T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

THE TRIP

Cam was out of breath as she raced up the snowy path to the top of the hill. She felt like a tuning fork tingling with anticipation. She and Alex were about to attempt extreme magick. “Tell me we’re not really doing this,” she said, elated.

“We’re not really doing this,” Alex deadpanned. A step behind her twin, she stopped and took a deep breath, partly to get calm, partly to get ready. Because she wasn’t.

She reviewed why the drastic step they were about to take was necessary.

One, she reminded herself, the anonymous notes warning that their mother was in grave danger and needed them.

Two, Cam’s vision of the desperate woman weeping in the snow. Who else could it have been but Miranda?

Three, the photo of Thantos visiting a clinic. Clinic, sanitarium, asylum, nuthouse, cuckoo’s nest — whatever you called it, it was a practically perfect place to stash someone who had gone crazy.

“But why would he keep her there? Why not kill her?” Cam checked in.

“Simple,” Alex said, sounding surer than she felt. “To get at us, of course. We’re supposed to develop into these genius witches, right? Take after our parents and all. And Ileana’s always saying that Thantos wants to get us on his side, use our powers to —”

“Get richer and more powerful himself,” Cam offered.

“So he kept her alive just to tempt us — or, like, blackmail us into working with him.”

“I’m getting a headache,” Cam complained.

“Are you having another vision?” Alex asked hopefully.

“No, just this monster migraine from thinking about our messed-up family!”

For the first time that morning, Alex laughed. “Okay, dude, let’s do this thing.” She glanced at her watch. It was still early. Emily and Dave would be thinking that they
were on their way to school. Never guessing that Cam, pretending to be Emily, had called the attendance office asking that “her daughters” be excused for the day due to stomach flu. Or that, for the price of four new CDs, Dylan was down with the caper and had sworn not to rat them out.

Tuesday morning, Cam thought, and here they were at the highest point in Mariner’s Park, standing under the sacred old oak tree. From the mound in which its deep roots burrowed, the entire U-shaped, boat-lined harbor was visible below. But Cam had never come for the view. It was the tree itself that had drawn her. She’d always known there was something special about it. Recently she’d discovered that her instincts were right. It was beneath the ancient oak, fifteen years ago, that Karsh had entrusted her to David Barnes. Alex was the only other person who knew the importance of this place. If they were going to make their scheme work, this was the spot to start.

The spell was called the Transporter. Accomplished witches and warlocks who knew how to use it were instantly carried from one location to another. Cam and Alex had tried it only once before — and had wound up not just transporting themselves, but calling up a traveler from the past!

“And that time,” a nervous Alex reminded Cam, “we only had to go across town.”

Cam, psyched, unzipped her backpack. “I don’t remember there being a limit on how far it could take you.”

She hoped she was right about that.

They needed to find the “intrepid” photographer — Als had looked it up; “intrepid” meant brave, fearless — who took the picture of Thantos leaving the celebrity clinic. He could tell them where their uncle had been. Plan B: They’d wheedle the guy’s whereabouts out of that photo editor, Edwards, who had to know more than he’d told them over the phone.

Mission? Rated D — for Doable.

Speed bump?
Starstruck
’s offices were three thousand miles away, in Carlston, California.

Take the next jet west? Not an option. Get Dave and Emily to finance the one-day round-trip? Not this millennium. The Barneses were so not Eric Waxman, who’d send his daughter a first-class ticket on a whim.

Thinking of Brianna made Cam uneasy. There was something so off about that whole L.A. party thing. Cam’s convo with Kristen had proved it. But what was really going down? Ouch! Too much thinking again.

“Yo, Cam, we are now leaving Six Pack land. We didn’t cut school so you could moon over your buds.” Alex had tapped into her overloaded brain. “Oh, speaking of buds — as in flowers — did you get the mugwort?”

Cam pulled a handful of scraggly dried weeds from
her backpack. “Herbs in the ’Burbs had one bunch left,” she crowed. “And I’ve got the candles, crystals, and incense.”

“Incantation right here.” Alex waved the sheet of notebook paper on which she’d copied the spell. “Now all we need is for our heads and hearts to be in the right place.” She was quoting from Ileana’s
Little Book of Spells
.

“Right,” Cam agreed, taking out the candles. She’d bought the ones in jars, to shield them from the wind. “And a passion to do good.”

“Whatever.” With a twig she’d found, Alex drew a circle in the snow, wide enough to surround Cam and herself.

