T*Witches: Split Decision (5 page)

“So you came because —” Alex had a sudden thought. “Do you think your mom is on the mainland? Is that why you’re really here?”

Michaelina was honestly perplexed. “Uh, no. Why would I do that? I like my freedom. A mommy figure isn’t what I’m looking for. Okay, my turn,” she piped up, completely over her emotional moment. “I get to ask you a question.”

“Knock yourself out.” Alex surrendered, her gray eyes sweeping the street, looking for whatever trouble might be brewing in this trouble-prone stretch of town.

“When you did sell out?”

The question startled her.

“When did you become conformo?” the pixie went on. “You grew up in a poor neighborhood, but you hate this one. You’re all scared of it. You’re laughing at the way I’m dressed, just the way people used to laugh at you. You put up this front of being indie girl, but you don’t even want to believe I’m here on my own, doing things my way.”

Alex fished for something to say. All that came out
was, “How are you affording this? Where’s the coin coming from?”

“I borrowed some,” Michaelina said carefully. “And I put a tiny spell on the landlord to make him think I’d be good for it. Besides, I thought I’d do the righteous mainland thing and get a job. Unless you disapprove of that, too? I mean, the Barnes are probably sharing the bling-bling with you.”

Alex’s back went up. She’d refused to take any more money from Cam’s folks than she absolutely had to — even if they were now her legal guardians. No designer duds, no cool computer, new CDs, not even a magazine subscription. Her most prized possession was a guitar, Dylan’s old one. Even her bike had been Cam’s castoff.

Apparently Mike hadn’t read her mind. Or wasn’t interested in her defensiveness. “So when did it happen? When did you become your sister on the inside, too, instead of your own person?”

Alex’s attention was suddenly diverted by a clamorous metallic sound. Three little boys were coming toward them. They were kicking a can. Their bantering voices, which she heard from far off, sounded oddly familiar, though she knew she’d never seen the boys before.

Michaelina was oblivious to the trio. “You know I’m right,” she insisted. “You used to be a free spirit —”

The voices. They belonged to the kids who had been playing with fireworks on the Fourth. They were the boys she’d helped Cam save.

“When did you get sucked into playing the game by someone else’s rules?” Mike nattered on. “When did you stop being
you?
”

Alex heard the question. She turned away from the ragamuffins and tried to scramble her thoughts so that Michaelina wouldn’t know she’d hit a nerve.

Despite her insistence on not owing anyone anything, in the past year she’d gotten used to living well — under the Barneses’ roof and rules. So what if she hadn’t started dressing like Cam and her crew. Was that all that remained of her fierce independent spirit? Had she really, as Michaelina mocked, strayed so far from her roots? From the person Sara had brought her up to be?

If Sara Fielding could see her now, what would she think of Alex?

“There’s the witch!” Wide-eyed and trembling, the three boys were staring at her. “She’s the one from the beach. Let’s get outta here!” they cried over their shoulders as they hightailed it up the street.

“What was that?” Michaelina wanted to know.

Alex tried to shrug nonchalantly. “How should I know?” she replied, to keep herself from saying what she knew to be true.
Even they think I’m my sister.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SECRET PASSAGE

The hidden door behind the dresser in Thantos’s childhood bedroom beckoned Cam. Despite the excitement of her amazing day with Shane, something drew her back here. She needed to find out where the strange hatch led — before she could decide if it was worth mentioning to Miranda.

Pleading exhaustion, she’d gone to bed early. In the middle of the night, when she was certain her mother was asleep, she made for Thantos’s room, careful to move the dresser out of the way slowly and quietly.

The small door was unlocked and swung open easily. It opened into a murky tunnel, which Cam followed to a stone stairway. It led into the caves of Coventry
Island. She’d been there before, lured by Sersee. She wasn’t scared, though, as she descended the stairs, which twisted and spiraled. The creepy quotient was definitely daunting. She’d bet Thantos used this secret chamber to torment his terrified brother Fredo.

