T*Witches: Double Jeopardy

by Reisfeld, Randi

  Alex was patting the anguished girl’s back and, although she didn’t believe it herself, she kept muttering, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  Finally, Kenya stopped wailing, snuffled back her tears, and squeezed Alex’s hand. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get Dyl all in it. What are you going to do now? I mean, do you know where he is? Do you have, like, any clue?”

  Alex was about to say, “No,” when she heard Cam moan. Her sister’s eyes were shut tight. Palms pressed against her forehead, Cam had begun to shiver.

  “Oh, no. What’s happening to her?” Kenya squealed, panicked. “Is she getting sick? Like having a fit or something?”

  “No way,” Alex said, standing up fast, blocking Cam from Kenya’s view. “Probably just had one slab too many of cafeteria mystery meat today. She’ll be okay in a second. Oh, and no, we don’t know where Dylan is — but we will.” She glanced at her sister. “We’ll know any minute now.”

  Suddenly, Alex felt a chill run through her — and heard a rasping voice whispering. She blinked. “Did you just say something?” she asked Kenya. “Did you just … like mention some numbers?”

  Kenya’s brown eyes opened wide.

  Alex took a deep breath. “Snap! Gotcha,” she told the startled girl, pretending she’d been kidding. “Okay, well, we’ll see you.” Alex took Cam’s arm and helped her up. “Don’t worry, Kenya,” she said as they left, “everything’s going to be all right.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A NEW TRICK

  “Give!” Alex commanded minutes after they’d left Kenya and started home. “You had a vision, right?”

  “Got aspirin?” Cam answered, confirming the guess.

  As Alex fished the achy-head med from her backpack, Cam began describing what she’d seen: It wasn’t a premonition of the future or a picture from the past. This one was here and now and totally scary. But the image was reassuring at the same time. Because it was of Dylan — and he was alive!

  Her blond bro was in a swampy wooded area. The trees were still mostly bare except for the evergreens. On the ground were deep clumps of wet leaves that Dylan was slogging through. He was limping. He looked banged up and lost. His face was so mud-streaked it was hard to see if he’d been cut or bruised. And he was clutching a red knit cap that matched Kenya’s description of RideBoy’s hat.

  “Any clue to where this woodsy swamp might be?” Alex asked.

  “Not too far from Marble Bay,” Cam said. “I mean the shrubs, pines, and even the iced-over marsh and sandy shoreline looked a lot like around here, but not exactly.”

  With the slightly bitter remains of the herbal cocoa, Cam downed the aspirins Alex had given her and asked, “What were you saying to Kenya … about numbers?”

  “The sound track to your movie, I guess,” Alex said. “Hot lyrics: ‘Seventy degrees, fifty-five minutes, forty-two degrees, thirty minutes.’ Never make the Grammys —”

  “They’re coordinates,” Cam said, excited.

  “What, like your cashmere turtleneck and peach corduroys?”

  “Duh. Latitude and longitude, Als. Got a map?”

  While Alex leafed through her geography book, Cam phoned home. Automatically, she asked whether there was any news about Dylan. Emily burst into tears. Dave took the phone. “What? Fine,” he said when Cam told him she and Alex were going over to Beth’s to study; was it all right if they had supper there? “Aunt Wendy’s here and Sally and some of Mom’s clients. Just don’t be too late,” Dave said. “And don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  “Got it!” Alex had flipped to the topographical map of New England. “Check this out.” She showed Cam the page. And there they were — the numbers Karsh had whispered to her, latitude and longitude! The coordinates for Salem, Massachusetts, two hours from Marble Bay as the bike pedaled. Shorter as the van flew.

  “Dylan must’ve caught up with RideBoy …” Cam conjectured, thinking about the hat.

  “And gotten dumped in some deserted place,” Alex finished the thought.

  “And wouldn’t you like to know how to find it — and your gallant brother, too?”

  The voice was deep and purringly sarcastic. Spooked, and with the Internet fiend on their minds, the T’Witches whirled, expecting to see RideBoy. Before they knew it, Cam had spun and kicked the predator in the shin. As he bent over, Alex crowned him with her hardcover geography text.

