T*Witches: Split Decision (10 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CAM’S REVENGE

Face-time with Uncle Thantos had left Cam reeling, emotionally KO-ed.

She’d heard, without processing, everything he’d gone on about:

The stellar job he’d done running the family business, building it into the dynasty Aron would have wanted. How Thantos had abided by his brother’s wishes for DuBaer Industries to be a force for good in the world. Did she know, by the way, it was he who had supplied every citizen on Coventry with a computer? The largesse of Thantos DuBaer, according to Thantos DuBaer, was unrivaled.

It could be bigger, better, more powerful, he humbly
suggested, if Miranda were to marry him. And Camryn would agree to live with them, to be a family.

“Alex,” Cam had said tonelessly. “You forgot Alex.”

“Yes, of course Alex,” the black-bearded tracker had agreed impatiently. “It goes without saying.”

Trying to deal with her uncle’s info overload, Cam had stumbled out of the salon, barely noticing Ileana furtively waiting outside. She felt rather than heard Ileana promise, “We’re getting Alex. She’ll be here soon. Be patient. Wait until Miranda and I have had a chance to tell you — to show you — what you need to know.”

Ileana had pressed a coin into her hand. Cam didn’t look at it. She went to splash cold water on her face. It wasn’t until she reached to turn on the faucet that the round gold piece tumbled from her fist. She recognized the image stamped into it. The crowned bear was the DuBaer family crest. And she knew, intuitively, that the amulet was as powerful as the sun charm her father had fashioned for her.

Cam skipped dinner that night. She had no appetite. It was all she could do to drag herself to the computer in the Crailmore library. Logging onto e-mail, she typed a short and urgent message:
Alex, I need you.

Then she’d gone to Aron’s boyhood room and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She didn’t hear Shane’s telepathic message. She didn’t know that he’d tried to see her and been turned away by one of Crailmore’s staff. The first she knew of his visit was a message on her breakfast tray the next morning.

I have to talk to you. It’s urgent. Meet me outside the gates. I will wait all day if I have to.

Cam pushed the tray away, fighting the urge to fall back to sleep. TMI. Too much information. It was important, she knew, to think through what she’d been told. But where to begin?

Thantos’s shocking admission that he loved Miranda? And that he wanted Cam’s … what? Her blessing? Her consent? Her help in bringing them together?

Or was it his casual admission that he could control the twins’ lives? Exhibit A: Thantos had masterminded the meeting of Bree and Miranda.

And what of Cam’s near-death experience in the quicksand? How had Thantos managed to show up in the nick of time and become her avenging hero?

It was some time after noon when she finally got dressed. Crailmore seemed to be empty but for the servants. There was no return e-mail from Alex in the library. There was no sign of her mother or her uncle anywhere. Ileana, she assumed, had probably returned to her cottage.

Cam thought briefly about going there. She was at the door, ready to leave Crailmore, when a thought halted her progress. What if …?

What if anything Thantos said had even a grain of truth to it? Ileana’s hatred of him eliminated her as an impartial sounding board.

“You can tell me. I would listen,” a voice said.

Cam looked up abruptly. She’d walked out the door and was approaching the gates of the estate and there was Shane. True to his word, puppy-dog eyes full of remorse, he was waiting for her.

“No,” she started.

He put up his hands in a gesture that was half surrender and half a plea for her to stop. “Please. I have to talk to you. It’s about yesterday —”

“You mean the yesterday when you told me how safe I’d be or the yesterday when you didn’t make a move to save me?”

He hung his head, looking appealingly defeated. “You’ll never believe me, I know. But it was Sersee —”

Feeling almost ashamed of her gullibility and of her untamed heart, Cam swung back one of the tall gates and allowed Shane to enter the grounds — which was where she intended to stay, no matter what he might say this time.

“What was Sersee?” she prodded him. It appalled
her to realize that while she no longer trusted Shane she was still attracted to the treacherous warlock.

He leaped at the chance to explain. “It took me half the night, but I finally got her under a powerful truth-telling spell, and she spilled it all.”

A sickening feeling, familiar now, came over Cam. Before Shane spoke, she knew what he was going to tell her. She saw it happening. But this vision was oddly blurred, as if washed over with a gray haze.

