T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice (11 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

SECRETS AND LIES

Ileana returned to the amphitheater feeling changed, different, and proud of herself. She had made a choice, the sort of choice she’d never really considered before. She’d chosen the welfare of others over her own selfish concerns and was about to see truth and justice rendered once and for all.

And she’d been given the chance to do it by her grandmother! Her own flesh and blood.

Ileana laughed at the expression. Leila was not exactly “flesh and blood.” She was spirit, the spirit of a wise and beautiful woman who was Ileana’s own grandmother. Amazing!

“What have I missed? What’s happened?” Ileana
whispered to Karsh, after tiptoeing down the aisle and slipping back into her seat beside him.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Karsh said, examining her glowing face, on which the hint of a smile still shone. “What’s happened to you? You look positively … transformed.”

Yes, do tell us all!

Lady Rhianna hadn’t spoken the words aloud but fired them silently at Ileana and Karsh like a schoolmarm hurling an eraser. She then turned to the Accused’s table — where Thantos sat glaring and Fredo, grinning — and slyly answered Ileana’s question. “Lord Thantos has produced several more witnesses, all attesting to his sterling character. Lord Karsh has presented others, of opposite opinion. We are now ready to vote.”

Fredo stood abruptly. “Order in the court. Order in the court,” he demanded. “No one asked me anything! When do I get to tell my side of the story?”

“Sit down,” his brother commanded. “You have no side!” And Fredo did.

“Wait.” Ileana stepped forward. “If it pleases the court …”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Rhianna responded.

“I have another witness. Someone who knows the truth. Someone from whom the murderer could not
hide.” She narrowed her startling eyes at Thantos, who stared back, his jaw set.

Fredo started to whimper, but Thantos clapped his huge paw over his brother’s face.

“Let her play this out. It should be very interesting,” he said.

“Oh, it will be,” Ileana retorted.

She bowed her head, and as Leila had instructed her, tossed a handful of mugwort and marjoram into the center of the amphitheater. She chanted, “I call on the spirit of a mother proud and unbowed, she who dwells in a world beyond. I call on the one who knows the truth and no fear. I call the spirit of Leila DuBaer!”

A blinding light filled the room, and then, though no windows were open, a gust of swirling wind formed, tornadolike, directly in front of the trio of the Exalted Elders. Ladies Rhianna and Fan and Lord Grivveniss were shocked into silence, along with everyone in the room. They watched in awe as the swirling took shape, silhouetted now in an unearthly glow. In seconds, the regal spirit of Leila DuBaer appeared.

Thantos’s rage got stuck in this throat. He started. “This is a hoax. She cannot …!” For once, the mighty tracker could not finish his thought.

Lady Rhianna was awestruck. “How did …?”

Grivenniss finished the sentence, “… she do that?”

Karsh was overcome with pride — and panic. He did not know the depth of Ileana’s talents and perhaps never would. He feared for her.

“The spirits of our dead cannot rest,” Ileana declared, “… not until justice is served. Even if the spirit must reveal a heinous family secret.”

Karsh stood and bowed his head. “Lady Leila, we welcome you.”

“You know I can’t stay,” the spirit whispered, lifting her head to gaze at the Elders.

Ileana charged forward. “I will be brief. Just a few moments ago you told me that your son Aron was murdered at the hand of his own brother.”

“He was,” Leila replied sadly.

“How do you know? Were you there?” Ileana gently asked.

“I didn’t have to be there. I know my sons. The murderer confessed to me — he was so … proud! Of what he’d done.”

“I ask you now, cherished spirit, is the murderer of your son Aron in this amphitheater?”

“He is.” For a split second, Leila’s regal bearing faltered. Her light began to soften, to fade.

Dizzy with dread and excitement, Ileana panicked.
No! She couldn’t leave, not yet. She hurried on. “Can you point him out?”

The spirit turned slowly. An outstretched arm pointed straight to the table of the Accused. Ileana held her breath.

Leila’s steely gaze fell on Thantos. “How could you?”

And then, slowly at first, but deliberately, like a Ouija board’s pointer, she turned, her accusing finger moved past Thantos. It stopped when it landed on … Fredo. When Leila spoke, it was clear she was using the last of her earthly energy. “You were supposed to take care of him!” she cried to Thantos. “He was incapable of taking care of himself! You made a vow. Were you so enraged at my disapproval of your bride that you exacted revenge by betraying me? By breaking your promise? How else to explain why you allowed Fredo to kill my beloved Aron?”

