T*Witches: The Witch Hunters (8 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SERSEE’S REVENGE

The witch hunters swept out of the classroom, hurrying to catch up with Sersee, who was howling with laughter.

A moment later, Cam rushed in, pale as paper. “You’re okay?! Oh my god, Als. You have no idea what I thought — what I just saw — what I thought I saw!”

“Nothing wrong with your eyes, Chamomile.” Alex allowed her sister to hug her feverishly, then allowed herself to hug Cam back. “She was here. Sersee. Spenser is, or used to be, her Protector.”

Floored, Cam gasped, “Mr. Spenser and Sersee?! Get out.”

“He was also the Witch Hunter,” Alex said.

“I figured that out. Sukari came by. Als, he thinks she’s a witch.” Cam stopped abruptly and stepped back. “Did you say ‘was’?” Belatedly she’d picked up on the fine distinction.

“Spenser. Yes. He
was
the Witch Hunter. Totally past tense. Sersee fired him. It was pitiful —”

“Not half as pitiful as that mob of morons running after her,” Cam noted. “Where’s she taking them? What were they doing here? Was Spenser throwing a Mr. Witch Hunter contest at Marble Bay High?”

“She’s going to sic them on some poor slob who she says is really evil.” Alex shook her head. “Can you imagine how bad someone has to be for Sersee to think they’re evil? Um, excuse me?” It was Alex’s turn to be slow on the uptake. “Did you say you figured out that Zany Brainy was the Witch Hunter?”

“Spenser, yeah.” Cam nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yo, Lucy,” Alex teased, throwing an arm over her sister’s shoulder and heading for the door, “I think you’ve got some s’plainin’ to do —”

Ileana was impressed. Not by the shining steel-and-glass architecture of Massachusetts CompUMag, or by the carefully clipped trees and shrubs in front of it, or the
spotless circular drive leading up to the building, but by the fact that she and Miranda, working together, had achieved liftoff.

They’d used a basic locator spell to find Thantos. That part was easy. Elementary. Then they’d stood on Coventry’s shore like a pair of beginners, peering across the water at the mainland and wondering when the next ferry would arrive. Finally, Miranda, reading the younger witch’s thoughts, had glanced at Ileana and said, “Well, shall we?”

Okay, so it had taken three tries. But they’d finally gotten the traveling spell right. Right herbs. Right crystals. Right incantation. And, most important, right thinking. When they had rid themselves of anger, selfish motives, and desire for revenge, the charm worked like a charm.

The proof? Here they were, witches on a mission, standing before the tidy glass doors of the hulking trickster’s headquarters.

“Getting here was the easy part,” Miranda reminded Ileana. “Now we have to find Karsh’s journal. That is, if that horrible little witch wasn’t lying about giving it to Thantos.”

“She was too ticked off to lie,” was Ileana’s opinion. “Imagine, she gave him the book hoping he’d take her under his wing, prop up her power, teach her tracker secrets.
And the sly skunk accepted the gift and said thank you by disabling her. He’s got the journal. I’m certain of it.”

“I was just thinking,” Miranda began.

Ileana cut her off curtly. “Hello, I know what you were just thinking and there’s no time now.”

“But we’re so near —”

“First the book, then your babies, okay? There’ll be time enough to visit Cam and Alex later. For goodness’ sake, Miranda, stay focused.”

They entered the spacious lobby, their sandaled feet clicking over the flawless marble floor. A burly man in a spick-and-span dark blue suit, a security tag dangling from a gleaming chain and an earpiece trailing wire down his neck, stopped them and asked to see their ID.

“I’m Mr. DuBaer’s sister-in-law,” Miranda offered, smiling politely.

“And I’m his daughter,” Ileana groused.

“And I’m his mother’s third cousin once removed,” the immaculate rent-a-cop sneered. “No ID, no entry. Get it, girls?”