Placing the candle glasses at the four points of the circle, Cam instructed, “Face east.”

“I know.” Alex knelt inside the circle. “Toward the water.”

As Alex lit the candles, Cam sprinkled the dried mugwort flakes around them, then handed the dregs of the herb and one of the crystals to Alex. “Got passion?” she teased, stepping into the circle.

“Got all the time in the world?” Alex shot back, pulling her sister down into the snow. “Just get it over with. We need to do this and get home.”

Holding hands, they read the incantation together.
As they recited the final lines,
“Good magick like air and water flow, Transport me body and spirit now,”
snow began to churn about them. The icy wind seemed to whip away their words. And then they were swirling inside a spinning darkness.

In an instant Cam knew something had gone very, very wrong. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” The line from
The Wizard of Oz
reverberated in Cam’s head as she slowly gazed around. She was completely lost … and alone.

A trio of “nots” flew through her addled brain. She was not inside the offices of
Starstuck;
the spell had not worked; and she had so not prepared for this possibility.

“I will not freak out. I will not freak out,” she chanted, trying to slow her thudding heart. Repeated calls for Alex — out loud and telepathic — went unanswered.

“Okay, I may be scared,” she confessed, hoping the sound of her own voice would reassure her, “but I’m not helpless.” She paused. “I’m a witch. Maybe not full-fledged yet. But I can handle stuff.”

A wet and furry, long-tailed, gray creature brushed her leg as it scurried by. Cam shrieked and leaped back as the trembling rat disappeared down a sewer grate.

“Stuff that doesn’t include rodents,” she amended.

Looking around, she saw warehouselike buildings surrounded by empty parking lots. She was in some kind of industrial area. But what state, what city?

It was still dark. She’d probably gone west, where the day hadn’t yet dawned. And south, as it was warmer here, no snow or wind, just air thick with an eerie silence. The area was run-down, deserted, creepy. The single streetlight still working cast a pale green glow over a nightmare setting, where danger hid and pounced.

What next, what now?

Hello! Her cell phone! She plucked it out of her pocket.

No service
were the words across the screen.

Cam stopped suddenly. There was a break in the silence. She heard the unmistakable sounds of footsteps. People! She was either saved — or sunk. Using her zoom-lens eyesight, she found them.

A block away, diagonally across a wide street, a couple was headed toward her. The one walking faster was a tall, stocky man wearing a baseball cap. He carried a suitcase in each hand. Cam focused in on his face. Did he look dangerous? More like desperate, she decided. He gnawed on his bottom lip; his deep-set eyes darted constantly as if he were fearfully looking out for something or someone.

A few steps behind him, a worried woman holding a sleeping child hurried to keep pace with the man.

Waving, Cam was about to shout, “Hello!” but the word never left her throat. Still a block away from the worried strangers, Cam stopped dead in her tracks and whirled around.

Behind her. It would come from that direction…. Her eyes began to sting viciously, her vision went blurry. An icy chill wracked her. And she saw: a big black car skidding around the lamppost corner, swerving wildly toward the frightened family.

Two guys were in the high front seat, one tall, the other short and squat. The tall boy, who was driving, pushed back a shock of dark hair that had fallen over his eyes. His face was animated by a wild grin.

The passenger next to him turned suddenly as if he’d felt Cam’s eyes on him. He leered at her, then let out a spine-tingling laugh.

The boys from the bowling alley, Cam realized. They were aiming deliberately at the frightened couple and their child. But why? And when would their car turn the corner? How much time did she, and they, have? Five minutes, ten at the most. It would happen …

Now!

She burst from the vision back to reality, shouting, “Watch out! Watch out!”

The woman clutching the baby stopped, terrified. “Don’t cross the street!” Cam warned as the wary mother stood at the edge of the curb, searching the darkness for her.

Suddenly, the man stuck one of the suitcases under his arm and reached to pull his wife forward. “Come on!” he hollered impatiently. “There’s no time to stop. I told you, he said they’re looking for me!”

Cam raced toward them, holding up her hand, yelling, “Wait! Don’t go! A car is coming.” But the man’s frantic shouting drowned her out. “Molly, come on!”

And then it was too late.

They were off the curb, rushing across the broad boulevard.

In desperation, Cam clutched her sun necklace, focusing hard on the threesome. A nanosecond of doubt held her back. Would it work alone, without Alex’s moon charm? Could she save them all by herself? “Help,” she whispered. “Tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do….”

