T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice (8 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MOJO IN NO GO?

A jarring screech came from Alex’s guitar. She dropped it on the floor and jumped up, snapping her fingers. “Cam! You know what just hit me?”

“That you can’t, in fact, play guitar?”

Alex ignored the lame quip. Her sister had been in a guilty funk all evening, ever since seeing McCracken’s picture on the news. “We didn’t do the Transporter spell wrong.”

Cam’s brow was furrowed. “Once more, for the slow section?”

Alex set down her guitar and paced the room. “Our magick got ahead of us, that’s all. It knew, if we didn’t, where at least one of us had to be. Someone needed
help. Desperately. And you were there. You saved the mother and child.”

“So what are you saying? Our magick has a mind of its own?” Cam scoffed uneasily.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Alex insisted, excited. “Think about it: Did I ask to break into the shallow mind of your most superficial friend? Rhetorical question alert. I didn’t have a choice. That night at the bowling alley, Bree was crying out for help.”

It was happening with increasing frequency: Alex’s extraordinary mind-reading power turning on and tuning in without her say-so, even against her own free will! Witness the stealth break-in today on Bree’s bizarre thoughts. She had no clue what that was about.

Cam challenged, “If our magick is so smart, why did I manage to save only two out of three? I couldn’t help the photographer.”

Alex didn’t want to say it.
Because you were up against a black belt tracker
.

“So in a battle of me against Thantos, he wins. I can’t cut it?” Cam said glumly, replaying the events of yesterday in her head.

“Hit the escape key on the I’m-not-worthy screen,” Alex advised. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Maybe you weren’t a match for him alone, but together …”

“No!” Cam sprang off the window seat. She suddenly made a decision. Or maybe she was voicing one that had been brewing inside her since the hit-and-run.

“No, what?”

“You’re mind-reader girl. Go for it. Wait, don’t bother. If Uncle T wanted to scare me, guess what — score! I am handing in my resignation. I’m out of the witch business.” Cam folded her arms.

Alex cracked up. “You’re out of the witch business? As if you could be.”

Cam walked up to Alex and looked into her twin’s eyes. “Wrap your brain around this: Bad stuff is happening. We can’t handle it. We need to summon Ileana. And Karsh.”

“Busy signal,” Alex reminded her. “Do not disturb.
Cerrado
,” she added in her best
Sesame Street
Spanish. Not wanting to be stunned, dazzled, poached, or roasted, she backed away to escape Cam’s gaze.

“Thantos sent two of his thugs to kill McCracken and his family. This qualifies as 911!” Cam exclaimed.

“Your point? This isn’t the first time he’s offed someone. He murdered our father, Cam. And probably my late, unlamented adoptive dad, too.” Alex bent over, picked up Cam’s book, and chucked it on her sister’s bed. “Anyway, this is our fight, not Ileana’s.”

Stubbornly, Cam said, “If you don’t want to summon our guardians, fine. But I’m taking a pass. I’m off the case.”

Alex refused to take her seriously. “Oh, just deal, Cam-ille. Our mom’s alive. You sensed it. You ‘saw’ her. The notes prove you were right. All we have to do now is find her. And we aren’t lead-devoid. We have two.” She ticked them off. “One: wife of shutterbug. She’s alive, thanks to you. She might know where Elias took the picture. And she owes you.”

“What part of N-O don’t you get?” Cam’s patience was running out. The photographer’s wife was on the West Coast. No way was she using the Transporter spell again.

Alex pretended she didn’t hear Cam. “Two: Whoever’s been sending the notes — even if it turns out to be our dear uncle Thantos — knows where she is. We find out who’s doing it, we find our mother.”

With or without Cami’s help, Alex decided, she would get to the photographer’s wife. For an encore, she would expose “anonymous.”

Brianna Waxman was no part of this plan. Yet there she was, rattling around in Alex’s brain again — tiny, tired, tart-tongued as ever. In school the next day, Alex found herself hyperaware of the elfin snob. Long on gossip,
short on temper. Practically lost inside her economy-size threads. But brittle, as if she might snap in half at any moment. What was Bree’s issue?

And what was Alex’s? For instance, why, after lunch, was she sneaking around following Bree? This time, the brown bag went into the garbage in the girls’ room.

“The Waxman heiress dumped her lunch,” Alex told Cam later at her locker.

“And?” Cam scoffed, disinterested.

“This isn’t the first time.”

Cam rolled her eyes. “Hello, leftovers. Bree is hardly Ziploc girl.”

“Okay,” Alex said with a shrug. “You would know. She’s
your
home girl.”

