stanley, via an emergency e-mail, would have insisted on meeting her here. Brice was a famous Hollywood movie star and secret warlock — what possible reason would he have for being here in this ratty park? In the middle of Salem, Massachusetts?

Not that she’d dropped everything and zoomed here just because Brice asked. She was hardly some common fan, one of the millions who’d do anything for the dashing, charismatic star. She wasn’t under his spell. What was that juvenile expression Apolla used? Right, she thought, kicking the grass. “Neh-vuh!”

No, Ileana had flown here for only one reason. She was desperate and didn’t know where to turn. Maybe he could help her. She still hadn’t figured out where Karsh was, or how to rescue her beloved, ailing mentor.

The threatening messages were becoming scarier.
Be warned, Ileana
, they’d said,
do not dare bring the Council into this. If we find out Lady Potato, as you secretly call her, or any of the elders, has been contacted, old Karsh is as good as gone.

The last one had come only the previous night.
While you waste time, he wastes away.

Then she got an IM from Brice! Had she not been so
preoccupied and panicked, she might have wondered why he was writing at this hour, predawn in California. Or why the message had sounded unlike him.

Mostly, why Salem of all places?

Well, she’d ask him as soon as he got here. Which, judging by the position of the sun and the gold pocket watch stuffed deep inside the pocket of her cape, Ileana now clocked at thirteen minutes, forty-seven seconds late. Impetuously, she pointed at the pigeon, muttered an incantation, and turned it into a chicken. As if the squawking would bring Brice there more quickly! But she had to do something: She hated tardiness — she forgave it in only one person, herself.

Crack!
The tree branch snapping was at least a block away, but the brilliant witch’s senses were sharp. Now she heard the unmistakable sound of tires, crunching on gravel. They were bicycle tires getting louder, rolling closer. Then the voices. Girl voices, whispers. She was about to disregard them, when she realized …

Ileana’s cape billowed, her hair flying around her as she whirled, furious. “You two! What are you doing here?”

Astride her bike, Alex braked a couple of feet in front of Ileana and snapped off her helmet. “So you did show up.” Her voice was a mix of relief and bitterness. “For him — for some movie star — you would.”

Cam finished the thought. “But not for us.”

Ileana’s arm flew out. She had half a mind to turn the insolent twins into … a pair of tadpoles! But Cam ducked away swiftly. Lightning-fast, Alex caught Ileana’s arm in midpose, stopping her.

She’d been tricked! How dare Apolla and Artemis be so duplicitous! It was a ruse worthy of… well, herself! How could they have been so clever as to
dupe
her — her! — into dropping everything and flying all the way from Coventry Island to this hated, horrible place, Salem, Massachusetts.

“We had to pick someplace we could get to on our own.” Cam, who’d tossed her helmet on the ground next to her red racer, knew they’d have a ton of explaining to do. “It’s a two-hour bike ride from Marble Bay.”

It had taken them less time, in fact, to break into Ileana’s e-mail account and figure out a plan to lure her there. Cam had started writing the urgent SOS.
We’ve been contacted! Lizard boy is back. You must come now!

Alex had nixed it. “This won’t work. There’s a reason she’s not here, a reason she never told us how to contact her.”

“It’s called control,” Cam had snarled. “As in, she decides when she’s needed. She decides when to help. She’s in control.”

“You’d know a thing or two about that,” Alex had mocked.

Cam had ignored Alex’s diss. “We’ve got to trick her. You’re right.”

That’s when they began opening the e-mails in Ileana’s account — and had seen the letters to and from Brice Stanley.

The movie star? Surprised, Cam had pressed her back against the chair. “She’s cyber-flirting with a movie star? And he’s
answering
her?”

Alex had grinned. “She’s crushed on America’s most self-centered … I mean, eligible bachelor. I bet if
he
asked to meet her, no matter how far or how soon …”

By eight
A.M.
, they’d grabbed a quick breakfast, left a note for Dave and Emily, mounted their bikes, and were off. Cam knew the way: She’d been on two class trips to historic Salem and had felt creepy there both times. Now, she knew why. The witch trials had been held there in the seventeenth century. Maybe one of their ancestors had been put to death there.

The twins had pulled an all-nighter, yet now as Alex earnestly explained why they needed her help, Cam couldn’t help thinking it was Ileana who looked exhausted. She was pale, her hair had lost its golden luster, and bordered on unkempt.

Alex picked up Cam’s train of thought, telepathically adding,
She’s lost too much weight.

Cam scanned Ileana’s outfit, what she could see beneath the cape. Her capris needed ironing….

“If you lured me here to play beauty and fashion police, I’ll turn you into Joan and Melissa Rivers,” Ileana snapped, reading their minds.

“What’s with the depress-o-rama?” Alex said softly. “Haven’t you heard a single word I’ve said? It’s lizard boy, the sequel: Fredo’s on the scene, and he’s trying to get us. It’s an emergency!”

“Aren’t they all!” Ileana seemed unmoved.

Gently, Cam touched her shoulder. “Sorry we tricked you. We tried incantations, but you didn’t hear us. We’re in trouble.”

Ileana shrunk from Cam’s touch and snapped, “Take a number!”

“We get to cut the line,” Alex retorted. “Our needs come before yours….”

Ileana threw her head back and laughed bitterly. “My needs? As if that’s why I haven’t dropped everything and come to your aid.”

“So you heard us —?” Cam was puzzled.

“— And deliberately didn’t come?” Alex was hurt.

“Smart little T*Witches! Now you’ve got it! You snap your fingers, I don’t jump. So you resort to trickery. Too bad you’ve wasted your time.” She stopped mid-rant. “How did you know my password?”

