T*Witches: Kindred Spirits

by Reisfeld, Randi

  Let this work, let this work, Cam prayed, closing her eyes.

  It will. It has to, Alex responded, though she had no idea if it would.

  But when their necklaces heated up, straining toward each other to fit together like magnets, the T’Witches knew they’d done it. The powerful magick inside them — though they hadn’t been taught how to use it — somehow had prevailed.

  Alex heard it first. A low, throaty, “Ribbit! Ribbit!”

  Cam felt the log moving, constricting, curling into a slippery bumpy ball as the frog once again took its own color and form. Very much alive, it pounced itself out of Cam’s arms and splashed into the sea.

  Steam was practically coming out of Sersee’s ears.

  Of course, Alex had to rub it in. “Say thank you, Sersee, your PETA membership card is in the mail.”

  Cam high-fived her sister.

  “Not so fast,” Sersee snarled and snapped her fingers. Out of the woods, a sleek black panther materialized. It wore a studded dog collar, from which a round orange tag hung. “Heel!” she ordered. The animal paused, looked curiously at Cam, then sat at Sersee’s feet.

  “This is my new pet,” she cooed malevolently. “A panther. He follows me everywhere!”

  Alex started to cough. The smell assaulted her, that same hideous mix of aftershave and cat fur she’d nearly choked on last night. “Your pet needs a bath,” she managed to say between coughing spasms.

  Its eyes, dark as night, fascinated and terrified Cam. They were the eyes she’d seen floating outside her window last night. Framed by long, thick black eyelashes.

  “What are you going to do to it?” Cam demanded.

  “Do?” Sersee’s face had darkened. “Trust me, the damage is already done.”

  “It’s terrified,” Cam couldn’t stop herself. “It’s hurting.”

  “You think?” Sersee stroked its head. “Well, he did have a little accident last night. He got cut running through the woods. Lost a lot of blood, I think.”

  Cam’s eyes widened. It was them! They were at the house with that panther thing!

  Then it hit her hard. They’d been following her. They were the watchers,

  Alex grimaced. The poison herbs, the blood! For all their T’Witch power, they’d never heard, seen, nor sensed a thing, not until Sersee had “summoned them,” purposely woken them up.

  No way they could do all that on their own, Alex thought angrily. They weren’t that good. They so had help. She blurted, “Kudos on last night’s stealth attack. Did your boyfriend help plan it or just lead you to us?”

  Sersee’s lips curled. This was going exactly as she’d hoped. “Boyfriend is such a mainland label. We are so much more than that. Soul mates, in fact, destined to be together always. But you knew that, Alex, you saw us snuggling at Lord Karsh’s funeral.”

  As if she’d just thought of it, the wily witch eyed Cam, “You know him, too. Shane Wright. He belongs to me.”

  Cam couldn’t breathe. She felt as if her stomach had hit the ground. Slowly, she turned to her sister and spoke with her eyes: You knew. You didn’t tell me! How could you?

  Furious, Cam spun and stomped away. She didn’t get far before Sersee shouted, “Wait! Don’t you even want to know my pet’s name?”

  “Not really,” Cam shouted back without turning her head.

  “No? But I think you’ll like it.” Sersee yelled at Cam’s back, “It’s Jason.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DOUBLE-CROSSED

  Fear struck like a hammer. Cam ran wildly, trampling bramble, thrusting aside tangles of branches — reckless motion to keep her imagination from running wild.

  Jason?

  Panting, she refused to even allow the grotesque thought in. No way! She would not go there. Only, she did.

  But not until she’d gotten back to Ileana’s, noticed the dinner invitation to Crailmore, with Ileana’s scrawled message: Pick you up at six. Be ready! Not until she’d showered and double-shampooed to get Sersee’s frizz-curse out of her hair.

  Only then did Cam try to logic it all out.

  Sersee had named that vile-smelling panther Jason. Coincidence? As if. The reedy crone had been way too eager to share that with Cam.

  Sick joke? Like the poison herbs and blood message on the yellow fabric — yellow like Jason’s tennis shirt?