“Once removed? I’ll show you once removed,” Ileana snapped, fishing for the piece of iron pyrite in the leather pouch at her belt. Pyrite for deception, for making things disappear. She’d have settled for the tektite, which sucked up bad energy like a Hoover.

“Oh, please, allow me.” Miranda’s cool hand landed gently on Ileana’s wrist. Smiling all the while, the older witch stared directly into the big man’s little eyes. Which, at once, began to water. Then from the pocket of her long robe, she withdrew a handful of herbs. She opened her palm under the blinking guard’s bulbous nose and allowed him to stare stupidly at the green flakes.

“Together?” Miranda asked Ileana without turning her head.

“Make a wish.” Ileana laughed. And together they blew the herbs into the man’s face. “Ta-ta.” Miranda fluttered her now-empty fingers at him.

“Sleep tight,” Ileana crooned, slipping the pyrite into his handkerchief pocket a moment before he fell over backward, making the polished floor quake.

Thantos felt the tremor two stories up.

He’d been sitting at his gleaming mahogany desk, flipping through Karsh’s worthless story — his futile attempt to unseat Thantos and turn the dynasty over to the DuBaer women.

With growing anger, he had been rereading the part about how he, as a boy, had urged his father to investigate the caves of Coventry. The caves in which his father had been ambushed and killed. Slain, old Karsh insisted,
by one of the traitorous, deranged, and derelict warlocks who lurked underground.

It was a pity that no one but Karsh and the murderer had witnessed the act. The mad culprit was long dead. Thantos had seen to that years ago. And now the ancient tracker was dead, too. Delicious irony. Thantos’s own nephews, his imbecile brother Fredo’s sons, had taken care of that.

Only they, two dead men, had heard Nathaniel’s last words. The words that had ripped the DuBaer dynasty from its rightful heirs, Nathaniel’s sons — Aron, Fredo, and the only one left with the brains and brawn to claim it, Thantos.

According to Karsh, Nathaniel had placed his family and its fortune in the care of his granddaughters. Only females would head the family. Females immune to the Antayus Curse.

Which left out Thantos’s own ungrateful child, Ileana, since her long-dead mother had been an Antayus. But left in his brother Aron’s troublesome twins, Camryn and Alexandra. Miranda’s children. Wild girls who had not even been reared on Coventry and had not yet been initiated.

They never would be, Thantos vowed. Not while he lived.

He had just taken a deep, calming breath. He had
just tapped the passage with his forefinger — the passage that spoke of who had killed his father underground. There it was. His way out. Then the hair on the nape of his neck bristled, signaling that enemies were near.

Thantos sniffed once, lavishly, as if he were testing the quality of tobacco in a fine cigar. Crisp air, mingled with juniper berries and evergreen needles, came first to his nostrils. It was the unmistakable scent of Coventry.

Sersee, he thought. He had left the girl on the sea cliff, her pale betrayed face pointing toward the battering wind. He looked around his spacious office for a place to hide the book.

It was too late. As he scanned the pleasingly uncluttered space, the locked doors before him flew back. Instead of the vengeful urchin, he faced two agitated women. One was the gentle, beautiful, and gullible mother of the twins, his rivals; the other, their guardian, his own hotheaded offspring, Ileana.

A broad and surprisingly earnest smile erased his startled look.

These two he could deal with. Always had. Although he was less than pleased that Miranda, who had always been so open, admiring, and accepting of him, had taken up with his bone-hard brat. It was more than a nuisance, actually. It was almost a threat.

As was his custom, Thantos tuned into Miranda’s mind. What he heard — or didn’t hear — emptied his smile of sincerity. She had closed the door against him. Miranda, who had trusted him unwaveringly since Aron’s death, was scrambling her thoughts. Shutting him out.

“Yes, well, it’s always nice to have a visit from family,” he said, struggling to disguise his displeasure. “You must be tired. It’s a long way from Coventry.”

“We took a shortcut,” his snotty daughter snapped.

