Her born-to-offend sister was all about stark black. Tight black jeans, black work boots, and a black Spandex T-shirt. The only touch of color in Alex’s ensemble was the faded patchwork quilt she had tossed across her shoulders like a shawl and the pink spikes in her hair.
Ileana didn’t rage or rag on either of them. Sounding more like gentle Karsh than her perfectionist self, she merely sighed and said, “Oh, well, I suppose it’s what’s inside that counts.”
They started through the woods. Above the tree line, Cam and Alex caught sight of strange fireworks flashing.
“It’s just sunlight bouncing off the glass panels of the Unity Dome,” Ileana informed them. “Close your mouths. The bees have more important places to explore. And, if it makes you feel any better,” she told them, “I, too, have never been to the funeral of someone who meant … so much to me … as Lord Karsh.” He’d been both mother and father to her.
“I have,” Alex murmured, thinking back again to the day her adoptive mother, Sara, had been buried.
That day, less than a year ago, griefstricken and alone, Alex had felt nothing but a deadly weariness. She hadn’t been able to cry. Or feel. Or think. She’d been in Crow Creek, Montana, with no idea how or where she’d live. Then the cheerful sprite who she’d called Doc had shown up.
Pasty-faced with what Alex now knew was the white herbal cream he used to preserve his ancient skin, Karsh had returned her half-moon charm and told her he knew just the place for her. Before nightfall, she was two thousand miles from Montana, on Camryn Barnes’s doorstep in Marble Bay, Massachusetts.
“Doc,” Alex whispered aloud, as if he could rescue her now as magically as he had then. “Karsh.”
“Will we have to see him?” Cam asked in a shaky voice. “I hope not. I don’t think I can —”
“He will be there,” Ileana said. “And those who wish to, will look upon the great tracker; those who prefer not to, won’t. You can decide once we’re in the hall. Have you thought yet of what you will say?”
Cam stopped abruptly. “Say?”
“About what?” Alex asked, although Ileana’s thoughts made it plain that they were expected to offer a eulogy, to speak of what Karsh had meant to them.
“Many of his devoted fledglings will be participating —”
“Oh, no.” Cam gasped. “I mean, he was your guardian —”
“I submitted your names to speak in my place. It’s a great honor,” Ileana assured them.
“We wouldn’t think of depriving you of it,” Alex shot back.
“Ungrateful fledglings!” the blond witch railed — sounding, Alex was glad to hear, like her irritable old self again. “Is my devastation not complete? After losing Lord Karsh, my dearest friend in the world, and now that grief has driven me nearly as mad and helpless as Miranda —”
“That’s our mother you’re talking about,” Alex felt compelled to remind her.
Ileana ignored the interruption. “You want to make my misery and humiliation complete? I will not stand, weak and defeated, before all who have known and envied me since I was a child!”
“Oh? And what, it’s easier for us to face a mob of strangers and make fools of ourselves?” Cam asked.
“Exactly!” Ileana was relieved that they understood. “Far easier —”
“For you,” Cam groused.
“Get over yourselves,” Ileana commanded. “What difference will it make to you? No one here really knows you —”
Shane, Cam thought.
They were emerging from the woods, trekking toward the south gate into the village. “Shane?” Ileana had read that thought, loud and clear. “You care more about what one of Thantos’s ex-lackeys thinks than about saving your guardian from disgrace,” she accused.
“She said,’shame,’” Alex quickly intervened, staring dumbfounded at the eruption of color around them. The buildings of Coventry Village were of every vivid hue. Small shops and houses, none more than three stories tall — except, still in the distance, the soaring Unity Dome — were painted purple and green, orange and turquoise, and decorated with rainbow pentagons, brightly striped awnings, and painted flower boxes overflowing with unseasonable blooms. There were café tables surrounding a pleasant village square, which was usually bustling. This morning, however, only waiters lounged there — and even they, Alex discovered by reading Ileana’s mind, would leave their posts shortly to attend Karsh’s funeral.
Soon they were caught up in the crowd flowing toward the Dome. Trembling at what she would see and say there, Cam took Alex’s hand. Instantly, she felt again, as she had in the woods, watchers … eyes focused on her, heating her back, neck, and face.
