T*Witches: Split Decision (8 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE RESCUE

Cam’s life flashed before her in movie-style slo-mo. She was kicking, her chubby legs were like scissors as David Barnes hoisted baby Cam in the air.

She was snuggled in Emily’s lap, listening raptly to
Goodnight Moon.

She was the proud big sister rocking baby Dylan.

She was running through the house in Marble Bay, riding her two-wheeler to school, jumping on the bed during a sleepover at Beth’s house, booting her first soccer goal…

And then she was in Montana, looking into Alex’s eyes for the first time, feeling complete. Whole. Saved.

Something huge, hard as steel tongs, seized her rib
cage. Hands, she realized, feeling a pulse pushing through the palms of whatever mammoth creature was gripping her waist and pulling her up through the dark ooze. An angry voice echoed, as if through a megaphone, “What have you done?!”

The viselike grip held firm. Cam was being ripped out of the warmth, out of the deadly clinging slime, out of the murky water. Before she could completely process what was going on, she was being wrapped in a heavy blanket and set down gently on the ground. Then the sound of her own coughing drowned out everything else. She sensed someone massaging her back. These hands were softer, lighter than the ones that had dragged her out of the pond. She knew it was Shane. He was shaking, calling to her, “It’s all right, you’re safe.…”

She understood. She’d been brought back, saved. But not by him.

The recognition of who had rescued her dawned slowly and made her sick to her already twisting stomach: Thantos DuBaer. Her detested uncle had materialized out of nowhere and had done what no one else could or wanted to — rushed into the deadly pond, reached down, and plucked her out. Pulled her from darkness to light. Saved her life.

“I demand an explanation!” Cam heard him bellowing at the group. “How could you let this happen to my niece?”

Their answers, coming in a jumble all at once, betrayed their trembling fear. Cam heard fragments. “Summer Solstice … the candles … an accident…”

“An accident?” Thantos roared. “Not one of you brilliant witches or highly trained warlocks could rescue her?”

“We tried, my lord.…” Shane sounded lame, even to Cam’s clogged ears.

“If I find this to be a prank of some kind, punishment will be swift. And severe,” her uncle continued coldly. “Now get out, all of you!”

Cam was still coughing, shivering, her teeth would not stop chattering. Shane was holding her, but Thantos tore him away. “Maggot! First you betrayed me, now you betray my niece?! You who would be a hero! How dare you allow this to happen to her? Get out of my sight! At once!”

It was Thantos’s massive black cape she’d been wrapped in. It held his bitter aura, the scent of the predator. Cam knew she ought to have been flooded with relief, gratitude. Instead, she wondered if his rage at Shane was fueled by the anger of not killing her himself.

“You cannot possibly believe that,” the outraged tracker barked. Kneeling beside her now, he had easily read her mind.

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said out loud.

The hulking warlock stood abruptly and pulled her to her feet. From behind a grove of dark evergreens, Cam heard a horse whinny. Thantos snapped his fingers and Epona, or his twin, trotted out of the shadows. Before she could protest, Thantos had lifted Cam again — this time depositing her onto the enormous horse’s broad back. “We’ll get you back to Crailmore,” he told her as she desperately seized the saddle horn. “Miranda will take care of you.…”

He stared expectantly at Cam. With effort, she held his challenging gaze and nervously said, “Thank you.”

Thantos laid a hand on the great horse’s shiny neck, steadying the beast. “Then you can repay me —”

Cam stared at him. “What?”

Her uncle’s bellowing laugh caused the high-strung animal to paw the ground. “I demand nothing but your attention. I have things to tell you. And you must listen without prejudice. Not too high a price to pay, in exchange for your life, wouldn’t you agree?”

Before she could answer, he smacked the stallion’s flanks and sent him galloping toward the cliffs of Crailmore.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I COULDN’T SAVE YOU”

The flame danced, and a picture of Cam appeared inside the mirrored lid of the candle jar. She was submerged in water. But she was all right. Lolling against the porcelain ledge of a bathtub, Cam’s auburn hair was slicked back, dripping wet, her gray eyes were closed, soapy water reached to her shoulders, and she was breathing normally.

