T*Witches: Dead Wrong (5 page)

“Another psycho uncle,” Cam agreed.

The only good thing about the skinny, goat-bearded warlock — which was who Fredo actually was when he wasn’t doing his lizard thing — was that he was as dim as a refrigerator bulb.

“So,” Alex asked, “do you think Uncle Fredo’s on the scene again — morphed into a lifeless bundle of rags?”

“Well, his smell is,” Cam responded. “Are you sure that boot I tripped over belonged to your faux father?”

“Gotta say” — Alex hugged the pillow more tightly — “that my first thought was Thantos.”

“Mine, too,” Cam agreed. “But the boot’s too small.”

“Correctamundo,” Alex tried to joke, then felt her nausea rising again. “So then I thought maybe some homeless person or one of Ev’s new crew had broken into the place,” she continued more somberly.

“Only Evan’s pals wear snakeskin boots, no?” Cam’s eyes were tearing. She wiped them away.

“Yes. But when I really got a look at the skuzzy
thing, at the worn high heels, it came down to just one self-centered bloodsucker —”

“Icky Ike?”

Alex nodded. “It was his boot, for sure —”

And disgusting,
Cam thought.
The boot was peeling and smelly and old and the heel was worn down. And the trailer — how could anyone have lived in a place like that? How could her own sister, her twin, have spent fifteen minutes in that tin coffin, let alone fourteen years?

“— but not necessarily his body,” Alex was saying. “Anyone could have wandered into that place.”

“That place,” Cam echoed, distracted by a heinous possibility.
What if she had been the twin given to Sara, and Alex had been brought to Dave and Emily? Could she have survived? Would she even have wanted to?

“Doubtful, your lowness,” Alex said angrily.

“You were listening in?” Cam accused.

They were glaring at each other when the front door opened, and Mrs. Bass called out to them. She sounded unusually breathless.

With effort, they turned from each other. “We’re right here,” Alex answered, standing. But the librarian bustled in before the twins could go out to meet her.

“Sit down,” she said, pulling off her ski cap and shaking the snow from it into the empty fireplace.
“Please,” she added. “I mean, you don’t have to sit down, I just thought you might want to, Alex.”

Cam knew what Mrs. Bass was going to say. She looked at her sister, then back at Mrs. Bass.

“There’s a dead man in your trailer,” the librarian blurted out. “Oh, that is not how I planned to break the news. Someone called the police today and gave them an anonymous tip. A woman or a girl, the new sheriff said. Anyway, he went out to the trailer and found him. A dead man. Just dead. No blood, no signs of a struggle, no weapons —”

“When will they be able to identify who it is? Was there anything … distinctive about him?” Cam asked.

“Well, actually,” Doris Bass remembered, “Sheriff Carson said the man had an odd patch of greenish eczema on one arm. And his nails — on that arm — were, well, long and yellow, like talons, he said. Isn’t that curious?”

OMG, it
was
Fredo!
Cam said telepathically to Alex.
The smell, the claws, the green lizard skin …

You think he was waiting for us at the trailer? That he knew we’d show up there?
Alex silently responded.

Could be,
her sister said.

And then what, when we didn’t get there early
enough, he died of disappointment? Maybe it was Ike.…

Mrs. Bass looked from one to the other of them, her eyes scrunched up inquiringly. “You’re very quiet,” she noted. “I didn’t mean to horrify you. I… well, actually, I thought you might have a guess about who’d break into the trailer. I actually thought it might be Isaac Fielding — but a man that vain would never let himself go like that.”

“Not a clue,” Alex said quickly.

“Nu-uh,” Cam agreed.

She noticed their jackets, the puddle forming around Cam’s boots. “I came home as soon as I could,” she said. “Did you … get over to … the cemetery?”

“We did,” Cam said.

“Actually, we —” Alex began, trying to get past the idea that their toxic uncle Fredo was dead … dead in the trailer where Alex and her mother had lived. It didn’t make sense. But nothing much made sense anymore — not since she and Cam had hooked up. Could Fredo have gone to the trailer to wait for them? But how had he died? And what was Ike Fielding’s boot doing in there? Ike couldn’t possibly have killed Fredo.

“Evan came by, we went to the cemetery and then up to the stream,” Cam covered for her suddenly silent sister.