Her tumble backward into the pond had been no accident, he explained. It had been a trap set by Sersee. Of course the evil and envious witch knew about the quicksand. Last night she’d bragged to Shane that when she separated Cam from him, when she’d insisted on talking to Cam privately, she had used a potent spell to ease Cam’s distrust and play on her fair-mindedness. She’d forced “the clueless mainlander” to give her the benefit of the doubt. And then had drawn Cam like a magnet into the fatal scheme.

At the same time, Shane insisted, Sersee had put a paralyzing spell on him so that he could not interfere with her deadly plan. And she claimed to have dosed the others, including her poor apprentice, Epie, with a mixture of herbs to confuse and confound them.

But Sersee hadn’t counted on Thantos.

Through the strange grayish wash, Cam saw them
together — the huge and horribly grinning tracker and the cowering young witch.

Why had the most self-centered warlock on Coventry come to her rescue?

Shane reminded her: “You called out for someone who loves you.”

Cam’s jaw dropped. In her wildest dreams she would not have put Thantos on that list.

“I have an idea.” His remorseful eyes glinted suddenly with mischief. “You could get revenge on her. You’re a powerful witch. You owe it to her — after all she’s done.”

Cam shook her head, shook off the strange vision she’d experienced. A powerful witch? Not without Alex.

Shane read her mind and kissed her forehead. “Your sister isn’t here, but I am,” he whispered, “and I’d love to get revenge on Sersee. She made me helpless, unable to save you. I hate her for that.”

The words
revenge
and
hate
jumped out at Cam, as if he’d boldfaced them. “No,” she said softly. “That’s not what our powers are for. You know that.”

“Sersee tried to kill you, Cam. Twice now. She lied to you, betrayed you, stabbed you in the back. Besides,” he prattled on before she could stop him, “what I have in mind won’t end her life. She might not want to live, but she will.”

*        *        *

Cam had mulled over Shane’s plan from the time he’d gone to fetch Sersee until this very minute when she could hear the bell on the front gate ringing, indicating that her guests had arrived.

She had changed her mind a hundred times while waiting for them. One moment she’d judged the warlock’s idea wrong and unworthy, and the next, she’d thought of it with a strange rush of energy — uncomfortable but exciting; a force that didn’t come from her sun charm or her noble heritage but was fueled by a vengeful glee.

Still undecided, Cam opened the door to allow Shane and Sersee in. One look at the raven-haired witch’s haughty scowl did the trick. Two could play mind games, she resolved. Mind and body games …

The decision to go along with Shane’s idea left her feeling weird. Though her heart was pumping wildly, she experienced no fear. Her very nerves tingled with excitement and anticipation. And her mind seemed amazingly clear.
She is prideful and must be taught her place,
it insisted.

“Welcome to Crailmore,” Cam heard herself say, as if from a distance. She was smiling, she knew, but the mad pulsing in her veins distracted her. She was suddenly
eager, edgy, almost angry, as if her boiling blood were pumping pure adrenaline.

“Don’t expect an apology,” Sersee snarled, sweeping past her.

With clenched fists, Cam turned to study the shameless witch. Something was off about her. She was swathed in her trademark violet cape, but she seemed tired. In fact, Cam realized Sersee’s eyes looked … brown?

“New contacts?” she asked, really curious.

Sersee tried to stop her hand flying to her mouth, but didn’t quite make it. Cam wasn’t supposed to have seen that.
I forgot to take them out!
She wasn’t supposed to have heard that, either. But she did.

Quickly changing the subject, the unusually forgetful witch spun to face her. “You’ve made a speedy recovery. That’s —”

“— disappointing?” Cam cut in.

Sersee scrunched her forehead. “You can’t possibly think I wanted to see you harmed.”

Not harmed, just dead,
Cam thought, escorting Shane and Sersee through the great hall and up the tower stairs. They ended up in Aron’s room — as planned.

Sersee was wandering around, picking things up, looking contemptuously at Aron’s awards and certificates.

“My father wasn’t just powerful,” Cam said, “he was also very bright… yet humble, I’m told.”

“Humble?” Sersee spun toward her and laughed. “He had every right to be, I’m sure. But powerful? I don’t think so. Your revered father was, after all, murdered by his own brother, the weakest link in the DuBaer chain. Fredo was renowned as a certifiable moron.”

“You don’t think very much of humility, do you, Sersee?” Shane asked, smiling slyly.

“I don’t think of it at all,” she replied. “Humble pie is so not my dish.”

“What is, then?” Cam demanded with the odd new fury building in her. “Conceit, smugness, arrogance?”