The reaction to Leila’s stunning revelation was profound and protracted. There was not a soul in the Coventry Island Unity Council amphitheater who was not shocked, scandalized — even traumatized — by the truth. A truth no one had even considered. For the first time, even the trio of Exalted Elders sat speechless.

The silence was broken by Fredo’s sons, Tsuris and
Vey, who carne charging down the center of the amphitheater, faces scarlet with rage. “It’s a trick!” Tsuris yelled. “She did something, she made you all blind! My father is innocent!”

“Tell them, Uncle Thantos,” Vey pleaded, reaching out to the mighty tracker. Thantos roughly shook the boy away. Without a word, he got up, turning to stalk out of the amphitheater.

His move jolted Ileana out of her shock. “No! I command you to stay!” she shouted. “I don’t know what you did to her, to Leila, but you made her lie! You would revile the spirit of your own mother, anything to save your murderous skin!”

Thantos spun toward her. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it abruptly. Staring at Ileana, he seemed to lose certainty. With a strange, almost pitiful glance at Karsh, the hulking tracker fell back into his chair and stared glumly at the trio of Exalted Elders.

“Let our father have his say!” Tsuris demanded. “He will clear this up!”

“He fears nothing! We fear nothing!” Vey called.

“Quiet!” Lady Rhianna, angry, shaken, but dignified as ever, found her voice and turned back to her old friend. “Karsh, what say you?”

Karsh’s eyes filled with tears. He’d known — a part of him, anyway — that it hadn’t been Thantos. But he
never suspected it was Fredo. That the youngest son’s stupidity was more dangerous than Thantos’s power. He nodded at Rhianna. “Let him speak.”

Fredo was overjoyed. The manic, goat-bearded warlock gloated. “Like Mama said, I’m the one, the man, the warlock! I flattened Aron with a stone. With one single heavy-duty rock. You wouldn’t believe how much damage one rock can do. I didn’t even believe it. But I had to make a choice. Aron even asked me to. He said, ‘Whose side are you on, Fredo?’ So I showed him.”

“I don’t believe you!” Ileana shouted.

“Why not?” Fredo asked innocently. “I didn’t mean to take Aron out of the game for good. I just wanted to show my other brother — you know, Thantos — how solid I was for him. They used to argue all the time. I mean, I thought Thantos would be ecstatic. But, oh, boy, was he ever mad at me.”

“You’re lying,” Ileana accused. “Why are you lying for him?”

“How can you accuse me of lying, fair Ileana? It was you who summoned up a witness. You who called on the spirit of the dead to appear here. You wanted the truth, you got it.”

Thantos hauled himself to his feet. “Haven’t we had enough of this grim circus?” he thundered.

Stubbornly, Ileana refused to believe it. “Of course
you’d like to stop him now. Now that he’s lied to clear your name!”

“Can I tell her?” Fredo’s glittering snake eyes turned pleadingly to his brother. “Oh, please, let me tell her.”

“No!” Karsh called. “Lord Thantos is right. Enough is enough.”

“But Karsh,” Ileana protested. “Something must have happened. I must have done the spell wrong. Or …” She narrowed her fierce eyes at Thantos. “He tampered with her spirit!! He’s powerful and mean enough to do it. He made her say it was Fredo!”

Even as she shouted it, Leila’s words echoed in her ears,
“Be careful what you wish for…”

Shaking her head, to rid herself of the terrible truth she must have known, but denied, Ileana shouted, “Fredo is just saying all that to get Thantos off the hook. Obviously, Fredo’s going back to prison. By confessing to Aron’s death, he spares the evil tracker, his murdering brother, the pain and shame due him. We can’t let the monster get away with —”

“Monster? Evil tracker?” Fredo flashed his swamp eyes at her greedily. “He is your father, Ileana.”

“No,” she railed. “Liar! You’re crazy, Fredo!”

“Mad as Miranda,” he agreed. “But is that any way to talk to your uncle?”

Thantos rose and stalked from the chamber, his
hands coiled into fists, his hobnail boots echoing menacingly.

