T*Witches: Split Decision (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

THE HIDDEN DOOR

“Golden slumbers fill your eyes … And I will sing you a lullaby…”

Someone was singing, stroking her hair. The light touch drifted to her cheek, tracing her cheekbones. She was a child again, safe, secure.

A breathy voice whispered, “You can’t imagine how happy it makes me that you came to visit. Can you hear my heart racing?”

“Alex is the one with the hyperhearing,” Cam mumbled drowsily.

“I know which twin you are, my daughter.” Miranda DuBaer, Cam’s birth mother, was perched on the bed. Miranda in person matched the dream Miranda: long
auburn hair braided down her back, lavender cloak and all. Beyond her mother’s looming, beautiful face, Cam saw a mullioned window set deep in thick stone … and the gilded walls of an unfamiliar room, a room curved to fit inside an enormous rounded tower.

The soaring tower of Crailmore. Which could only mean … Cam was really on Coventry Island?

Had she … dreamed herself here? Was that possible?

Miranda smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. “You seem a little dazed, disoriented. I’m not surprised. Even on the day you were born, it look you longer to awaken than your sister.”

“How long have I been here?” Cam asked, flipping over onto her back and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“You were exhausted when you arrived yesterday and went straight to bed. So, not very long at all.”

Arrived yesterday? Cam blinked once more, and it all came back to her. She had gotten here not by magick but manipulation. Dave and Emily were away; they’d never know she was gone. As long as Alex agreed to cover for her.

Cam had told Alex the truth. She needed to go there. She wouldn’t say why, which flipped Alex’s skeptic switch. But when Als suggested that Cam was going only to see Shane, Cam had totally denied the charge. She claimed she simply needed some time alone with Miranda.
Cam had invited Alex to come along, but knew her twin sis would never skip town while Cade was around. So they’d made a pact. Alex would do the coconspirator thing if Cam agreed to be back well before the Barneses’ return. Furthermore, Cam would contact Alex if she got into trouble.

Cam sat up and stretched luxuriously. Her eyes took in the gilded room, the sunshine pouring through the tall window, the welcoming smile on Miranda’s face. Cam grinned happily. She’d been sleeping on the softest, biggest bed she’d ever seen. She was in a total comfort zone, blissed out. I was right to come here, she thought. Then it hit her. This was —

“Right,” Miranda affirmed. “Your father slept in this very bed —” She ran her slender fingers over the quilt as though it might still hold her murdered husband’s warmth. “When he was about your age. That’s why you feel so peaceful and protected here. Aron is gone, but strong magick is still here. His magick.”

“Is there some special meaning to the shape?” Aron’s room, wide where the bed was, narrowed into a V at the door, like a pizza slice.

Miranda explained that the family’s sleeping quarters came together to form a sacred circle. All the bedrooms connected. The doors on either side of Aron’s
room led to those of his brothers, Thantos and Fredo. “Your grandparents wanted their three sons to be close. This was one way of trying.”

“Yet failing, epically,” Cam said sarcastically. In the Super Bowl of dysfunction, it was victory DuBaer.

Cam scrambled out of bed and rushed to the window.

Crailmore was the most imposing structure on the island; the fortress had been in the DuBaer family for generations. In this generation, it was ruled by Lord Thantos, head of the family. By default — de
fault
being Uncle Fredo’s. The skanky brother-with-the-fewest-marbles had murdered the twins’ father — sidebar, because he thought that’s what Thantos wanted him to do.

Cam did not understand why Miranda still trusted the dangerous tracker. Then she shuddered. Was the hulking black-bearded warlock nearby?

“Your uncle is away,” Miranda said stiffly. “But he’ll be back shortly. And you really have nothing to fear.”

Startled by her mother’s easy eavesdropping, Cam tried to scramble her thoughts, which at the moment were:
Ba-ap! So wrong. Try again.
Safe
and
Thantos
don’t belong in the same sentence.

