T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice

by H. B. Gilmour

  Cam caved. On the way to lunch, she pulled Beth into an empty classroom for a sidebar — which, before Cam said a word, viciously freaked her freckled friend. “Oh, no! You need privacy. There’s something wrong with you. This is the part where you tell me —”

  “Where I tell you again what I’ve been telling you: 98.6, good to go, and ready to rumble!” With a deep sigh, Cam leaned against the blackboard, one knee jutting out, heel pressed against the wall. “There’s just some stuff I’m dealing with,” she began. “If I tell you, you’ve so got to swear not to breathe a word of it. It’s about our …” Cam hesitated. It was hard for her to say “real mother” to Beth, who considered Cam’s house a second home and Emily a second mom.

  But Beth, dealing with her parents’ recent separation, was ahead of her. “It’s a family thing, right?”

  Cam knew she’d have to tread carefully. Still, having a confession session with her best and oldest friend — like going bowling, flirting, pigging out on pizza at Pie in the Sky — felt so good, so right, so every girl.

  Beth knew nothing about Cam’s witch heritage, about Karsh, Ileana, Coventry Island, Thantos, or freaky Fredo. But everyone knew that Cam and Alex had been adopted. So spending a day searching for their birth mother wouldn’t seem all that strange.

  Especially since they’d recently received anonymous notes saying that their mystery mom needed them.

  Beth exhaled and ran her hand through her thick mass of curls. “Wow. That’s really scary. Your par — I mean, Emily and Dave don’t know?”

  “No. And that’s why you can’t tell anyone,” Cam repeated.

  Beth made a zipping motion across her lips. “You’ve got it.” Then she smiled and shrugged. “Keeping your secrets is a full-time job. So, is there anything you want me to do besides that? I mean, you know, like in the old days —”

  Before Alex, she meant. Before Alex had come into the picture, Beth was Cam’s other self, the girl who knew what she was thinking before she said it. Not the way Alex, with her brain-picking hyperhearing, did, but instinctively, naturally, just from being together and liking the same things and each other.

  Impulsively, Cam hugged Beth Fish. “You are totally the best,” she said as they walked back out into the corridor. “I know you’d do anything for me and, like, I hope you know I’m there for you, too.”

  “One hundred fifty percent,” Beth agreed. They walked in silence toward the lunchroom. They walked past the friendship art display. “That’s Kristen’s creation.” Beth nodded at the strange collage. “So what do you think, which one’s Kris and which one’s Bree?” she joked.

  Cam’s eyesight blurred. Oh, no, not here, not around Beth again, she thought, seeing, distantly, the slim woman on her knees in the snow, anguished, rocking back and forth and crying. Beth will think I’m sick and freaking. Was there a way to stop a vision? Was there an incantation or herb to bring her back from the brink of unconsciousness?

  “Okay, then,” Beth was whispering happily as Cam’s sight sharpened again. They were standing in front of the lunchroom doors, about to go inside. “When do you want me to look at the notes? I think you’re right. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes, a different perspective. Who knows? I might see some clue you haven’t.”

  A wall of sound greeted them as they entered the school cafeteria. After yesterday’s horror, Cam was grateful to be back, safe and all about the buzz.

  At the Six Pack table, Brianna, draped in an oversized Polo sweatshirt, was holding court. Slender fingers flying to punctuate her sentences, she regaled everyone in earshot with tales of glitzy L.A., the In Style-worthy casa de Waxman, and how, of all the stars at her party, Brice Stanley was the nicest. They’d gotten totally chummy.

  Wonder if Ileana knows? Alex, barred from leaving the school building as she usually did during lunch, telegraphed Cam, who slid onto the bench next to Beth.

  Let her have her fun, Cam responded. I don’t think a fifteen-year-old is much competition for our goddess. Especially this one. If Bree had gotten one ray of California sunshine, it didn’t show. She looked paler than ever. She looked, Cam found herself thinking, like the wailing woman in her vision.

  Brianna’s cheery chirping did not improve Alex’s mood. Bree sounded like a sparrow on a sugar high. One weekend in Hollywood, and poof! The mouth of Marble Bay was back, too hip for the cosmos. It didn’t hurt that Marco, a few tables away, had to eat his lunch sitting on some geriatric butt cushion — due to his unfortunate collision with the bowling alley floor.

