Witch Twins (11 page)

Claire looked at her, puzzled. “She’s got Justin.”

“Well, but poor Dad doesn’t have any one.”

“Dad’s in California,” Claire reminded her. “And when he comes back, he’s got Fluffy.” Fluffy was Claire and Luna’s brand-new step-mother. Her real name was Edith Hortense. Fluffy was just one of those terrible childhood nicknames that had stuck into adulthood.

Now Claire leaned forward and wagged a finger at Luna. “You don’t really want to go to camp, do you, Luna? Crumbs, I knew it! You’ve got no zest for adventure!”

“Whatever!” Luna answered, but then she couldn’t think of what else to say. She turned her head toward the window and listened to the conductor call the names of the stops that led all the way out to Bramblewine, the thirteenth stop, which was where their grandparents lived.

Maybe Claire was right. It was true that Luna did not like being caught by surprise. When she checked out a sad or scary book from the library, she read the last chapter first, just to be prepared. When she took a test, she made sure that she read the directions twice. When a spell called for a pinch, she measured out an eighth of a teaspoon. And she always, always liked her pencil to have a fresh eraser on one end and a sharp point on the other.

She liked to think of herself as careful. Cautious. Not zestless.

“Bramblewine!” shouted the conductor. As usual, Claire and Luna were the last two passengers left on the train. Nobody ever came all the way out to Bramblewine. In fact, most people did not even know there was a thirteenth stop. That’s because Bramblewine was a rather mysterious place. And their grandmother, Five Star Head Witch Arianna of Greater Bramblewine, was one of Bramblewine’s most mysterious residents.

“Hello, twinsicles!” Grandy called now, leaning out the window of her dusty old Lincoln Continental. She was wearing her green-quartz-and-blue-topaz necklace and she’d had her hair beauty-parlorized, but her eyes looked a little squidgy.

“I’m still recovering from our Fourth of July party,” she explained with a yawn as the twins climbed into the car. “We had almost a hundred people over. Your grandfather must have flipped two hundred soy burgers. You’ll both have to sit in back, since Wilbur needs to stretch. Last night he swallowed a champagne cork, and he hasn’t been himself since.”

Wilbur was Grandy’s cat, who often ate things he shouldn’t. Grandy said the inside of his stomach probably looked like the bottom of the sea. Right now, Wilbur was asleep in the front passenger seat, snoring peacefully on his traveling cushion. He did not even twitch when Claire poked him.

“Hey, why weren’t we invited to your party?” asked Claire.

“No kiddies allowed. Which reminds me, girls, how are your kittens?”

“They just had their shots,” said Luna. “Mom promised that she would take good care of them while we’re gone.”

“Mom says kittens are too much effort and she wishes you hadn’t given them to us,” said Claire. Luna elbowed her. Claire never knew when to keep her mouth shut.

Grandy did not seem to care. “A witch needs a cat,” she said. “Your mother is not a witch, so she can’t be expected to understand.”

“Hey, Grandy, when did you know Mom wasn’t a witch?” Luna asked.

“I knew the minute she was born, because she started to cry,” said Grandy. “When a witch is born, she sneezes.”

Claire, who (like Luna) was a one-star witch, faked a sneeze, and then fake-sneezed all the way to their grandparents’ house. She was really getting on Luna’s nerves today.

“She’s just excited about camp,” said Grandy, after Claire had jumped out of the car. Following the sound of Grampy’s tractor, she sped down to the garden. “Claire has a love of adventure.”

“Zest,” mumbled Luna, shouldering her bag. “You mean a
zest
for adventure.”

Grandy raised her eyebrows. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you something,” she said. “Maybe it’ll rub the doom off your gloom.”

So Luna followed Grandy into the house and upstairs to the library.

The library was dark and smelled like books and spells and secrets. Glass-fronted cabinets stretched from the skin-thin antique Persian rugs to the high, water-stained ceiling. There was no air-conditioning at their grandparents’ house, but the walls were so thick that the rooms stayed cool, even in July. Luna loved-loved-loved this library. It was her favorite room in any house, anywhere.

Grandy sat down at her desk chair and turned on a slim silver laptop computer that Luna had never seen before. “I recently downloaded my Big Book of Shadows,” she said. “It’s a lot easier for spell searches. Eighteen hundred pages take too long to thumb through, not to mention the mildew problems. Come here and sit by me.”