Thantos.
The premonition came over Cam so quickly her knees buckled. To keep from falling, and to
keep Miranda from realizing she might, Cam pressed down hard on the windowsill. Her vision blurred. Dizziness gave way to nausea. A sheen of perspiration swathed her. She saw a book. Its cover was of old cracked leather.… Inside it were pages of aged parchment … and a hand, a smooth, confident hand was writing on the parchment.…
Thantos
was the only word she could make out.

“He knows you’re here,” Miranda was saying as Cam’s vision faded.

She held her head, which was pounding furiously, and tried to focus on her mother. “Who knows? Thantos?”

Miranda’s expression was troubled. “No. The boy. The blond child, wild and untrustworthy —”

It took Cam a moment. Shane! It was Shane her mother meant. She’s not gonna stop me from seeing him, she thought, panicked.

“Stop you?” Her mother seemed genuinely surprised. “No. Just be cautious around him.”

“And?” Cam was waiting for the rest of it. The part Emily would have stressed: “We trust you. We know you’ll use good judgment.”

It didn’t come.

Instead, Miranda moved on. “I wish Artemis could have come with you. I was just thinking of her. Of summoning her here.” She offered a beautiful kimono to Cam.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Cam asked, poking her arms through the robe’s flowing sleeves. How shallow was she that the kimono’s fabric, as soft and light as a rose petal, sidetracked her for a moment. “I mean, aren’t I enough?” She quickly regrouped.

“Of course!” Miranda seemed astonished that Cam would even ask. “This is not about you not being enough. I have something to tell you —”

“Go for it,” Cam urged.

Miranda shook her head. “Not now. This needs to be told to the two of you, together and face-to-face. We’ve planned it, Ileana and I. When she returned from her trip, we were going to come and see you.”

Ileana was Cam and Alex’s cousin and the guardian appointed to protect the twins, ever since the day that Aron died and Miranda suffered an emotional breakdown.

“This important thing you have to tell both of us at the same time. We were here, on Coventry, for Lord Karsh’s funeral. Why didn’t you tell us then?”

“Because,” Miranda said gently as she headed for the door, “I didn’t know it then.”

Cam hadn’t meant to snoop. But this was her father’s room. She’d been robbed of the chance to know Aron DuBaer. This, she decided after she’d dressed, was a way to begin.

She was astonished at all the accolades, certificates, awards, and trophies her father had won when he was a boy. Cam’s heart swelled with pride. Was it any wonder
she
was a winner, too? At least that was what Emily often insisted. “You’re amazing. An athlete graced with brains and beauty — you’re a winner, baby,” her adoptive mom used to say, shaking her head in wonder. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Emily’s praise had sometimes embarrassed Cam. Now she thought maybe her gifts were not something she’d done, but a wonderful genetic legacy from this amazing man.

Aron had been an idealistic young warlock. Awarded a special citation for being the youngest ever to complete initiation, he had written of his goals: to use his talents, and the family inheritance, to help the world’s people. Cam kept only one souvenir, a note Aron had scrawled, which she found in a dresser drawer:
An’ it harm none, do what you will.

Her uncles’ rooms told different stories. Fredo, the youngest, had papered his walls with posters of monsters, Godzilla-sized lizards, giant rattlesnakes. Inside his desk drawer were letters from instructors and private tutors urging him to try harder. One memo struck an eerie chord. “Fredo is easily led. We must encourage him to think for himself.”

Oldest brother Thantos’s room was a self-obsessed braggart’s den. Its theme was mirrors. Cam counted seven of different sizes and shapes on the walls, closet doors, atop his desk, and on the bureau. Even as a child, Thantos was his own biggest fan.

He did admire Aron, though — if you believed imitation the sincerest form of flattery. Cam chuckled at the number of items in his room labeled
PROPERTY OF ARON DUBAER
— from a bag of crystals to a spell book, even homework. It was easy to see where Aron’s name had been crossed out and replaced by Thantos’s. One instructor wasn’t fooled.
Thantos has been copying Aron again,
was scrawled in red ink across a theme paper.

Cam could barely wait to share this stuff with Alex.