  “Hey, where’s Kris?” Beth asked, unwrapping her sandwich. “Don’t tell me she fell in love with L.A. and decided to stay.”

  Without hesitating, Bree responded, “She’s here. She came back with me Monday night. But she did fall in love at my party. She’s probably in the computer lab, e-mailing Josh Hartnett as we speak.”

  Cam nearly choked on her alfalfa sprouts and peanut butter sandwich. Coughing, she cast a sidelong glance at Alex, who rolled her eyes.

  Dylan had seen Kris on Sunday — a fact Ms. Hsu had not bothered to deny. Deduction: She’d probably never gone to L.A. at all. But why would Brianna lie about it?

  No one seemed to have caught Cam and Alex’s silent exchange. Beth sniffed her sandwich and wrinkled her nose. “Anyone want to trade? One more tuna sandwich and I turn into …”

  “A Fish?” Sukari chortled at her own joke. “I’ll swap. If you can stand ham and cheese with an overdose of mayo. But,” she added, eyeing the rest of Beth’s lunch, “sweeten the deal. Throw in the cupcake.”

  “Done,” Beth said, switching lunch bags.

  “Yuck,” Bree commented, staring at the food exchange. “I mean,” she quickly laughed, “tuna for ham and cheese — it’s like switching seats on the Titanic.”

  Licking the chocolate frosting off the cupcake, Sukari threw Bree a look, then eyed Alex. “We get our chem papers back next period. I’m thinking I did between an A and an A minus. You?”

  Alex motioned with a thumbs-down. “No thinking required. I totally tanked.”

  Sukari shrugged. “Olsen might let you take a makeup test.” Suke turned to Brianna suddenly. “Hey, you were absent that day, too. You guys could probably take a makeup together — be study buddies. How cute would that be?” she teased.

  Brianna’s eye-crobatics signaled her response: “As if.”

  The chick chat ’n’ chew moved on. Alex tuned out.

  Which is when she heard, I hope they don’t see me.

  She grimaced. Another unasked-for break-in to Bree’s brain? I’m grounded and I have detention, Alex thought. Isn’t that punishment enough? She walked to the soda machine, but distance didn’t drown out Brianna’s monologue. I can’t do this. I won’t. Oh, my god, how could she load me up with, like, eight thousand calories! Alex was relieved when the bell rang, ending the lunch break.

  “Bree?” Alex heard Cam say. “Hey,” she whispered, “everything okay?”

  Brianna chewed the inside of her cheek, then blinked rapidly. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she responded, tapping her foot and looking everywhere except at Cam.

  Oh, please, just go, Camryn. To Alex, Bree sounded more pitiful than impatient. She sounded whiny, Alex realized, almost as whiny as the woman in the snow.

  “You waiting for someone?” Cam continued innocently.

  “No,” Bree snapped, then adjusted her tone. “I mean, Kris might meet me here. I’m just hanging for a minute. See you in language arts. Tootles.”

  Good! Bree breathed a sigh of relief when Cam walked away from her.

  Alex started toward the door, determined to exit both the cafeteria and Bree’s head. Only she couldn’t do either one.

  Go, Alexandra. Hello. What’s she waiting for? I so do not need an audience.

  That nailed it. The sullen desperation Alex had heard had been Bree’s, not Miranda’s.

  Alex swung out the lunchroom doors, hoping to catch up with Cam. Her sister was nowhere in sight. She turned back to peer through
the diamond-shaped window. Amid the stream of kids dropping off their trays and going off to class, Brianna did an abrupt U-ie. She strode quickly across the cafeteria to a trashcan at the far corner. There, Alex saw, she unzipped her backpack, took out her lunch bag, and dropped it into the rubbish.

  Cam was already home and seemed to be engrossed in reading, when her sister finished her hour’s detention and came in from the cold.

  “Dude, the weirdest thing just happened —” Alex began.

  “Give it a rest!” Cam held up her hand, which, Alex noticed, was trembling slightly. “Later,” Cam added forcefully. “Right now, I’m totally maxed out on weird.”

