T*Witches: The Witch Hunters (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

SENSITIVES AND
PROTECTORS

It was late spring and easy to see it, Cam thought, sitting at the top of the soccer field bleachers behind Marble Bay High. How could she not have noticed the profusion of daffodils, the vivid new greenness of the bushes and bursting tree buds?

And there was a green newness in her, too. Saturday night, for the first time, she’d been able to hear the thoughts of someone other than Alex. But whose thoughts were they? Who had known, as she and Alex had, that something bad was about to happen?

Cam drew her arm across her forehead, swabbing
soccer sweat with the sleeve of her team sweatshirt. Practice was over for the day, and she needed a couple of minutes alone, some downtime to replay what had happened at the premiere.

The image of the robed lunatic haunted her. Some crazed weirdo had shown up way too close for comfort, just miles from Marble Bay, her safe haven. Was that past tense now?

She wanted to go over what she knew about the Witch Hunter — everything about him. The near-miss car crash, his psycho ranting at Brice, and his last menacing words to them, “You’re next. All three of you.” Who was this guy, and what did he want with them?

A breeze ruffled the strands of auburn hair that had escaped her scrunchied ponytail. It was a warm breeze, but it chilled her. As did the uninvited memory it seemed to have carried.

Out of nowhere, Cam remembered the cave on Coventry Island. Lit by blazing candles, its stony walls were slick and icy. There was a chain attached to one of its dank walls, a chain that held a sick, pacing panther. The groaning beast had once been … Jason.

“You okay?”

Cam opened her eyes and there he was. Jason Weissman. Tall, athletic, grinning with the brash joy that
always lit his face when he saw her. Jason, her honey and wanna-be hero, her best guy pal, the kind and gentle boy Sersee had turned into a wounded beast.

Sersee. Cam couldn’t rid herself of the bitter memory: ebony hair and a pale, contemptuous face that held mocking violet eyes. Ambitious, jealous, reckless, and skilled in the craft far beyond her years, the wicked young witch abused her formidable powers, destroying all and anything in her way, casting painful curses and vicious spells to get what she wanted.

With the help of Ileana and Miranda, Cam and Alex had been able to reverse Sersee’s spells and erase the entire Sersee episode from Jason’s mind. If only, Cam thought, she could erase it from her own …

“Cami, hey, wait till you hear this.” Jason thumped down next to her, his buff, six-foot-two bulk bouncing the bench.

Cam blinked at him, blinked herself back to the moment. Realizing, as she did, how glad she was to see him. It felt good to know that whatever happened — no matter that a witch-hating, witch-hunting maniac was on the loose — Jason would have her back. He was dependable, heroic, daring. Hadn’t he followed her all the way to Coventry just to protect her?

“Hey!” Jason was psyched. “Don’t you want to hear my big news?”

“Definitely.” Cam forced a smile — then seeing, really
seeing,
his flushed and classic face, realized she meant it. “What are you so hyped about?”

“I made the team. First string. I’m gonna play for Nebraska next season. I mean, I’ve got a real shot at it. That’s what they’re saying. They called yesterday —”

“Excellent!”

Jase was a basketball prodigy. For the game, his height was only adequate but his skill with the ball was awesome. It had won him a fat sports scholarship.

“Yeah,” Jason continued, “I’m splitting right after graduation. I’m at training camp for the summer.”

His excitement was contagious. “That’s fabulous!” Cam affirmed. “Oh, Jase, that’s wonderful. That’ll be —” And then she stopped. And looked at him. And swallowed hard. “Oh, no. You’re leaving.” The words escaped before she could bite them back.

“Yeah, but after graduation,” he reminded her, his expression suddenly unsure. “We’ve still got a couple of weeks till then. Cami…” he said cautiously, “I’ve gotta go. Okay? I just wanted you to be the first to know —”

“Sure. Um …” Why was she feeling so blue? So … “abandoned”? This was a good thing times two, she tried to tell herself. Jason would realize his dream and, as a bonus, stay safe. Win-win. The farther he was from her, the better off he’d be. Right? No one would use him as
bait to get at her and Alex; no one would capture him or cast spells or try to morph him into some evil carnivorous creature.

But she’d miss him. A lot.

Snap out of it, she told herself. It’s not like you’re going to be alone this summer. And if your back needs covering, there’s always Ileana, Miranda … Alex.