“Uncle T, yo, wait,” his nephew Vey hollered.

“You can’t leave our father,” Tsuris raged. “Not after all he’s done for you. He only killed Aron because he knew you wanted him to. And what about us?”

“Yeah.” Vey smirked. “We polished off that chump photographer for you, didn’t we?”

Ileana covered her ears and stood shaking in Karsh’s arms. The old warlock held her gently as she buried her face in his warm velvet waistcoat. “It can’t be true,” she sobbed. “Karsh, dear guardian, my oldest friend, tell me that he is lying.”

But even as she urged the faithful warlock to say otherwise, Ileana knew that Fredo had told her the truth. Lord Thantos, the greedy tracker she despised, the twins’ evil uncle against whom she’d fought to protect them since the day of their birth, was her father.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SAYING HELLO

Cam connected with Brianna nearly every day — whenever Alex wasn’t on-line playing nuthouse Nancy Drew, or getting Cam to unscramble some cyber-mess she’d clicked herself into.

At first, Bree’s replies, some short, others long rants, upset Cam. Brianna was sullen, angry at “being here,” at being forced to eat, gaining a “flabalanche” of weight! She wasn’t sure where “here” was, and didn’t care. Just that it was called Rolling Hills.

Her mom, on leave from her jobs, was staying in a nearby hotel and came to see her every day. Choosing between pride and her daughter’s well-being, Mrs. Waxman
finally accepted her ex-husband’s offer of support. As for the Hollywood producer, he visited, too.

I had to get to this sick for him to pay attention to me, Bree wrote forlornly. How twisted is that?

But, after several weeks, Bree’s e-mails steadily became more upbeat. Aside from her own therapy, she confided, the Waxmans were getting family counseling. It wasn’t as if they’d gone from dys to functional in five easy sessions, but she’d actually gotten good and mad at her father and really let loose on him about his broken promises and messed-up priorities.

Of course, she’d broken down crying a minute later, but her shrink was totally proud of her. Brianna claimed the doc’s Saturn would soon be wearing a bumper sticker that read:
MY PATIENT IS AN HONOR NUT AT ROLLING HILLS
.

Cam wished Alex was progressing as well. Her sister, the cyber-klutz, had gotten lost on a virtual tour of three facilities in San Diego. She’d printed out reams of clinic names and locations. Started receiving a ton of brochures from spas and sanitariums all over California. She compared the pictures in the flyers to the front-page photo in
Starstruck
, hoping to see just the right palm tree in front of just the right front entrance to make a match. No luck so far. She haunted celebrity websites
and began reading
People
magazine to find out which asylums burnouts of the rich and famous frequented. There were hundreds of places, thousands.

California, Alex suggested, during week three of her clinic search, should be renamed the rehab state.

It wasn’t until Bree began ragging on the “other loonies in the bin” that Cam knew she was actually getting better. Rolling Hills, Brianna explained, was like this huge buffet of sickos. The place was filled with substance abusers, eating disorder victims, depressives, bipolars, old-fashioned nervous breakdown sufferers, and rage-aholics in search of anger management techniques.

The ultimate bummer? She wasn’t allowed to talk or write about who was actually there, or for what. “Even though every tabloid in the nation knows and tells,” she grumbled. Much as it killed her not to dish, she confessed, she had decided to play by the rules.

Of course, the place was not perk-devoid, Bree eventually admitted. It was the ultimate in luxury. Great private rooms with plush carpeting, TVs, VCR, DVD and CD players, plus a media room, a spa, and a greenhouse-like solarium. Best of all was the pampering. “You get waited on hand and foot, you could live here,” she joked. Though she wasn’t planning to, there were others who were “lifers.” There was even an on-site beauty salon, not that everyone used it. This one woman she’d gotten
friendly with had not cut her hair since arriving — fifteen years ago!

“Fifteen years? What’s the name of her place again?” Alex asked, getting out her list of clinic names.

“Rolling Hills. Why?” Cam wanted to know, although she’d gotten the same electric buzz at the number. “You’re not thinking —”

“No, dude. No way.” Alex’s finger flew down the pages. Frustrated, she tossed the sheaf onto her bed. “Must be totally exclusive. It’s not even listed!”

