Miranda said it sweetly and sternly, a woman in such control, at this point, not even her daughters knew how sincere she really was. Her mission was accomplished, though: Thantos was willing to chance it.
Miranda assured him, “I will ensure that Ileana and my daughters do not interfere with our talk. You have my word. Do I have yours?”
No one had to break into the great tracker’s skull to know what was going through it. Maybe he really did love her. His body language gave it away. He was on the brink of allowing himself to be led.
Miranda gently coaxed him forward. “Will you do that, Thantos? Will you trust me?”
Still, he made no move, until Miranda came out with it. “If you don’t trust me, you can’t possibly love me.”
It was done practically before she got the words out. Ileana was finally restored of her sight and her faculties. The Furies were dethorned, unglued, and sent packing — Shane and Amaryllis left, too.
Miranda allowed herself a wide smile. It dazzled Thantos. She took his hand. “Come, let’s have some privacy. We’ll talk next door.”
Aron’s room. She was leading her vile brother-in-law into the childhood room of her husband, where his spirit, his magick, could be keenly felt. But Thantos was too far gone to resist. He was like putty!
Miranda turned to her daughters and her niece. “I’m asking you to stay put. Do not follow us, and please, do not eavesdrop. You must not.”
Cam was nervous, unwilling to capitulate to Miranda’s request. Alex shared the concern that Thantos could still hurt her. It was Ileana who found her inner rationale, her calm, and her trust. “Your mother has to make up her mind on her own. It’s in her hands now. And whatever decision she makes is the one we’ll all have to abide by.”
Miranda led Thantos through the door — and closed it.
“Okay, then, we won’t eavesdrop,” Cam agreed. “But we don’t have to shut off our senses, either.”
“Excellent.” Alex high-fived her, while Ileana shrugged her consent.
“What do you see?” Alex pressed her sister.
Cam closed her eyes and opened her mind “Ugh,” she grunted as the foggy image began to grow crisp. “She just sat down on that little couch —”
“The divan,” Ileana informed her.
“And she’s patting the place next to her, inviting him to sit beside her.”
Alex tensed. The deceitful trickster was too close for comfort. Like her sister, using her inner senses, she strained to hear what was being said.
Miranda’s voice was softly soothing. “I’ve known you since you were a child, Thantos. And though I’ve admitted that my feelings are unclear, I can tell you how your brother felt: He loved you. Unconditionally. You were his blood.”
Alex rolled her eyes. Her mother was playing the big heel. She could hear it — and so, she realized with awe, could Cam. Her sister’s mojo was on Miracle-Gro! And Cam was smiling smugly, thinking exuberantly, How cool is our mom?
Thantos was so not. Like a stammering teenager, he urged, “Then you believe that Aron would want us to be together? To have a family of our own, to have a son.”
“Let’s ask him,” their mother proposed. “My powers are too diminished, but will you call up Aron’s spirit, Thantos? Let us find out what he would have wished.”
There was a pause. Despite herself, Ileana strained forward.
“What’s happening?” Alex asked.
Cam shut her eyes again. “He’s freaking,” she said.
Suddenly, Alex could see it, too. Hazily, to be sure, but she could see her mother and the tracker facing each other on the … divan … and that the color had drained from their uncle’s ruddy face. “No,” he was pleading, “it’s too dangerous. I mean, I don’t think it’s wise. Because — let us settle this together, between ourselves, without disturbing poor Aron’s restless spirit —”
Ileana gasped. When Cam and Alex looked at her, she whispered, “He’s afraid of your father! Afraid of what your father will say! Miranda has won the game. He can’t have her without Aron’s permission and he is too fearful to ask for it.”
“Yesss!” Alex cheered, beginning to giggle. Cam and Ileana looked at each other and nearly choked. It took all their self-control not to laugh and snort like children.
“He is so done,” Cam reported. “Look at him, he looks more deflated than Sersee —”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” was Alex’s gleeful opinion.
“He can’t even look at her!” Ileana reported, too intrigued with what she was seeing to realize that yet another of her lost powers had returned. “She’s waiting —”
“But he’s got nothing to say,” Cam whispered.
“Shhh, they’re getting up.” Alex heard the rustling, saw the misty figures standing. Miranda, tall and regal; Thantos checkmated by the queen.
By the time Miranda reentered the room, her daughters had plunked themselves onto Thantos’s bed and were raptly listening to Ileana as she drilled them on spell-casting.
The man who followed their mother was a shell. Head bowed, massive shoulders hunched dejectedly, he was running on empty. No ropes bound him; no blows had knocked him over. Miranda’s wit had triumphed over Thantos’s iron will.
He glanced at them as if disinterested. “If you will excuse me,” he murmured, hurrying past them, making his way to the door.
“You were brilliant!” Ileana hurried to hug Miranda. Alex followed close on her guardian’s sandaled heels.
“Way to go, Mom.” Cam joined the huddle.