Alex’s racing heart slowed at the sight. The prickly tension left her body in a
whoosh
of relief and she collapsed on the floor, barely aware of Michaelina’s self-congratulatory told-you-so babble.

The sprightly sorceress had done it, pulled off the Situator spell. Even as Alex began to relax, she knew that
something bad
had
happened to her sister and that the SOS she’d received was real. But Cam’s pose was classic; her twin was in post-trauma mode. Whatever the threat had been, she was all right now. Alex had no strength left to find out exactly what had happened. She’d catch her breath, she decided, then connect later. She lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

“So, what, you’re going to fall asleep on me?” Michaelina mischievously demanded. “Before you even thank me?”

“Pretty much,” Alex murmured. She yawned and closed her eyes.

Someone was poking her. The first thing Alex saw when she opened her eyes was the last thing she’d seen before closing them. Michaelina.

The wiry witch was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Alex, cheek resting in her palm. “Do you always sleep this late?”

“Only when I’ve been wrenched awake by a twin in mortal danger. What time is it, anyway?”

“Four —”

What? Alex bolted upright. She’d slept all day — missed work, missed Cade?

“In the morning,” Mike informed her.

Alex fell back down. “Tell me this is your idea of a
joke.” She turned on her side, her back to Michaelina. “And then tell me — not to be rude — but ‘see ya later’ would work. Tell me you’re leaving now.”

“I
am
leaving. So are you. Assuming you still want to do what we talked about yesterday?”

They’d said a lot of things —

“Sara,” the pixie reminded Alex. “If we go now, we can get to the sacred ground before dawn. That’s the best time to call up the spirits of the dead.” Michaelina rushed to the phone and began dialing. “We’ll have to get to Salem before sunrise,” she announced. “So I’m calling us a cab. No use wasting time and energy on traveling spells. We’ll need all we can muster to work out a visit with your lost protector.”

Suddenly, Alex wasn’t sure. It was true that she longed to see Sara again, Sara, the best and only mother she’d known for fourteen of her fifteen years. But right now? Like this? With Michaelina in charge?

“I resent that.” Having ordered a taxi, the wounded witch slammed down the receiver. “Didn’t I help you see that your Wonder twin was safe and sound? Look around. Aren’t I the only one in this room who knows the right herbs, crystals, incantations? Unless you’d like to wing it —”

How do
you
know such an advanced spell? Alex
found herself thinking. To her knowledge, neither Mike nor the other Furies had ever been initiated.

“Through no fault of our own, I assure you,” Michaelina snapped. “But we
have
watched more initiations and snagged more secret books and picked up more tricks of the trade from unwitting Coventry initiates than most so-called
acceptable
fledglings. Trust me, I can get you to your mom faster than Ileana and Miranda combined. Especially since neither of them seems available or inclined to help you or your sister at the moment.”

Alex let the sarcasm slide. The pint-sized sorceress sounded very sure of herself. And uncertain as Alex was, she did yearn to hear Sara’s rasping voice again, to see her image, even if it was ghostly and not of flesh and blood. It had never really occurred to her to ask her mother, or Ileana, to summon Sara for her.

Once they were in the cab — en route to Salem Woods — the Coventry imp became noticeably edgy.

“Aren’t we there yet?” Mike harangued the driver. Snappish and impatient, her certainty that she could pull off the Transporter spell seemed to be fading, giving way to ill-tempered jitters. “You’d better not be taking us out of the way. Hello, do you even know where we’re going?”

Why was Mike so jumpy? It wasn’t as if Sara’s spirit
was waiting in the moonlit grove, tapping her watch and threatening to leave if they were late.

Michaelina immediately picked up Alex’s flippant thought. “I’d think you’d take this more seriously,” she scolded. “This is your dearly departed mother we’re talking about!”

“Speaking of. Why do we have to go all the way to Salem? There are other places where Cam and I have tapped into spirits, like Mariner’s Park where —”

“I don’t make the rules,” Mike retorted. “This is where they said —”

“They? Who’s they?” Instantly suspicious, Alex blurted, “This better not be a setup.”