Just then, the woman stopped walking and looked straight at Cam.

“Don’t,” Cam began weakly, but as the sun charm began to heat in her hand, her voice became sure and strong.
“Spirits who protect and love the innocent and helpless,”
she chanted, holding the frightened woman’s
gaze.
“Save from harm all those you judge kind of heart and selfless.”

A mask seemed to fall over the woman’s taut face. As if in a trance, she slipped her hand out of the man’s and stepped back onto the curb.

Cam set her sight on the man, but his cap shaded his eyes. She could not make contact with him. “Stop,” she wanted to shout. Instead, it was the woman’s voice that cried out, “Stop. Elias, wait. Come back. Come here!”

He was in too much of a hurry, too frightened. Cam’s scream seemed to blend with the wailing of the woman and her wakened baby. That was all she remembered. That, and wishing Emily were there, to hold and comfort her.

She was wakened by the polar opposite of nurturing warmth.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I? This is what I get for trusting you!” Ileana!

Cam had never been so relieved to hear that icy voice, to see the haughty expression, the jutting cheekbones and windblown golden hair, to see the dangerously flashing gray eyes of Ileana staring at her.

“What are you doing here?” It was a rhetorical question, asked as Ileana opened her cape and signaled for the trembling, blubbering Cam to wrap herself inside it. She pretended not to hear the fledgling’s tale of a man
being run down by two terrifying boys, how she’d seen it coming and had not been able to save him. How she could only help the woman with the baby —

“Do you think this is all I have to do?” the imperious witch interrupted. “Keep bailing you out of trouble? I’m in the middle of what may be the most important trial in the history of Coventry Island and you force me to choose between you and seeing justice done!”

Cam tried to explain, but Ileana wanted the answer to only one question: “Where’s your sister?”

CHAPTER TEN

ALEX’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE

Exactly as it had happened before, a sharp breeze set the candle flames flickering, then swirled around Alex, enclosing her in a funnel of whirling wind. When she opened her eyes, it took her a moment to realize that she was inside an office, surrounded by cubicles, computers, file cabinets. Photos and wacky headlines shared a huge bulletin board with schedules and dates.

Excellent! The Transporter had worked! She was inside
Starstruck
’s headquarters. Even better, she was exactly where she’d wanted to be: in the photo department, which was very quiet. On California time, it was too early for anyone to have arrived at work.

“Dude!” Alex spun around to slap palms with Cam.
“We’re in — we did it!” She was about to say, “You the girl,” only Cam wasn’t there. Alex called out, “Camryn! I’m in here, in the photo department! This rocks!”

No answer. She shrugged. Okay, Cam must’ve landed in another part of the building. Sending a telepathic message, Alex figured her sister would find her — meanwhile, there was no time to waste. Edwards wasn’t in yet, but the picture they’d come for probably was.

Where to begin? The photo honcho’s office would be a good place to start. But where was that? Main dude? Biggest office.

The nameplate read
ALVIN D. EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
. Alex opened the door. Ole Alvin commanded a spacious suite. But it reeked!

The ventilation hadn’t kicked on yet and the windows in Edwards’s messy workplace were sealed and strictly for the view. The office was seriously cluttered. Filing cabinets banked two walls. On his humongous desk, practically hiding the computer and the multiline phone, were piles of files, photo loops, notes, random supplies, and, big surprise, crumpled coffee cups and cellophane wrappings, complete with morsels of muffins, doughnuts, and cream-filled mystery cakes that even Dylan, the ultimate junk foodie, would reject.

Alex started with the cabinets. Luckily, Edwards alphabetized. She worked her way from A for Aliens to Z
for Zilch. Which is what she came up with: There were no files for Thantos or DuBaer anywhere.

She attacked the litter on Edwards’s desk, stopping every once in a while to listen for Cam or zap her another message. No go.

An hour later, Alex had rifled through hundreds of prints and slides but had not found the one she was looking for.

Nor had Cam arrived.

Dejectedly, Alex plopped into Edwards’s chair. The only place she hadn’t searched was the top drawer of his desk. It might contain a random picture or two. Wrong. It was Edwards’s junk drawer. Among pens, stickies, paper clips, and rubber bands were half-eaten candy bars, enough crumbs to host an ant convention, a shriveled, dripping peach, and a blackened dead banana. Someone get this guy a Dustbuster and a fumigator!