Miranda embraced them enthusiastically, realizing with gratitude that she alone had read her brother-in-law’s parting thought as he’d looked at her children. This is not over! he’d warned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PLAYING TO WIN
Cam closed her eyes, tilted her face upward to let the sun caress it. “Sun-kissed.” She’d always loved being described that way. She smiled.
Next to her, Alex sat cross-legged, leaning back, palms pressed against the warm wooden pier. She listened to the music of gentle waves lapping the sandy shore.
The twins were back in Marble Bay. They were waiting for Dave and Emily’s cruise ship to return to the dock. And they were doing some serious thinking.
The summer had blasted off with Fourth of July fireworks and continued apace, one emotional explosion, one terrifying blast after another. Cam had almost lost her life; Alex, her faith in herself.
Now, less than two weeks later, the T*Witches were ready for some downtime. Some peace.
A breeze lifted strands of Cam’s auburn hair out of the banana-yellow scrunchie holding it back in a ponytail. Alex ran her fingers through her own unevenly clipped ’do and sniffed the sweet, salty air.
The tension was only slowly leaving their bodies: Cam envisioned the sensation like thick, syrupy liquid draining from them, slipping through the slats of the dock. She willed the ocean to take it out with the tide.
Both knew — it didn’t need to be said — that the weeks ahead, the rest of the summer, would be the calm before the storm. Their initiation as full-fledged witches was scheduled for the fall, around the time of their sixteenth birthday. And there was nothing they could do to stop that from happening. Initiation was the starting point, the opening gate, the first step on the road that would lead to their destiny. The path ahead was theirs to walk. They could only vow to walk it together.
Back in Coventry, after Miranda had disabled Thantos, she and Ileana had taken the twins outside, where they’d walked through the fragrant herb garden Miranda had been nurturing lovingly. There, the women finally told the girls all they needed to know.
They read passages from the book, the true book Karsh Antayus had written and bequeathed to Ileana. In order for Cam and Alex to understand what lay in store for them, what their grandfather’s wishes had been, they had to understand their family’s history.
Cam had marveled, her heart swelling with pride, and just as often, wit
hering with disappointment, as she listened to tales of heroism and betrayal, spells of love and curses of doom, conjured up and carried out by those in her own DNA pool.
Alex could practically hear the tape rewind. All she’d ever been taught about the Salem witch trials — history books and fiction classics like The Crucible, replayed in front of her eyes. Only now the characters in the novels were her own kin.
The twins had learned about the curse that haunted their family: Because Jacob DuBaer had exposed Abigail Antayus as a witch, she’d been hanged. Her children had cursed the DuBaer family. In each generation, an Antayus would kill a DuBaer.
Cam and Alex had been shocked when Miranda and Ileana — reading Karsh’s words — confirmed that the curse was real. That it had never skipped a generation. That even when their grandfather Nathaniel DuBaer and Karsh Antayus had become best of friends, had pledged to end it in their lifetimes, the curse had prevailed. It had proved stronger, more powerful than the great will and pure hearts of these good men. It had been a heinous, horrible accident — absolutely — but in the end, Thantos had been right about one thing: Karsh had caused the death of Nathaniel.
The curse, though, had one qualification: It applied only to males. The dying wish, then, of their grandfather was, as Ileana had read: “From this time forth, only women shall rule the DuBaer dynasty, only women shall head the family.” And then the curse would be no more.
Of course, Ileana had explained, Thantos knew of his father’s decision — the pact that would rob him of his right to rule the powerful and rich family. The bitter tracker’s jealousy of Aron had started the day his younger brother was born — and had only grown stronger with the passing years as he watched Aron shine and grow to his most bountiful goodness. But when his brother’s wife gave birth to twin girls, female heirs, Thantos’s rage and envy turned to hatred. He vowed to see that these children would never stand in his way.
The hulking warlock’s ultimate goal was simple: He wanted Cam and Alex out of his way. He didn’t really care how he achieved that. He could separate them — send one away and lure the other to his side, or, failing that, kill one or both of them. He’d spent the better part of one full year plotting, scheming, using others to do his bidding, anything to remove them from his way. Anything to change destiny.
The twins had listened as, gently but firmly, their mother and their cousin read Lord Karsh’s dying words to them, then closed the leather-bound book and insisted that Alex and Cam take time to think over all they’d learned, take the rest of the summer to digest it.
Ileana suggested that they leave Coventry and get back to Marble Bay, back to the safety, comfort, and love of Emily and David Barnes. “We need you to be rested, to be strong,” she had said.
“And I need you to promise me …” Miranda had searched their eyes beseechingly. “That you will try to have fun, to spend the rest of the summer as carefree and untroubled as you can.”
She didn’t have to add that the next several weeks might be their last carefree ones for a long while.
Now, Cam and Alex sat together on this shockingly brilliant summer morning. It was several hours before the ship they’d come to meet was due to dock. They had the pier to themselves.
And their thoughts were in sync. “He played us.”
