T*Witches 3: Seeing Is Deceiving

by H. B. Gilmour

  In between those extremes was Aron, the middle brother. A handsome and exceptionally brilliant boy, he was first in his class in all subjects. Aron rose through the ranks of warlocks from guardian to tracker, shape-shifter, master of transmutation, and on to mentor. He’d been the youngest ever in all of Coventry Island’s history to be awarded a lordship.

  Yet Aron had refused to “lord” his gifts over anyone. He believed those who stood tallest were those who stooped to help others. All on Coventry Island accepted their destiny to serve humankind; Aron believed that in his heart.

  It was Aron who’d started the company, CompUmag; it was Aron’s dream to develop and use technology for the good of all. More than a visionary, Aron was the brother smart enough to turn his dreams and ideas into reality.

  Aron had been the brightest of the brothers.

  Fredo had never grasped that simple fact.

  Because Thantos did, he was wildly jealous. He coveted everything Aron had.

  He still did.

  “Camryn and Alexandra are my nieces, my blood. They will come to me, and there is nothing you can do to stop that!” Thantos had ranted at Karsh repeatedly for the past two weeks.

  “And you believe that by keeping me from them —” Raising his sparse, wispy eyebrows just slightly, Karsh had continued wearily, “that they will fall into your clutches, just like that? You give me too much credit, Lord Thantos.”

  Thantos’s mouth twisted into an evil grin. “I am not crediting you, doddering fool. You know why I have you here.”

  “You’re the bait!” Fredo crowed, feeling brave enough now to rise from his corner of the room and head over toward Karsh.

  “Shut up, you imbecile!” Thantos roared, stopping Fredo in his tracks.

  “All we want,” Thantos had told Karsh threateningly on that first day, “is a little bit of your time. Not that, by the looks of it, you have that much left!”

  Silently, Karsh cursed the infirmities of his advanced age. A younger man would not be bowed by arthritis, by weakened bones; a healthier specimen would not need to rely on the elixirs and potions to keep the constant pain at bay.

  His younger, stronger self would not have been hoodwinked by Thantos, or kidnapped by Fredo in the first place.

  It happened the very night Ileana had brought Fredo back from Marble Bay, to the steps of the Coventry Island Unity Council. Yes, Lady Rhianna was there, ready to take him into custody, but the Exalted Elder on her own could not stop Fredo from shape-shifting into a giant lizard. Ileana had not bothered to follow the rules, to be sure there were three Elders in attendance when she brought him in. Startled by his rank insubordination, Lady Rhianna had not reacted quickly enough. Fredo had gotten away.

  His destination was not Thantos’s mansion on the mainland. Too terrified of his brother’s wrath to show up empty-handed, he’d hatched a plan to capture Karsh. Fredo wasn’t as smart as the wise Karsh, but he could, and did, use the shock of surprise.

  A stealth attack.

  Karsh had been in his tangled, overgrown herb garden, tending to the special plants that helped him wage a valiant fight against his constant pain. He’d just picked enough to concoct the elixir he needed when, without warning, the immense lizard had swooped from the sky, snatched him in its monstrous claws, and carried him off — Karsh had dropped the seeds of his herbal remedy, spreading them over the landscape below.

  Sometime later, Fredo delivered him to Thantos, unsure of what he had even accomplished by taking the tracker.

  Enraged that Fredo had failed to deliver the twins, Thantos had quickly thought of a way to use his baby brother’s “gift.” He would use the elderly warlock to lure Ileana. Surely, she would rescue Karsh. And with the two of them out of the way, Camryn and Alexandra would be unprotected.

  So far, it hadn’t worked. But Thantos knew it would. He knew Ileana. For all her brilliance, her cunning, her beauty, bravery, even — at the bottom of it all — her pure heart, her downfall was what it had always been. Impatience.

  She would not wait much longer to make her move.

  Karsh knew what Thantos was thinking. He also knew a secret — one that neither of his captors realized he knew. Thantos might threaten Ileana, he might frighten, trick, and ultimately ensnare her. But he would not harm the talented young witch.

  Which made Karsh think of someone else he once believed the hulking madman would never harm.