“Sara’s stream?” Mrs. Bass sighed. “She loved that place ever since we were girls. Used to go up there to ‘think’ … meditate, they call it now. Sara heard voices up there —”

That got Alex’s attention. “Get out,” she exclaimed, falling back into Crow Creek slang, into Lucinda-speak. “I mean,” she said, when Mrs. Bass looked at her oddly, “did she really or are you teasing us?”

“The truth? No one believed her but me. I knew she didn’t lie. And I knew she wasn’t crazy — even if she did fall for that fast-talking, strutting little bantam, Isaac. Biggest mistake of her life.” Mrs. Bass shook her head sympathetically.

“The voices,” Cam prompted.

“Yes, well, that stream, that area, was supposed to be sacred to the Crow Indians —”

“What language did they speak?” Alex asked.

“Siouan, I believe,” Mrs. Bass answered, studying Alex curiously. “It’s the language of the Hidatsa Crow of South Dakota. As for the stream, it’s said that a revered shaman died there. A shaman is a healer; white people called them medicine men.…”

Doris Bass had gone full-tilt librarian on them. “Did Sara understand Siouan?” Cam interrupted.

“I don’t think so, but I don’t actually know. There was so much about Sara I didn’t truly know. For instance,
she was psychic, I guess you could say. Very, very intuitive. She used to dabble in the paranormal. Was quite good at it, too. Which I didn’t know about until we were out of college. She lost interest in it after she adopted you — oh!” Mrs. Bass suddenly remembered, “Not only is the stream a sacred Indian site, it’s also the place where Sara received you, Alex — from a white-haired man she’d met at a magic convention.”

Alex and Cam gasped in tandem. The white-haired man was Karsh.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DARK SIDE OF
COVENTRY

The northern tip of Coventry Island was craggy with cliffs. Here, trees were twisted by the wind and weathered by the great lake. At the highest point of this bleak land stood Crailmore, a deserted fortress built during a time of deadly witch-hunts.

The ancestral estate of the DuBaer family — who claimed kinship to Cleopatra’s physician, Merlin, Incan high priests, Polynesian chieftains, native shamans, and scores of feared and revered gurus, seers, sibyls, healers, clairvoyants, mystics, and diviners — Crailmore was where Thantos stayed (some would say “hid”) when he
visited his island birthplace. And it was here that his hotheaded brother, Fredo, lived.

Although the fortress could house an army, Thantos’s followers — the torchbearers who had joined his angry search for his infant nieces fifteen years before — had all but deserted him. Only a handful remained, a horde of fortune-seeking fledglings, young witches and warlocks hoping to prove their daring in his reckless service. The young warlock Shane had trained here, until he’d become infatuated with one of Thantos’s young nieces.

Today, however, at Thantos’s command, the brothers were alone. Fredo, tugging at the wisps of hair sprouting from his pointed chin, cowered nervously in the armchair beside the fireplace — which held more cobwebs than wood. Towering above Fredo, the robustly black-bearded Thantos ground his teeth, trying to control his anger. “Three times you have failed me,” he hissed. “I sent you to lure Aron’s daughters — to attract them, entice them. And what did you do?”

Fredo shrugged sullenly.

“I asked you a question!” Thantos roared, lifting the silver cane he’d been using since the accident. Then he cleared his throat, even more enraged now that he’d lost his temper. “You turned yourself into a stinking lizard.”

“The odor isn’t my fault,” Fredo argued. “It was your
bright idea. And I wish you’d remove the smell spell.” He giggled suddenly, pleased with himself. “That’s pretty funny — smell spell.”

Thantos made a disgusted face. His hands reached forward automatically, as if he was going to grab his brother’s skinny neck. Instead, he turned away, his velvet cape flaring, and began to hobble back and forth in front of Fredo. His good foot, in its hobnail boot, and his cane clacked heavily on the stone floor of the great room.

“The odor was your punishment for failing me the first time. I will undo it when you bring me Artemis and Apolla — ”

“Who?” Fredo asked.

“Alexandra and Camryn, dunce! You are an embarrassment. Which is why I order you never again to shape-shift into that demented lizard —”

“It wasn’t my fault I fell on you. It was an accident. And your hip is practically all healed —”

“Fredo,” Thantos whispered dangerously, “listen to me. I taught you how to shape-shift. Without me — despite the reknown of our family — you’d still be a lowly apprentice trying to pass your warlock initiation rites. I taught you and now I have taken back my gift! Do you hear me? Never, never again are you to unfurl those dragon wings or wrap yourself in that putrid, scaly skin — ”

“I didn’t!” Fredo cried. “I did what you said. I found him in the trailer. And I didn’t transform myself —”

“If ever you disobey this command, you are finished, my brother —”

Fredo gulped. “Finished?”