Wrinkling her nose, Alex pushed aside the leftovers and reached into the back of the drawer. She came up with a handful of laminated badges, press passes for employees. She flipped through them. Neither the people in the pictures nor the names rang a bell.

She was about to toss them back in the drawer when a familiar, sickening feeling washed over her like a tsunami. Her senses sharpened as she honed in on something far away. She heard: screeching tires, busted glass,
horrified shrieks. “No! No! Elias!” And then, a baby crying.

Alex jumped up and looked out the window. Daylight was dawning, but the street below was peaceful, no cars, no screaming people. The crash hadn’t happened there. Well, where then? Could there be some connection between the ID badge in her hand and the terrible sounds of an accident? She sat back in Edwards’s chair and checked out the mug shot. A thick-necked man in a backwards baseball cap. The name tag said …

“Alexandra DuBaer, I presume.”

Alex froze — and looked straight up into the beady eyes of a man so mountainous he filled the door frame. She hadn’t heard him coming: The car crash had obscured all other sounds. This dude was mammoth. And snarling. She was so busted.

Lamely, she went for a quip. “And you would be … um … Madonna?”

Edwards was ferociously unamused. His eyes bored into her. “You’ve got some nerve,” he growled. “You little punk. Think you can just break in here and go through my stuff?”

Alex calculated the distance between herself and the doorway. Edwards was about to pop a vein. If he took three steps toward her, she’d be toast.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“Helping.” Pathetic much? It was all she could think of to buy time.

“Helping yourself straight into juvie — by the looks of you, exactly where your kind belongs!” he barked at her. “Breaking and entering, trespassing, stealing. I’d call security, but it’s going to be much more satisfying to haul you out myself.”

He came at her. So did an idea.

Alex pictured the rotten banana in the desk drawer. Could she act quickly enough to send the squishy, revolting thing, sliding across the floor? It wasn’t much, but …

“Whoa … Ow! What the …?!” The big man slid into a skid, then went down hard. But he wasn’t down to stay — and, unlike the bowling alley bozo, Edwards seemed intent on causing major bodily harm.

From his flat-out position on the floor, he glared at her. “You little freak! You’re gonna be sorry you ever set foot in this office.”

Time was so not on Alex’s side. Edwards would be up in a minute. Other people would be here soon —

She could run — but … nah.

She needed to know the photographer’s name.

Where was Cam? Her sister could stun people, fasten them to the floor with a stare, dazzle them into confessing what they didn’t want to. If there was ever a time Alex needed those skills, this was it.

But she was alone, helpless … except for her wits, her necklace … and the crystal and herb flakes Cam had given her!

Alex took them out of her pocket and tossed what was left of the mugwort at Edwards.

The photo editor laughed. “That’s your weapon? Parsley?”

Clutching her half-moon necklace in one fist and the crystal in the other, Alex recited the Truth Inducer incantation:

“Free him,”
she said, feeling her half-moon charm begin to warm.
“Free Alvin Edwards … from doubt and shame.”

The laughter caught in his throat. He stared at her as though she were crazy.

“Let us win his trust … And lift his blame.”

“Girlie, Ms. DuBaer, or whatever your name is,” Edwards said with no trace of anger, “you’re barking up the wrong guy. That picture came in by e-mail from a freelancer.”

McCracken — the name on the ID badge. Alex remembered the one she’d been holding when she heard the phantom car crash.

“We published the picture,” the editor went on, “saved it in our cyber files. And it’s gone. Believe me, only a big-time computer hacker — a guy like your uncle
— could have cracked our system and deleted it — but someone did. That picture you’re looking for is history.”

Edwards lay back on the floor of his office. He put his arms under his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“I tried to find McCracken after you called,” he finally said. “He must have changed his screen name like he changed his address. The check we mailed him came back stamped ‘Moved. No Forwarding Address.’ And get this, it was his biggest score yet,” Edwards said admiringly. “Something must’ve spooked him.”

Or someone, Alex thought.

This whole trip had been a failure. Her heart sank. No photo, no photographer. And no idea where Cam was.

“She’s at home, where she belongs — as do you!” Ileana, boiling mad, sailed into the office, glaring at Alex.

Edwards’s eyes bugged at the sight of the exquisite velvet-draped witch. He lifted his head to watch her. Ileana sighed impatiently and waved her hand over his supine body. His head fell back with a thud, eyes rolling, unconscious. Daintily, she stepped over him. “Let’s go,” she grumbled at Alex. “Your timing stinks!”