Miranda, he noticed, took the girl’s hand. “Thantos,” she said in the light, whispery voice he adored, “I’ve just seen something terrible. And been told something worse. Of course, I can’t believe it of you — ”

Ileana snorted sarcastically but held her tongue.

“I can’t imagine what you mean. Sit. Please.” Thantos set down the book as casually as if it were a computer magazine he’d been browsing. He put it on his tidy desk and pretended to shuffle through a few papers, which he then placed over Karsh’s journal. He had not so much disguised the pages as hidden them in plain sight, then he turned back to face his guests.

“We found a girl, a child —” Miranda began.

“Sersee,” Ileana cut in.

“Sersee?” Thantos’s expression didn’t change but his dark eyes glinted angrily. “I don’t believe I know anyone by that name.”

“Oh, yeah, well she knows you, Big Daddy.”

The hand holding Ileana’s administered a knuckle-busting squeeze. “She told us a very distressing story,” Miranda continued.

Thantos stroked his beard. “Sersee, Sersee,” he tested the name. “I think I recall the girl now. A homeless waif, a liar, and a thief. She and her friends, the Furies, they call themselves, have been pillaging the island for years.”

“A liar and a thief? Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you? If you can name it, you can claim it,” Ileana hissed.

Like an incensed bull, Thantos’s thick shoulders reared up. His arm swung back. Miranda jumped in front of Ileana to block the blow. But the exasperated tracker turned away from both of them and brought his fist crashing down on his desk.

The papers he’d spread over Karsh’s book flew up. The cover flipped open. Inside its hollow shell sat the precious pages.

“That’s mine!” Ileana roared, rushing forward.

“Then take it!” Thantos tore the pages from their nest and flung them at his daughter.

Miranda gasped. Thantos turned on her with a look of such rage that she put up her hands involuntarily, as if to protect herself from him.

He saw her wince and recoil. He turned away again, trying to calm down and to think — which for Thantos meant only one thing — to work out a way to regain his advantage.

It infuriated him that Miranda had witnessed his loss of control. He blamed it on Ileana. And on his daughter’s mewling guardian, Karsh Antayus.

The Antayus Curse had destroyed dozens of DuBaer men. That was why Nathaniel, Thantos’s own father, had decided that only women should head the dynasty. Well, here, Thantos thought, striking his own thick chest, was one man the curse would fail to crush. But he needed Miranda on his side.

“Forgive me,” he said, the moment he saw that it was his only option.

Dramatically, he grasped her hands. “Miranda, please forgive my outburst, my terrible temper, my frustration. You must know I would never harm you or your children. It was for you and for them that I wanted to read Karsh’s words. I was going to give his journal to you as soon as I had finished it. I took it to make certain it did not fall into the hands of one who would use it badly. Misuse it to cause a rift between us. To sow doubt and fear in you. To turn you against me.”

He paused to glare at Ileana, but she barely noticed
him now. She was wiping the soiled book with the hem of her skirt. At the sight of Karsh’s familiar cramped writing, her eyes had filled with tears.

Thantos threw her a contemptuous look, then turned back to Miranda. “I took the book from my own daughter only to help you. I took it from Ileana. Yes. From an Antayus whose hatred of DuBaers is in her blood — ”

An audacious hoot interrupted him. He turned toward the sound, toward the doors Ileana and Miranda had flung open. In the wide frame stood Sersee, laughing and pointing at him.

“Who took the book?” she howled. “Not you, coward. Not you, too noble to sully your hands. It was I, the lowly orphan you thought you could destroy!”

She flew past him, her cape sailing out behind her, and rapped on the pane of the enormous window behind his desk.

A commotion started up from below. A strange chanting that only Sersee seemed to understand. The trio, Thantos, Miranda, and Ileana, rushed to join her at the window.

Two stories below, they saw a riot in progress. A horde of strangers in black capes and hoods trudged before the building, waving sticks, fists, and primitive-looking swords. Some were in hand-to-hand combat with Thantos’s
security force. Others were tearing up the carefully pruned trees and bushes in front of the building. Still others were collaring terrified workers who had run out to see what was happening.