“I must have obedience,” Thantos ranted, slashing the air with his cane. “Total, unquestioning obedience. This is a time of exceptional opportunity. You will not destroy it for me. Karsh is ill. I saw it when we held him hostage. He can’t last long. And his charming companion, Ileana, a beauty like her mother —”

“And talented, like her father.” Fredo smiled his yellow-toothed smile.

Thantos aimed a silencing glare at him. “Once the elder is gone, she will do my bidding —”

“You know what I don’t get?” Fredo ventured carelessly. “What the big deal is about these twins. I mean, if you wanted kids, you could have had more of your own.” He ducked as Thantos’s cane soared toward his head. “Okay, okay,” Fredo whined, his hands protectively raised. “Sorry I mentioned it!”

Thantos composed himself. Leaning against the fireplace mantle, he looked up at the full-length portrait of his mother, once the most powerful leader of the Coventry clan. She had urged him to marry but had ridiculed his choice — Beatrice, an extraordinary girl from an ordinary
family. That was the problem. As bright and beautiful as Beatrice was, her roots were undistinguished. Except for one ancestor who, scheduled to be burned at the stake, had cast a spell on her executioner who then refused to light the fire; and another who’d survived the dunking chair in Salem and lived to a ripe old age as one of the first women doctors in New England — there was barely an important witch amongst them.

But Thantos had been young and besotted and on the rebound. His one true love, after all, had married another. So he allowed himself to be smitten by the girl’s golden good looks and by her strangely aristocratic, at times even arrogant, manner. He approved of the way she valued herself — as though not having a grand and powerful bloodline was more a flaw of fate than a fault of hers. And so he’d married her against his mother’s caution — and lived to regret it when she died in childbirth a year later.

“Yes, Ileana will do my bidding.” Still staring at the painting of his disapproving, willful mother, Thantos continued, “Because I know what she wants.
Who
she wants. I’ve known him since he was a boy. His name was Bevin then, a reckless orphan in my service. I took him in when he had nothing, was nobody, a forlorn little warlock. He has a new name now. Brice. He is famous, rich, and powerful. And he knows what he owes me!”

CHAPTER NINE

SNAKES AND STOOGES

The diner wasn’t really crowded, it just sounded that way to Alex. At one end of the smoky restaurant, she, Cam, Lucinda, and Evan were wedged into a corner booth. Andy Yatz was a couple of tables away, sipping the dregs of a Coke and mooning over Lucinda. At the counter, an elderly twosome was noisily sharing a meat loaf platter, and a couple of truckers were sucking down caffeine and yukking it up with the waitress.

Everyone was either talking or thinking too loudly when Alex spotted the trio outside.

Cam thought she heard her sister saying something, but caught up in her own horror movie about the body in the trailer, and with Luce chattering nonstop opposite
her, and Andy’s loud slurping, she missed Alex’s
Yo, it’s them!

Hello!
Alex cleared her throat, coughed, and finally got Cam to look at her.
Check out the door. Look who’s there.

Cam turned. “Who?” she asked aloud.

Alex rolled her eyes, disgusted.

Lucinda turned to Cam. “Who what?” she asked.

Aw, no. Not now,
Alex heard Evan grumble to himself as he spotted the trio of boys moving toward them.

All three were dressed in black. Two, who Cam guessed were the Applebees because of their resemblance to each other — small puffy eyes, wide pug noses, and humorless thin lips — were both wearing beat-up black parkas that had a greasy sheen to them from too many seasons of wear. There was something about the coats that seemed familiar.

The shorter of the two boys had a black kerchief tied around his head.
Riggs,
Alex silently identified him. The other brother’s head was bare; his wet hair rubber-banded back in a scraggly ponytail. A familiar ponytail, Cam thought with a shiver.
Kyle,
she heard. Clearly, he was the leader of the pack, and mean.

The third boy —
Derek
— wore a big felt cowboy hat with a feather in the band. He was wrapped in a black coat with a short cape attached to it, a western-style
duster that reached the ankles of his grungy, wet snakeskin boots. Despite the rough-rider costume, Cam felt that he was a fraud — as surely as she knew ponytail boy was dangerous.