At the bottom of the stairwell, Cam found herself in a high-ceilinged, circular cavern. Like rays from a black sun, five tunnels led off in different directions. As she stood in the center of the dark vault, a strange feeling came over her.

It was neither a vision nor a premonition coming on. She did not grow dizzy or hear the loud buzzing that usually heralded her prophecies. She simply knew something suddenly that she had no rational way of knowing.

There was a book.

She hadn’t read it but somehow knew a portion of its contents. The book told of what lay beneath the soil of Coventry, what — and who — she might encounter should she journey farther, deeper into this part of the fabled caves. What kinds of inhabitants, more dangerous than the Furies, might be found. Here spirits of the dead roamed, and others, deranged souls who struck out blindly at any who dared enter. These wretched apparitions could materialize at any bend in the tunnel.

This came to her as fact without fear. Cam felt a sense of calm and peace. She’d be protected here. She
didn’t know why, or how, or from what exactly, but whatever had lured her here this time, that same powerful magick would not allow harm to come to her. She stood very still in the middle of the circular chamber and waited for her senses to guide her.

Her hearing, never as astute as Alex’s, was the first sense awakened. She heard scratching sounds coming from one of the tunnels. She listened intently. A steady, monotonous scraping, like fingernails on a chalkboard, raised goose bumps on her arms and turned her stomach.

Yet she forged forward.

Her eyes, beacons in the dark, were on high beam. So she saw him well before he saw or sensed her. A spindly man, his cloaked back to her, was bent in concentration over a stone outcropping, a table of sorts formed by a ledge in the wall. His frayed cape had probably once been a burgundy color. Now it was threadbare and as sleek with grease as his long, stringy, dark hair, which was tied back in a rattail.

This was no apparition, no haunted spirit. What, then? Who would sit in the icy bowels of Crailmore and what was he doing?

Afraid only of startling him, she advanced slowly and stealthily.

As she drew closer, she realized what he was doing and what she had heard. With a quill pen, the hunched
wretch was laboriously scrawling a message on stiff parchment. Grungy and fragile as he looked, his hand was steady on the page. A pile of already completed sheets sat at his right hand. Was he composing a book? Was it the book she’d seen in her vision this morning, the book she’d thought of a moment ago?

She was only a few feet away. Surely he would sense her presence soon. She expected him to whirl around, a withered soul, some nutcase whose lair she’d invaded. When he did spin to face her, she saw not the face of a hapless aged hermit. Smooth and unlined, this was a warlock about Shane’s age. His icy expression could have been carved from the very stone he was using as a table.

She noticed, too, his hair was cropped short on top. Cam had an insane urge to tell him the mullet look was so over — but fear, the first she’d felt since sneaking through the odd door in Thantos’s room, stopped her cold.

She found her voice. “Who … what are you … doing?”

The rattailed warlock did not respond. His gaze locked on Cam, pinned her with his inky eyes.

She swallowed, trying to show no fear. But just then her sun charm grew hot against her chest, so hot she thought it might burn her. When she tried to lift it, she got an electric shock.

She knew now to retreat, to run. This same force that had pulled her down into this cave was pushing her out. She heeded the warning at the exact same moment the warlock reached out to grab her. Something gleamed from the collar of his grimy shirt. As Cam raced away, she realized what she had seen. A horseshoe-shaped crystal hanging from a gold chain.

It was identical to the amulet Shane had been wearing.

“No
way
!” Shane assured her the next day. He’d come again to Crailmore to see her, to spend the afternoon together. “You think Epona is some descendant of an evil equine empire? A symbol of death?”

Death hauling sun god’s chariot, Cam thought.

That’d be her. Or her namesake.

A book she’d found this morning in Crailmore’s huge library confirmed Miranda’s memory of the legend of Epona. How much of it did Shane know? Why would he tease her, or test her about ancient symbols of evil?

Until she had answers, Cam had decided, she would not let her feelings blind her.

She could do this now, because her senses were sharper here. Her ability to hear things from far away, while still not in Alex’s league, had improved. Here on Coventry, she was more attuned, in tune, with her biological
heritage. More like, she thought with a start, the girl she was born to be.

