“Snakes and stooges?!” Alex exclaimed. That was what she, Luce, and Evan used to call the trio — and it was Evan who’d come up with the name! Snakes and stooges, ’cause there were three of them acting stupid as the Three Stooges, and as mean as snakes. Plus, the Applebee brothers wore ratty snakeskin boots to school all the time, and they and their crony Derek Jasper — who wore a ten-gallon hat with a big old feather in the hatband — all had rattlesnake tattoos around their upper arms.
“Hanging with the stooges is dumb, but it’s not a crime. How did Ev get arrested?” Alex asked.
“Someone left a threatening note in a teacher’s mailbox — Mr. Adamson, the gym teacher, you remember him?” Luce answered. “I don’t know for sure, but kids started saying it was a death threat. And since, like the day before, Adamson was riding Ev in gym about his bad attitude and what a wuss he was at martial arts, everyone immediately assumed he wrote the note. Then a kid said he saw a knife in Evan’s locker — and the principal looked and, sure enough, there was one. Which, of course, Evan said he’d never seen before —”
“Was it his?” Cam asked.
“Not that I know. I never saw it but I believed Evan. The principal didn’t. So the police got called and hauled Ev off to jail and he was in there for a couple of nights but they had to let him go. But he got suspended from school again and they’re probably going to kick him out permanently and —” Should I tell them the rest?
Alex was about to say, “Of course you should,” when she realized that Luce hadn’t asked the question aloud.
“And?” Cam prompted. Lucinda had stopped abruptly. Too abruptly.
Should I mention Evan’s warning? I said I wouldn’t. Maybe I got it wrong. I could have misunderstood.… Alex listened as Luce wrestled with her conscience. The girl was stressing.
Say something, say something, tell us! Alex wished Luce could hear her. But Lucinda couldn’t — and left the rest unsaid. Alex decided not to push her — yet.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE HOLLOW
Lucinda’s dad dropped Alex and Cam at Mrs. Bass’s house. As Mr. Carmelson’s rusty wreck drove away, the twins went to the rear of the house, where the heat-fogged kitchen windows and the smell of warm food told them that Sara’s old friend was at home.
They were welcomed with hugs and homemade macaroni and cheese by the tall, slim, attractive woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, who Cam had characterized as old and straitlaced.
“I’ve got to get back to work soon,” Doris Bass told them apologetically. “Ben’s traveling this week but he sends regards.” Ben was Doris’s husband of twenty years, a book salesman for a New York publishing company. “Just stash your stuff upstairs. There’s only one guest room, but it’s got two beds and an old black-and-white TV Make yourselves at home and I’ll be back around five.”
There wasn’t much time to quiz Mrs. Bass about Ike. During lunch, she told them she’d been over to the cemetery sometime around the holidays. She’d brought a pretty wreath she’d made. It hadn’t snowed all that much — but enough to see footprints leading right to Sara’s grave — made by someone wearing pointy-toed boots. Mrs. Bass’s heart had fallen the minute she’d noticed them. Isaac, she’d immediately thought. He’d always worn these ugly pointy-toed boots with two-inch heels to make him look taller and feel important.
And, sure enough, there’d been someone standing there, a man in a parka and cowboy hat staring down at the stone. You had to walk around a stand of evergreens to get to the gravesite and, by the time Mrs. Bass emerged from the trees, the man was gone. But it was Isaac, she knew. The heartless dope had left a pair of dice on the grave. Dice! Who but Isaac Fielding would’ve done a darn dumb thing like that? His idea of sentimental, she guessed.
They went upstairs and unpacked shortly after Mrs. Bass left. “Did you notice Lucinda freaking?” Alex asked. Cam shook her head, and her sister filled her in. “She didn’t tell us everything. There’s something about some warning Evan gave her.… She was afraid to talk about it—”
“Why don’t we go over to Evan’s, find out from him what’s going on?” Cam suggested.
“Def idea. You got a snowmobile? They live over in the hollow, about ten miles from here — and we’ve got no wheels or skis —”
“Maybe he’d come over here. We could phone —”
“If their phone’s still working. When Mrs. Fretts goes on a bender, everything gets shut off sooner or later. Telephone, electric … At least they’ve got a wood stove to keep the place warm.”