She was about to head back to her room when a picture caught her eye. She lifted the framed snapshot of three boys — tall, stout Thantos, athletic, smiling Aron, little Fredo with his head down, squinting in the sun. Cam ran a finger over her father’s handsome young face. Returning the photo to its place, she accidentally hit a silver hairbrush that had been next to it. With a discomfiting clatter, the brush fell behind the dresser.

She was on her hands and knees, peering under the furniture, when she saw something odd and out of place. Inching the dresser away from the wall, she discovered a strange hatch, a door about four feet high, one that a
child might go through. But why was it hidden? She reached to open it —

“Camryn, are you dressed yet?” Miranda called from the hallway.

Cam felt like a thief caught in the act. She quickly pushed the bureau back into place and bolted through the door that linked Thantos’s room to Aron’s.

“You’ve got male,” her mother quipped, knocking and then entering Aron’s room again a moment after Cam got there. “That’s spelled m-a-l-e.”

Shane! Cam’s heart leaped.

Miranda stood back and allowed Cam to dash past her. “Please,” her mother’s soft voice called after her, “be careful.”

Cam promised she would.

But she wasn’t.

CHAPTER FOUR

KISS, INTERRUPTED

Be careful.

No one had to warn Alex. She’d been telling herself just that since Cade had come loping back into her life. Don’t get in so deep that you can’t get out. Leave an emotional escape hatch. Do not — she pictured road signs as she pedaled her bike — yield, let your defenses down. Do not let him get to you. Do not expose your heart. It’s too —

“Earth to Alex —”

— Fragile. Too late.
Kaboom,
she’d already fallen.

Cade was riding beside her, their wheels, Alex noted, rotating in sync. “If I were a mind reader —” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his black-lashed blue eyes.

Alex gripped the handlebars tightly.

“— I would know why you’ve got that determined look on your face. Why your eyebrows are knit in concentration, your lips pursed. Why we’re biking side by side, yet you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

He’d been
talking
to her? Hyperhearing girl? “Oh, man,” she moaned, “my bad.”

“Nah,” he contradicted. “There’s nothing bad about you —”

She turned away. Not so he wouldn’t see her blush. To stop the free fall she was in.

Alex had met Cade Richman last semester, when they’d been the new kids at Marble Bay High. They connected in many ways. There was insta chemistry and language arts — they totally got each other. There was also biology,
if
that could be measured by just one kiss. But not enough history. Cade’s dad had gotten transferred to Paris; the family had to move.

Cade had packed a souvenir: Alex’s heart.

Fast-forward. The boy with the dark curly hair, cobalt-blue eyes, and lopsided grin was back. All she knew was that Cade’s dad had gotten him a job and a place to crash — with his boss’s family. But was he here for a summer cameo or for good? The question hung in the air between them. Unasked, unanswered.

“We’re almost there,” she announced. She was taking
Cade to a special spot, a place where wonderful things had happened. It was just a grassy field surrounding an ancient elm tree, but it was the highest point in Mariner’s Park and offered a breathtaking view of Marble Bay’s harbor.

Her sister had been drawn to it years ago but had never taken anyone there until Alex came to live with her. Months later, the twins had met their biological mother for the first time, there, under the huge old elm.

Alex hadn’t planned on sharing it with anyone else.

But the best things in life are the unplanned ones. Like Cade.

“I see why you like it here,” he said after she’d stopped and laid her bike down in the grass. Leaning his bike against the tree, he shaded his eyes to check out the boats in the distant harbor. “It’s like a postcard, a snapshot of some other world.” He paused, listened. “It’s so different up here. Quiet, you know? Peaceful.”

He got it. Alex knew he would. She felt herself swaying and her emotional safety net falling away. She’d brought a blanket, but was afraid to sit down next to him. What if she never wanted to get up? What if she got lost in his eyes, in his embrace, and couldn’t find her way back?

Alex wouldn’t allow it to happen. She plunged her hands into her pockets, as if that would keep her from
reaching for him. In the right side of her camouflage jacket her fingers found a sharp-edged stone. It began to heat up at her touch. She knew at once that it was a crystal of pink quartz that she and Cam had used in the past to cast spells and practice magick.