Thantos saw some of his employees look up, following the accusing fingers of the bizarrely robed rabble. They, too, his own workers, began to shake their fists and shout at him. But their voices were muffled by the thick glass.

Sersee realized the problem in an instant. Turning, she grabbed a large metal disk that had been sitting on Thantos’s desk. A bear wearing a crown was etched into the heavy paperweight. She recognized it as the DuBaer crest.

Thantos made a move to take it from her. But it was too late. The lightning-quick imp hurled the disk at the window. The huge pane shattered. The impact sent fat splinters of glass across his tidy desk, ripping ugly scars in the polished mahogany, tattering and scattering his neat piles of paper like so much confetti across the once pristine room.

Thantos lunged at the brazen urchin. But stopped suddenly. Burning with rage, he heard the insolent, incredibly embarrassing cry from below:

“Thantos DuBaer is a witch! He lives a lie! Warlock, your time has come!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HELLO, GOOD-BYE

No place was safe. It was as simple as that.

Not Coventry, the island of their birth and bloodlines. Not Marble Bay, the picture-postcard, “nothing bad ever happens here” town where Cam had grown up and Alex found sanctuary.

Anyplace people feared and hated what they didn’t understand — including ordinary people with heightened senses or a talent for making the scientifically impossible possible — was no longer a DMZ, a zone of safe space. And that was pretty much everywhere, Cam found herself thinking.

It was the last day of school. Students poured out of Marble Bay High, cheering and laughing, flushed with summer
freedom. As Cam’s footsteps echoed through the almost empty halls, she fought the urge to look over her shoulder, to listen for anyone following her, to give in to the creeping paranoia that could, if she let it, become a way of life.

Much as she tried to stifle it, one notion hung on. She wasn’t alone. Her suspicion blossomed as she noticed that the door to the chem lab was open.

A moment before she reached it, she realized who she’d find there.

Sukari.

With relief, Cam saw her friend slumped in her front row seat, staring at her report card.

“You didn’t fail, did you?” she asked softly, so as not to startle the engrossed girl.

“A-plus in science,” Sukari confirmed in a monotone. She did not look up.

“You miss him?” Cam posed it as a question, but it wasn’t a question. Shuddering, she knew. In her hazy way she could still read Suke’s mind. And it was all about the Witch Hunter and loss.

“Who, Mr. Spenser?” Sukari shrugged.

“Suke, he was … kind of… creepy, wasn’t he? Out-there and abusive. He called you a witch —”

Suke hoisted her plump self out of the chair. “Well, I’m not a witch anymore,” she said, sighing.

“You never were,” Cam reminded her.

“Maybe not.” Sukari stood and shouldered her backpack. “But even though it was freaky, there was something kind of cool about guessing his questions in advance. I don’t know why he started flipping out. I heard he’s in, like, some hospital or rest home or something. But talk about chemistry — we had it, Mr. Spenser and I.” She smiled sadly. “Something tells me my mojo days are gone. With the dude who took his place … it’s back to our regularly scheduled knowing-by-studying program.”

Jason stuck his head in the door. “There you are,” he said to Cam. “Thought we had a date.”

“We do.” Cam patted Sukari’s back. “Come with?” she asked.

“Rain check,” Suke demurred. “Hey, Jase. When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow.” He opened his arms to her. “Come on, give me a good-bye hug.”

Suke reached up and hugged him. “Everyone’s going … or gone,” she said.

With no advance warning, not a mojo tickle, Cam burst into tears.

Alex charged by the open door, then backed up to look inside. “Yo, last day of school. It’s no-cry Friday. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Guess some of us don’t see the ‘good’ in good-bye,” Cam offered, laughing despite herself.

“Run that by me again,” her sister proposed.

“Well, Jason’s leaving — ”

“And Cade’s coming tomorrow. Yahoo!” Alex shouted.

Would she recognize him? Would he know her? The last time she’d seen him her hair had been … platinum? Red-tipped? Streaked blue? She couldn’t recall.