Cam flopped down on the twin bed nearest the window. “I’m tired … and out of ideas —”
“That was fast,” Alex teased. “World record, I think. Okay, wheels, wheels, wheels. We need someone with four-wheel drive and a license.”
Cam said nothing, but gazed out the window. “Is it cold in here?” she asked after a moment, shuddering. She sounded distant, distracted.
Alex stopped pacing, fell back onto the second bed, and studied her sister. The sudden weariness, the chill… Cam’s black-rimmed gray eyes seemed unfocused, as if she were looking inward, not at the silent snowfall outside.
Finally, Cam asked slowly, dreamily, “Als … do you know anyone about five-ten, with brown, I think, hair kind of curling out of a black knit cap? A boy with black eyes and a dimple in his chin?”
“Crooked smile, with a classic little space between his two front teeth? Andy Yatz,” Alex answered, astounded.
“Who’s that?” Cam blinked, then winced and covered her eyes.
“This guy I went to Crow Creek Regional with. But I never mentioned him to you —”
“He’s going to” — the phone rang — “call,” Cam finished.
“Mojo girl,” Alex exclaimed, leaping up. “You are such the sibyl, seer, and psychic!”
Her twin’s excited shout made Cam flinch again. “Chill,” she ordered as Alex flew out the door and thundered down the stairs to answer the phone. “How unfair is it?” Cam called weakly after her. “I get the headache, you get the phone call from the hottie.”
For a second, a split but stellar second, Cam had thought the smiling boy she’d seen in her premonition was Shane. She sighed. Just weeks ago, the teen warlock who had been sent by their hulking uncle Thantos to snare them had switched sides. He’d gone from being the twins’ enemy to their ally; from serving Thantos to saving Cam’s gullible best friend, Beth.
Cam wondered what Shane was doing now, back on Coventry Island. She wondered whether she’d ever see him again.…
“It was Andy!” Alex was back three minutes and two aspirin later. “He’s home from college and heard I was in town. He’s coming right over. Said sure he’d drop us at the Fretts place, but he won’t hang around if Ev is there,” she told Cam, who was resting her forehead against the icy windowpane, staring out at a gale of snow blowing off bare, wind-swirled trees.
Shane. Alex caught Cam’s melancholy vibe.
“Don’t,” her sister warned her, without turning around.
“I was just going to say I hope we see him again,” Alex explained.
“If he’s still alive,” Cam said. “He crossed our vengeful uncle, remember? So … you were saying?”
“Actually, Andy was saying” — Alex crossed to the window and casually stroked her sister’s hair, which, if the situation had been reversed, Alex would totally have hated — “that he heard Evan’s really changed a lot and kind of doesn’t like anyone anymore. If Ev’s not around, though, Andy’ll drive us back.”
Despite her headache, Cam was pleased that — like Alex’s gifts — the hunches and premonitions her Marble Bay buds called “Cam’s mojo” worked this far from home. She’d never heard anything about Andy Yatz before and suddenly she’d seen this hunk-a-rama in a red plaid lumberjack shirt and black knit cap dialing a telephone number and grinning like mad.
It wasn’t Shane but, as boys in visions went, this one was way cooler than the scary glimpse she’d had of Evan and his skanky, ta
ttooed friends.
Andy Yatz drove up in an old Chevy station wagon. Alex saw him from the guest-room window. Rifling through her suitcase for her black turtleneck sweater, she hollered down to Cam to get the door. Which Cam did, a second before Andy rang the bell.
“Hey,” he exclaimed, taking in the auburn-haired, gray-eyed girl in the red sweater and clingy black ski pants. “You look fantastic. Life out East agrees with you.”
Cam laughed. “It must. I’ve lived there forever.”
Andy, in his plaid shirt and black cap, looked exactly as he had in her vision. He was studying her now, trying to figure out what she’d meant.
“I’m not Alex,” Cam finally said. “She’ll be down in a minute. I’m Camryn, her sister.”