They burst out laughing. They’d said it out loud at the same moment, capped off by another think-alike: “Could we have been any stupider?”
Thantos had played hard on their vulnerabilities — on Alex’s need to square things with Sara, to feel independent, to prove she hadn’t changed now that she was part of the Barnes family. To her, he’d sent Mike: the little witch who could bring friendship and a reminder of all Alex’s dreams. And he’d offered her the biggest dream of all: to “see” Sara again.
He’d played on Cam’s isolation, her mixed-up emotions for Jason, and her attraction to Shane, the alluring warlock whom Thantos had gifted with exceptional powers.
Worst of all, Thantos had played on her snobbishness, Cam thought miserably. She did like being number one — the most popular, winningest athlete; cute, coin-infused — she had a great life and loved it. The second that life was threatened — even momentarily, even just for the summer — Thantos had moved in and set his plan in motion.
Luckily, that plan had been blasted to smithereens. He’d been done in by his own pride.
“Thantos is our uncle, and he was right about one thing. Like it or not, we do share his blood. There is a part of Ileana, and certainly of me,” Cam said, “that’s — I don’t know, vain, power-hungry. Gullible.”
“And a part of me that’s maybe too independent for my own good,” Alex said. “Who doesn’t see the big picture, acts rashly — dismisses the good guy’s suspicions to fall into the clutches of the bad friend! What are you going to tell me, I’ve found my inner Fredo?”
That gave them both a laugh.
They shared the sharp memory of Miranda’s last words before she’d packed up the twins and sent them back to Marble Bay. “We all have vulnerabilities,” she’d told them. “If we didn’t, we simply would not be human. Thantos played on yours and almost won. But he, too, is human. He, too, has vulnerabilities. Never forget that.”
They never would. Miranda, their brilliant mother, had taken revenge on Thantos for the intolerable things he’d done to her daughters and to Ileana. She was the only one who could get back at him, for she held the key to his weakness. She was his vulnerability.
Cam had started a litany of “if only”s. If only she’d recognized the signs, had learned about the legends and myths, the horse and the horseshoe pendant. If only she hadn’t been so needy, so —
“Human?” Alex had asked rhetorically. “Yo, in the self-flagellation battle, it’s a tie for the gold. How’d I manage not to know Michaelina had been sent here to play me, to make me believe she could bring Sara back? How’d I manage not to know I wasn’t seeing or talking to my mother? It didn’t work only because Sersee kept putting the wrong words into Sara’s mouth.”
Maybe it runs in the family.
Alex and Cam exchanged quick, surprised looks. They’d both heard it. Then they burst out laughing. They’d gotten a telepathic reminder from Miranda. Had she, too, not been duped? For years! By Thantos.
“I believed the person I shouldn’t have,” Alex noted, thinking of Mike, “and dismissed the one telling the truth. Worse? I dismissed my own gut. I knew Cade was a keeper, still, I didn’t really listen to him … because,” she finished regretfully, “he’s not a warlock. I figured, what could he know? He knew Michaelina wasn’t to be trusted. He knew something wasn’t right.”
“Guess he wanted what was best for you,” Cam said, remembering something Dave had once told her: “That’s what love is. Wanting what’s best for the other person. And I think that may be more powerful than witchcraft.”
“I bet I know what Karsh would say if he were here,” Alex mused.
“‘Give it a rest, T*Witches’?” Cam guessed. “Like, ‘at the end of the day, Thantos lost again’?”
But they both knew that was only partly true. The battle had been won, but there were greater dangers ahead.
Cam turned to face the water and, in the distance, saw what no one else could. A ship, still far away, slowly approaching. It was bringing everything Miranda and Ileana had wished for them: safety, security, and stability. It was bringing Dave and Emily Barnes home.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
H.B. Gilmour is the author of numerous best-selling books for adults and young readers, including the Clueless movie novelization and series; Pretty in Pink, a University of Iowa Best Book for Young Readers; and Godzilla, a Nickelodeon Kids Choice nominee. She also cowrote the award-winning screenplay Tag.
H.B. lives in upstate New York with her husband, John Johann, and their yellow lab, Harry, one of the family’s five dogs, five cats, two snakes (a boa constrictor and a python), and five extremely bright, animal-loving children.
Randi Reisf
eld has written many best-sellers, such as the Clueless series (which she wrote with H.B.), the Moesha series, and biographies of Prince William, New Kids on the Block, and Hanson. Her Scholastic paperback Got Issues Much? was named an ALA Best Book for Reluctant Readers in 1999.
Randi has always been fascinated with the randomness of life.… About how any of our lives can simply “turn on a dime” and instantly (snap!) be forever changed. About the power each one of us has deep inside, if only we knew how to access it. About how any of us would react if, out of the blue, we came face-to-face with our exact double.
From those random fascinations, T*Witches was born.
Oh, and BTW: She has no twin (that she knows of) but an extremely cool family and a cadre of bffs to whom she is totally devoted.
T*Witches: Split Decision Page 15