  Could be … but why? What did Sersee and her little horde of horror-ettes have against them? Simple jealousy? All Shane had done was show her around Coventry. Sersee had to know that — she’d been spying on them the whole time!

  Again, those eyes loomed in front of her. Panther’s eyes. Jason’s eyes.

  Eeww! Cam shook her head hard, as if she could shake out the too weird and sickening thought. No. It was a vicious trick to freak her out.

  Sersee, the wicked witch of Wisconsin. Jason, the sweet cool breeze from Massachusetts. One here. One not here. They didn’t even know each other …

  Unless, Alex had mentioned him …

  Alex. Who’d known about the “soul mate” and hadn’t bothered to share. Or what, conveniently forgot to mention, “Oh, BTW: Shane? Not single. Girlfriend, possessive, potentially evil.”

  Which witch was playing Cam now?

  She’d brushed her hair dry and changed for dinner when she heard someone coming.

  Alex … and she wasn’t alone! Her psycho sister had brought home one of the vicious vipers, Michaelina.

  Cam T-mailed Alex: I don’t want to talk to you. Then she slipped out Ileana’s back door.

  Alex’s mental memo replied, You have to trust me.

  Have to? she responded. Trust this: No way.

  Trust your instincts, Karsh had told her.

  Trust your heart. That one came from Emily when Cam was only nine. “But what if your heart tells you two different things?” Cam had asked, torn between wanting to show her mom the amazing things she could do and knowing, somehow, that she shouldn’t confide in Emily.

  “Listen harder.” Her mom had kissed the top of her head then.

  Beyond the herb garden, in the woods behind the house, Cam spotted a hammock. She stretched out on it and stared up through the lacy canopy of leaves into a sapphire sky.

  Go home, her gloomy heart was saying, to the parents who raised you, to Dylan, to your friends. Her friends! None of whom would keep a secret like the Shane/Sersee alliance from her! If only her cell phone worked — or if there were any phones here in the land beyond Amish. Beth was her level-headed, loyal BFF. Cam needed a dose of her reasonable perspective now.

  “How is Beth, anyway? I haven’t seen her since my trip to Marble Bay.” Startled, Cam twisted around so suddenly, she nearly tumbled out of the hammock. Shane saved her. Shane, whose eyes twinkled like sapphires, the exact same shade as the cloudless sky.

  Minus his cape, Shane was in mainland garb: jeans and an ab-hugging, short-sleeved black T-shirt. What was this? Casual Friday on Coventry?

  In spite of herself, Cam felt her tummy do the flip-flop thing. He was so hot, she felt her anger melting. Unfair use of cute!

  She forced a picture of Sersee into her head, tried to imagine them cooing and cuddling at Karsh’s funeral.

  Coolly, she said, “Beth is fine. Better since she’ll never see you again.”

  “Is that her opinion or yours? Why are you angry at me?”

  “I have this quirk,” Cam said. “I don’t react well to liars. And, I don’t like being played for a fool.”

  His smooth, warm hands locked over hers, and electricity shot up her body. Gently, he eased her off the hammock and into his arms. Resistance was futile. Confusion, total. Her head nestled on his chest, Cam could hear his heart beating.

  “What’s going on? You can tell me,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

  Flashback! Jason had said the same thing only two days ago. It felt like two years ago. She didn’t want the truth to sink in, not right then. But it did. She could always trust Jason. Shane — whose arms felt so good around her? Not so much
. Not at all, Alex would have clarified.

  “You lied to me,” she managed to squeak out. “My parents’ home wasn’t torn down.”

  Shane seemed to stop breathing for a moment. “I’m sorry. But when you found the signpost, I knew you’d try to find the house. I didn’t want you to see LunaSoleil like that — boarded up, neglected, moldy, no way to get inside. I thought you’d be devastated. I was trying to spare you.”

  Shane’s embrace quickened her heart, but it didn’t soften her brain. She would reveal no more. With effort, she pulled away. “Were you also ‘sparing me’ by not mentioning Sersee?”

  Shane cocked his head and half-smiled. “That’s what this chill is about?” He gave Cam’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Listen, I know she tells people I’m her boyfriend —”

  “Property,” Cam interrupted. “She says you belong to her, you two are soul mates.”