Determined to pump up her deflated heart, Cam took a deep breath and managed to smile — brightly, she hoped. “Jase, it’s wonderful. No kidding. I’m totally psyched for you —”

“So we’re cool?” Relieved, he planted an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek and took off.

Alex, heading toward the bleachers, almost bumped into him in her eagerness to get to her twin. They laughed, Jason and she. “Where’s the fire?” he asked.

“In my heart,” Alex quipped, hurrying past him.

“Yo, Cami — wait till you hear what’s up,” Alex said.

“You’ve discovered the true identity of the Witch Hunter,” her sister said with a weird combo of sadness and sarcasm.

“That’s on tomorrow’s To Do list.” Alex would not be put off. “Remember Cade?”

Cade Richman. Alex’s tall, dark, and handsome crushee of last year. How could Cam forget? Cade, the boy who’d come closest to melting that lump of spiked
concrete that Alex called her heart. Cade, who had lived in a mansion in Marble Bay Heights but came to school in skinny jeans, black tees, and biker boots. Those boots were made for walkin’, Cam thought, remembering Alex’s angst when Cade and his family moved to Paris at the end of the school year.

“He’s coming back. I picked up my e-mail in computer lab five minutes ago and there was this excellent letter from him saying he was going to be in Marble Bay this summer!”

Cam couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. She twisted her mouth into a jerk-o-lantern grin and just blinked at her ecstatic sister. For the second time in ten minutes, she was being called upon to act happy when she felt crappy. Not that she begrudged Alex a summer fling. It was just that…

“What?!” Alex demanded, having read Cam’s thoughts. “You think I’m going to put Cade ahead of the deranged sucker who threatened our lives? No way, Camay. As far as I’m concerned, it just pushes up the deadline.”

“What deadline?” Cam asked.

“The deadline for catching and crushing the costumed creep.”

But at dinner, while Cam pushed food around on her plate and obsessed about the Witch Hunter, Alex was
all Cade this and Cade that. And when it was time to do the dishes, she begged unashamedly to be allowed to check her computer for messages and promised she’d do more than her share the next day.

When Emily, Cam’s adoptive mom, started to object, Dave signaled her with a tiny shake of his curly head to let Alex go.

“I’m on garbage detail. You don’t need me till later, right?” Dylan, Cam’s brother and Emily and Dave’s bio-son, reminded them, scrambling after Alex.

“Em, we can handle this.” Dave pushed back from the table and began to collect the dinner dishes. “Why don’t you relax tonight?”

Emily gratefully acquiesced. “Holler if you two need any help,” she offered, happily heading for the den.

“It’s okay. I don’t need help,” Cam told her dad.

“No, no, no. It’s all right,” Dave insisted. “I’d like to … Consider it quality family time.”

Cam eyed him suspiciously. You could practically monitor Dave’s feelings by the weathervane of his bushy mustache. A congenitally happy soul, his whiskers usually tilted upward. When he was upset, he tugged them down, sometimes mindlessly chewing on an end. Right now, they were centered but tending downward, signaling a thoughtful mood. Or one of perplexed concern.

Cam put the platter she was carrying into the sink. “Okay, what’s up?” she said.

“Good question, I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“Noth —” she began automatically.

“And don’t say ‘nothing,’” Dave plowed on. “I can feel it, sense it. You’re upset about something. Is it about that nut who crashed the premiere Saturday night? Or because Jason’s leaving early for college?”

Alex had volunteered that info the moment they sat down to dinner.

“No.” Cam did denial at first, then changed it to “Sort of. A little of both, I guess. Dad —” She had an idea. “When you say you can sense it, you know, ‘feel’ that something’s wrong, what do you mean? Do you mean like a regular person? Or do you still have that … ‘mojo’ Karsh spotted in you?”

“Karsh.” Dave sat back down at the table and waved for Cam to join him. “Is that what’s going on? You miss him, don’t you? You and Alex haven’t been the same since you came back from his funeral, from Coventry.”

Dave alone in Cam’s mainland family knew of their visit to their island birthplace. He alone knew — had known — the beloved old warlock who had saved their lives as infants. Karsh himself had chosen Dave to be Cam’s protector.

“Did anything happen there that you didn’t tell me?” Dave asked now. “Something troubling?”

“Why?” Cam challenged. “What do you feel? Can you see things that aren’t here and now? Can you hear what I’m thinking?”