What’s going on? Alex asked silently as a racket of girls’ voices assaulted her ears and Cam’s hand grew hot and sticky in her own. There they are. Not Spike-haired Blackie, the other one, Pasty-in-Pink. But, Sers, they look so … ordinary!
I don’t know, Cam answered. It happened before. When I was with Shane.
“Save your gossipy little secrets,” Ileana said, hurt and anger mingled in her voice. “Try to remember why we’re here.” She stepped behind them and, with an arm on each of their shoulders, shepherded them swiftly through the slow-moving throng.
The big amphitheater already seemed full. Sunlight streamed through the dome down onto a plain pine coffin at the center of the arena. Three people bathed in light sat behind the raised casket.
“The little one is Lady Fan,” Ileana whispered to them. “She’s one hundred and two, if she’s a day. The dotty old codger blowing his nose is Lord Grivveniss.”
As she looked at the large, strangely beautiful brown woman in the center chair, Cam’s eyes stung with tears.
“And that’s Lady Rhianna,” Ileana said, suddenly misty-eyed herself, “one of Karsh’s oldest friends.”
The regal woman’s face was placid, but Alex could hear her inner grief, and the sorrow and love in Rhianna’s silent sobbing shook Alex to her core.
Look, they’re crying. She heard the sarcastic girl’s voice again. They are sooo mainland.
People were filing past Karsh’s coffin. Some of them paused silently, some merely looked, then moved on, and some laid flowers, herbs, crystals, or amulets in the pine box.
Ileana started down the aisle to the center of the arena. “No,” Cam whispered, “I … I can’t do it.”
“I’m going,” Alex said, following Ileana. Cam hesitated, looked over her shoulder at the seated, stricken strangers, then quickly scampered after her sister.
Ileana waited for them at the bottom of the stairs. With an arm around each, she led them behind the casket to introduce them to the three Exalted Elders. Lady Fan and Lord Grivveniss merely nodded. But Lady Rhianna rose as they approached.
“Apolla.” She took Cam’s hand, then Alex’s. “And Artemis. I’ve waited so long to meet you.” They felt the electric charge of her grip. It reminded Alex of the tingling sensation she’d gotten the first time she’d brushed against Karsh, when she’d mistaken him for a doctor at the hospital where Sara lay dying.
Holding onto their hands, studying their eyes, boring into their thoughts, the wild-haired witch smiled sadly. “As always, Lord Karsh was right.”
Right? Cam tried to say aloud, but her mouth had gone dry and the word stuck in her throat.
“Right about what?” Alex asked.
But Lady Rhianna had turned to Ileana. “You have done well, reckless child. They will yet lead a dynasty.”
As Rhianna embraced their guardian, Alex looked away and found herself staring at Karsh.
The sight drew a gasp from her, which was followed by all the tears she hadn’t been able to shed for Sara. Awash in sorrow, hiccupping back sobs, Alex shut her eyes and pressed a fist to her mouth, trying to hold back the wild flood of emotion.
Her eyes flew open at the unexpected feel of something brushing her cheek. But it was a gentle caress. Soft as a first kiss, light as a summer breeze, it filled her with golden warmth.
She turned to see who had touched her. Cam was still staring at Rhianna; Ileana gazed skyward at the great glass dome, her face bathed in streaming sunlight. If not them, who had tried to comfort her?
And then she knew. The one who had always reassured her …
Ashamed of her outburst, Alex blinked away her tears and looked, really looked at the adored old warlock in the plain pine coffin. “Cam, it’s all right,” she whispered. Karsh’s face, warm brown and unlined as a boy’s, was smiling contentedly beneath the worn halo of his nappy white hair. There was no scar left from the rocks that had cut him down, the rocks their terrible cousins, Tsuris and Vey, had thrown.
“No,” Cam whispered. “I can’t. I’ll —” Her shoulder tingled suddenly, hummed with a strangely soothing vibration. She glanced up at Rhianna, who murmured to her softly, “You can, child. You must.” Then, nodding with compassion, the majestic witch turned Cam gently toward Karsh’s casket.
