T*Witches: Split Decision (14 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PLAYING TO WIN

Cam closed her eyes, tilted her face upward to let the sun caress it. “Sun-kissed.” She’d always loved being described that way. She smiled.

Next to her, Alex sat cross-legged, leaning back, palms pressed against the warm wooden pier. She listened to the music of gentle waves lapping the sandy shore.

The twins were back in Marble Bay. They were waiting for Dave and Emily’s cruise ship to return to the dock. And they were doing some serious thinking.

The summer had blasted off with Fourth of July fireworks and continued apace, one emotional explosion, one terrifying blast after another. Cam had almost lost her life; Alex, her faith in herself.

Now, less than two weeks later, the T*Witches were ready for some downtime. Some peace.

A breeze lifted strands of Cam’s auburn hair out of the banana-yellow scrunchie holding it back in a ponytail. Alex ran her fingers through her own unevenly clipped ’do and sniffed the sweet, salty air.

The tension was only slowly leaving their bodies: Cam envisioned the sensation like thick, syrupy liquid draining from them, slipping through the slats of the dock. She willed the ocean to take it out with the tide.

Both knew — it didn’t need to be said — that the weeks ahead, the rest of the summer, would be the calm before the storm. Their initiation as full-fledged witches was scheduled for the fall, around the time of their sixteenth birthday. And there was nothing they could do to stop that from happening. Initiation was the starting point, the opening gate, the first step on the road that would lead to their destiny. The path ahead was theirs to walk. They could only vow to walk it together.

Back in Coventry, after Miranda had disabled Thantos, she and Ileana had taken the twins outside, where they’d walked through the fragrant herb garden Miranda had been nurturing lovingly. There, the women finally told the girls all they needed to know.

They read passages from the book, the true book Karsh Antayus had written and bequeathed to Ileana. In
order for Cam and Alex to understand what lay in store for them, what their grandfather’s wishes had been, they had to understand their family’s history.

Cam had marveled, her heart swelling with pride, and just as often, withering with disappointment, as she listened to tales of heroism and betrayal, spells of love and curses of doom, conjured up and carried out by those in her own DNA pool.

Alex could practically hear the tape rewind. All she’d ever been taught about the Salem witch trials — history books and fiction classics like
The Crucible,
replayed in front of her eyes. Only now the characters in the novels were her own kin.

The twins had learned about the curse that haunted their family: Because Jacob DuBaer had exposed Abigail Antayus as a witch, she’d been hanged. Her children had cursed the DuBaer family. In each generation, an Antayus would kill a DuBaer.

Cam and Alex had been shocked when Miranda and Ileana — reading Karsh’s words — confirmed that the curse was real. That it had never skipped a generation. That even when their grandfather Nathaniel DuBaer and Karsh Antayus had become best of friends, had pledged to end it in their lifetimes, the curse had prevailed. It had proved stronger, more powerful than the great will and pure hearts of these good men. It had been a heinous,
horrible accident — absolutely — but in the end, Thantos had been right about one thing: Karsh had caused the death of Nathaniel.

The curse, though, had one qualification: It applied only to males. The dying wish, then, of their grandfather was, as Ileana had read: “
From this time forth, only women shall rule the DuBaer dynasty, only women shall head the family.”
And then the curse would be no more.

Of course, Ileana had explained, Thantos knew of his father’s decision — the pact that would rob him of his right to rule the powerful and rich family. The bitter tracker’s jealousy of Aron had started the day his younger brother was born — and had only grown stronger with the passing years as he watched Aron shine and grow to his most bountiful goodness. But when his brother’s wife gave birth to twin girls,
female heirs,
Thantos’s rage and envy turned to hatred. He vowed to see that these children would never stand in his way.

The hulking warlock’s ultimate goal was simple: He wanted Cam and Alex out of his way. He didn’t really care how he achieved that. He could separate them — send one away and lure the other to his side, or, failing that, kill one or both of them. He’d spent the better part of one full year plotting, scheming, using others to do his bidding, anything to remove them from his way. Anything to change destiny.

The twins had listened as, gently but firmly, their
mother and their cousin read Lord Karsh’s dying words to them, then closed the leather-bound book and insisted that Alex and Cam take time to think over all they’d learned, take the rest of the summer to digest it.

Ileana suggested that they leave Coventry and get back to Marble Bay, back to the safety, comfort, and love of Emily and David Barnes. “We need you to be rested, to be strong,” she had said.

“And I need you to promise me …” Miranda had searched their eyes beseechingly. “That you will try to have fun, to spend the rest of the summer as carefree and untroubled as you can.”

She didn’t have to add that the next several weeks might be their last carefree ones for a long while.

Now, Cam and Alex sat together on this shockingly brilliant summer morning. It was several hours before the ship they’d come to meet was due to dock. They had the pier to themselves.

And their thoughts were in sync. “He played us.”

They burst out laughing. They’d said it out loud at the same moment, capped off by another think-alike: “Could we have been any stupider?”