What about the guys? Beth had prodded Cam to ask.

Oh, yeah, it’s a regular Hotties Anonymous, Bree reported drolly. Actually, she was surprisingly uninterested in boys. Call me crazy, she wrote — making Cam laugh — but the psycho-babes on campus are so not my thing. Mostly she hung with the woman with the long hair. “Rapunzel,” Bree called her, like the fairy-tale princess.

There was something very regal about her. Which was weird, Bree knew, since in addition to blowing off the beauty salon, the woman didn’t wear stitch one of makeup and never went anywhere without clutching this raggedy old quilt. She carried it to meals, the solarium, probably to the bath.

Alex was standing behind Cam, reading Bree’s e-mail.

“A quilt?” Cam looked over her shoulder at her sister. “Didn’t Karsh tell us once that Miranda had made us a patchwork quilt?”

Alex shrugged, but only because her lips had gone dry. And her heart was totally thudding.

The thing was, being with Quilt Woman made Bree feel good. Not like all happy and woo-hah, but … quietly good. Healthy. Oh, and don’t tell Amanda, ’cause she’ll like storm the place, but Rapunzel is way into herbs, candles, and crystals.

“Cam?” Alex said, her voice breaking. “It can’t be, could it?” But before Cam got a chance to answer, Alex shook her head. “No way. Someone’s messing with us.”

“Either that or —”

“Or what?!” Alex challenged, balking suddenly at the possibility. She’d been pushing Cam, telling her they had to find their mother. But was she herself really ready? Now? Ready to be disappointed?

She’s got this New Agey vibe going, Brianna reported in another e-mail. She’ll be staring into space, sitting there wrapped in her old quilt, but the minute I show up — me or this other kid I’m bonding with, a well-known teen actress whose identity must remain a secret except to say she got busted for shoplifting and it was all over the news two weeks ago … When either of us shows up, Rapunzel snaps out of her trance
and turns into this full-out mama bear. Totally there. And she’ll ask, I don’t know, all the right questions, the kind that get you to really open up. She’s an amazing listener. She seems to understand everything. There’s something different about her.

Different. Hadn’t that been what Cam and Alex had felt all their lives? Was “Rapunzel” different the way they were?

“It’s her,” Cam said one day, a minute before her cell phone rang. They both jumped. “I didn’t mean the phone. I meant Bree’s … friend. It’s Miranda, Alex.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” her sister cautioned.

Cam pressed
TALK
. Brianna was on the phone, sounding distressingly, in Alex’s opinion, like her old manic monologue-ing self. Today’s call was all about the shopping trips Bree was now allowed to take — in addition to the phone privileges she’d earned. “Not that there are many designer stores in the ’hood,” Alex heard her complain to Cam.

The ’hood, they’d finally learned, was the small, privately owned island off the coast of California where Rolling Hills was located. Alex grabbed her guitar, with every intention of drowning out Brianna’s latest tale.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you — Quilt Lady?” Bree reported. “She never dresses in anything but hospital
robes, but I bought this top I thought would look so slammin’ on her. When she tried it on the other day I noticed she’s got this necklace. I never noticed it on her before, it’s probably been hidden under her robe. But the necklace? If you put Alex’s and your charms together, it would look sort of like hers.”

Cam was afraid to speak.

Alex tossed her bass on the bed and quickly filched the phone from her. “What’s her name?” she asked. “Besides ‘Rapunzel’?”

“Minda. Minda something. I don’t know,” Brianna said casually.

Cam found her voice and the twins began cautiously to lob questions at Bree. They found out the woman was “a lifer.” That Bree wasn’t sure why she was there, but she did seem kinda moony and depressed a lot. “Her story is a weeper,” Brianna conceded. “Her husband was killed — and she only has this one strange-o visitor. Scary guy. Massive and mean-looking. Black beard, boots that are so lumberjack.”

My vision!
Cam sent an excited telepathic message to Alex.
The one I had before? Of a woman with a long braid, staring out a big window? There were all these colors — like a patchwork quilt! Als, could it be an …?

Epic coincidence, or evil master plan?
Alex finished
the thought.
Thantos said he’d bring us to her
. “Yo, Breeski,” she said, “can you hold on a minute?”