  Thantos let out a deep, throaty laugh. “So, my lordship, you’re still thinking of her after all these years. Interesting that you didn’t scramble that thought; it was easy for me to read.”

  Karsh raised his raspy voice. “What did you do to her? Surely, in my incapacitated state, you can tell me. I am no threat to you.”

  Thantos stroked his dark, coarse beard. “Miranda, Miranda. What makes you think I had anything to do with the disappearance of my brother’s wife?”

  Fredo cut in, “Yeah, what makes you think she’s alive? Besides, why do you care? Forget about her. She’s gone, dead to you. You’ve got bigger problems.”

  Karsh blinked suddenly, as the thought, the certainty, washed over him. “Miranda’s not dead, is she?”

  Thantos abruptly sprang out his chair. Stopping just short of the old man’s nose, he seethed, “Know this: You will never see her alive again.”

  “Why is that, Lord Thantos?” Karsh challenged, unbowed and unafraid.

  “Because, you stubborn, senile old trickster, if your ward, the charming Ileana, fails to come to your rescue, or delays much longer, you will be quite unable to see anyone ever again. You will be dead.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BRUISE CLUES

  “Score!” Alex hooted triumphantly, flagging down her sister in the hallway between class periods the next day. “I’ve got something on her.”

  “You read Webb’s mind?” Cam guessed eagerly.

  “Better,” Alex teased with a glint in her metallic eye. “I hid, I heard, I sent something crashing to the floor, I saw!”

  Maybe it was seeing her sister so bummed. Or finding out that Webb was tangled up in Helping Hands — and had ensnared Beth. Perhaps it was Alex’s plain prickliness at Karsh and Ileana for pulling a no-show.

  Or, Alex thought, searching Cam’s worried but hopeful face, most likely she just needed to help her sister, whether she agreed with Camryn or not. Whatever: Alex had decided to deal with Webb.

  Her way.

  Which meant, that morning, sneaking into the teachers’ ladies’ room, posting an OUT OF ORDER sign on a stall door, then locking herself in, pulling her knees up, so no one would notice her — and waiting.

  Just after homeroom, her gambit paid off.

  As she told Cam, “Turns out Cecilia Webb’s got a cell phone, and either the reception in the bathroom is very good or during first period it’s unlikely she’d be interrupted there. Anyway, as soon as she walked in, her phone was ringing. Only I guess she didn’t get to it in time, ’cause she had to call back.

  Cam added with a grin, “Who was she talking to?”

  Alex shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Cam’s smile faded. “But she was saying something totally incriminating, right?”

  “Not unless you consider ‘I miss you,’ and ‘Don’t worry, honey, I’m going to come through for you’ incriminating.”

  Cam folded her arms across her chest. “So she’s got a boyfriend she hasn’t seen in a while — that’s it? That’s what you scored?”

  “That… and, uh, this little tidbit: He’s in prison!”

  Cam’s jaw dropped. “He is? How’d you …”

  Alex’s eyes sparkled. “I got impatient waiting for her to say something more interesting. So I decided to see if the phone number of that ‘missed call’ showed up.”

  So, Cam thought, anti-cell-phone girl Alex had learned a thing or two about mobiles. About to give her sister props, Cam remembered, “But how’d you see the digital readout on the phone through the bathroom door?”

  “I
didn’t,” Alex told her. “Supersight is your department. But making her drop the phone — moving it to a spot where I could see it — that’s kinda mine.”

  Impressed, Cam asked, “And you saw … what, Massachusetts State Prison?”

  “Right. Like it was that easy! All I had time to do was hit ‘List missed calls.’ The first one that popped up was this phone number …”

  “Which,” Cam finished for her, “you looked up.”

  “State penitentiary, sista.”

  The fact that Webb was calling someone — her boyfriend, probably — in the pen was a juicy tidbit and a potential clue. But until they knew more, it wasn’t enough evidence to nail her.

  “Let’s get some more!” Cam declared.

  Unfortunately, more evidence of the Webb sort wasn’t in huge supply that week, nor the one that followed. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Cam got ahold of the teacher’s schedule, so the twins could “coincidentally” bump into her and Alex could get close enough to read her mind. They passed her in the hallway and on the stairwell. Once, they hovered nearby when Amanda stopped her to ask a question. The day Webb was on lunchroom duty, Alex made the ultimate sacrifice and ate in the cafeteria.