The dark trio brushed past the truckers, who dropped change onto the counter for their coffees and headed for the door, deep in conversation.

“Yo, kung fu man, wassup?” the ponytailed boy called to Evan. His words were casual, easygoing, but there was a threatening edge to his tone that prickled the skin on Cam’s neck. She’d heard that voice before, but where?

“Kyle, dude,” Ev answered, knocking fists with him unenthusiastically.

Kyle patted his grungy jacket pockets, fished out a lighter, and began mindlessly flicking it on and off.

“Hey, Riggs,” Alex greeted Kyle’s younger brother. He was short but massively built, and his bristly, shaved head was covered in a black do-rag. He was also wearing black leather gloves, she noticed, with the tips cut off so his red, chapped fingers and grungy nails stuck out. They were the kind of gloves weight lifters wore, but plain dumb for this weather. It tickled Alex to see Riggs Applebee trying to look so tough. She’d known him when he was a skinny, picked-on kid in fourth grade.

Back then, the Applebees were just these dirt-poor, skinny little guys whose mom had run off and left them.
Alex had felt sorry for Riggs, who was in her class, and Kyle, who was a year older. It was a terrible time for them. Their daddy didn’t know how to take care of them and they’d started looking crusty and failing at school and some kids got really brutal with them, saying — right to their faces — that the reason their mama split was because they were so dumb and dirty she couldn’t stand being with them.

Up until that time, it was Derek Jasper everyone had picked on. He was the smallest kid in class, even smaller than Riggs Applebee, he had a high squeaky voice, which changed by the time they started middle school, and he was new to Crow Creek, having grown up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation near Busby.

Riggs and Derek had started hanging out together. At first, Alex remembered, she’d been glad for them that they’d each found a friend, found someone to “watch their backs.” And, of course, they both looked up to Kyle because he was a whole year older. Then, suddenly, it seemed, they’d changed. A lot. Derek had a growth spurt and his voice didn’t just get deeper, it became an angry growl. The three of them started pumping iron. By the time everyone was at Crow Creek Regional, the Applebee boys and Derek Jasper had gotten tattoos and attitude. They didn’t just freeze out the kids who’d teased them, either. They wouldn’t even talk to Alex, Lucinda, or
Evan, who’d been as friendly to them as fellow outcasts could be.

That was when Evan dubbed them snakes and stooges. Unfortunately, other kids picked up on it and the name stuck.

Riggs looked her up and down now. Then he recognized her. “Alex Fielding. Yo, what are you doing around here? I heard you broke out of this place —”

“Just visiting,” Alex said, but Riggs had just seen Cam and his small puffy eyes were bugging. He let out a low whistle. “Jeez, you guys could be twins.”

“Duh, Riggs,” Lucinda murmured. “That’s ’cause they are.”

“Didn’t you hear?” His older brother, Kyle, snickered — and Cam noticed that he had a chipped front tooth. “They cloned weird girl. Ain’t that right, Piggy?”

Lucinda reddened and lowered her head. Kyle moved the flame of his lighter near her cheek.

“Quit it, Kyle,” Andy hollered from his table.

Kyle blew out the flame and stuffed the lighter back into his pocket. “Man, I wouldn’t take her to a dogfight ’cause I’m afraid she’d win,” the ponytailed stooge taunted. His partners giggled and snickered.

Evan started to get up, but Alex grabbed his hand.

“Call me when your IQ hits room temperature,” Cam blurted out.

“Whoa.” Kyle turned to her. “That sounded really cold. I bet I’d be bummed if I knew what you were talking about.”

The jackass chorus chimed in again with grunts and guffaws. Then the duster-wearing Derek, the tallest of the trio, even without his ten-gallon hat, reached onto Luce’s plate and started to help himself to her grilled cheese.

Andy stood up. But Evan had already grabbed Luce’s fork and whacked the back of Derek’s hand with it. The boy yelped.

“Yo, forget it, DJ.” Riggs Applebee tugged Derek away from the table.

“Sit down, hero.” Kyle pushed Andy back into his chair.

“Leave him alone, you big bozo,” Luce shouted at Kyle.

He glared at her for a moment, then he grinned. “Yeah, right, Cinder-elephant!”