“They? Did I say they? And, excuse me, but did you say setup?” Swinging deftly from defensive to insulted, Michaelina drew herself up, though she still barely came up to Alex’s shoulder. “You wanted to do this. Are you really getting cold feet about seeing the person who was most important to you? Well, I’m the witch with the power switch. I can make it happen. Unless you don’t think I’m capable.”

Carefully, Alex said, “Oh, I know you’re capable.” The question was of what.

Arms folded, Michaelina challenged, “Oh, I get it. You’re scared.”

She had reason to be. She’d been in the woods of
Salem, Massachusetts, once before. Ghosts roamed the wilderness. Spectral apparitions had come to her as breezes, ruffling her hair, tingling her scalp. She’d smelled musty robes, the charred threads of clothing long ago turned to ash. Something, Cam had hysterically sworn, had reached out and touched her. Alex herself had heard muffled, deep, wounded voices urging her and Cam to go back. Because if they stayed in those woods, the voices warned, he who they loved would follow them and die.

He
was Karsh. He had come to save them, just as the spirits had prophesied. And there he had suffered a terrible death.

Alex remembered the stricken old warlock lying on the ground, inside the circle of stones; she could still see Ileana leaning down to comfort him, straining to catch the fallen tracker’s last words. Which Alex had heard and, in the grief and fear that had followed his passing, had nearly forgotten. Now she recalled they were about a book.…

“Keep the change. Both pennies,” Michaelina snapped at the driver, hopping out of the cab and slamming the door. The taxi sped off, leaving her and Alex in a cloud of dust.

To her immense relief, Alex saw that this was not the same area she and Cam had traveled to before. The
forest where Lord Karsh had been killed had been near the water, smelling of salt and brine. This place was dry, its ground a bed of soft pine needles.

Still, this woodland was eerie in another way. Alex couldn’t put her finger on it until Michaelina led her onto a narrow dirt road that cut through the forest. An old, weather-beaten sign nailed to a tree alongside the path told the story:
GALLOWS HILL.
This was the executioners’ lair. In these very woods, victims of the witch trials not burned or drowned were hanged.

But why would Sara’s spirit be here? Sara had been a protector, and though she held firm beliefs about the beauty and bounty of nature and its ability to heal sick souls, she wasn’t a witch. And she hadn’t been murdered, unless you counted the big C as a killer. Lung cancer, not a noose, had ended Sara’s life. Nor had she any ancestors that Alex knew of whose spirits might haunt this place.

“Over there.” Michaelina stopped, pointing to a thicket of evergreens. “We’ll cast a sacred circle right there.”

Alex’s stomach lurched. Until this moment, she hadn’t completely believed this would happen. Only now it felt very, very real. It sounded real, as if, over the buzz and scramble of forest creatures, someone was breathing, waiting only to be summoned.

Alex sniffed the air, expecting the aroma of violets,
of chamomile and chocolate, her mother’s sweet scents. She caught a whiff of something else — medicinal and acrid.…

“Pay attention!” Michaelina ordered. With the slim branch in her hand, she scurried to draw a circle in the earth. Even before it was complete, the urchin extracted stones from her drawstring pouch. “Opals to contact the spirit world,” she announced. “And lots of marjoram —”

The traveler’s herb, Alex knew. Mike’s candle was courtesy of the Cami collection, an aromatherapy candle she’d swiped from the nightstand.

“Come inside.” Michaelina held out her hand, and Alex took it, stepping into the circle. “Are you ready?”

Numbly, Alex nodded, her pulse pounding in her ears, until she could barely hear the incantation.

      
In the pale before day, in the dark beyond night,

      
Good spirit, grace us with your light

      
Grant that Alexandra, the daughter adored,

      
May see you, and hear you, dear mother, once more,

      
Seeking truth and guidance, she braves this black glen.

      
Be with her now, Sara, as you were with her then.

“Don’t be upset.” Michaelina gave Alex’s hand a surprisingly strong squeeze. “She might not look exactly as you remember her.”