She could use it now, Alex reasoned, use it to quiet her emotions and protect her heart, to keep at a distance if not Cade then her own dangerous feelings.

No. The beloved warlock Karsh, who’d given her the crystal, had taught that magick was to be used to promote love and healing, not to hide from it. She let go of the stone, hoping anyway that some of its power had entered her heart through her hand.

Alex wasn’t hungry but deliberately opened her backpack and withdrew a pile of plastic containers. She’d prepared lunch — salad, tuna, cheese, bread, fruit, chips, and bottled water.

Cade whistled in appreciation. “That’s what’s so cool about you. You’re unpredictable. Not what people expect —”

Alex stopped what she was doing and folded her arms. “Let’s see, purple hair, black nail polish, a camo jacket instead of cashmere — that renders me unable to make a sandwich? That what you mean?”

“Busted,” he admitted sheepishly, blushing a little.

“It’s my suburban sister who’s totally kitchen phobic.
That girl thinks adding strawberries to Special K is gourmet cooking. Speaking of walking contradictions — looked into a mirror lately?”

Cade was the kid who’d come to school looking rough, raggedy, small-town. Nothing to suggest the well-traveled, rich boy Cade Richman was. “I never did ask you,” Alex gave voice to her thoughts. “Why’d you hide who you really were?”

He leaned over on his elbow. Their faces were inches apart. “I didn’t. This is who I really am. You were the only girl who ever bothered to find out. Besides, we all have secrets —”

“Not me,” Alex lied. “I’m an open book. Ask me anything.”

He did. Which is how they spent the hours, talking, laughing, trading stories, realizing how little — yet how much — they knew about each other. Even leaving out the witch part, Alex felt like she could talk to him forever. And listen, too.

Cade’s dad was some big muckety-muck in a global conglom, and the family moved often. In his sixteen-plus years, Cade had gone to as many schools. He’d finished his sophomore year in Paris. “The city of light, they call it. It’s cool, but not the perfect city people dream of.”

Alex had never dreamed about Paris. Her desires had been more modest. She’d wanted to understand her
own weirdness. She’d yearned to move out of the tin trailer she’d shared with her adoptive mother, Sara. And most of all, she’d wanted Sara to regain her health, beat cancer.

Two of her wishes had come true. It was the third, the one that hadn’t, that would always gnaw at her. With all her gifts, her powers, she had not been able to save the only mother she’d ever known or wanted from death.

“Want me to say something in French?” Cade broke in suddenly, teasing. “It
is
the language of love, after all.”

It was more than flirting, and Alex knew it. He’d sensed her gloom, was trying to pull her out before she got in too deep. He was amazing.

She brightened. “
Oui
.”
Yes
was the one French word she knew.

“Okay. See if you can figure this out.
Tu es très jolie, Alex, mon petit chou,”
he said with a sly smile.

She had no clue what it meant.

Cade leaned in and cupped her chin. “It means, you are so pretty …”

She blushed.

“— my little cabbage head.”

Alex scrunched her face and mock punched him. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

Cade answered by reaching over and pulling her close. “Let’s see if you walk right into this.”

Alex’s heart began to race. She remembered what Cade’s kiss felt like. She closed her eyes and leaned toward him —

This better be worth it. She’d better come through. Or I came a long way for nothing.

— and jerked her head away roughly. What the —? Was that what he’d been thinking? Alex stared hard at Cade. She was so angry, she blurted, “What better be worth it? You mean me?”

Cade was startled. “What’s going on?”

Of course
you.
You think I’m here to hook up with that prissy sister of yours?

Alex sat up sharply and moved away from him. “I don’t know what game you’re playing —”

“Game? Alex, what’s wrong? What’d I do?” Cade wanted to know.

A game? Great! How ’bout one we both know? Hide-and-seek?

She was fuming. Her face was probably beet red. What could she say? I read your mind, you imbecile? You’re just playing me? Alex leaped up, ready to grab her bike and bolt.

You’re IT, Alex! Find me.… I’ll say if you’re hot or cold.…

She grabbed the handlebars, booted the kickstand, and stopped. Those were
not
Cade’s thoughts. Someone
else was here. Someone powerful enough to break into her head.