Cade’s flight from London was scheduled to land at the opposite end of the terminal from the jet that would be winging Jason west.

Alex figured she’d catch him at the international passengers’ passport check. She was anxious to get over there, eager to split from Cam, who was working overtime trying to keep it light and breezy. But it was Cam’s barely holdin’ it together ’tude that kept Alex glued to her sister’s side.

Pacing outside security, waiting for Jase and his ’rents to arrive, Cam was reciting a mumbled monologue of reassurances. “It’s no real biggie, is it?” “He’ll be back in a couple of months, right?” “There’s always e-mail —”

The mumblings were supposedly addressed to Alex but were actually a one-way pep talk Cam was giving herself.

Which made Alex’s presence kind of unnecessary. You would think. Only Cam wouldn’t let her leave. She kept insisting that she needed Alex’s input.

Alex slumped down in her molded plastic seat. It was attached by a metal bar to her twin’s identical tangerine chair. Of course nothing was in or on Cam’s seat at the moment but her silvery, see-through backpack. The bar bolting the chairs together? Pointless, Alex thought, since she and Cam were linked by more than steel.

“I mean, I love the guy, but it’s not like I’m
in
love with him —”

Alex failed to see the distinction and tried, for the umpteenth time, to make her presence — and her desire to split — evident to her diving-off-the-deep-end sib.

Why had she let Cam talk her into borrowing a pair of fresh stonewashed jeans and a sparkly belly-baring tee instead of slipping into the time-worn black denims and aged leather jacket that fit and felt like a second skin?

Would Cade have changed his look, she wondered. Would he be duded up in some trendy Eurotrash outfit? Maybe he had mowed his long black hair with its floppy strands falling over his forehead?

“Are you okay?” she asked Cam, for the third — fourth? fifth? — time that morning.

“Hello.” Cam put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at Alex. “Why do you keep asking that?”

“Oh, hey, look. There he is. Here they come.” Alex leaped up at the sight of Jason heading toward them. “Catchya later.” She went to buzz Cam on the cheek for luck.

Way wrong move.

Cam grabbed her hand and clamped it tight. “Don’t go. Wait with me. I need your moral support.”

“And I need my digits!” Alex nearly shouted, yanking back her hand. “You’re fine — like you’ve been telling me all day. You’re okay. You’ll be okay. To quote a gross commercial, ‘gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now.’”

Alex bolted over to Jason, threw her arms around the towering hottie, and said her own good-bye. Then she wheeled away from the emotional train wreck that used to be her tranquil twin and took off for the international terminal.…

Where her own much-delayed meltdown commenced.

According to the blinking light on the departures and arrivals monitor, the London flight had landed. Cade Richman was home.

Alex began to pace furiously outside the immigration
and passport area. How long would it take for people to gather their belongings and leave the plane? Not that long … not as long as they’d have to stand in line at the INS gates where the contents of their luggage would be tossed around and their ID would be checked against computer files.

Computers! They were always going down. What if there was some computer glitch at the airport? Great. Cade could be in some interrogation room for hours, for days … trying to explain that the wrapped package in his bag was … a gift! A present for the girl he loved!

Loved? Delete that —

Alex had begun to do her own mumbling dance.

Breathe,
a calming voice told her.

It wasn’t Cam’s, not today.

But it wasn’t exactly not Cam’s, either.

You can’t think when you’re hyperventilating. No oxygen to the brain. Breathe, Artemis.

Alex stopped pacing. Although she doubted it would net results, she couldn’t help looking around. People of every color and kind were crowding the international area. Alex searched above heads covered by turbans, yarmulkes, head scarves, and broad-brimmed Aussie outback hats.

Then she saw her.

One arm raised in a loving wave, the other tightly
clutching an old book. Though it was bound in cracked brown leather, the book seemed to be radiating light.

A wisp of white robe, a toss of gleaming auburn hair, a flash of smiling gray eyes, and Miranda swept out of the terminal.

