T*Witches: The Power of Two (15 page)

Cam snorted. "You know I am."

"I just thought of something."

"I hope it's a short thought. It's really late and I'm fried."

Alex sat upright in bed. "When you were telling me about Marleigh's vanishing act, you said the white face, the bleacher-creature, forced you to look up in the stands. Tell me again what you saw—I mean, besides him and the little kid who was running."

Cam flipped from her back onto her side and yawned. "Just what I told you. Marleigh was gone. Nightmare man had taken her place next to Tonya—"

"What was Tonya doing?" Alex leaned forward.

"What do you mean? She was watching the game. Watching me blow the game, if that's what you're getting at—" Cam sat up. "Okay, even though Tonya wasn't playing because of her ankle, she was wearing her team uniform. Her crutches were propped up next to her."

"Was she screaming, like, go, team, go? Or some lame cheer?" Alex prompted.

"Yeah, really lame." Cam almost laughed, remembering how Tonya wildly shrieked, "Kill them!" But that was earlier. When Marleigh left... "She was on the phone," Cam recalled.

"Her cell phone?"

Cam nodded.

"You just said Marleigh needed to make an important call and couldn't get a signal," Alex said. "It was Tonya who suggested she try going behind the stands. And no one saw her ever again."

Camryn Barnes and Alexandra Fielding had identical reactions. "How come Tonya's phone worked just fine in the stands—" Alex wondered aloud.

Cam finished the thought. "And Marleigh's didn't?"

"We have to tell someone," Cam said, for the fifth time, as she poured cereal into twin bowls.

It was Sunday morning, and the girls had slept in. Dave and Emily had left a note reminding Cam they were at their weekly tennis game and would be back in a few hours.

"Sure we do," Alex, who was perched on a tall stool by the kitchen counter, sarcastically replied. "We should tell, oh, I don't know, your parents? The police? How 'bout the media? And you're going to say exactly what? That you saw—in exquisite, minute detail—what you were too far away to have possibly seen? Tonya on her cell phone?"

Cam put the cereal box down and frowned. Alex was right, of course. From her position on the field, no way could anyone see that much detail in the bleachers. No one
normal
, that is. She sighed.

"While you're on the topic," Alex teased, "why not tell everyone about what happened at Big Sky? How we saw and heard what we couldn't possibly have, how we mended the rusted Ferris wheel bolts? You can even throw in the part about the rhyming thing."

Cam gulped. She still had no clue why, at certain times, these rhymes, or as Alex called them, incantations, popped into her head.

Alex flipped on the kitchen TV. She channel surfed, but couldn't get away from what had become a national obsession. Regurgitating the same old, same old. The singer had vanished. She'd been getting strange e-mails. Which they'd traced to a computer in town. And that's where the trail went cold.

Cam grabbed spoons and brought their breakfast to the table. "Snag the milk, okay?" She nodded at the fridge.

Alex opened the refrigerator door. She was nearly blinded by the white, bright, spilling over-fullness of it all. Containers of juice and milk, bottled water, cold cuts wrapped in crinkly waxed paper, a loaf and a half of bread, eight bottles of salad dressing lined up in the shelf on the door, plastic containers of leftovers.

A picture of her own pitiful half-fridge in the trailer came to her. The wilted lettuce, the pocked tomato, the mostly empty jar of peanut butter—clear evidence that something was wrong, that her mom wasn't taking care of business. That she was going downhill fast. Why hadn't Alex picked up on the clues, and insisted that Sara be seen at the clinic immediately?

She didn't mean to slam Cam's fridge shut, but apparently, she did. Hard enough to rattle the salad dressing bottles.

Cam whirled around, annoyed. "It can break, you know."

"So?" Alex, whose heart was breaking just that second said, "Just get a new one. What's it to you?"

Cam closed her eyes. Was this how it was going to be every single day? She almost wished Alex had never shown up. And that she'd leave. Soon.

But Alex instantly apologized. "That remark, as my teacher Miss Flock used to say, was totally uncalled for, young lady. I'm sorry, Camryn. Anyway, it was an accident. I didn't mean to slam it. I barely touched it." Opening it slowly now, she was relieved to see nothing had smashed.