  “Oof!” the big, black-bearded man stumbled forward. Only then did Alex catch the odor of spicy cloves, the horse-stable stench of muck, and a scouring sting of ice.

  They had attacked their treacherous uncle Lord Thantos.

  He moved forward, sweeping them before him into the shade of a giant evergreen. Hidden beneath its thick drooping branches, the giant warlock glared at them. His dark eyes caught Cam’s. He stared at her malevolently, whispering hoarsely, his lips barely moving.

  All at once Cam’s hands and feet felt tight, shrunken, and sharp-toed within her shoes. The same tingling sensation afflicted her hands. When she glanced down at them, her heart nearly leaped from her chest.

  In place of her pale, thin fingers were furry gray paws with long sharp nails. Her teeth began to rattle, not from cold or fright, but rodentlike, moving rhythmically, ready to grind anything that came her way.

  Alex screamed at the sight of her altered sister. But the scream emerged as a high-pitched hiss. Her back hunched uncontrollably. She was on all fours, fighting an empty ache in her belly, a hollow hunger that traveled to the synapses of her brain. There the pain was translated into a command: Chase, catch, kill!

  She was a cat. And Cam was a mouse. And everything inside Alex demanded that she stalk and destroy her twin.

  Fighting the urge with all her might, Alex turned toward Thantos and sank her claws into his leg. He whirled and she felt herself spin out into space, landing with a thud against a prickly hedge. Cam followed her through the air, a piece of their uncle’s dark velvet robe clasped between her rodent teeth.

  “Enough!” Thantos growled. “You are mere children! And ungrateful fledglings. I came to offer you help, and this is the way you greet me?!”

  “Help?” Alex’s voice sounded as uneven as Dylan’s sometimes did. Only in her case it wasn’t part child, part adult; it was feline vs. human. “You mean the way you helped Dylan?” she mewed. The effort of speaking left her throat painfully tight.

  Cam’s sharp little teeth were chattering. “Undo us!” she squeaked.

  Thantos took a deep, calming breath, then waved his hand in their direction, mumbling again, still annoyed.

  They began to morph back into their human forms. The return was more uncomfortable than the shrinking had been. Cam’s limbs ached as they grew through the gray bristles of her mouse hide. Alex yowled pitifully.

  “Never —” Thantos ignored their misery. “Never challenge my power!”

  Despite the soreness in her jaw, Cam tried to tease her sister. “Talk about embarrassing. Do you think anyone saw us?”

  “Oh, please.” With a raspy tongue, Alex licked the back of her hand. “We have way more urgent issues.”

  “I came as a favor to your mother,” Thantos was roaring as they stood before him, whole again, “and because your guardians are too busy with their own paltry affairs —”

  At least Karsh let us know where Dylan is, Cam silently reminded Alex.

  Mid-rant, Thantos didn’t hear the aside. “This, Miranda and I have in common,” he was booming, “arrogant, thankless children. Yet Miranda cares. Your mother cares deeply about your welfare. Which is why she sent me —”

  Alex rolled her eyes. “Right. To turn us into pets?”

  Thantos lifted his arms suddenly, as though he were going to morph them again. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Only for Miranda would I tolerate such insolence!”

  “Why did you tell her that we were dead?” Cam demanded.

  “Haven’t you a more pressing problem?” their uncle reminded the
m, letting his hands fall to his sides. “Your brother is in trouble, I understand.”

  “You understand? Ha! You’re the one who got him in trouble to begin with,” Alex accused.

  “Yeah,” Cam added. “How did you know Dyl was in that Dumpster?”

  “I didn’t,” Thantos said smugly. “You did. It was your premonition, dear Camryn. I just made it available to both of you.”

  “Did you plant his earring in there, too?” Alex pressed.

  “His earring? Oh, I see. You found something of his, did you? Excellent. To prove my good faith, I’ll show you a most amusing ‘trick.’”

  “What are you going to do now, put us in a petting zoo?” Alex challenged.

  “I’m going to show you how to perform a feat only trackers are permitted to know. How to locate someone by using an item that belonged to them, however recently or long ago. It’s called the Situater.”

  “You’re going to show us how to find Dylan?” Alex said.