  But at no moment, fleeting or extended, could Alex get in to Webb’s head.

  During lunch, while Webb was on cafeteria patrol, Cam slipped out of the building and made for the teachers’ parking lot. Maybe there was some evidence in the scheming substitute’s car that supersighted Cam could unearth.

  Trying not to be conspicuous, Cam circled the black Acura with the Helping Hands bumper sticker, telescoping in on the contents. Webb wasn’t much for neatness. On the passenger seat lay maps, Helping Hands brochures, and a box of tissues. Empty water bottles and fast-food containers littered the floor. The backseat was empty.

  Cam was about to walk away when something wedged under the back of the driver’s seat caught her eye. The corner of a sales receipt, so small that no one with normal eyesight could see it. Luckily, Cam wasn’t in that category. She zoomed in. It appeared to be from a cheapo jewelry store in Boston called Trompe L’Oeil. And — whoa! — Webb had bought, like, a dozen different items. Only … Cam’s eyes began to sting as she telescoped in more carefully. Try as she might, she couldn’t read the signature. Only that it didn’t say Cecilia Webb. The first initial was a B. The last name began with an R.

  The receipt was potentially interesting, but how it — or the call from prison — tied her to some shoplifting ring, Cam couldn’t figure.

  Meanwhile, during class Ms. Webb continued her demanding, demeaning manner, tossing out rapid-fire questions, piling on the homework. But after a while the class’s griping trickled to a halt. Most people adjusted. One student in particular seemed even to blossom under the tough tactics of their substitute: Elisabeth Fish.

  Beth had become superstudent, racking up one Einstein moment after another. Her homework assignments were so exemplary, Webb read them aloud a couple of times. Pop quizzes, the scourge of Cam’s existence, seemed to be what Beth lived for.

  There was a flip side to the academic coin: Beth’s zoom up the GPA ladder in social studies mirrored her slip-slide in nearly every other subject. According to a round of Six Pack IMs, Kristen noted that Beth, usually her closest competitor in Spanish, had totally messed up on the last test. Amanda wrote, In algebra, she was marked unprepared. I don’t think she did the homework. Sukari typed, Dag, and I thought it was just a temporary case of brain rot when the girl formerly known as Ms. Frizzle couldn’t come up with the formula for iodine.

  Beth was not on the IM tip. She wasn’t anywhere with the Six Pack lately. She bagged their Friday pizza fest, bailed on the mall troll and movies on Saturday. She was barely on-line anymore. E-mails went unanswered, some unread even. And when the talk of the school was a round of shopliftings at the Galleria — another scam involving a teen and a decoy adult — Beth noticeably didn’t participate.

  As Cam feared, Beth hadn’t shown up for two soccer practices and was booted off the team. Worse, her friend didn’t seem to care. During lunch one day, she got defensive about Helping Hands. Volunteering was so time-intensive that Amanda, who’d meant to sign up, had changed her mind. And Beth (so unlike her) had taken the innocent girl to task. “I guess helping abandoned children isn’t as important to you as you thought it was,” she’d said, sniffing.

  Amanda defended herself. “That’s not fair. Ms. Webb said we’d have to meet after school every day. Learn fund-raising techniques, look up potential donors on the Internet, design flyers and stuff. You’ve been doing all that, and you haven’t even seen the kids. I would have no time for anything else. I’ve already made a commitment to soccer and my team needs me.”

  “And your friends need you” is what Cam wanted to say to Beth, but didn’t. Their relationship was still on the fritz. Cam didn’t want it to sputter out.

  It wasn’t until the following Saturday morning, when emptying her backpack in search of her English notes, that Cam found the folded-up piece of paper she’d wedged into her math textbook.

  I need to talk to you. Alone. Really crucial stuff going on. Call me on my cell phone right after school.

  Beth’s note. The date was a week and a half ago.

  Beth seemed surprised, and not especially happy, to see Cam standing at her front door a little after ten A.M. on Saturday morning. Still in her pj’s, without her contacts in, her hair a dense tangle of bed-head frizz, she squinted suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”

  Feeling suddenly awkward, Cam folded her arms. “I need to see you. And I figured even Helping Hands wouldn’t have you up and out this early.”