"I know you didn't. C'mon, have some cereal. It's my signature dish."

Alex laughed. "No-can-cook, huh? I'll have to teach you."

"What's your specialty?"
"Oh, you know," she said with a mischievous twinkle. "Fried pig, opossum tails, deer brains. Just the usual for us hicks."

"Cute, remind me to get the reci—" Cam stopped mid-quip. The voice coming from the TV screen was too familiar. Tonya, being interviewed outside her house.

"I can't believe those news goons are stalking her," Cam said indignantly.
Alex shook her head. "She knows more than she's saying."

"What are
you
saying? That Tonya had something to do with Marleigh's disappearance? Your mojo's in no-go, Alex."
Alex lifted the cereal bowl to her mouth and gulped down the last of the milk. Something Cam used to do before Dylan started imitating her.

"Right. I'm just a clueless yokel from Montana," Alex said, wiping her mouth with the napkin. "But you said no one knows her all that well, right?"

Cam sighed. "What I said was, she's a loner. It doesn't make her capable of... you know."

Alex shrugged, grabbed both their bowls, and went to the sink to wash them.

"You don't have to do that," Cam said, following her. "I'll get 'em."

"I'm not chore-allergic," Alex said sharply. "Or, for that matter, too fragile to earn my keep. Speaking of which, would you know if there are any baby-sitting gigs up for grabs?"

"I guess. Why?"

"I need a job."

"You do?" Cam chuckled. "I thought you weren't staying."

"I'm not. Not forever, anyway. But since I don't know how I got here, obviously, I can't get back the same way. And without money, I'm stuck here."

Cam grabbed a towel and furiously wiped the bowls dry. "My parents will give you money. If you want to leave that bad."

Alex's voice softened. "Look, I have to stay at least until the DNA results come back. And I'm used to working. It's what I do. Anyway, it looked like fun—I'd rather be minding kids than stuck in that suffocating ticket booth at cheesy old Big Sky."

Cam smiled. "You really like kids, huh?"

"I really do," Alex conceded. "You know that kid Jenny, the one Beth babysits? She's hyper-freaked about the Marleigh thing."

"Everyone in town is—in case you hadn't noticed."

"There's something else going on. Poor kid has this twisted idea it's her fault Marleigh vanished."

Now Cam put down the dishes. "You spent like a half second with this child. And somehow you know all this already?"

Softly, Alex said, "She's a mess. Beth knows it. She just doesn't know why, let alone how to help her."

It only took a second for Cam to recognize the look in Alex's eyes. "You have a hunch, don't you? You think Jenny, a seven-year-old, knows something about Marleigh."

"All I know is this: Jenny is one terrified little chickadee. Maybe she saw something, maybe not. But if I can help her, I want to. I want us both to."

"What can we do?" Cam challenged. "It's awful that Jenny somehow blames herself for Marleigh's disappearance. But where do we come in? We're not shrinks or anything. We're got problems of our own."

"Maybe so," Alex said, staring hard at Cam. "Whoever we are really? We can do what no one can—read minds, maybe figure out what really happened."

Thirty minutes later, after getting the address from Beth, they were ringing the bell at Jenny's house. If fell to Cam, who had met the girl's parents once, to get them in the door. And while Cam chatted with Jenny's mom—explaining how they'd noticed Jenny was pretty upset yesterday and thought they could get her to open up about what was bothering her—Alex would talk to Jenny again and try to help her.

Alex found Jenny in her bedroom. The walls were plastered with pictures. Some were the child's own crayoned artwork on construction paper, others were glossies of Marleigh Cooper, cut out of magazines. Jenny was still in bed, wearing pajamas.

She was clutching a book, her hair an uncombed ball of frizz-curls.

"Hey, Jenny." Alex waved from the doorway. "Remember me? We met at the duck pond, yesterday."

Jenny's pale blue eyes took Alex in. Her birdlike body stiffened.