Luna pulled up a chair. Grandy was quick on the keystrokes and did not have to look down at the letters once. She logged on and typed in “zest.” Dozens of categories popped up.

Squeeze New
Zest
from Old Dandelions: Leaves

Squeeze New
Zest
from Old Dandelions: Roots

Take a Three-Minute
Zest
Test

Zesty
Magical Herbs: Fennel, Flax, and Feverfew

Guatemalan
Zesty
Spiced Tacos

Carefully, Grandy scrolled down, and then highlighted the category marked
Zest
for Adventure. A long list of spells came up, but Grandy went right to the one called
Marigold Zest
.

“Aha,” she said. “Presto perfecto.” She double-clicked.

Luna read:

Marigold Zest:

A harmless adventure enhancement

Warning: do not confuse this spell with Marigold Pizzazz.

You will need:

Thrice-distilled marigold essence and clean feet

Directions:

Standing barefoot, facing west,

Three times chantyth, “Zest, zest, zest!”

Sprinkle powder toe to heel

’Twill soon provide that zesty feel.

Grandy clicked PRINT. “Since you are so good at memorising, Luna, you should learn this by heart tonight,” she warned. “It’s a bad idea to take a written-down spell to camp, where it could fall into the wrong hands.”

“Thanks, Grandy” said Luna, studying the paper. She did not quite know what the spell was about. Interesting, yes, but how could it help her?

“I’ll be seventy-seven this year, but nobody can call Arianna Bramblewine a techno-turkey.” Grandy patted her laptop and stood up. She crossed the room to unlock the door of one of her cabinets and took out a glass bottle of yellow powder. She blew the dust off its seal and held it up for Luna to see. “There you are, thrice-distilled Marigold Zest. This vial should
never
leave your care, though the smell is so unique it could be mistaken for some useless, overpriced cosmetic item. But a bottle of Marigold Zest can work wonders on even a non-witch’s wishes. So hide it well! And if anyone asks you what it is, say it’s homemade cornmeal foot powder.”

She tossed the vial to Luna, who, after a moment’s hesitation, slipped it into her pocket. “Thanks, Grandy.”

“It’ll put some temporary spring in your step,” said Grandy.

Luna glumly rolled the bottle between her fingers. She would need more than a springy step to get through the next five weeks. Under Grandy’s watchful eye, she felt her face grow warm.

“Grandy, I don’t want to go to camp,” Luna blurted. “And that’s not the kind of thing that can be solved with spells. It’s just my personality.”

Grandy looked down her nose. “Nothing,” said Grandy, “can be
solved
with a spell. Especially not the dinky one-star spells you and Claire are allowed to cast. But think how lucky you are, Luna. You’re a twin! Imagine all the girls who brave camp alone.”

“It’s worse to be a twin! All camp will do is show how different Claire and I really are!” Luna wailed. “Claire’s so much better for a place like camp. She can walk backward on her hands. She can whistle through her fingers. She never gets sun rash. I wish she hadn’t talked me into stupid Camp Bliss. I wish I could stay here all summer and take care of the kittens!”

“Oh, they’ll be fine. Cats are loners by nature. That’s why they’re such good pets. I’m more concerned about you.” Grandy’s brow furrowed. “Can you think of anything wonderful that might be at camp, that you wouldn’t find at home or Bramblewine?”

Now it was Luna’s turn to think hard. “Well, maybe one thing,” she confessed in a voice slightly louder than a whisper. “I keep wondering if maybe my true, all-weather friend is at camp. Someone just for me.”

“Well, there you have it!” Grandy thumped Luna’s knee. “An all-weather friend is scarcer than finch-and-turtle soup. And I’d go farther than the Galapagos for finch-and-turtle soup. You’re only going to Virginia.”

W
HAT CLAIRE REALLY WANTED
to know about Camp Bliss was: would there be a tug-of-war?

“You always see tugs-of-war in the movies and television shows about camp,” she said, leaning up to talk in Grandy’s ear.

“Claire, sit back. Is your seat belt on?” snapped her grandmother.

“Sometimes the tug happens over grass,” Claire mused. “Other times there’s a huge mud puddle, and mud is what I’d rather—”

“You’re blocking my rearview, Claire. Your belt’s not on, is it?”

“—I’d rather tug over mud since I’m—”

“Sit back and buckle up, Claire!”

“—since I’m good at mud!”

