T*Witches: Don’t Think Twice (6 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THIS JUST IN

Ileana hung around just long enough to tear into them.

“The Transporter is off-limits to you! None but the initiated may use it.” She stalked around the Barneses’ family room, cape flaring, stiletto heels clicking on the polished wood floor, while Cam nervously toyed with the spell book Ileana had left them. “Which you two” — whirling dramatically, she pointed at Cam and Alex — “are not. And will not be until your sixteenth birthdays — if you survive until then!”

Before they could protest, or remind her that it was she who’d given them the book, Ileana snatched it back, adding, “As your guardian, I forbid you to use that spell
again. Do not think about trying to find that photographer. Or, for that matter, your mother.”

Cam, shaken from the hit-and-run, was curled up in a corner of the couch. Her cell phone rang, but she didn’t bother answering it. She only whimpered, “You don’t know what it’s like. Not knowing if one of your real parents is dead or alive. It can be —”

“Frustrating, maddening, all consuming?” Ileana’s searing eyes softened briefly with compassion. “I have some small experience in the area,” she assured them. “Now,” she continued, pausing to clear her throat, “if, against all odds and evidence, Miranda is alive — big if — I will be the one to find her. End of story.”

She turned away abruptly, as if to prove the conversation was over. But, Alex suspected, it was her thoughts Ileana wanted to hide from them.

She wasn’t fast enough.

What they just accomplished is amazing. Karsh was right
.

Alex caught every glowing word.

Together, they’re powerful beyond imagination. But they need so much help. Without humility, education, discipline, and the wisdom of an ancient community to guide them, their talents can be corrupted; their gifts become their downfall. Bright as they are
, Ileana told herself,
they cannot win against Thantos! They
may not even be capable of besting Fredo’s wild boys, who were probably sent by their miserable uncle to taunt the twins. The very idea that Thantos pretends to know where Miranda is, that he visits her, is probably a trap. He must be stopped. Now!

With a regal toss of her flaxen hair, Ileana announced, “I’m off.”

“Wait.” Alex sprang from the high-backed chair she’d been parked in. “You’re supposed to help us. I mean, if you don’t believe Miranda is alive, then tell us what the notes mean. Someone’s been sending us messages about Miranda. We think they’re from Thantos. Can you at least confirm or deny?”

Ileana heaved a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I’ll grant you one more minute of my valuable time. Make the most of it.”

Alex darted up to their room and was down a moment later with the two anonymous notes they’d received.

Ileana read them, turned them over, sniffed at the paper they’d come on. “You think this is Thantos’s work? You must be joking,” she said finally. “Not even the most primitive witch or warlock would communicate in this coarse fashion. This,” she said, tossing the pages back to Alex, “is a joke from one of your infantile friends.”

Cam was depressed. The feeling was new to her and unwelcome. They’d messed up the spell and, in addition
to not being any closer to finding Miranda, it had cost an innocent man his life.

Now Ileana was gone and Cam’s brain was stuck on replay. Alex had ended up in the right place, but left without a single lead. Both the picture and the dude who took it were MIA. Ileana and probably Karsh were furious with them.

If only that was the worst of it. Not even.

That would come when Emily Barnes got home.

Cam’s mild-mannered mom was a wreck. Coat askew, with hat hair, makeupless, she stomped toward the front door in high heels made for stylish strolling. “Wreck” morphed into “wrath” when she realized the twins were in the family room. Tossing down her fuzzy hat, blue eyes blazing, she laced into them.

“You’re here? You’re home? I called everywhere! No one knew where you were! I called your cell phone five minutes ago!”

Cam gulped. She wanted to say something, but her mom was just warming up. No way would she get a word in here.

“You cut school! One of you called and pretended to be me — how could you lie like that?” With each sentence, Emily’s voice seemed to go up an octave. Had Dylan gotten trapped into confessing? Cam wondered — but not for long. Emily promptly solved that mystery.

“The dentist called!” As if she’d just read Cam’s mind, Emily railed, “He wanted to see if you could come in during lunch today instead of after school. I called you. When I couldn’t get through, I tried the school office. Imagine my surprise — and embarrassment — to find out that I had called earlier this morning!” Cam’s stomach fell, landing with a splash in a puddle of guilt.

“Where were you? Your father and I were worried sick! Didn’t you even think about that?” Emily stopped pacing and stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at them.

We didn’t think we’d get caught
, Alex was thinking.

Emily stared right at her. “Or didn’t it occur to you that you might get caught!”

Alex’s jaw dropped. Had the woman read her mind? Well, if Alex returned the favor, she’d probably catch Emily thinking: This kind of thing never happened before Alex got here!

She knew she was being paranoid. Emily was, just as ticked at Cam, maybe even more so since Princess Perfect never got in trouble, Alex thought sourly, until, oops, trouble came to her.

Quietly, Cam said, “Mom? Just one thing. It wasn’t Alex. It was me. If you have to blame one of us, blame me. And also … Mom? We won’t do it again.”

If Emily heard her, she didn’t show it. She’d spent hours panicked at the thought that something awful had happened to them. She was too worked up now to turn the switch to cool down. In fact, she was just warming up.

“If I find out you involved your brother in this …”

Alex fell back onto the opposite end of the sofa where Cam had curled up again. Without glancing at each other, they suffered in polite silence through Emily’s tirade. It finally ended with, “I can’t wait to hear why you did this and, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I’m assuming there’s a very good reason.”

Of course there was. Just none Emily would believe. In fact, there was nothing they could say to Dave, either, when he arrived home a few minutes later. David Barnes, who knew Karsh, who knew the importance of protecting the girls — though not specifically why or from what — was as angry as Cam had ever seen him. Clearly, he was severely shaken by what might have happened to them, and of failing as a father and a guardian.

“But, Dad,” Cam began.

“We’re so sorry, uh …” Alex thoughtfully omitted “dude” from the end of the sentence.

Emily sighed deeply and glanced at her husband. His usually smiling, mustached face was stern and ashen.

Cam looked at Alex, who nodded knowingly.

They were so grounded.

Grounded at home. Detention at school. Alex’s life was nothing if not well balanced. Twin punishments for only one twin.

Of course, cutting was not exactly Alex’s first infraction at Marble Bay High. But it was Cam’s trouble debut, so she got off scot-free —

Unless you counted the Six Pack’s slam book of snooping. Beth, Kristen, Bree, Sukari, and Amanda were all over the leader of the pack to spill, dish, get down, and tell them where she and her twin had been. In the end they had to settle for Cam’s lame excuse: “Als and I just had stuff to do.”

Everyone swallowed it but Beth.

All morning long, Cam’s curly-haired bff pestered her. “What happened? Why didn’t you answer my calls, my IMs? Were you at the doctor? Did it have to do with your … you know … mini space-out the other day?”

Cam pressed assurances on Beth, but nothing worked. In third period Spanish, her rangy bud played the I-know-you-better-than-anyone, I-know-when-something’s-wrong card. And then, her voice laced with real fear, she asked softly, “You’re not, like, sick or anything, are you?”

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.”