“Alex, come on,” Cade said anxiously. “Give me a clue — I’m lost here.” He’d come up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, about to spin her around. She whirled, beating him to it.

Her heart sank. She didn’t have to read his mind. Cade’s hurt and confused feelings were all over his face. She stammered, “I’m … I didn’t mean it… I mean, it’s not you, it’s me.…” Alex awarded herself an A in inane babble. “I know this is weird … I’m acting weird, you’re probably thinking …”

Cade searched her eyes for a clue. She had none to give. She only hoped she could come up with an explanation he’d believe and that he’d forgive her.

Oh, Alex, you’re not even trying! And you, the huntress, shame, shame!

Grimly, Alex turned away from Cade and shot back a telepathic message of her own.
Whoever you are, I will find you. You’ll wish I hadn’t!
She scanned the landscape, wishing for her sister’s zoom-lens eyesight. On her own, Alex saw nothing.

Except this. When she turned around, Cade was gone.

*        *        *

She ached to go after him, to shout, “Wait! Don’t go.”

How could things have gotten so messed up, so fast? Their first quality time alone was ruined. She’d make it right with Cade — as soon as she flushed out this rude intruder.

Intruder? I could be insulted. But I’m having too much fun.

Her jaw set, Alex scrambled down the hill, digging her heels into the soft, grassy earth so she wouldn’t topple. Every few steps she paused, listening, thinking. Her adversary had spied on her and Cade, broken into her head. A witch for sure, but which witch? Not Camryn, nor Miranda, not even her mischievous cousin Ileana would mess with her this way.

You’re overthinking this, Alex. Use your ears… use your instincts.

Don’t tell me what to do!
Alex shot back, walking faster, more deliberately. She knew this park, this view by heart. What wasn’t she seeing?

Suddenly, she realized it didn’t matter if she couldn’t flush someone out by sight. She could hear. There was a swishing sound, like someone dragging a blanket across the grass. Then a sliding, skidding, and bump! Her mystery guest had fallen.

A memory came to her. Weeks ago on Coventry
Island, a short young witch tripped on her too-long cape and tumbled down a flight of stairs. No! It couldn’t be —

Michaelina?

“Ta-da!” The teen witch, arms outspread, popped out from behind a tree and gleefully announced, “The one and only!”

Alex blinked. Oh, no! It really
was
her, the double-dealing rival Alex had met on Coventry. What was she doing here?

Michaelina, with her twinkling green eyes, mischievous mouth, and pixie-gone-punk hairdo, had been one of a trouble-brewing trio of witches who called themselves the Furies. Sersee, Epie, and Michaelina. They’d tried to kick serious T*Witch butt and almost succeeded — thanks to Mike, who had briefly befriended the twins, then led them into a near-lethal trap.

“You’re not holding
that
against me,” Mike quipped. “What do mainlanders say,’Bygones —’”

“In your case, it’s
be gone.
Now would be a good time,” Alex snapped.

Michaelina smiled big. “You haven’t changed at all. That’s good.”

“What are you doing here?” Alex fingered her moon charm menacingly.

Michaelina held up mini-palms. “I come in peace. Just to check out mainland life. It’s as simple as that —”

Jaw set, Alex demanded, “Who sent you?

“No one! Look, Alex, I know what happened was bad. I learned a lesson, too. I’m not one of Sersee’s servants anymore — I … I know this sounds sappy, but I’m sorta trying to figure it out, y’know? Looking for a second chance?”

“At what? Another betrayal? What makes you think I wouldn’t put a spell or curse on you?”

“No way.” Michaelina snorted. “You’re a card-carrying member of Witches Magnanimous. You totally believe that hooey, ‘that all things might grow to their most bountiful goodness.’ It’s not in your nature to hurt me.”

Mike was right, but for the wrong reason. Alex wasn’t angry enough to hurt the girl. It was something in the sprite’s eyes, the way she put up this totally tough front. It reminded Alex of someone.

It was the way she might have ended up had the beloved warlock Karsh not brought her to Cam.