  “No way, we’re not even serious,” he scoffed. “I know her from school, and when I got kicked out of my house, she let me … she found a place for me to live. So I’m grateful, but I don’t have those kinds of feelings for her.”

  “What kind of feelings would those be?” Even as she hated herself for doing it, Cam flirted.

  “The kind I could have …” He brushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “… Maybe one day … for you.”

  He’d done it again. She melted, wanting to believe at least this much was true. It was possible Shane had put a spell on her. Only she knew, by her instincts and in her heart, he had not.

  There were two reasons Alex hadn’t followed Cam home after Sersee’s panther parade. Sersee and her lap-dogs were more than just mean-spirited rivals. They were dangerous.

  Which led her to wonder, reason two, why Michaelina had been mouthing the words to the frog-to-log spell. And whether the punk pixie had “accidentally on purpose” given them the means to reverse the curse? Alex had more to gain hanging with the teen trio than sprinting after her shaken sister.

  So, doing her best imitation of a wicked witch wanna-be — which included releasing Skeletor’s hair from its towering cone-head ’do — she stayed behind to schmooze with the teen trio.

  Alex didn’t have to keep up the ruse for long.

  Sersee got bored soon enough. With a toss of her restored, waist-length, corkscrew curls and a wave of her slinky arm, she whirled theatrically, “Errands to run, spells to cast, so many lives to ruin, so little time …”

  Epie shrugged, curled her fingers around the panther’s collar, and trotted after her.

  Michaelina waited, studying Alex with open curiosity. Then, turning toward the lake and casually skimming a stone across its surface, she asked, “So what’s it like where you live?”

  “Ileana’s cottage?” Alex said, knowing that wasn’t what the pint-sized witch meant. “It’s fabulous, just like her. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  Too cool to confess she’d meant their mainland home, Michaelina shrugged and said, “Okay. I’m open.”

  She was anything but.

  Pumping Michaelina for info didn’t yield much — except for one heart-stopping detail. She, Sersee, and Epie, best friends, called themselves The Furies.

  Treading carefully, Alex asked, “Random choice of name? Or —”

  Proudly, Michaelina said, “You’ve never heard of The Furies of legend?”

  Alex had just read about them in the book stored in her parents’ cedar chest. She said, “But that legend says they’re outcasts, living underground, doling out punishment.”

  Impressed, Michaelina explained, “We’re more like an updated version. Only the old-fashioned, narrow-minded,” she bragged, “considered them outcasts, when really they were forward-thinkers, rebels even.”

  “Rebelling against what exactly?” Alex asked.

  “All the junk that’s shoved down our throats, Sersee says, at school and Unity Council meetings. The lore, the legends, the icky sweet kindness. Sersee says we question authority. We’re deciding for ourselves what to believe.”

  Alex ventured, “You mean using your skills — your magick — for things other than the good of humankind?”

  Michaelina chuckled. “You sound like a textbook. You sure you didn’t grow up here?”

  “Very,” Alex confirmed as they approached the cottag. She felt Cam’s confusion, and then anger, radiating through the closed front door. Trust me, she tried to tell her twin, but Cam sent back a sarcastic No way and slipped out the back door as Alex led Michaelina inside. “But I know what Lord Karsh …” Her throat caught. “What he taught us. The reason we have these gifts is to help.”

  “You inherited them,” Michaelina pointed out. “You, of the revered DuBaer family. They don’t want us to know. But the truth is, not all your famous relatives were quite so perfect.”

  Alex flashed on Thantos. And Fredo … and Tsuris and Vey. She was not surprised when Michaelina continued, “Sersee says some DuBaers were less grand and giving than others. Some helped themselves before helping anyone else.” She surveyed Ileana’s posh living room. “Sersee says your own guardian has probably cast a spell or two for personal gain.”

  Alex refrained from a knee-jerk defense of Ileana. She had been tempted herself to use her skills to, uh, “help herself” on a test, or find out what one of Cam’s superficial friends was really thinking. But it would never occur to her to use her gifts to hurt an innocent person or creature.

  Michaelina prodded, “Have you ever asked yourself why you just blindly believed everything Karsh taught you? Never even questioned it?”