Thantos had played hard on their vulnerabilities — on Alex’s need to square things with Sara, to feel independent, to prove she hadn’t changed now that she was
part of the Barnes family. To her, he’d sent Mike: the little witch who could bring friendship and a reminder of all Alex’s dreams. And he’d offered her the biggest dream of all: to “see” Sara again.

He’d played on Cam’s isolation, her mixed-up emotions for Jason, and her attraction to Shane, the alluring warlock whom Thantos had gifted with exceptional powers.

Worst of all, Thantos had played on her snobbishness, Cam thought miserably. She did like being number one — the most popular, winningest athlete; cute, coin-infused — she had a great life and loved it. The second that life was threatened — even momentarily, even just for the summer — Thantos had moved in and set his plan in motion.

Luckily, that plan had been blasted to smithereens. He’d been done in by his own pride.

“Thantos is our uncle, and he was right about one thing. Like it or not, we do share his blood. There is a part of Ileana, and certainly of me,” Cam said, “that’s — I don’t know, vain, power-hungry. Gullible.”

“And a part of me that’s maybe too independent for my own good,” Alex said. “Who doesn’t see the big picture, acts rashly — dismisses the good guy’s suspicions to fall into the clutches of the bad friend! What are you going to tell me, I’ve found my inner Fredo?”

That gave them both a laugh.

They shared the sharp memory of Miranda’s last words before she’d packed up the twins and sent them back to Marble Bay. “We all have vulnerabilities,” she’d told them. “If we didn’t, we simply would not be human. Thantos played on yours and almost won. But he, too, is human. He, too, has vulnerabilities. Never forget that.”

They never would. Miranda, their brilliant mother, had taken revenge on Thantos for the intolerable things he’d done to her daughters and to Ileana. She was the only one who could get back at him, for she held the key to his weakness.
She
was his vulnerability.

Cam had started a litany of “if only”s. If only she’d recognized the signs, had learned about the legends and myths, the horse and the horseshoe pendant. If only she hadn’t been so needy, so —

“Human?” Alex had asked rhetorically. “Yo, in the self-flagellation battle, it’s a tie for the gold. How’d I manage not to know Michaelina had been sent here to play me, to make me believe she could bring Sara back? How’d I manage not to know I wasn’t seeing or talking to my mother? It didn’t work only because Sersee kept putting the wrong words into Sara’s mouth.”

Maybe it runs in the family.

Alex and Cam exchanged quick, surprised looks. They’d both heard it. Then they burst out laughing.
They’d gotten a telepathic reminder from Miranda. Had she, too, not been duped? For years! By Thantos.

“I believed the person I shouldn’t have,” Alex noted, thinking of Mike, “and dismissed the one telling the truth. Worse? I dismissed my own gut. I knew Cade was a keeper, still, I didn’t really listen to him … because,” she finished regretfully, “he’s not a warlock. I figured, what could he know? He knew Michaelina wasn’t to be trusted. He knew something wasn’t right.”

“Guess he wanted what was best for you,” Cam said, remembering something Dave had once told her: “That’s what love is. Wanting what’s best for the other person. And I think that may be more powerful than witchcraft.”

“I bet I know what Karsh would say if he were here,” Alex mused.

“‘Give it a rest, T*Witches’?” Cam guessed. “Like, ‘at the end of the day, Thantos lost again’?”

But they both knew that was only partly true. The battle had been won, but there were greater dangers ahead.

Cam turned to face the water and, in the distance, saw what no one else could. A ship, still far away, slowly approaching. It was bringing everything Miranda and Ileana had wished for them: safety, security, and stability. It was bringing Dave and Emily Barnes home.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

H.B. Gilmour
is the author of numerous best-selling books for adults and young readers, including the
Clueless
movie novelization and series;
Pretty in Pink,
a University of Iowa Best Book for Young Readers; and
Godzilla,
a Nickelodeon Kids Choice nominee. She also cowrote the award-winning screenplay
Tag.

H.B. lives in upstate New York with her husband, John Johann, and their yellow lab, Harry, one of the family’s five dogs, five cats, two snakes (a boa constrictor and a python), and five extremely bright, animal-loving children.

Randi Reisfeld
has written many best-sellers, such as the
Clueless
series (which she wrote with H.B.), the
Moesha
series, and biographies of Prince William, New Kids on the Block, and Hanson. Her Scholastic paperback
Got Issues Much?
was named an ALA Best Book for Reluctant Readers in 1999.

Randi has always been fascinated with the randomness of life.… About how any of our lives can simply “turn on a dime” and instantly (snap!) be forever changed. About the power each one of us has deep inside, if only we knew how to access it. About how any of us would react if, out of the blue, we came face-to-face with our exact double.

From those random fascinations, T*Witches was born.

Oh, and BTW: She has no twin (that she knows of) but an extremely cool family and a cadre of bffs to whom she is totally devoted.