  Cam shuddered, thinking Als was about to blow it, about to tell Thantos that they already knew Dylan’s whereabouts. Don’t, Cam wanted to warn. Let’s suck up Uncle T’s tracker trick. It’ll be useful some other time. But her sister surprised her by saying, “Ultimate cool. Guess we had you figured wrong, Uncle Thantos.”

  “Give me the earring.” He held out his great hand.

  “Nuh-uh,” Cam said.

  “You still don’t trust me.” The forceful warlock sounded exasperated, angry. “Foolish girls. Don’t you know how protected you are by Miranda’s devotion? Do you think I would do anything to cause her more pain? She is more to me, much more, than my brother’s widow or my defiant nieces’ mother. She is …” Thantos let it trail off. “Open your hand. Show me the Barnes boy’s earring. Now!” he commanded.

  Cam opened her hand, which, she was relieved to see, was still her own and not some woodland creature’s. Dylan’s earring lay on her palm.

  “Now watch,” their uncle ordered. He removed a leather pouch from his belt and took out a rough-hewn, faceted piece of rock.

  But it was the pouch that fascinated Alex. She stared at it, thinking about how full of goodies it probably was and how amazing it would be to get her hands on it.

  “Quartz crystal,” Thantos said, holding the translucent stone over Dylan’s earring. “Also known as sacred fire for its ability to trap and magnify light, to focus one’s energy on a particular subject.”

  Light did pour onto the earring, making it gleam like a crystal ball. “Pay attention!” the warlock snapped, handing the quartz to Alex and gesturing for her to hold it over the earring.

  Next he took two herbs from the sack. “Henbane,” he said. “Normally one would burn this. But at this moment, I can turn it to ash in my hand. And this —” He held up a strange-looking root that seemed to have arms and legs. “Mandrake. Can you not see your brother in its form?”

  Setting down the leather pouch, he didn’t wait for an answer. His hands reached out and closed over both Alex’s and Cam’s, locking the earring, quartz, and plants together in their grasp. Then he looked up through the pine needles at the darkening sky.

  The twins could feel heat rising in their palms. Thantos had told the truth when he said he could burn the henbane without a fire. Their impulse was to pull their hands away, but he held them firmly. Then, closing his eyes, their uncle recited: “Sun and moon, earth and sky, take us deep within this sacred object’s magick eye, to see what it has seen.”

  Drowsily, Cam’s and Alex’s eyes fluttered shut. They recognized, against the dark screen of their eyelids, the back of the mall in early light. A banged-up old red van was practically the only vehicle parked there. Leaning against it was a man smoking a cigarette. The man — about thirty, his potbelly protruding from his shiny black baseball jacket, a red knit cap down low on his head — was scanning the place. His gaze drifted past the twins — past Dylan, they realized, who must have been peering out of the Dumpster.

  The man, clearly RideBoy, checked his watch, paced, waited, looked at his watch again. They could tell he was getting nervous. He threw down his cigarette and turned toward the van.

  Suddenly, their view of him shifted — Dylan had obviously begun to climb out of the Dumpster. “Yo, dude, wait up!” they heard. And then the picture tumbled round and round, as Dylan’s earring fell, landing on a collapsed carton next to a green plastic bag.

  “Awesome,” Alex breathed, opening her heavy-lidded eyes.

  Cam was shaking. She tried to remove her hands from Thantos’s grip, but he clamped down tighter. Alex, whose hands were mashed in the grasp, yipped, “Hey!”

  “Are you so impatient with old Karsh?” their angry uncle growled. “Does he teach you but half a spell? Be still!”

  “There’s more?” Cam asked.

  Thantos didn’t answer. He looked up through the pine branches again and begrudgingly snarled: “From this object show us how, with herbs and stones so rare, we may find young Dylan now, and see how he does fare.”

  At last, he released them. Cam and Alex opened their hands. Both the henbane and mandrake root were ash. Dylan’s earring, beneath the crystal, glowed bright red. In it they could see the sandy shore, the swamp grass, the carpet of dead leaves, and Dylan! He was standing still now, holding on to a tree with one hand. His head was bent with exhaustion. He was breathing hard.

  Don’t give up, Alex wanted to cry out to him.

  “He can’t hear you, of course,” Thantos said. “Do you recognize the place?”