  Alex bristled. “Lord Karsh, okay? And no, I never questioned it.” She didn’t explain that Sara, on her deathbed, implored Alex, “Listen to him. He might look scary, but he’s good.”

  “You guys are so touchy.” Michaelina shrugged. “I meant no disrespect.”

  Alex continued, “And I might not have understood everything, but I knew Lord Karsh’s heart. He was just everything … everything that was pure and wise and kind … and good. He protected us, guided us, loved us. I knew him.” She fought back tears, which startled her almost as much as it did Michaelina. “And trying to be a fraction of the person he was, is a worthy goal.”

  The wiry witch’s expression softened. “Well, Sersee says —” she began lamely. Then shook her head. “Oh, never mind.”

  “Did you ever question what Sersee says?” Alex asked gently.

  Michaelina didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. And Alex didn’t have to break into her head to know: Michaelina wasn’t lamebrained, of course she had. But never as much as she was questioning it right now.

  Or not.

  Michaelina hung at Ileana’s cottage just long enough to gather some juicy info. She wasted no time scooting back to Sersee, reporting word for word what she’d overheard. How respectful of Alex not to eavesdrop on the little backyard drama between Cam and Shane. Michaelina had not been so respectful. She parroted back to Sersee, “We’re not that serious. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for her.”

  Sersee was burning up. How dare Shane tell this … this … nothing! that they weren’t “that serious.” Had Cam put a spell on him? Was this DuBaer princess capable of even doing that? If Sersee had been jealous before, she’d just racheted up to murderous: Cam would live just long enough to regret it.

  What Sersee had seen earlier in the day added fear to her fury. On their own, Camryn and Alexandra were powerful forces not to be underestimated. Together, they were truly awesome, possibly unbeatable. Imagine figuring out how to undo the transmutation spell before they’d even been taught it, let alone initiated!

  Separating them was the only option. Wasn’t it lucky, then, that she knew just how to do that?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE VOW

  Ileana was back.

  Or so she told herself, studying her image in the cloudy mirror propped on Karsh’s fireplace mantel.

  It wasn’t as if she were feeling like her ol
d self again. That would be too much to hope for. She might never be her old self again. The spell-casting, transmutating, incantation-chanting ingenue might be gone for good — buh-bye — but Ileana, dressed to kill, was back with a vengeance.

  Her makeup was perfect, her blond hair brushed to shimmering brilliance, her bloodred nail polish looked eerily liquid as she tapped her fingers on the cover of Karsh’s journal.

  And she was wearing the diamond earrings that Thantos had given Beatrice as an engagement gift, earrings that Karsh had kept for her — along with the secret of who her father was.

  Now she knew. And knew how he must fear her, fear her mother’s blood. That was why he’d sent her away, given her to Karsh to raise, kept her at a “safe” distance all her life.

  Only no DuBaer son was safe, not while there were Antayuses in their midst. After all, the Antayus Curse had never skipped a generation. Or so Karsh had written.

  Even her old friends, impatience and glee, had returned for the occasion. She could hardly wait to lead Cam and Alex into her father’s fortress.

  Ileana whirled away from the mirror. She’d spent a good part of the afternoon getting ready for this evening. To that end, more important than her makeup and clothing, had been reading Karsh’s journal.

  You have met your grandmother Leila, met her in spirit, which I assure you is but a pale imitation of her fierceness in life, Ileana had read. Had she been less determined, the curse might have ended.

  Your grandfather, Nathaniel, and I had devised a means for it to end. We were only boys when we came up with our plan. But as there is genius in simplicity so simple, children may find solutions that evade their complicated elders.

  Nate and I met preparing for our coming-of-age celebration, our initiation. We were fifteen, Camryn and Alexandra’s age as I write this. Nathaniel DuBaer was an only child, the only living male DuBaer on Coventry Island. And I, also an only child, was the last male Antayus of my generation.

  Nate lived on the northern cliffs of the island at Crailmore. My parents’ home, Harbor Haven, was south of where my cottage now stands, on the leeward side of Coventry. If we’d laid eyes on each other before, neither of us recalled it. But we could remember in detail every moment of our first day together.