  “You should have called,” Beth mumbled. “This is really not a great time.”

  From inside the house, Cam could hear muffled sounds: a dog barking, music coming from Beth’s sister Lauren’s room, voices raised in anger. She’d assumed the TV was on, but now realized the voices belonged to Beth’s parents.

  Cam aimed for a quip. “Nothing like a little family discord with your Cheerios, huh?”

  Beth’s face darkened as if she was about to say something, but she bit her lip instead.

  “Can we go to your room?” Cam took a step inside. “This is important, Bethie.”

  Her friend didn’t answer, but turned, motioning for Cam to follow. At least Beth wasn’t that mad, Cam thought with relief as the girls walked down the hallway to the back of the house; she hadn’t booted her.

  Beth’s room was bright and sunny, a shrine to friendship, flora, and fauna — a total reflection of the good-natured girl’s personality. Ceramic vases holding bunches of dried flowers dotted the room; Sierra Club posters fought with collages and family photos for wall space. Snapshots of the Six Pack were everywhere, a friendship captured through the years. Cam noticed Beth’s Mary Englebreit sappy-saying calendar was still on the month before.

  As Beth was about to close the door, her dog, a wire-haired fox terrier — the canine equivalent of Beth, Cam used to secretly think — named Cooper, bounded into the room and jumped onto Beth’s still unmade bed.

  Cam plopped down next to him and massaged him behind the ears. “Hey, Coop, what’s the scoop?”

  Beth pulled her hair back in a scrunchie and sat down at her desk to put her contacts in.

  “So, anyway, we need to talk,” Cam said finally.

  “Fine,” Beth said in a flat voice, propping one eye open while she inserted a lens. “You’ve clearly got a bone, so pick.”

  Disappointed that her friend had not warmed up more, Cam plunged ahead. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what happened between us, but I guess it probably seems like I haven’t been the greatest friend to you.”

  “Gee, what makes you say that?” Beth cracked as she slipped the other contact in and blinked. “Just because you see me doing something on my own and feel the need to stop me?”

  “It’s not that and you know it —” Cam started to protest.

  But Beth interrupte
d, “Or maybe it’s that I’m doing better than you are in one subject, and you can’t stand it? Or is it that Cami’s not teacher’s pet?”

  Teacher’s nightmare is what Cam wanted to say. “Don’t be like that. I… look, I’ve been distracted lately, and I just got your note.”

  “My note?” Beth seemed really surprised. “That’s why you’re here? So over, Camryn.”

  Guiltily, Cam ventured, “Whatever the problem was, it’s been solved? You don’t need to talk to me?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve found other people to talk to.”

  Stung, a sharp breath caught in Cam’s throat. “I’m … I’m really sorry. But that’s not the only reason I came over.”

  Beth guessed, “You want to try and talk me out of doing the one thing that’s meaningful to me now. Wow — great friend you’re being!”

  “I know you’re angry. And maybe you have a right to be. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still care about you. I worry about you.”

  “What’s to worry about?” Beth challenged. “I’m helping children.”

  Cam pressed on. “Social studies aside, you’re messing up in school. We never see you anymore, we barely hear from you. You are still my BFF no matter what.” She paused, then added quietly, “I miss you.”

  Beth turned away to grab a tissue and blot her eye. Was it the contacts, or was her friend tearing up?

  “BFF. Right.” Beth sniffed. “I think a certain punky lookalike has taken over that position.”

  Although she heard the hurt in her friend’s voice, Cam tried for another quip. “Like they say, ‘You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your long-lost identical twin.’ Or something. You and I picked each other a long time ago.”

  Beth’s lip trembled and she swiveled in her chair to face Cam. “I’ve missed you, too. But Helping Hands is a good thing in my life. Other stuff is going on. I’ve been trying to tell you … but you weren’t listening.”

  Now it was Cam’s turn to tear up. “I’m listening now.”

  “Elisabeth!” The door flew open with a bang, and Beth’s mother appeared, eyes puffy, cheeks red — completely frazzled.