“All well earned,” Sersee declared. “Where is your uncle? I didn’t come all this way to visit with you.”

“Your pride, Sersee,” Cam observed, sticking to the script, “is as blown up, hollow, and full of hot air as a balloon.”

Sersee’s violet eyes — hidden behind the strange, sparrow-brown lenses — narrowed menacingly.

If Cam hadn’t known what Shane was about to do — and if she weren’t feeling so keyed up and capable … of anything — she might have been intimidated. As it was, she almost pitied the Coventry cur. Almost, but not quite.

Shane came at Sersee from behind, tossing just a
pinch of skullcap over her head. They wanted her still, not asleep. As the seeds rained down on the startled witch’s ebony curls, Shane took Cam’s hand. Together, they recited the incantation he had taught her.

      
You of no empathy, lacking in kindness,

      
Must see yourself clearly, to cure you of blindness.

      
Like a prideful balloon, be puffed up, we bequeath you,

      
Till you lose your scorn for those you deem “beneath you.”

It was like watching a parade float being blown up.

Sersee’s cape began to billow, wider and wider to accommodate her sudden horizontal growth spurt. Soon she looked like a waddling sphere. She didn’t have to speak. Her horrified expression said it all. The fear and panic were as real and deep as anything Cam had seen or experienced, including her own near drowning.

Despite the warped exhilaration coursing through her, Cam was about to ask Shane to change Sersee back. But then the ever-expanding witch spat bitterly, “I wish you had died in that quicksand! I curse Thantos for rescuing you!”

“My, what a
huge
ego, and so
overblown
,” Cam retorted, as she had practiced saying. “I’ll get some transportation to take you home.”

On cue, Amaryllis entered the room with a wheelbarrow.

“Up you go,” Cam declared as she, Shane, and Amaryllis hoisted the supersized Sersee into the wagon. The sight of the jumbo Fury shaking with rage, sending layers of jellylike flesh quivering over the sides of the barrow, was supposed to be funny. At least Rowan and Serle seemed to think so when Shane invited the guffawing duo to wheel Sersee home.

The only one missing from the party was Epie. Had the girl been afraid to face Cam again after her treachery at the pond? Cam was about to ask Shane about it, when he stopped her with a triumphant hug. “Didn’t I tell you revenge would be sweet?”

Mean-spirited laughter bubbled up inside her. It left an acid burn in her gut, an ulcer of spite. Sweet. Right, she thought. Sickeningly so.

And yet, watching the pain in Sersee’s eyes when her so-called friends wheeled her down the path, a pitiful laughingstock, Cam did not feel sympathy or regret. She felt… powerful.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SPLIT DECISION

After Shane left, Cam lay trembling for a long time on Aron’s big bed. The boiling exhilaration that had fueled her horrible behavior was seeping out of her — replaced by even hotter shame. No matter what the willful witch had done, what
she’d
done to Sersee was still wrong. Simple as that.

She couldn’t bear to be in her father’s room, to disgrace it with her presence. Disgust filled the vacuum her soul sickness left. Never would she have believed herself capable of such cruelty. She had crossed a line, passed over … to the dark side.

Cam felt an urgent need to be cleansed, to acknowledge what she had done, to tell on herself. She was
still shaking as she got up. Her appalled brain searched for someone she could confess to and beg forgiveness from.

Not Miranda, not Ileana. She was too ashamed. Certainly not Thantos, who she suspected would be more pleased than revolted by what she’d done.

Who, then?

Karsh, of course —

Cam’s momentary elation disappeared as she remembered that her steadfast friend was gone.

Before attending his funeral on Coventry, Cam had never seen a dead person. Her terror had dissolved the moment she’d set eyes on the ancient warlock, at peace in his plain pine coffin. His unlined face was smiling — or so it had seemed at the time. Even in death he’d continued to teach her, to show her what was to be feared and what was not.

She left Aron’s room and asked Amaryllis for directions to the cemetery.

“Which one?” the servant had inquired, then hastily amended, “You must mean the DuBaer cemetery.”

But when Cam told her who she wanted to visit, Amaryllis directed her to the southern portion of the island where the Antayus graveyard was located. There, among the simple plaques laid flat in the earth that marked the departed, Cam found the one she’d come for. She knelt beside it and brushed off bits of dirt that had
blown onto the tablet. The new grass planted only weeks ago had started to poke though the fresh earth. Soon it would surround the old tracker’s stone.