  “Sort of,” Cam said.

  “Look deeper. Look through the stone into the earring’s gleam.”

  They did. The image opened out, as if they were flying backward, above Dylan. They saw the outside edge of the woods, the bay, a highway, and then the sign: SALEM 15 MILES.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A GRAVE SITUATION

  “We’re almost there.” Because Miranda had asked, Ileana was taking her to a place she herself would not have chosen to go just now.

  To Aron’s grave, at Rock Mount Cemetery.

  No archway, neither sign, nor gate indicated the entrance to the hallowed and, some said, haunted burial ground. It lay on the northern tip of Coventry, where the wind whipped most fiercely in the winter and rain fell in curtains during the spring, leaving its pathways soggy and leaf-strewn.

  Thick with broad-branched trees, there was little room for the sun to break through. Darkness permeated the cemetery, even at high noon.

  It was a daunting place, but Ileana had never been frightened of it, not when she was young. As a child, strong, healthy, daring — reckless, even — she had laughed at those who believed the ghost stories, dared them to come with her.

  Now, for some reason, she felt just like the friends she’d laughed at.

  The creaking branches overhead, the footfall-like snap of twigs in the underbrush, every noise sounded menacing, startled her, raised goose bumps. Several times she’d turned, fear spiraling up her spine, to see if they were being watched, followed.

  The two women moved slowly along the rocky path, breathing hard with the effort. Miranda clutched the hem of her robe in one hand and a walking stick in the other. Ileana admitted only to herself that she, too, could have used a stick to keep her balance as they climbed.

  Once, she had sprinted up this hill, light on her feet, senses sharp always. Like a young goat she had darted through the thorny bramble and branches that surrounded and protected the grave sites — and kept all of them, even the most isolated, carefully hidden.

  Once, she had believed her parents were buried here and had searched for their graves, even though she knew little of her mother and nothing of her father. Karsh, who had acted as both to her, disapproved of her trips to Rock Mount. So she’d sneak out and wander about, reading the names on the headstones, hoping, each time, to come across one that would stir something in her that would evoke some momentous feeling to let her know that here was her mother. Or father.

  Whe
n none ever did, she wondered if her secret fantasy wasn’t reality. That somehow her true parents were alive, that they were, in fact, Aron and Miranda DuBaer. Though they were hardly old enough, they were good, and kind, and strong, and loving. And she resembled them. Her metallic-gray eyes were exactly the same as theirs. She imagined that living with Karsh was some kind of test. And if she passed it, Aron and Miranda would come to claim her, to welcome her back into her true home.

  Ileana had held that fantasy close for many years. She didn’t give it up entirely until she was fourteen — and learned that Miranda was pregnant and would soon start a real family. It was irrational, she knew, to feel betrayed. But she had.

  As if Miranda intuited the teen witch’s envy, she’d spent more time with her, listening, teaching, nurturing. Acting much like the mother Ileana had always wanted.

  And then the twins came, and Miranda vanished.

  * * *

  With increasing difficulty, the fragile women traipsed up the steep incline. Ileana stole a glance at Miranda, wondering whether Aron’s widow — who had gently but firmly insisted on this trek — was really up to it.

  Finally, they came to the crest of the hill where Aron had been buried amid many, many generations of DuBaers.

  It was hard to find his modest stone because here, taller than the traditional prickly hedges, were flowers! A garden of fragrant flowering herbs ringed the DuBaer family plot.

  Who had done this? Who had so lovingly and diligently kept it up?

  Karsh, thought Ileana.

  Thantos, thought Miranda.

  It had been many years since the young widow had cried and keened for her husband. Not since that terrible moment when Karsh had told her of Aron’s death, had brought her his bloody cloak, and she had gone mad.

  Had her years at Rolling Hills rendered her numb? Or had she been there because her feelings were too deeply buried?

  Miranda dropped to her knees amid the rosemary and thyme, the stalks of lavender and pink and blue blossoming sage, the towering sunflowers and creeping phlox. She leaned against the small marker that bore her beloved’s name, feeling the smooth marble against her forehead and the rush of tears against her cheek. Her shoulders heaved as she wept, sobbed, shook in a churning gale of sorrow.