“Anyway,” Cam continued, annoyed that Alex thought she was an expert on friends Cam had known practically all her life. “She’s always been weird about food. At PITS, she orders Beverly Hills pizza. Instead of cheese and sauce, it’s topped with salad. Even then she cuts off the crust. Besides, if I know Bree, she probably called for a sushi takeout and had it delivered to her locker or something.”

“In the category of ‘If I know Bree’ for the daily double, here’s another puzzler,” Alex challenged.

“Lay it on me.” Cam feigned boredom.

“Remember that tasty tidbit Bree dropped the other day? Did she not say she was partying with Hollywood heartthrob Brice Stanley? Well,
Access Hollywood
states that Brice is on holiday, far from the movie crowd, in his retreat on an unnamed island.”

“So, he’s probably on Coventry. This relates to Brianna exactly how?”

“Timing,” Alex responded. “How could he have been in L.A. on the chum-patrol with Bree at the same time?”

Cam sighed. “Brice Stanley is a warlock. Duh. Warlock. Transporter spell? Shape-shifting. He could totally be in two places — if not at exactly the same moment, he could commute from one to the other instantly, making it seem like that. Any of this sound familiar? As in … did we not just do something pretty similar?”

“That’s your hypothesis,” Alex said.

“And yours would be?”

“We know Kristen didn’t go, and Brianna lied about that. I say Bree never went, either. Daddy dropped the ball again. Only this time, she was really too mortified to tell anyone.”

Cam hadn’t meant to stamp her foot. She almost took a header on the waxed linoleum. “I’m not ‘anyone.’ I’m one of her best friends. She would tell me.”

Alex shrugged and walked away. Livid, Cam watched her go. If something were seriously wrong with someone
as close to Cam as Bree was, her mojo would be in overdrive now. She would have had a premonition, a vision. She would just know.

“Sibling rift?” Cam held on to her locker handle this time as, startled, she spun to face Beth.

Pausing to make sure no one was in hearing range, Cam’s tall, curly-haired bud followed up with, “Any progress on the mother search?”

What could Cam say? Thantos had Miranda locked away in some loony bin — and Cam couldn’t get to her? “Not yet,” she murmured, flipping the combination on her locker.

“You will,” Beth said encouragingly. “BTW — did you remember to bring those bizarro notes?”

“Forgot.” Cam flipped open the locker. Panic kicked in and she dropped her books. There was a note taped to the inside of the door.

“What is it?” Beth cried. “What’s there?”

This one was a collage. Done in bits of material, calligraphy, and strangest of all … letters pasted in bits of food.

Altogether, it spelled out:
Open your eyes, why can’t you see what’s happening to her? She’s crying out for help — why can’t you hear her?

Cam couldn’t stop trembling. Whoever left this note was mocking them — her supersight and Alex’s
keen hearing. She barely realized she was speaking aloud. “Whoever wrote this —”

Beth finished her sentence, “Is a copycat!”

“Huh?”

“This is totally Kristen’s style,” Beth pointed out. “You know that.”

Cam stood there, dumbfounded.

“The calligraphy is just like the Chinese silk kind that Kris is learning,” Beth explained. “And the food-as-art thing? Identical to the ones in her friendship collage.”

“Someone’s copying Kristen?” Cam repeated dumbly.

Beth arched her eyebrows. “Unless … it
is
Kristen.”

Cam shook her head vigorously, as if she could shake off her rising panic. “Why would Kris be sending me anonymous messages about my mother? Make sense much?”

“Not even,” Beth agreed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

STUDY BUDDIES

Brianna was clearly startled — and not in a good way — to find Cam’s clone at her door. Not that Alex had expected a friendly welcome when she rang the bell.

Listening to Brianna thinking,
What’s she doing here?
was unsurprising. Hearing her say aloud, “Love that Montana hat but trick or treat is months away. Lost much?” earned her honors in the totally rude category.

Alex deserved it, she guessed. Showing up on Bree’s doorstep was kind of a stealth attack. Whether Cam agreed or not, Alex knew that the pint-sized girl was in trouble. Ignoring that fact, no matter how she personally felt about Bree, was not an option. Witching 101 demanded that she find out what was going on and help the
girl. So Alex had talked Mrs. Olsen into giving her and Bree dual makeup tests. After balking, Bree had finally agreed to a study session. Only Alex neglected to mention that today after school was the only time she could do it.

At Bree’s house.

Caught off guard, Bree went from rude to hostile. “No can do now. I’m on my way to the gym.”

She didn’t look it. She was still in the same clothes she’d worn to school — down to her Steve Madden slides.

Alex played the parent card. “Look, I’m grounded for the Tuesday cutting thing. This is the only way I could get out of jail free. Besides, we can do this in a half hour.”