“But is he powerful enough to have engineered Brianna being at the same place he stashed our mother?” Cam asked, as Alex clamped her hand over the receiver. “Is this how he’s finally going to lure us? Or are we being galactically paranoid?”

Cam snatched back the phone. “Bree, is there a very, very sunny room at Rolling Hills, one filled with plants?”

“Hello. Did I mention our sunroom? That’s like Rapunzel headquarters.” The phone flew back and forth as they plied Bree with questions. The woman was sort of average height, had auburn hair, they learned. “She’s the one who never cut it, wears it in a braid down her back,” Brianna reminded them. “Gray eyes, sometimes they look kind of dull, but other times, they do resemble yours. Age: indeterminate.” And now that she thought about it, the woman seemed to seek out Bree.

“She asks me about where I live, what I think about things. She’s really easy to talk to. And you know what’s really funny? Funny weird, not funny ha-ha. Of all the doctors and shrinks in this place? Minda’s the one I can talk to about the really deep stuff. We talk about my dad, how he’s acted like a jerk. Like how one day maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be okay being me. At whatever weight.” Bree added thoughtfully, “She hardly talks to anyone else. Just
me and Jocelyn — oops, I mean, my anonymous famous shoplifting friend.”

“Did she ever talk about … I mean, does she have kids?” Cam’s voice cracked.

“Lost. Lost babies she once said. Who’d be about my age,” Bree answered.

“More than one? Two lost babies?”

Later that night, they sat together in their room, staring at the phone. “It’s not like I had a vision today,” Cam reminded Alex.

“I know. I didn’t catch a scent or hear a standby,” Alex said.

“But she’s going to call, right?”

“Soon,” Alex decided. “Are your hands clammy?”

“No. My neck.” Cam tugged at the collar of her sweater. “I’m hot and cold and sweating.”

When the phone in their bedroom rang, she and Alex just stared at it. They knew who was calling.

A second ago, a buzzing had started in Alex’s ears. “Oh, no. What if I can’t hear her?”

As if she were getting a premonition, Cam’s eyes started to sting.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Alex rasped.

Slowly, Cam reached for the receiver. Alex’s hand whipped past and pressed speakerphone.

A soft, whispery voice asked, “May I speak to … Apolla? I’m sorry, I mean, Camryn? Camryn Barnes?”

Cam’s body turned to jelly. “This is,” Cam managed to squeak.

Alex was hyperventilating. There was silence on the other end. “And … Artem — Is Alexandra also there?”

“Yes,” Alex practically shouted, then lowering her voice she said, “This is Artemis. Apolla is here, too….”

They could hear crying on the other end of the phone. Suddenly, Cam’s face was wet. When she spoke again her voice was thick with tears. “Is it really you?” she sobbed.

“Are you all right?” Alex asked, trembling.

Suddenly, it didn’t matter if Thantos had masterminded the whole thing. It didn’t matter if he had used Brianna, or was now using Miranda, their mother, to lure them — or if he intended to put their powers to work for him.

The person they’d been searching for ever since they’d met was close enough to — “Can we come to you?” Cam sputtered.

“Soon,” Miranda responded, clearing her throat. “Very soon. I’ll come to you.”

“Can you leave Rolling Hills? Will they let you leave? How will you get here?” Alex blurted.

“I can. There’s just been no reason before. I
haven’t — not in fifteen years. But if you are my babies, my lost babies —” Miranda couldn’t continue.

Why didn’t you come for us?
Alex only thought it, but through the phone, from 3,000 miles away, her mother heard. And answered.

“I was sick. And when I began to get well, I asked for you. And I was told you had not survived.”

“He told you that? Thantos?” Alex asked bitterly.

“And you believed it?” Cam wanted to know.

“In my heart, I never gave up hope. Apolla. Artemis. My lost babies.” Miranda could barely speak. “I’ll see you —”

“Wait!” Cam said, terrified that their mother would hang up, and somehow be lost to them again, this time forever. “Don’t go! I mean, where — are you coming here, to the house? When? Where can we meet you? Where will you be?”

“At the tree,” Miranda said. “I’ve pictured you there so many times. A gnarled old oak tree on a hill in a park overlooking a harbor. Is there such a place?”

“Mariner’s Park,” Cam said.

“But when?” Alex asked.

“Soon,” Miranda promised.