Memories of her own sickening childlike terror, when Hardy Beeson would stand in the doorframe, with that twisted look on his face, demanding money, came flooding back to Alex. She didn't want to scare the tousled tot. "Is it okay if I come in?" she asked, smiling. "Your mommy said I could talk to you for a minute. But if you don't want, that's cool. I'll just go."

She held her breath. But Jenny didn't boot her. Instead she whispered into her book, "You could stay."

"Thank you," Alex said, walking over to the bed. "I wanted to ask you something. What made you say I was bad yesterday? I know you didn't really mean it. I'm a friend of Beth's and you like her, right?"

Jenny glanced up at Alex finally. "Beth's nice. We're friends."

"I'd like to be your friend, too. If that's okay with you."

Jenny shrugged her narrow shoulders and buried her head deeper into her book.

Alex checked its cover. It was about princesses who could fly. "You like that story?" she ventured. "Can you read it all by yourself?"

Jenny didn't respond. Alex tried again. "In the picture, it looks like the princesses are superheroes. Did I get that right?"

Jenny slammed the book shut, pressed her lips together, and stared out the window.

Way to be lame, Alex reprimanded herself. Like pretend-bonding over a book would magically make this kid open up. Of course it wasn't going to work. Kids always know when you try to manipulate them.

"Jenny, can you just look at me for a minute?" Gently, she reached out and lifted the child's chin. Jenny didn't resist. But the little girl's eyes never reached Alex's face: They froze when they got to her necklace. Jenny started to shake.

That boy! That bad boy! I don't like him!

Had Jenny said that or only thought it? Alex was pretty sure it was the latter. "Jenny, sweetie," she explained, "this is just a silly charm. I know it looks scary, but it can't hurt you. It's just tin, like a toy."

Jenny swallowed and gripped her book so tightly, the tips of her bitten-off fingernails whitened. Her heart began to beat wildly.
He took her away!

Alex's stomach twisted. She pushed on, trying to keep her voice light. "Lots of people wear them. It doesn't mean they're bad. Some people wear them as earrings. Even boys! Isn't that silly?"

Jenny's silence filled the room but Alex didn't want to stop. "Guess what. I'm new in Marble Bay. But I heard there's a boy who works at the CD store. A tall boy who wears an earring just like this. I bet you saw him when you went to buy Marleigh's CD, right?"

Suddenly, Jenny shook her head vigorously. At the mention of Marleigh's name, pools of tears formed in her perfectly round blue eyes. "My mommy bought me her song."

Alex took a sharp breath. "You never went to that store, Music & More?"

Jenny didn't answer. Alex continued. "But you know the boy I'm talking about, don't you?"

The trembling little girl folded her bony arms across her chest. "I'll get in trouble if I say."

"I promise I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to. But this is for Marleigh. Maybe we can help find her. Where did you see this boy?"

"Go away now!" Jenny suddenly erupted, balling her hand into a fist. "I don't want to talk to you anymore!"

"Hey, Jen." The voice came from the doorway: It was Cam's and she kept it level, casual. "That's okay. You don't have to talk to her if you don't want to."

Alex glared at Cam.
But it would be really important if she did! She saw something the day Marleigh disappeared. I'm sure of it. The kid's in big trouble. I'm doing my best to help her. Think you can do better?

Alex had thought that, spoken to Cam in silence. And Cam had heard it clearly. She was getting pretty cool at this. Furtively, she glanced around the room. Was there something she could do to win Jenny's trust, to get her to open up?

Her eye fell on one of the crayon drawings on the wall, a rainbow over a girl with long yellow hair. Cam realized the crudely drawn figure was Jenny's rendition of Marleigh.

Enchant her!

Huh? Who'd said that? Not Alex. Her look-alike hadn't even
thought
that.

Yet the voice—how weird!—sounded familiar.

Enchant her? What did that mean? Delight her? Dazzle her? What would enchant a seven-year-old? Cam had an idea. A dumb one, maybe—but it was the only one she could scrounge up on short notice.

She stared hard at the child's drawing of Marleigh. She gazed intently at the rainbow. But nothing happened, nothing changed. Then she felt the heat rising in her again. Easy, she told herself, not too hot... Cam's eyes stung and began to tear. The rainbow blurred.