Andy tugged off his cap. His head looked like a topographical map, jungles of tangled curls interspersed with damp flatlands of hat hair. But his dark eyes sparkled and the space between his front teeth was, as Alex had said, classic.
“I heard she had a sister … but no one said —”
“That we were twins?” Alex was suddenly at Cam’s side, looking fine and foxy in her black sweater and jeans.
Andy’s grin widened. And Cam felt a hint of jealousy as he looked Alex over with obvious joy. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were back. Are you staying?”
“For a couple of days,” Alex said. She cocked her head and frowned unexpectedly. “Anyway, thanks for coming by and giving us a lift —”
Cam was surprised at the sudden coolness in her sister’s voice. “What’s up?” she asked as they followed Andy to his car.
“He’s got the hots for someone,” Alex reported. “He was checking us out but thinking of her —”
“Bumosity,” Cam groaned. “He is such the rural babe. Who’s the lucky girl?”
Alex shrugged and they took off, three of them in the roomy front seat, with Cam in the middle. There was no need for mind reading on the ride to Evan’s. The twins peppered Andy with questions — beginning with Alex’s blurted, “So are you, like, seeing someone?”
“Huh?” Andy was startled.
“Um, I think Lucinda mentioned it,” Cam bailed out her sister.
“Lucinda? Lucinda Carmelson?” Andy asked, as if Luce were ice cream, his favorite flavor. “She thinks I’m seeing someone — is that what she said? No way. How’d she say it? I mean, you know, like she cared?”
“Lucinda?” Cam and Alex stared at the boy, taken aback. Holy cow, he’s into Luce, Alex thought.
Duh, Cam responded silently. They glanced at each other, then broke up laughing.
“Yeah, yeah —” Andy blushed, then started laughing, too. “Hey, I always liked her,” he confessed. “And, I don’t know, on my trips home from school she’s looking really fine lately —”
“I second that emotion.” Alex let the embarrassed hottie off the hook and moved on to the bonus round. Evan.
Andy knew, as everyone did, that Evan had bonded with the rattlesnake crew. From what he’d heard they’d put Alex’s bud up to bad-mouthing Mr. Adamson, who Derek Jasper had a grudge against. Andy doubted that Evan wrote the threatening note — even though Adamson was supposed to have made fun of his cruddy karate performance. But then someone had seen the knife. Seen it tumble out of Evan’s locker when the principal pried it open. “He’s not like you remember him, Alex,” Andy cautioned again. “He’s really changed.”
Evan’s house was out of town, up a snowplowed, two-lane mountain road and then down a narrow, pitted dirt path. Almost every two miles, a mailbox would appear. The fourth box was an old rusty one labeled FRETTS. Judging by what was left of the paint chips on the container, it had once been red, white, and blue.
“That’s it,” Alex said, excited just to see Ev’s last name on the run-down mailbox.
While Andy waited in the car, Cam trailed her sister along a path made by tire ruts in frozen mud. Carefully stepping over a piece of crusty inner tube and then a discarded hubcap, Cam shook her head involuntarily. How could someone who looked so like her, who knew her inner thoughts and feelings, be so pumped to be back in this awful place?
There was nothing remotely Marble Bay about the peeling mailbox or the small, one-story shack at the end of the tacky trail. Leaning away from the wind, the house’s wooden frame was worn to an ashy gray. Unbelievably, in the gusting snow, a woman was hanging wash on a line tied between two porch posts.
“Mrs. Fretts?” Alex called softly, clearly happy to see Ev’s mom, even though the alcohol fumes drifting from her were making Alex slightly dizzy.
The woman was wrapped in a brown army blanket, from the bottom of which a flowered housecoat fluttered. A hunting cap with dangling earflaps and unbuckled rubber galoshes completed her outfit.
“Mrs. Fretts,” Alex called again, louder.
Evan’s mom turned and looked over the twins’ heads, as if the voice she’d heard had called to her from the clouds.
“Is she blind?” Cam whispered.
“More like blind drunk,” Alex said. “Hey, Mrs. Fretts! Remember me? It’s Alex. Alex Fielding, Sara’s daughter.”