A breeze picked up and Alex shivered. A faint tinkling gave way to a rustling, to footsteps in the forest. From behind a tangle of trees, a thin, tiny ray of light shone. Alex watched it in awe until its brightness forced her to shut her eyes. When she reopened them, a cloaked figure stood in the shadows, just outside the circle.

Alex’s eyes clouded; her throat closed. Was it…?

“Yes, it is. I was hoping you would send for me. I’ve been waiting.”

Alex gasped. Sara’s voice — it wasn’t… hoarse. She spoke in a whisper, but there was no wheezing, no coughing. A wild thought came to Alex. In death, had Sara been cured, the ravages of years of smoking cleansed from her lungs and throat? “Mommy?” She swallowed hard. “Are you … is it… okay?”

“Yes,” the soft voice answered. And Sara was somehow taller, as if, unbent by illness, she could stand straighter than ever. Her eyes were not the warm golden brown Alex remembered. They were the duller brown of sparrow’s wings, and watery. Had she been crying? And her skin, it had been so gray and drawn just before she died. Although Alex couldn’t make out her features
clearly, the woman before her had a smooth sheen to her skin, a translucency. Alex had the overwhelming urge to run to her. It would take only one giant step, one leap outside the circle.…

“She’ll leave if you do.” Mike squeezed her hand again. “It’s not allowed.”

Alex had seen only one other spirit. Her grandmother Leila, who was not exactly the kind of ghost you wanted to get close to. But Sara! Alex scoured her mother’s face, wondering, did she remember all they’d done and had together, would she call her by her cherished childhood nickname —

“Lexi…” the spirit whispered.

No. Allie had been Sara’s name for her. Could she have forgotten? Alex fought her quick disappointment. She knew so little about what happened to a person after … what they remembered or forgot. “Mommy,” she said, “I have so much to tell you, to ask you —”

“We have little time. I can’t stay long,” Sara warned without smiling.

Alex took a deep breath. “I’m okay. I hope you weren’t worrying, because everything worked out. I have a twin. Did you know?”

There was no answer. Alex said softly, “I’m safe, Mommy.”

“I never doubted it. You are a strong girl, Alexandra. I always had faith in you. You must listen now, I have things to tell you.”

“Wait, okay?” Alex couldn’t help interrupting. There was something she’d wanted to say ever since Sara’s death. The words caught in her throat now, choking her. But she had to get them out. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you. I didn’t know then all the stuff I know now. I didn’t know how to help. But soon I’ll be able to do more —”

A thin arm shot out from the spirit’s cowled sleeve. Sara put her hand up as if to silence her daughter. But the floodgates had opened and Alex couldn’t stop. Bursting into tears, gulping and sobbing, she said, “I was only fourteen. And I didn’t know how to save you. Mommy, I’m so sorry.”

“You waste your time feeling sorry for yourself,” the spirit unexpectedly admonished.

Alex was stunned. “No,” she managed. “Not for myself, for you —”

“It’s too late for me, Alexandra, but there are others who need you. Who call out for you even now. I hear them every day. You have the power to heal so many mortal souls, but they are too far away. The longer you stay here, the more harm you do.”

What was Sara telling her? She was hurting people, shirking her helping and healing duty, by staying in Marble Bay?

The spirit nodded.

But this was where she lived now. With Dave and Emily, who’d taken her in; with Dylan, the brother she’d bonded with; and especially with Cam, the sister she needed. And Cade. He’d come back to Marble Bay just to be with her.

In life, Sara could not read Alex’s mind. She didn’t have to; she’d always known her daughter’s heart. Now she said sternly, “You must not allow your feelings to prevent you from doing what you were born to do. Not even for him, this boy.”

She knew about Cade?

“You must leave the home of those who took you in,” Sara told her. “They are good people, but they are not your destiny. You are needed elsewhere.”

Chills shuddered through Alex. Sara was telling her to go to Coventry —

“No, not the island. You are needed at home. In the place we lived together. That was my charge when I was chosen as your protector. You must return to Montana. Soon.”

Alex couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It had
blindsided her, come out of left field. Her tears started up again, though she bit her lip trying to hold them back. Finally, she said, “Is that what you want me to do?”