Dave’s mustache flagged. Then he understood what his child was asking and it returned to its normal optimistic upswing. “Okay, let’s talk,” he agreed.

Gratefully, Cam sat down across from him.

“When I first met Karsh, I was getting pretty good at knowing — knowing, sensing, not actually hearing,” he clarified, “what people thought. I was … highly intuitive, I guess. Karsh called me a Sensitive. Of course, when I showed him what I could do, which was embarrassingly amateurish, very basic — I mean I could make assumptions about people based on … feelings I got about them, vibes — Karsh laughed.

“You remember that laugh of his?” Dave asked his daughter. “Never mocking. Always with you, not at you, always on your side. I met him at a paranormal conference, you know, a sort of convention of geeks interested in extrasensory perception, psychic healing, using one’s mind to accomplish amazing feats — things most people think of either as magic or madness —”

“And you got to talking …” Cam knew the story
and tried to move Dave along. “And he really liked you and thought you’d make a perfect dad — ”

“A perfect
Protector
,” Dave corrected her. “A Protector is a person of high intuition and intelligence — hey, I’m quoting Karsh here,” he added modestly. “A Sensitive with a strongly developed capacity for loyalty, love, and support. Being called Dad is all gravy. As for perfect, there’s no such animal, honey. Protectors, like everyone else in the world, are human and, therefore, flawed. In fact, before I agreed to take you, Karsh told me stories about failed Protectors. People who were given fledgling witches and warlocks to rear but couldn’t handle it. Either because they were too weak or their charges were too strong.”

This was a piece of the story — a dark, chilling part — Cam hadn’t heard before. “But you wanted to be a Protector, anyway?”

“It wasn’t that so much.… That first meeting with Karsh happened a couple of years before your mom and I got married. We met again, at another conference, some years later. By then Emily and I had tried and failed to have a child of our own. Of course I mentioned it to him. There was nothing I couldn’t talk to him about. I don’t remember anything else about that meeting. Except…” Dave seemed to recall it now. “I think he asked whether I’d be willing to forgo, to give up or lose my own growing
abilities in order to nurture another person’s — a being whose potential far outshone my own, possibly a child’s.

“I said I thought so. I mean, I was just dabbling. I was using telekinesis and ESP as party tricks to entertain friends. Karsh seemed to be asking whether I’d trade that in to help someone who’d use his or her skills for more important reasons. To do good things, to help others. To help, I think he said, the universe and everything in it. Something like that. It wasn’t until he brought you to me,” Dave said, reaching across the table and gently taking Cam’s hand, “that he spoke of warlocks and witches. But by then it was too late. I’d taken one look at you and knew, instantly, there was no turning back.”

Alex heard, though she’d tried not to, the conversation between Dave and Cam. It made her feel empty at first, whistled through her like a cold wind. These were the times she felt most alone. The Barnes family had taken her in, done everything they could to make her feel included — but there was no way she’d ever be as connected to Dave and Emily as Cam was.

She’d had her own Protector, Sara Fielding. She wondered now whether Sara also had given up her witchy gifts to take care of her. And … if she’d kept them, would she have been able to save herself? Could she
have cheated death, beaten cancer, somehow gotten better …?

Alex wished she’d had more time with her mother. Correction, as Cam would say: with her
Protector.
With Sara. She wished she could ask, like Cam just had, what Sara’s life had been like before she’d met Karsh — how he’d found her and why he’d chosen her.

Most of all, Alex wanted to know whether she herself could have cast a spell, used herbs and crystals, willed the cancer cells to leave Sara’s ravaged lungs the way she’d willed the weapon to leave the Witch Hunter’s hand.

“So, where is he?” Dylan’s voice punctured her ballooning sadness.

“What?” She spun on the desk chair, turning away from the computer to face him. Had Dylan, Emily and Dave’s only bio-child, just read her mind? For a stunning moment Alex stared at Cam’s blond brother, blinking in wonder.

“The French connection.” Dylan hit a chord on his guitar. “The Paris … defection.” He strummed again. “Cade’s, um, direction —”

Cade! He meant Cade. Of course. She’d been about to check her e-mail when her head got all into the downstairs dialogue between Cam and Dave.

Alex relaxed, laughed. “Yo, Mr. Sass. You may be from Mass,” she shot back at Dylan, “but give it up, bro. You ain’t no Thoreau.”