“Karsh,” she whispered, as if that were the only way he might hear her, “I don’t know who else to talk to. I know you’re … well, not here anymore.” Cam licked a salty tear that had trickled to the corner of her mouth. She sat beside the grave, hugged her knees, and poured her heart out.

“I’m so mixed up. I thought I finally understood who I was and what I had to do, thought I knew who was bad and who was good, and that I would always choose right over wrong. Now it’s all turned inside out.

“You taught me to fear Thantos, who wanted us dead. But he says it’s not true. He wants us to be a family. He says he loves my mother and wants to marry her so that we could be a family again. Karsh, is this what my father would have wanted?”

Cam sat there in solitude for a long time. She felt peaceful after a while. She’d gotten no real answers to her tortured doubts but realized it was important that she figure things out for herself. And knew, too, that she would, in time. She traced the name on the gravestone with her forefinger and voiced one last question.

“What I did to Sersee … it was terrible, I know.
But she tried to kill me, more than once. Didn’t she deserve it?”

Cam shifted her weight and something crinkled in her pocket. It was a folded piece of paper that, when she unwrapped it, read:
An’ it harm none, do what you will.

Her father, as a schoolboy, had written that. Had Karsh, or his spirit, meant for her to find it just now? Was that his answer? Witches don’t curse people, they don’t make others suffer, they harm none.

She
had
harmed the girl.

Cam brushed the dirt from her pants. She would find Shane and undo the spell, return Sersee to her own body. It didn’t matter what the diabolical witch had done. Neither Karsh, nor either of her parents, Aron or Miranda DuBaer, would have wanted her to seek revenge.

Cam was about to leave the cemetery, when her eye fell on the grave-marker just a few feet from Karsh’s. Beatrice Hazlitt DuBaer. What was a DuBaer doing here? Weren’t all of them laid to rest in the grander sanctuary on the other side of the island?

“My wife,” someone said unexpectedly.

Cam spun around. “Thantos? What are —?”

“Looking for you,” the burly tracker responded. “My staff told me I might find you here, and I wanted to be sure you hadn’t gotten yourself into any other life-threatening
situations.” He eyed her, then chuckled. “I
am
capable of a joke, you know.”

Cam gestured toward the plaque. “Was she Ileana’s mother?”

He nodded. “She died in childbirth. She rests here because that was her wish. As hard as I tried, I could never make her feel like part of the family. She asked to be buried here, among her own kind.”

“Is that why there are no pictures of her at Crailmore? No mementos …” And no one, she thought, ever spoke of this woman. But for this simple headstone, it was as if Beatrice DuBaer had never existed. Cam thought of Ileana. No wonder —

Thantos put his arm around her. Cam didn’t flinch this time or make any move to pull away. “I heard what you did to the Tremaine girl.” He was speaking of Sersee. “Good for you. A DuBaer does not allow herself to be taken advantage of —”

Cam was about to challenge that, when Thantos stopped and abruptly stood up. “We have company.”

“Where
is
she, Thantos?” Ileana snapped, strikingly beautiful in her royal-blue cloak.

“How lovely of you to join us.” Thantos looked right through his daughter, as if she didn’t exist. It was Miranda, who stood behind Ileana, that he welcomed. “I was just telling Apolla about —”

Miranda cut him short. “We tried to find Alex. She’s not where you said she’d be. Where is my daughter?” Her tone was suspicious, borderline nervous.

Cam felt a wave of panic. “Alex is missing?”

“No, no!” Thantos assured the women. “Of course she’s not. Did you go to the —”

“We went everywhere you told us to,” Miranda responded. “The Barneses’ home, to that boy’s house, to the apartment of the little Coventry girl —”

“The Coventry girl?” Cam tried to figure out who they meant.

“Her name is Michaelina,” her mother answered. “She’s one of the young witches who tormented you and Alex. She’s now in Marble Bay, where she’s befriended your sister. You didn’t know?”

Marble Bay? How could that be possible if Michaelina was doing “community service” here?

Duh. Sersee had lied about that, too. How new.

“You sent us on a wild-goose chase,” Ileana accused him. “If you’ve harmed her —”

Cam blurted, “No!”

Three pairs of eyes stared at her questioningly. But Cam responded with a question of her own. “If something bad happened to Alex, I’d know it. Wouldn’t I?”

Miranda put her arm around Cam’s shoulders. “I hope so.”