Bree wavered.
I don’t want her to see my house! I told Cam not to bring her
. She had? Alex was stunned. Cam had never said a word about that. Not that Alex cared about Bree’s crib, but what was up with that?

Whatever. Alex got back on track. “I borrowed Sukari’s notes. If we start with them,” she suggested, and went on and on about grade points and PSATs and college admission requirements until she finally wore Brianna down.

“Oh, fine. Come in. But a half hour, that’s it.”
Not that I care what she thinks, but … I’m sure she didn’t expect this dump
.

Bree had that right. Casa de Waxman East was nothing
like Alex expected. It wasn’t even where she assumed it would be. The me-so-cool daughter of a him-so-hot Hollywood producer should have been living in swank Marble Bay Heights, in some palace fit for the princess she so was, right?

Nuh-uh. Turned out to be a modest suburban ranch in a modest suburban neighborhood. The biggest shock? Brianna’s room. Expectations? Expensive, expansive, elaborate. Reality? Small, square, and spare.

“Mom’s not home?” Alex asked, trying not to let her surprise show.

“She’s at work,” Bree replied.

“What does she do?” Alex had assumed the ex-Mrs. Waxman didn’t work. All Brianna ever talked about was her dad and the mounds of moolah he had. Was this another Bree secret Cam purposely kept from her?

Brianna sighed.
Might as well tell her. It’s not like I need to impress
her.

Thanks, Alex grunted.

“Four days a week, she works at a doctor’s office. Two days, she works as a bookkeeper for an accountant. And on the seventh day, she cleans the house.” Alex’s eyes popped. Bree’s mom worked two jobs — like Sara had? But that didn’t make sense. For Sara Fielding it was about survival. Didn’t Eric the great Waxman even support his family?

Brianna snorted, “In case you’re wondering, and I know you are, my dad would give us anything we want. He sends me money for clothes and stuff. But my mom won’t take anything. She considers herself very proud. And independent.”
And stupid
, Brianna added silently.

Alex could not believe she actually had something in common with Queen Bree. But she said, “My mom was the same way. Proud. And independent. She was a great role model.”

“Lucky you,” Bree said sarcastically. Then she sighed. “Look, you want a snack? I can probably dig up something.”

While Bree was gone, Alex surveyed the room. Posters, magazine tear-outs, photographs — some of Brianna and the Six Pack, Bree and various boyfriends, but most of the snaps were family shots. Little Bree with both parents; with her dad and grandparents; preteen with her dad and some random starlet. Bree’s dad young, with his arm around Redford and Newman; Bree’s dad older, shaking hands with young movie stars; with politicians, holding up a poster and pointing to the line on it that said,
Eric Waxman Presents
. The room was like a shrine — to a dad she hardly ever saw.

When Bree returned with a bag of chips, a jar of salsa, and two bottles of water, Alex pointed to one of the framed photos. “How old were you when this was taken?”

“Around six or so, during my chubola period,” Bree answered sourly. “I don’t know why I even keep that one up there.”

“You don’t look chubby,” Alex scoffed. “You look like a normal kid.”

Normal enough for my parents to have split like a minute after that shot was taken
. “I’ve been on the pudge patrol for, like, ever,” Brianna said dismissively.

Which reminded Alex what Bree had thought of herself that night at the bowling alley. “Stupid, fat, and ugly.” But that expression — heinous as it was — was like the theme song for half the girls at Marble Bay High and beyond. It didn’t mean anyone really believed it. Did they?

“Anyway,” Bree continued, “let’s get this studying thing over with. I really need to hit the gym.”

Alex tilted her head. “Want to come over for dinner?”
I can’t believe I just invited her….

“Uh …
no!
” Bree wrinkled her nose and shot her such an “are you insane?” look that Alex immediately regretted asking.

Studying with Brianna turned out to be okay. The girl had smarts and deftly memorized charts, elements, chem facts. Except for a father and the pile of cash everyone thought she had, Brianna Waxman was doing all right. She was the total opposite of stupid, fat, and
ugly. But why did she always front — act as if being Eric Waxman’s daughter was the only thing that mattered?

As if Bree had tapped into her brain, the bitty blonde mentioned offhandedly, “My dad asked me to spend the summer in L.A. with him. But I’m so not bathing-suit ready yet.”

“You should go,” Alex said encouragingly. “Even though you practically just got back.” Then she heard Brianna’s tortured thoughts.
Just got back, right. Back from my backyard. Cam knows Kristen stayed home. But if anyone finds out that my dad never sent the tickets, I’ll be like … no one
.

For the first time since realizing she could read minds, Alex had to work at not saying something about what she’d just heard. How could Bree not see that Eric Waxman’s neglect made
him
a deadbeat dad? Yet her self-esteem was totally tied to him. That was warped.