Like Alex, Cam was taken aback by how peaceful the beloved tracker looked, and by the smile suffused with love that seemed directed at her. His golden shroud glittered beneath a bounty of mourners’ gifts. Before she knew what she was doing — and oblivious to the fact that Alex had the same thought — Cam began to unhook her sun charm as her sister unlatched her hammered-gold moon.
A cry from the front row of the amphitheater stopped them. They looked up into Miranda’s alarmed gray eyes.
Cam blushed. Alex reddened, too, but her heightened color came from anger, not embarrassment or guilt. The mother they barely knew was sitting beside their uncle and old enemy, Thantos. And she hadn’t even gotten up to come to them, to hug them. What spell had Thantos cast on her, or did she simply care more about him than her own children?
“Hold onto your amulets,” Ileana advised them both. “You have no idea how Karsh schemed to make sure you won and wore them.”
“But what can we give him?” Cam asked.
“Your heart in words,” Ileana said.
Seven speakers, including Lady Rhianna, the most eloquent of all, had given their eulogies when Ileana signaled the twins that it was their turn.
“It’s okay,” Alex said, feeling Cam’s hand begin to tremble again in hers. “I’ll go first.”
She had no idea what she would say. But as she walked past Karsh’s casket and glanced at his still comforting face, she found herself silently asking him to speak through her … to help her find words, the right words that would please him. It was a crazy thought, she knew, and yet she could almost hear him — imagine him, anyway — saying yes.
A murmur started through the assembly as she mounted the podium and cleared her throat.
“Aron’s daughter,” she heard. “Which one?”“The impetuous one whose wildness Karsh loved.” “Artemis, the moon child.”
Alex laughed. Which quickly silenced the crowd. “I guess I don’t have to tell you who I am,” she said. “But I want to tell you that I myself didn’t know … until Karsh — Lord Karsh — in all his black-velvet splendor … in clothing way cooler than my grotty tribute …” She plucked at her T-shirt, explaining her costume. “His face smeared in that ‘white fright’ concoction he wore …”
There were appreciative chuckles from the audience. And one caustic snort, which Alex traced to a trio of girls about her age, midway up the amphitheater, girls she’d never seen before. There was a vacant seat among them, which she only noticed because it was probably the only one left in the arena.
Clearing her throat, she continued. “Until he … until Karsh came to me in dreams. Gently and gradually, he let me know that I was not the geek, mutant, weirdo the kids at school called me — but someone … something … special. That what I had been frightened by and ashamed of were really magical gifts. Gifts to be respected and cherished, because they were capable of helping me do great good. Karsh revealed to me that I was … one of you. A witch. And that a girl I’d seen with a frightening likeness to me was actually my sister, my long-lost twin.”
She smiled at Cam then, seated between Lady Rhianna and Ileana, her eyes on Alex, glowing with pride. You go, girl, Cam telegraphed. Some of the spectators burst into laughter — those who were mind readers intercepted the message.
Alex laughed, too. “You have no idea how good it feels, how freeing to be among you, to not have to hide who and what I am, to know that though most of us have never met before, we know all about one another … I mean, I definitely get the feeling that you know all about me —”
“Bet on it, T’Witch girl,” she heard. She turned toward the trio of young witches again. This time, the empty seat was filled. By Shane. Alex was about to nod at him when the girl to his right, a striking young witch whose glaring face was framed with long, wild, dark curls, suddenly wrapped her arms possessively around him and slithered her cheek against his.
Shane had a girlfriend! Alex stole a quick glance at Cam, who clearly hadn’t heard or seen what Alex had.
“Um, you know me … because you’re just like me,” Alex finished her thought. “That also is a gift Karsh has given me, given us … I miss him, and yet I know that he is still with us. He’s with me, for sure,” she said, unconsciously stroking the cheek that the ghost hand had caressed. “I feel his presence. I hear and see him fifty times a day…. I ask his advice and, guess what, I receive it.”
Her remark was greeted with nodding heads, chuckles of recognition, and murmured agreement. “Yes.” “It’s true.”“I feel the same way.”
She was finished. She had said what she’d wanted to — or maybe what Karsh had wanted her to say. Alex felt complete. Connected. Home.