  Alex shrugged, upended her backpack, and dumped its contents on the bed, aiming to deal with her own pile of homework. She opened her notebook but couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept wandering back to a place she so didn’t want to be: the Land of Bree. What was the little princess angsting over? Why had she gone from Spandex to sweats? Where had she and Kristen actually been when they were supposed to be partying in L.A.? And, final question, why was Alex still privy to the blond sprite’s panicky thoughts? It wasn’t like Bree needed help the way she had at the bowling alley.

  Fifteen minutes later, when Alex had finally gotten into remedial chem, Cam glanced at her watch, got up, and flipped on the small TV in their room.

  “Yo, actual studying-in-progress here,” Alex called to her.

  “In case your hyper-hearing’s on the fritz, it’s the news,” Cam shot back. “I have a current-events thing to do. But never mind, I’ll be all sacrifice-girl to your sad little GPA and mute it.” Which she did.

  “Cami, what did Miranda look like? I mean, in your vision,” Alex ventured.

  “Actually, I didn’t see her all that clearly,” her sister answered, annoyed. “Small, blond — why?”

  Before Alex spoke again, Cam shook her head, perplexed.

  “Blond?” Alex asked.

  “I know,” Cam said, only now realizing that she, too, had thought it odd. “It’s not the way I pictured her, either.”

  “What if it wasn’t —” Alex began. But her words were drowned out by Cam’s scream.

  Alex leaped off her bed. “What? What happened?”

  One of Cam’s hands was clapped over her mouth, the other, still trembling, pointed at the TV.

  There were snapshots of half a dozen people on the screen, under a network banner that read: “Hit-and-Run Rate Rises.” Alex recognized one of the pictures. She jumped up, grabbed the remote, and hit VOLUME.

  “… eighteen-year-old Martha Perks of Sun Valley, whose dream of becoming an Olympic athlete was destroyed on a lonely Arizona highway, and the latest casualty, Elias McCracken of Carlston, California,” the announcer was saying. “… He died earlier today from injuries suffered in the ninth hit-and-run fatality this month. Leaving a distraught wife and a one-year-old baby, McCracken was a freelance photographer —”

  Before Alex could get the words out, Cam sputtered, “That’s the guy!”

  “Dude, he’s the guy who took the picture of Thantos,” Alex yelped.

  “No, you don’t understand!” Cam fell to her knees and covered her face with her hands. “He’s the man I couldn’t save.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ILEANA RETURNS

  Ileana returned to the courtroom with a vengeance — heels clacking, cape flaring, her face contorted with determination. Heads turned as she marched down the center aisle of the dome to the People’s bench.

  Lady Rhianna shook her head in disbelief. “Back so soon?” she announced drolly. “You missed the best part. But I won’t keep you in suspense. In a landslide decision, the Accused was found guilty of all charges.”

  “What a surprise,” Ileana muttered.

  Rhianna added, “With better timing, my dear, you could have skipped the entire trial.”

  Still standing, Ileana tossed back her golden hair. “Trial or travesty?” she rudely challenged. Karsh covered his face with his bony old hands, sensing that his audacious charge was just warming up.

  “Did she say travesty?” Lord Grivveniss asked.

  “I did, Lordship,” Ileana answered, her voice rising so that all could hear her. “This entire procedure is a farce, a sham, a charade. Every witch and warlock in this sacred hall knows that the criminal who ought to be on trial today is Lord Thantos!”

  The communal gasp practically emptied the dome of oxygen. A frantic buzz began, followed by spectators calling out their shock, disagreement, or approval. To his credit, Thantos barely blinked. He rose slowly from the Accused’s table and, more slowly still, turned to gaze at the agitated crowd. As his dark eyes drifted over them, they fell silent one by one.

  “Lord Karsh,” he announced, sounding more amused than angry, “is this how you reared the child?” Utterly ignoring Ileana, he continued, this time addressing the trio of judges. “And is this, Exalted Elders, how the rude young witch is schooling my nieces?”

  “Exalted Elders and members of the Unity Council,” Ileana cried out, “I accuse Lord Thantos DuBaer of murder!”

  “Silence!” Lady Rhianna shouted.

  “He killed his brother Aron. Everyone knows it!” Ileana persisted. “New evidence suggests that he made off with Miranda while she was helpless, broken by misery, and incapable of good judgment. And that he knows where she is even now! This is the beast who pretends to care about their children!”