That’s what she’d been thinking as she walked beside Shane along the cobblestone path leading away from Crailmore. Despite last night’s encounter with the weirdo in the cave, she was feeling strong again, secure, empowered.

Which was why the sudden dizziness took her by surprise. She reached out to Shane as everything blurred. But he was a step ahead of her and she couldn’t get to him in time. The premonition hit with such force, her knees buckled. She doubled over and fell to the ground.

And then she was drowning. And screaming.
Help! Help!
But no one could hear her. She had no voice.

I can’t breathe! I can’t…

Flailing, kicking, clawing her way out… someone had to help her! She was being sucked under too fast. Something was closing in on her. Water? It was cold, wet, coarse — and it filled her mouth, suffocating her with grainy mouthfuls … of sand? She tried to spit it out, shake it off. Climb out, put one hand over the next.
Pull yourself up,
was all she could think. But there was nothing to grab onto. She had no footing. She was going down. Pulled down. To her grave.

No! No! I’m not ready to die — help! Somebody help! Alex …!

She was ready to give in, couldn’t fight anymore. Then a pair of giant hands grasped her rib cage and pulled her up and out.

“You’re okay! You’re okay!” She heard Shane, but he was far away, alarmed. “Come out of it, Cam! That’s it, open your eyes —”

She was on the ground, on the moss-covered cobblestones. Hyperventilating. Her head was pounding, and Shane was kneeling beside her, scanning her eyes.

Shaking, sweating, Cam clutched his arms.

“What happened?” he asked. “Are you sick?”

“I had …” Something stopped Cam from finishing the sentence. He hadn’t recognized what was happening to her. Maybe that was as it should be — and stay. Info best kept to herself. For now. “I got dizzy,” she said.

“You’re still shaking,” he noted. “Sure you’re all right?”

She was, but for how long? There hadn’t been a single time in all her life that her premonitions hadn’t come true. This had been her first of her own death.

She wanted Alex. She needed her sister. Now.

“Come on,” Shane was saying gently as he helped her to her feet. “Let’s go to the Village Plaza. I’ll get you some herbal tea. If you don’t feel better, I’ll bring you back home.”

She almost protested. She almost said, No, I’ll go
back now. If she couldn’t be with Alex, she wanted to be with Miranda. Maybe she should tell her mother about these last two visions — and last night’s discovery. But Shane was urging her forward, smiling at her, telling her he’d be there to catch her if she got dizzy again.

And though she’d vowed to be cautious this time, she believed him.

The Village Plaza was the center of town, usually bustling with witches and warlocks of all generations. Ringed by dozens of inviting shops, open-air markets, and cafés with outdoor tables shaded by big, colorful umbrellas, it reminded Cam of a peaceful artists’ colony — one that hadn’t yet been cheesed up with chain stores and T-shirt souvenirs. Triangular flags and window boxes overflowing with flowers upped the fairy-tale feel of the place.

“Let’s go get that tea.” Shane led her to a café called the Rive Gauche. “And maybe something sweet to go with it. Could I talk you into that?”

Okay, so maybe it was coincidence, but Cam thought…
not.

The Rive Gauche Café had only one group of customers clustered around a large outdoor table. There were five of them about Cam’s age, and one was awfully familiar. Accent on
awful.

And sarcastic. “To what do we owe a visit by the
DuBaer heiress? The princess of power … she who could kill with her eyes but would do no harm and spare even her enemies?”

Sersee. The vicious witch who had been so cruel, so hurtful, so bent on destroying Cam and Alex. Her haughty highness tossed her head, dramatically casting off her hood to free a cascade of ebony curls. She caught Cam in the crosshairs of her piercing violet eyes.

Cam stared back hard. The scary vision of a little while ago? Over it. She shot back, “To what do we owe the opening remarks, insincere though they be?”