Karsh’s death, though it left an aching emptiness in her heart, had been the bridge between her worlds.
Head bowed, she stepped down and moved toward her seat.
And Cam stood shakily.
She did not glance again at the casket. She walked past it, chin up. Trying furiously not to give in to the building tears, she stepped up to the podium.
“Karsh saved my life. I had everything, I thought — and some weird disease,” she began. “I lived in the home Lord Karsh entrusted me to … a wonderful home with caring, loving people … parents, friends … Materially, I had everything —”
And I am a material girl, Alex heard one of the girls with Shane whisper.
“But … like Alex … um, Artemis, my sister, I thought something was … wrong. I tried to tell people about it. My mom —” Cam reddened furiously and could not look at Miranda, who sat at Thantos’s side, facing her.
The burly tracker smiled at Cam’s slip. It was hard to tell whether his expression was meant to pity, encourage, or ridicule her.
“Um, I mean, Emily, one of my protectors. I tried to tell her and my … Dave … and my best friends…. But all the while, the only one who really knew, knew and understood was —”
Alex expected to hear her name. Instead, Cam said, “Karsh. He always understood me. He brought me and my sister together. And he helped us every step of the way. I mean, really helped. As I said, he saved my life … more than once. I am sorry …”
The dam holding back Cam’s tears burst at last. “So sorry that I couldn’t save his,” she sobbed.
Lady Rhianna hurried to the podium and reached to help her down.
As Cam was about to take a step she saw a face in the crowd. A face so out of place she thought she might be dreaming.
What was Jason Weissman doing here?
CHAPTER SIX
THE FURIES
Cam had to get to Jason. If it was Jason. The face she’d seen had worn a mask of shock, but the clear olive complexion, the dark eyes, midnight-black hair … A dream? If only.
Jason was here. In this, her other life.
How had he found her? What had he heard? And where was he now, Cam wondered desperately as Karsh’s funeral service wound down.
As soon as she could, and without a word to Alex, Cam took off in the direction she’d seen Jason’s face. Ileana’s delicate dress kept tan
gling in her legs, slowing her down as her mind raced frenetically.
Where could he have gone? Toward the woods? The lake? Into the village? He’d be alone, probably lost and bewildered. She had a wild, irrational thought. Maybe he was hungry.
Score on that last idea. Cam found Jason sitting at a deserted outdoor café in the village square. Elbows on the table, head in his hands, he looked like a confused stranger in a very strange land.
Her heart in her throat, Cam sped toward him but abruptly stopped several feet away. He looked up, and their eyes locked. At first, neither spoke. Then they talked at the same time, loosing a string of questions: What are you doing here? How’d you get here? What were you doing? What kind of trouble are you in? Did someone make you come here? What did you see?
Jason raised his palm. “Whoa. Okay, you go.”
Biting her lip, Cam walked over to the table and forced herself to sit down. Urgently, she asked, “Please, Jase, I need to know. What are you doing here?”
“I came after you.”
“Hello, obvious. But why?” Cam could hear the rising edge of hysteria in her voice.
He shrugged, trying to hide his embarrassment. “It looked like you were in trouble, like you wanted help but couldn’t ask. I thought I …” he mumbled, “should be there for you.”
He’d acted, he told her, out of fear, concern, and though he didn’t say it, she knew, love. She’d been an emotional wreck at the airport. Jason could not just walk away. He cared too much.
Cam thought she was out of tears. So wrong. The floodgates holding back her tears were about to burst as her heart ached for-him, for his kindness. But all she could say was, “What … how much did you … see?”
“I don’t know what I saw,” he answered candidly. “Maybe you can tell me.”
He’d found out where she and Alex were headed and changed his ticket. Once he landed in Green Bay, he’d asked around — Had anyone seen them? They were hardly inconspicuous. Identical but opposite. It had taken him a day and a half, but eventually he ran into an old ferryman who offered him a ride to Witch Island, where he’d taken the girls — a place from which, he’d hinted, Jason might never return. “What a crock, huh?” Jason laughed nervously.
T*Witches: Kindred Spirits Page 4