“She’s not here!” the woman roared at the sky. “Now get! Scoot! Quit hollering at me!”
“Maybe we should go,” Cam urged. “Come back later or tomorrow when she’s —”
“Is Evan here?” Alex ignored her sister. “I’m here to see Evan!” she shouted through cold, cupped hands.
Finally, Mrs. Fretts brought them into focus. Instantly, she dropped her clothespin bag and the frozen-stiff wrinkled shirt she’d been about to hang. Through swollen squinting eyes, she stared in disbelief at Alex and Camryn. “I’m seeing double! And she’s not even dressed the same! Evan, help! Come quick!”
The weaving woman grabbed onto the porch post to steady herself and, as if she’d become suddenly tired, slid down the pillar to the rickety wooden floor.
Alex hurried to her. “Mrs. Fretts, I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just me, Alex — and this is my sister, Cam. You’re not seeing things. She’s real and she’s my twin.” She reached out to help her friend’s mother, but Mrs. Fretts slapped at her hands and began to screech piercingly.
Freaked, Cam could barely keep from screaming herself.
Suddenly, the front door banged open and there was Evan, boiling mad. In two strides, he was standing over Alex, with a shotgun pointed at her head. “What’s going on? What’d you do to my mama?”
Alex looked up. “Ev. Evan, it’s Alex! Put that stupid thing away!”
Cam peeked out from between her hands and saw a boy aiming a shotgun at her sister. It was Evan — looking nothing like the teasing, easygoing guy with the bushy, blond-tinged dreadlocks she’d met less than a year ago. Grim, breathing hard, battling panic and rage, it was the Evan she had seen in her vision!
But the porch he was standing on now was not where she’d pictured him. This scene was crisp, clear, free of the strange, shadowy shapes that had loomed behind him in her dream.…
Cam’s eyes widened and, almost on their own, telescoped in on the muzzle of the gun. It was cheap metal, she saw. Aluminum or tin. Easy to heat, even in this weather. Before she realized that the weapon Evan was holding was a toy, the metal turned red and then white; smoke curled from the muzzle and the barrel began to bend.
A little boy charged outside, followed by an eight-or nine-year-old girl. “You give me back my gun,” the little boy howled at Evan.
“Nicky, get back in the house,” the girl scolded.
They both saw the twisted toy at the same time and gasped.
“Alex?!” Evan came to his senses, looked at the bent-barreled gun, and started laughing out loud. “Alex Fielding,” he sputtered.
Alex jumped up, punched Evan’s arm, and pointed at Cam. “You remember my look-alike from the Ferris wheel at Big Sky? She’s weirder than me by a mile, bro.”
“Little trick I picked up in first-year toy bending,” Cam joked nervously. “I’m a magic major.”
“Sneeze state?” Cam asked.
“Yeah, Mass-ah, ah, ahchoo-zits!” Evan teased.
The wild and wooly blond dreads Alex had loved so much were now tightly cornrowed flat against his head. The ratty overalls and sneakers he’d always worn had been replaced by tight black jeans, stomping boots, and a black hooded sweatshirt, the back of which someone had painted a skeleton in a top hat, identified in gothic letters as “Dr. Death.”
“Yo, nasty boy, we’ve got to talk —” Alex said.
“I’m down with that,” Ev answered.
“About you and snakes and stooges.”
Evan’s grin faded fast. His face grew hard. The muscles in his cheeks rippled and his dark eyes flashed a warning glare. Then as swiftly as his anger came, it vanished. He lightened up. “Later for that,” he said. “When’d you get here? Back to Crow Creek, I mean? Are you back for good?”
“Just for a week. We’re staying in town, at Mrs. Bass’s. Can you give us a lift back there?” Alex asked, remembering Andy waiting in his car.
“Sure thing,” Ev said. “Be out in a minute.” While he went inside to check on his mother, Cam hurried out to the road to thank Andy and tell him they had a ride home.
Alex sat down on the porch, her back against the bottom of the post, her legs tented, arms wrapped around her knees. As Lucinda and Andy had warned, Evan was different — his hair, his clothes, his quick, menacing anger.
T*Witches: Dead Wrong Page 3