“We didn’t,” Cam explained. “It took us all night, trying to think of everything we knew about you. We thought you might use a name. Someone close to you.”

“Karsh.”

Ileana turned away so they wouldn’t see her lip tremble. “The magic word.”

Cam saw it before Alex heard it. The icy chill whirled around her, goose bumps rose on her arms, and the throbbing in her temples began. Her eyes stung. But she saw: a room so small and sloped, a tall person had to stoop in certain places. A room so enclosed, only a few people could be in it at the same time, so dark you needed a flashlight. Or a candle.

Then Alex heard it: the creaking of wooden steps, or was it fragile bones? Background noises she couldn’t identify, but if she had to pin them, they sounded like a lion’s roar, and then a goat’s neigh, and faintest of all, a raspy whisper.

Together, Cam and Alex exclaimed, “Karsh is in trouble!”

Astoundingly, Ileana burst into tears. But only for a second. Wiping her gold-flecked eyes with the back of her hand, she admitted, sniffing, “They’ve got him, and I don’t know where he is.”

Cam felt her throat constrict. “Who … who’s got him?”

Ileana’s words pierced her heart. “Who do you think?”

Tremulously, Alex said, “Thantos? He’s got the power to kidnap Karsh?”

“Fredo, the idiot uncle, is there, too,” Ileana spat bitterly.

Cam was confused. “Uncle? Thantos is our father’s brother, right? Where does —”

“Who said Aron had only one brother?”

Alex felt her stomach turn to jelly. Cam trembled.

Ileana had forgotten how much the twins didn’t know. She felt exhausted suddenly and was grateful the statue had a base. She sank down onto it, and told the twins some — but hardly all — of their family history. How the brothers had grown up on Coventry Island. How Karsh, who’d mentored Aron, had grown closest to the brilliant and kind warlock.

Cam found the words they both wanted to ask. “And our mother. You knew —”

Ileana took a deep breath. How much would Lord Karsh want her to say? At the thought of him, tears welled up again. Pressing her lips together, she said, “Miranda is gone. Vanished soon after you were born.”

Alex whispered, “Is she dead?”

“No one has seen her in fifteen years, so it’s assumed,” Ileana said. “Only —”

“Only what?” Cam jumped in anxiously.

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing!” Alex gripped her arm.

“They never found” —
a body,
Ileana wanted to say, but instead said — “proof of her death.”

A soft breeze could have knocked Alex and Cam over. Instead, a furious biting wind rose up from the east — from the water. Alex’s head was spinning. She couldn’t think of any way to stop it, except this: “Karsh! We’ll find him,” she blurted. “We’ll help you find him.”

“There’s nothing more important than that!” Cam knew she sounded over-the-top. She felt like her blood was boiling, veins and arteries pulsing hard against her skin.

“We can help, let us,” Cam pleaded, then described the room she’d seen, yelling over Alex’s shouts of the sounds she’d just heard when thinking of Karsh.

Ileana thought, So earnest! And fierce! She’d just divulged a family secret that shook them to the core. And yet, finding Karsh was uppermost in their minds. When it came to helping someone else, Apolla and Artemis had no fear and knew no bounds.

Ileana could not accept their help. The girls were Thantos’s quarry. He’d do anything to get them.

Not on her watch.

So she dismissed their anxious pleas to help.
“Here’s the equation,” she told them. “You help me, they win. They
want
both Karsh and me out of the way, so you are left unprotected.”

“If that’s true,” Cam reminded Ileana, “they’re already winning.”

“Give me a break, I’m working on it!” Exasperated, Ileana sprang up and began to pace, circling the statue. “I’ll figure it out on my own!”

Alex recognized the look on Ileana’s face. The brave and beautiful witch was fighting not to let her terror show. Alex’s heart went out to her. There must be
something
she could do.

As if wishing could make it so, a bolt of inspiration charged through her like electricity racing through a circuit. There was a way to help. She asked her distraught witch-guardian, “Do you have any herbs on you?”

Startled, Ileana blurted, “Of course! I always carry monkshood, parsley, and sage. He needs these to make the potions!”

Cam realized Ileana was talking about Karsh. And she locked into her twin’s vibe instantly. Holding her palm out, she stepped toward Ileana. “Can I look at them?”

Ileana impatiently peeled off the pouch slung over her shoulder. She tossed it at Cam with a look that said,
As if you would know what to do with these!

Alex quickly unclasped her necklace while communicating to Cam,
Give me your sun necklace now!
A second later, the gold amulets lay on Alex’s open, outstretched palm, intertwined.

Meanwhile, Cam had opened the pouch and sprinkled the herbs, which Ileana had already ground into a fine powder, on her own open palm.

They needed an incantation, now! But which one?

Of course, Cam thought — a healing one. Alex began, and she chimed in.

Universe of love and health,

Use these gifts of nature’s wealth

To free Ileana from the doubt that renders her undone, grant her power to win this bout

With moon magick and curing sun.

Alex felt the tingling first, then the necklaces heating up, accompanied by a faint buzzing sound. The magick was working; the sun and the moon charms were fusing together!

Although Ileana had witnessed this before, the sheer power of Aron’s twin daughters acting as one left her awestruck.

Alex hadn’t planned what she was going to do next. She felt Cam’s hand squeeze her shoulder and closed her eyes and forced herself to envision the necklaces — the
amulets meant to protect her and Cam. Ileana needed the gold sun-moon charms, but would never take them. Could Alex give them to her guardian some other way?

A sudden anger overtook her, a rage against the monsters who’d taken Karsh captive. Fueled by her venom, Alex saw them floating up from her palm, into the air, and settling in the deep velvety pocket of Ileana’s cape.

When she opened her eyes, her palm was empty.

Ileana shivered. Now the twins were completely unprotected.