“You know Sheriff Carson comes in here all the time,” Lucinda reminded Kyle, though her gaze was aimed at Andy, who looked painfully embarrassed.

“I’m shivering in my boots” was Kyle’s brilliant response.

Cam felt a shock of recognition, as if she knew him, remembered his chip-toothed snarl, his menacing posture.…

He was looking at her now. “Yo, Doublemint girl. Something on your mind?”

Did he know what she was thinking? Was he more than just a bully; was Kyle Applebee, like Shane, one of Thantos’s messengers?

Doubtful,
Alex answered Cam’s unspoken question,
but he is definitely a rank dude.

Rank? Understatement alert,
Cam retorted angrily.
Don’t ever diss Bree to me again! Compared to your hometown clowns, she’s
—

But Alex had tuned out.

“Tell them,” Luce was whispering to Evan, who was looking ill since his so-called crew had showed up. “You’ve got to tell them. Alex can help you. I’m sure of it.”

Evan gloomily dismissed his old friend. “You’re sure,” he whispered back. “What, are
you
going psychic now? Alex can’t do anything about this. And neither can anyone else. It’s going to happen, that’s all. And you’d better do what I told you.”

“Let’s go, Fretts,” Kyle ordered Evan. “We’ve got… stuff to do—”

“What kind of stuff?” Cam asked as Evan tossed his napkin on top of his half-eaten hamburger.

Kyle gave her a hard look. He pulled out his lighter again and began flicking it on and off compulsively. “Yo,
Alex Two,” he warned Cam, “keep your nose out of it, okay?”

“Watch how you talk to her, Kyle. She’s a friend,” Evan told him, reluctantly sliding out of the booth.

“Maybe, kung fu, but where is she going to be next week, huh?” Kyle held the flame alongside Evan’s cheek. Evan pushed the older boy’s hand away.

“Yeah, who’s going to watch your back next week?” Derek challenged him.

“So, Riggs, how’ve you been?” Alex tried to reroute them. “What’ve you been up to? Want a fry?” She held up a greasy potato stick.

“Call that a fry?” Kyle made a face as his brother reached for it.

Derek knocked the french fry out of Riggs’s hand. “Yo, don’t you remember from school? She’s a weirdo, dude. Who knows what she did to that thing?”

Riggs Applebee shoved Derek, sending him sprawling backward against a counter stool, his hat over his eyes.

“Anyway, I like curly fries, not those limp pieces of puke you’re eating,” Kyle told the twins.

“No big,” Alex said, focusing on the leftovers on her plate. She could picture the straight-cut potato twisting as if she’d picked one up and wrung it out, twisting and soaring up, up, up. Then the rush started in her gut.

Go for it,
she could hear Cam will. Alex looked up and saw her sister smiling, smiling and rubbing the sun charm she wore around her neck.

Alex stood abruptly, accidentally flipping her plate. Food flew. A startled shout cut off Kyle’s laughter. Two french fries had spiraled from the flying dish, corkscrewing into ponytail boy’s nostrils.

Riggs backed off, gasped, then clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from cracking up. From the floor, Derek pushed back his ten-gallon hat and stared up, awestruck at Kyle Applebee’s potato-horned nose.

Poor guy,
Cam giggled silently to Alex,
I bet those fries are cold.
She stared at them — as everyone else was doing — until the tips glowed red-hot and wisps of smoke oozed from Kyle’s nostrils.

His eyes went wide as a mad cow’s and his outraged bellow added to the illusion. “Moo some-ding!” he hollered.

“Do something?” Cam translated.

Evan grabbed Alex’s glass of water and threw its contents in Kyle’s face.

The fire hissed out. Coughing and sputtering, Kyle shook his head wildly. The fries flew free. One splatted onto Derek’s black cowboy hat; the other landed on his brother’s black parka.

Kyle glowered. “You think that’s funny,” he jeered at
Alex and Cam, who were trying not to laugh. He pulled out a knife.

Evan grabbed the older boy’s arm but Kyle easily shook him off.

“Give that to me!” Andy leaped up unexpectedly.

Still holding the weapon, Kyle whirled around. The knife sliced through Andy’s down jacket. “Who you giving orders to college boy?” he sneered.

“Look outside, you bonehead,” Lucinda called triumphantly.

They all did and saw the revolving red light of Sheriff Carson’s car pulling into the diner parking lot.