The revelation that the leader of the Furies had been twice abandoned — once by parents killed in a fire, then by a Protector who had failed her — tempered Cam’s righteous anger. Not that she felt sorry for the Serster, but the burning desire to clobber her had dissolved. Instead, Cam was peeved at Shane — clearly he’d spread the word of her visit.

“Welcome.” Sersee’s expression was anything but. “Come join us at the Coventry equivalent of the popular table at the lunchroom. We wanted to make you feel right at home. No Starbucks, no sushi, no slice of Beverly Hills pizza, but we can do tasty tea, hot chocolate, and ice cream with the best. And our herbal remedies are … to die for.”

How convenient, Cam noted, there were two empty seats.

Shane said, “It’s up to you, Cam. Want to go someplace else?”

Well,
duh,
she thought.

“Oh, not yet!” Sersee exclaimed. “We must introduce Lady DuBaer to her future subjects.”

Shane scowled. “Enough, Sersee.”

She ignored him. “Of course there’s Epie —” The intra was unnecessary. Cam recognized the grinning moonfaced girl. She was Sersee’s most loyal lapdog. “She’s kind of hard to miss,” the violet-eyed witch added.

Hard to miss? Was the queen of mean dissing her faithful stooge? Epie was chubby but not grotesque — except in the friends she chose. The plump girl tried to laugh now but her face had turned crimson. “At least let me say sorry about what happened last time.” She continued gamely, “You remember me, right?”

How could Cam forget? Epie was the most clueless of the Furies. As trusting and devoted to Sersee as their third partner, Michaelina, was wily and cunning. The three had been formidable enemies. “We got punished for what we did,” Epie informed her, as if that now made it all right, the slate wiped clean.

She’s cute, man!
One of the warlocks, a kid with
long dark brown hair and full lips, was giving her silent props. He introduced himself as Rowan. His friend, a boy with a long face and sour expression, was Serle.

That left one other young witch, a gray-eyed girl with straight chin-length dark hair, who was not just looking at Cam but intently studying her. Where had Cam seen her before?

The girl grinned suddenly. “I’m Amaryllis. I work at Crailmore. I’ve seen you there. Rowan’s right. You’re very pretty.”

Cam smiled, flattered despite her suspicions that the girl and the rest of the crew were Sersee’s new slaves, faithful, fresh recruits to the Furies. It crossed her mind that Amaryllis, since she worked at Thantos’s fortress, might have a dual allegiance — to Sersee and also to Cam’s treacherous uncle. Was she here to spy on Cam?

“I’m not a slave, you know,” Amaryllis bristled, answering Cam’s unasked question. “Lord Thantos pays us well, and allows liberal time off.”

“What a guy,” Cam deadpanned.

Shane settled into one of the empty chairs, assuming they were staying. Before Cam could join him, Sersee unexpectedly seized her arm. “I need to speak with her in private,” she announced to the gathering. “I’m sure no one minds.”

“I do.” Cam tore her arm away, but Sersee’s quick hand grasped her waist and swept her along, whispering, “Please. What I have to say is not for public knowledge.

“They all look up to me,” she added when they were behind the café, “and I want to keep it that way. Anyway, I regret any inconvenience I might’ve caused you in the past.”

Inconvenience? That was like the doctor saying you may feel some “discomfort” before plunging you into horrible, stinging, unbearable pain. Exactly what Sersee had caused her.

“I am sorry,” Sersee reiterated. “I want to make it up to you.”

Cam brushed her off. “Take a memo, Betty Spaghetty. Sorry doesn’t begin to do it.”

The violet-eyed witch continued as if she were reading off a TelePrompTer. “You stole Shane from me. I hurt you because I was jealous.”

“Hurt me? You turned me into a hamster! You tried to kill me!” Cam heard herself squeaking like one, as she shuddered at the memory.

As if envy made attempted murder forgivable, Sersee continued, “Shane was so
obvious
about it. I was betrayed. I gave him a place to stay, helped him when he was down and out. And then you come along and he
kicks me to the curb. Me! Treats me like some big, fat, bad nobody.”