  Lady Rhianna, her rich, brown skin turned ashen, stood and unfurled her great wings. The whooshing sound they made and the gust they unleashed silenced the crowd once more. “Enough, Ileana! Quiet … everyone.” When her command had been fulfilled, she reeled in her wings and sat again. “Lord Thantos, Lord Karsh, approach,” she ordered. Sassy as ever, Ileana followed Karsh — and, seeing this, Fredo, seeming nonplussed about the guilty verdict, strutted behind his brother. Rhianna glared at them.

  “Oh, let them stay,” Lady Fan said, her small dark eyes gleaming with excitement. “A trial like this comes along once in a century — and I’m too old to wait for another.”

  Lord Grivveniss chuckled.

  “Fine,” Rhianna gave in. “But do not speak” — this to Ileana and Fredo — “unless you’re addressed directly, understood?”

  “Understood,” Ileana agreed. Fredo pretended to lock his lips with an imaginary key and toss it over his shoulder. “Esteemed trackers.” Rhianna nodded at Thantos and Karsh. “This is a most unusual circumstance. Yet it presents a welcome opportunity. For both of you, it offers the chance to end the harsh rumors and suspicions that have brought discord to Coventry for fifteen long years.

  “Lord Thantos, you’ve been very generous to us,” Rhianna continued. “Your contributions helped to restore the great amphitheater. The computers you donated to the Unity Council have simplified our voting system. Can we not call upon you again — to clear your name and return true unity to our divided island? I urge you to think about it. And, Lord Karsh, will you represent our people once more by telling what you know and by asking aloud the questions that have been whispered about Lord Aron’s death for more than a decade?”

  “You dare ask me to stand trial for the death of my brother?” Thantos growled.

  “Oh, is that what this is all about?” Fredo blurted. “No, no, no. You’re barking up the wrong brother, Rhianna!”

  “How would you know?” Ileana snapped at him.

  “Silence,” Rhianna shouted.

  “He started it,” Ileana protested.

  With a cold smile, Thantos shook his head as if he were far above and weary of both of them. To Karsh, he said, “Have you any evidence linking me with the unfortunate incident?”

  “Circumstantial at best,” Karsh admitted.

  “Circumstantial?” Ileana muttered under her breath. “Who came to call on Aron that very morning? Who was the last person Miranda saw him with?”

  “You mean me?” Fredo asked. Thantos glared at him and Fredo again pantomimed locking his mouth and th
rowing away the key.

  “Exalted Elders,” Karsh addressed Grivveniss, Fan, and Rhianna. “As always, I will gladly do what you request of me. I will ask the questions. And then we may leave it to the Unity Council to vote —”

  “With his computers!” Ileana balked.

  “And I, also,” Thantos offered, avoiding Ileana’s blazing eyes, “will do whatever you think best.”

  And so it happened, the merely curious trial of Fredo DuBaer morphed into the most compelling one in all Coventry history. The Accused was the most revered and feared warlock of the island, the billionaire mogul, Lord Thantos DuBaer himself.

  In accordance with the laws of the Unity Counsel, the Exalted Elders offered him a qualified advocate, as well as time to prepare a defense. The arrogant tracker refused both. “Help to clear my own name? I think not,” he snarled. “Let’s get this over and done with. It won’t take long.”

  Karsh, too, waived time to present the People’s case against Thantos. Had a day gone by in the past fifteen years when he hadn’t thought about the devastating day or Aron’s death? It was he — sadly, along with Ileana — who’d found Aron’s bloodied body; who’d assumed the grim task of telling his wife and delivering Aron’s bloody cloak to her. Miranda had told him precious little, but he would never forget her words: “Thantos came … but would not enter. Aron left to speak to his brother.”

  No, Karsh didn’t need time to reconstruct what had most likely happened. It was a tale he didn’t want to believe; a small part of him continued to balk. But he knew the story by heart. Aron left his wife and newborns, never to return.

  The old man rose. On spindly legs, he made his way to the witness seat. His voice was rasping but steady. “I have known the DuBaer family for many decades. I watched the sons of Leila and Pantheas grow up — one with a brilliant mind, one canny but consumed with ambition, and” — Karsh looked down at his bony hands, avoiding Fredo’s gaze. “One unfortunately slack-witted. Thantos, the eldest, admired all that Aron possessed: his keen intelligence, his beloved and equally gifted wife, his powerful twin children — most of all, the company founded by his brother —”