Thantos rolled his eyes. “Oh, the lot of you! Come here. I’ll show you where she is. From the inside pocket of his cape, he withdrew a gold lighter. He tossed a handful of herbs into the flame while reciting the Situator incantation.

There in the firelight, was Alex. She wasn’t alone. Someone, Cam suspected Cade, was cupping her sister’s chin. For a split second, Cam wondered if she should blow out the flame. If this was about to get R-rated, she was sure Alex would not want an audience. But just then, the vision faded.

“I’m going to get her,” Miranda said decisively, turning to leave.

Thantos pulled her back. “Save your strength, Miranda. You just got back. Let me send a servant. It will be faster and not tiring for you.”

Even Cam noticed that Thantos said nothing about Ileana. Did he have any feelings for her at all?

“No, in fact, he doesn’t.” To Cam’s embarrassment, Ileana answered her silent question. “It’s only appropriate that my father demonstrates his apathy for me as he stands at my mother’s grave,” Ileana continued. “He believed what Leila DuBaer told him — that Beatrice Hazlitt wasn’t good enough for him. Not even in death would he have his wife — my mother — among the DuBaers.”

Cam was puzzled. “But…” She turned to Thantos. “You said Beatrice asked to be buried here.”

The statement set Ileana off; she went ballistic. Red-faced with rage, she turned on Thantos. “Is that what you told her?”

Miranda jumped in. “Calm down, wait… surely Thantos didn’t —”

But Ileana would not be comforted. Her gale-force diatribe had only just begun. It was aimed at Cam. “Ask him, your dear uncle Thantos, to tell you the real reason he cast her out. Ask him to tell you about my mother’s family, who ‘her kind’ were. Ask him to tell you why he married someone against his mother’s wishes — and why he deserted me, his own flesh and blood. And then, Apolla, ask him how he dared usurp what isn’t his. What is yours. And your sister’s! And mine!”

Ileana now spun toward her father, glaring at him, daring him to respond. But he wasn’t looking at her.

Cam was floored. It wasn’t just the bile Ileana had spewed — she could barely follow that. It was the way Thantos had watched Miranda throughout his daughter’s attack. He was studying her face, trying to gauge her reactions, her feelings.

Cam’s mother was upset, but peacemaker was her default mode and she fell into it. She reached for Ileana,
but the infuriated witch wasn’t having it. To Thantos, Miranda said quietly, “You might have considered options other than casting the child out completely. No matter how much pain and sadness you were in.”

Thantos drew himself up to his full, intimidating height. “I did what I thought safest and best. I was not in my right mind. I was crazy with grief over the death of my wife. It was my idea, after all, to place Ileana in the care of the good and wise Karsh.”

It was Miranda’s turn to gape. “Rubbish! That was Aron’s idea, not yours.”

Ileana gave a bitter laugh. “How surprising. You coopted an idea of Aron’s — as you have all your life. You have always coveted everything he had — including his wife. And now his children.”

Cam thought she was going to gag. She remembered the notes from Thantos’s earliest teachers.
He’s copying Aron again.
So … did Thantos not love Miranda? Had he been lying about that and about loving Cam?

The hulking tracker silenced her thoughts with a fierce look. She blinked but did not turn away. “Why was it best to place Ileana with Karsh?” she asked. “Why didn’t you raise your own daughter?”

“He’ll never tell you the truth,” Ileana sneered. “He’ll
say
he was not fit to be a father. But you can read for yourself. Lord Karsh wrote it down. All of it.” Ileana
untied her cape and took from a pouch beneath it an old leather-bound book. Cam could see that it was filled with parchment sheets. Where had she seen the volume before? Where had she seen the pages?

“No!” It was Miranda. “Not yet, Ileana. We decided. We would wait for Artemis.”

So that was it.
That
was the big deal? She was not going to see Lord Karsh’s writings without Alex. Cam kept her voice steady. But she knew what effect her words would have. “What’s in there, Mother?”

Miranda paled. It was the first time Apolla had called her Mother. Whatever she’d meant to say fell away. The ethereally beautiful witch just folded, choked up. She could not answer her daughter.

But Ileana could. She held up the journal. “Your family history, that’s what’s in here. Your legacy, yours and Alex’s. Your destiny.”

“Or,” Thantos bellowed so loudly, they all jumped. “Is it in here?”

They whirled as one, to see, in his large hard hands, an identical book.