Alex rubbed her eyes. How stressed was she?

Was that really Coventry Mom? What was she doing in Boston? At the airport? And what was that crusty volume she was carrying?

Maybe Cam would find out since their equal-op mom seemed to be heading in her direction.

And not a minute too soon, Alex decided. It was her sister, after all, who needed the most help today. Cam was losing what Alex was gaining: a honey to hang with —

Unless Cade thought they were just… friends? Sure, why not? He hadn’t used the L-word. Hadn’t signed his e-mails with XXXs.

All at once, she turned. It felt as if two hands had gripped her shoulders and pointed her at the entrance to the international arrivals gate.

The double doors swung open behind the thrust of a luggage cart. The guy pushing it had curly black hair, dark glasses, and a soul patch sprouting in the cleft between his full lower lip and his strong, squared-off chin.

Cade!

Even without the motorcycle jacket and beat-up stovepipe jeans, she’d have known him. But would he recognize her?

Cade took off his dark glasses. His spotlight baby blues roamed the area. He’d looked right past her!

Wave, Alex,
she told herself.
Hands up. Speak. Shout.
But her arms hung limply at her side and her lips had turned to Velcro.

Which wasn’t so bad. ’Cause Cade’s mouth had, too.

At least that was what it felt like after he abandoned his cart and raced through the crowd to catch her up in his arms and fasten his own Velcro lips to hers in a wonderfully familiar, yet wildly new kiss.

Arms around each other, Cade and Alex were on their way to pick up Cam, could actually see her ahead, her arm around Jason’s high waist, when the commotion erupted. The entire area between the two couples was suddenly flooded with noise and light.

Flashbulbs popped. Video cameras whirred. Microphones were being lifted and shoved toward the center of the moving mob.

“What’s going on?” Cade asked, straining like everyone around them to see who or what was in the middle of the melee.

T’Witches, hello. May I have your attention, please?

Alex and Cam got the message at exactly the same time.

Ileana!

“Someone said Brice Stanley is here,” an excited woman told Cade. She was jumping up and down, trying to catch a glimpse of the superstar over the heads of the frantic media.

“Who’s the babe?” a news guy shouted.

“It’s his steady — the mystery blond,” a cameraman called out from the inner circle. “Guess they kissed and made up.”

“D’ja find out where they’re going?”

Brice and I are on our way to Maui.
It was Ileana again.
Your mother is around here somewhere. I told her not to bother seeing us off, but she insisted. Wanted to catch a glimpse of her baby girls before heading home. Don’t worry, I won’t be gone long. And when I do get back, Miranda and I have an important matter we’ll need to discuss with you. Try to stay out of trouble. There’ll be trouble enough to deal with when I return
—

“Hey, I just got here and you just left,” Cade teased. Alex hadn’t realized how raptly she’d been listening to Ileana. She gave Cade a smile she hoped was reassuring and turned to look at Cam.

Jason was staring adoringly at her sister, but her
twin’s gray eyes, like her own, were focused on their mirror image.

An important matter to discuss?
Alex repeated Ileana’s words.

Trouble enough to deal with?
Cam sent back.

The ominous phrases flew across the space that separated them, sounding serious and menacing.

What more was there to find out? What more was there to fear? Staying out of trouble didn’t seem like an option, just a fragile hope.

Jason squeezed Cam’s shoulder and she turned to look at him. Unexpectedly, tears gathered in her eyes again. She didn’t want to lose him, not now. She didn’t want anything to change. For this single moment she felt safe.

Glancing again at Alex, it occurred to her that the person she had grown closest to in the world was not leaving. Alex would be here for her. And she would be her sister’s rock. They were T’Witches after all. No matter that one was saying good-bye while the other was saying hello. They were connected. And connection — to people they loved, whether near or living only in their hearts — was what would keep them safe.

No one, nothing, could break Camryn and Alex. Not while they were all about doing good and healing. And not while they were together.