They had been on the road since early morning, and now it was just past lunch. Luna was up front, with Wilbur on her lap. The reason Luna was up front, of course, was because she had started complaining that she was carsick from the moment she woke up that morning. Even before breakfast.

“How can you be carsick before you’re
in
the car?” Claire asked.

“My anticipation that I will get carsick is almost as bad as the real thing,” Luna answered primly.

Claire had a hunch that her sister only felt sick because she did not want to go to Camp Bliss. Even though Luna kept insisting it wasn’t true, Claire’s hunches usually were correct.

“If Camp Bliss doesn’t have tugs-of-war, I’ll enkindle one,” Claire said. She had just learned the word
enkindle.
It was a fantastic word that made her think of a candle sparking into pale flame. Claire also had a hunch that
enkindle
was not working perfectly in her sentence, but it was hard to find the correct way to use a word like
enkindle
in regular, everyday talking. You had to grab your chances.

“If you don’t sit back, Claire, I will enkindle your toes,” said Grandy crossly. (Grandy was not using
enkindle
perfectly, either, but Claire decided not to say anything about that. Grandy was acting too crabby.)

“Besides,’” said Luna, turning around, “what does that mean, to be ‘good at mud’? What do you think you are, a pig?”

Claire rolled her eyes, sat back, and refastened her seat belt. Grandy said it would take three more hours before they arrived at Bluefly, Virginia. Claire could hardly wait another minute. So far, it had been a pretty bad drive.

At first, Grandy had been enthusiastic about an all-day sight-seeing trip down south. “Well do a quick detour through Roanoke. That’s where I met your grandfather, you know,” she told them. “But first, well stop for a fish gumbo at this darling place I know in Baltimore.”

But they got stuck in traffic and didn’t find the darling fish gumbo place, after all. Instead, they had to eat a fast-food lunch. The take-out people forgot to make Grandy’s drink diet. That’s when Grandy started to grump.

“This trip was longer than I bargained for,” she kept saying.

“A lot longer.”

“It’s never-ending. What was I thinking? Who the heck would ever want to go to Bluefly, Virginia? There aren’t even any outlets.”

Then Luna started getting grumpy, too, since grumpiness was in the air.

“Stop kicking the back of my seat,” Luna complained. Or, once: “You didn’t wash your hair last night, did you, Claire? I can smell it from up here. Yuck. It smells like dog breath.”

And no matter what interesting subject Claire brought up—did Camp Bliss have tugs-of-war? How much money would Justin make delivering groceries this summer? Would their kittens forget them after five weeks? What color did pink and green and a touch of mustard make? No matter what, it was nothing but crabbing from the front seat.

“Pink, green, and mustard is the color of carsick throw-up,” said Luna.

“Pink, green, and mustard is the color of nondiet soda,” said Grandy.

At one point, even old Wilbur looked up and yawned rudely in Claire’s face.

So Claire was relieved, watching her grandmother in the rearview, when Grandy began to get her thoughtful, spell look. Grandy’s spell face was unique among all others. First, she pressed her lips together so that they almost disappeared. Then her eyelids drooped. And then she started to nod her head. It all happened very, very slowly.

Claire crossed her fingers as Grandy cleared her throat.

“Girls,” Grandy began, coaxing, “To get this boring drive over with means casting a spell. I seem to have forgotten, however, the correct speed-driving spell. The only one that comes to my mind is a speed-sailing spell. But surely you do not want to sit in this car with me and my terrible mood for the next couple of hours, do you?” Her voice was loud and deep, ready to cast. “Young witches mine, be we in agreement? Aye or nay?”

“Aye!” shouted Claire.

“Aye,” said Luna, very quietly because, Claire suspected, she did not want to get to Camp Bliss any earlier than she absolutely had to.

“Ayes have it. Hold tight!” Grandy ordered. With a tap of her finger north, south, west, and east on the odometer, she cast:

Batten down the hatches!

Blow, wind, blow.

We’ll sail to Bliss

In the undertow.

There was a rush of freezing cold. Claire shut her eyes as what felt like a giant wave, then another, then a third, pounded and crashed the sides of the Lincoln Continental. It sounded so real and salty wet that Claire almost believed she was getting soaked. When she opened her eyes again, she realized that, as a matter of fact, she
was
soaked, and the car was pulling up between two blue-and-tan-striped pillars. Stretched between them was a canvas banner that read: