T*Witches: Dead Wrong (8 page)

“Oh, right, like Brice Stanley?” Alex ragged. She immediately regretted it. Ileana furiously stared at her, and Alex was overcome with fear and nausea. Bolts of electricity careened through her body like a lead bead in a pinball machine. And, all at once, she knew that she was being transformed … into a woodland creature … something small and desperate that scrabbled through the darkness to snatch its food from under rocks.

No!
she heard herself beg from a distance. And then she was well again. Breathing hard, but unharmed, unchanged.

Ileana wore a smile of dangerous satisfaction.
“Adios, amigas,”
she sang out. With a flutter of her fingertips and a wink to Alex, she left them to follow the tunneled trail Boris was making as he moved beneath the snow.

A moment later, their devious guardian had disappeared. Their attack uncle was nowhere in sight. They were alone. Camryn and Alex stared out at the swift-moving darkness.

The faint light Cam had seen moments ago was coming from a small cabin in the shadow of the Ole Wagon Wheel. It was some sort of old storage shed with two small windows. Inside, lit by the glow of oil lamps, Riggs and Derek were ransacking the place. Cam recognized
them by their height and head gear — Riggs, a stumpy shadow in a black bandanna; Derek, a Stetson-crowned string bean.

The voices Alex had picked up came from outside the cabin. Blowing on his hands, shifting from foot to foot in the snow, Evan was only a few feet from the log cabin’s door, talking with Kyle Applebee.

“Yo, man, don’t even go there,” Alex heard the older boy say, his forefinger thumping Evan’s shoulder for emphasis. “No way are you wimping out on us now —”

“Dude, I never said I was with you on this one,” Evan argued. “I said I wouldn’t rat you out. And I didn’t. But get real, Kyle. You’re not actually going to do this, are you? Set fire to the school —”

“No, man.” Kyle’s brother stepped out of the cabin. “You got it all wrong.” Riggs, short, squat, and hard as a fireplug, told Evan, “He’s not going to do that. You are.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE AVALANCHE

“You’re crazy,” Evan protested.

“No, he’s telling the truth.” Kyle laughed. “
You’re
crazy — same as your mama. Don’t forget, dude, she’s the one who’s gonna pay if you bail on us now —”

“But he won’t.” Riggs clapped Evan’s back. “Right, bro?”

“Don’t you get it?” Evan was trying to get through to them. “You can’t do it. Someone could get hurt, really hurt. Dude, I’ve got friends there and you guys do, too. There are lots of kids who look up to you —”

“Well, they better stay in the bleachers and out of the building.” The ponytailed Kyle grinned. “Anyway, bro,
we’re not up to that part yet. First thing we gotta do is get you tattooed. That’s why we’re here.”

“Yeah, that, and just one other little thing.” Riggs rubbed his hands together. He was wearing his weight-lifting gloves, and the tips of his fingers were bright red with cold.

“Later,” Kyle snapped at his brother. “We’re not talking about that now. You ready in there?”

“We got a problem,” Riggs admitted sheepishly. “No electricity. So Derek’s gonna do it jailhouse style. He’ll draw the snake with his fishing knife — it’s not too rusty. Then we’ll rub ink into the cut. Won’t be as pretty as ours, but it’ll work.”

Evan looked around anxiously, as if trying to see out into the darkness.

“He’s looking for us,” Cam whispered. “I wonder where Luce is. Evan must have come alone. Alex, we have to do something.”

“Like what?” Alex rasped back, the smell of pine needles suddenly sharp in her nose. In an instant, she tracked the scent to a tall fir tree overhanging the cabin. Its broad branches glistened with packed snow.

How choice would it be if a sudden wind ruffled the heavy pine needles, loosening the snow and sharp icicles, sending them crashing down onto Kyle’s grungy
ponytail, down the back of his scrawny neck, walloping his rigid shoulders …

“Bull’s-eye!” Cam whispered admiringly. “You got him!”

The avalanche Alex wished for had toppled Kyle Applebee. “Help me up!” he commanded, writhing on the ground, reaching out to his brother. But a late-falling chunk of ice broke Riggs’s grip and sent him tumbling on top of Kyle.

For a moment, in disbelief, Evan watched the boys squirming and sliding in the snow. Then his good nature took over and, with Derek, who’d run outside, knife in hand, he tried to haul the brothers to their feet.

“What happened?” Derek wanted to know.

“Shut that door!” Kyle hollered viciously.

Derek ran back and pulled the metal door shut.

“Show him?” Cam said.

“I’m tired.” Alex grinned. “You take the encore.”

Cam did. Her gaze fueled by anger, she heated the heavy snow on the storage cabin’s slanted roof, sending it sliding. A river of slush roared down on Derek’s beloved ten-gallon hat, crushing his favorite feather and weighing down the hat’s brim till it framed the startled boy’s face like a pioneer woman’s sunbonnet.

“My knife,” Derek wailed, dropping to his knees in
the snow. “It fell out of my hand. It’s my old man’s. He doesn’t even know I took it.”

“You and that dumb knife. Forget it,” Kyle sneered. With Evan’s help, he and Riggs were on their feet again.

“You don’t understand. My old man’ll kill me,” Derek wailed, plunging his fingers under the snow, still searching for the knife.

Did you see where it went?
Alex silently asked Cam.

Of course,
her supersighted twin responded.
He’s inches from the blade. Whoops! He found it.

Derek let out a hair-raising shriek. “I’m cut. I’m bleeding!”

“Get over yourself, DJ,” Kyle said contemptuously. “We got more important things to do tonight than listen to you bellyache over a scratch.”

“Yeah, the best is yet to come,” Riggs snickered. “Come on, Kyle. Can’t we do it now?”

“I’m … ready,” Evan said, talking about the tattoo.

“Hear that?” Riggs told his brother. “He’s ready.”

“There’s not gonna be any tattoo,” Kyle told Evan. “Riggs and DJ were messing with you —”

“Yeah, like you really earned your rattlesnake. Not!” Derek sneered, wiping the blood off his cut hand with snow.

“I don’t get it,” Evan said. “Then what are we doing here?”

Derek and Riggs looked at each other, trying not to crack up. Then they turned to Kyle. “Yo, Ev. Let me ask you again,” the older boy said. “You in with us or you out?”

“Dude, I can’t do it — ”

“Sure. Sure, kung fu. I understand.” Kyle took Evan’s arm. “Come on, got something I want to show you.”

“Oh, wow. Oh, man.” Riggs was ecstatic. “DJ, wait out here,” he ordered, following Evan and his brother back to the cabin.

“Where’s the red container?” Cam whispered. “And the woman? Everything’s pretty much the way I pictured it, except for that — oh, and also that there are three guys with Evan instead of two.”

“Never mind all that — where’s Fredo?” Alex sniffed the blustery air. It was cold, biting, scented with pine needles and wet wood. “Great. What if Uncle Carbuncle doesn’t show?” she said too loudly.

Derek looked up, nervously studying the shadows. “Who’s out there?” he called softly, tentatively.

An ill-timed gust of wind shifted their cloud cover.

“Busted,” Alex said, stepping from behind a tree out into the bright moonlight.

Derek’s eyes widened in fear and wonder. “Alex Fielding? What are you doing here?”

Cam followed Alex into the light. “We could ask you the same question.”

“Hey,” Derek said, bewildered, “what’s going on here? Who else is back there?” He looked past Cam as if expecting a parade of clones to march from the shadows. When it didn’t, he grumbled, “My dad does security here. Me and my crew are taking his shift for tonight. Now get out.”

“Don’t you wish this place was open?” Alex asked, eyeing the dark disk of Ferris wheel against the cloud-dappled sky. “So you could go on a ride?”

“Ha-ha, so funny I forgot to laugh,” Derek said. “I told you to beat it. Now, scat!” he ordered.

“A ride on the Ole Wagon Wheel. Excellent idea,” Cam chimed in enthusiastically.
Think we can do it?

Full moon. Necklace power. Got Ileana’s crystal in my pocket. Right here with …
Alex pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Uh-oh,” she groaned.

“Uh-oh, what?” Cam wanted to know.

Nothing
—

Cam snatched the paper from her sister’s hand.
It’s the note you were going to leave for Mrs. Bass!

—
much,
Alex concluded weakly.

So if we don’t succeed, tonight we’ll have to let the cops know what’s going to go down. And Evan will be right in the middle of it.

Hello. We are going to succeed!
Pausing to consider their situation, Alex added,
We have to.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LOSING DEREK

“I told you to get lost,” Derek said. “Want me to spell it out for you?”

“If I remember right,” Alex said, “that would be harder for you to do than for us to make you fly.”

She clenched the crystal and felt bits of marjoram clinging to it. “Think of mugwort —” she called softly to Derek, who gaped at her, dumbfounded.

Rubbing the hammered-gold sun medallion their father had made for her, Cam said, “It’s this really nice plant — think silver-gray, leafy …”

Stare at him,
Alex urged,
while I come up with an incantation. Cool,
she said, a moment later.
How’s this:
“Spirits of fairness, justice, and right. Save Crow Creek High from its terrible plight
—”

“You enchant, girl!” Cam cheered, her intense eyes pinning Derek.

“
Help us
…” Alex floundered. “
Er, help
—”

“
Help us to do what you would want done,”
Cam quickly ad-libbed,
“with the magic of moonlight and the power of sun.”

Derek was staring at them. His mouth was slack and his eyes scrunched, as if he were trying to understand a tricky homework assignment. Then, suddenly, his body arched backward, arms raised, legs stretching up from his ratty snakeskin boots.

“Eyes on the prize,” Alex said, calculating the distance from Derek to the Ole Wagon Wheel, which loomed behind the storage shed. “That one,” she decided, focusing on one of the run-down ride’s highest and most rickety carts.

Alex rubbed her half-moon charm, feeling at once the hum of energy flow in her.

“Let’s blow him away,” Cam said, reminded suddenly of Leila’s enchanted sigh.

The same thought came to Alex.
Grandmother, help us now,
she urged.
Great spirit of the stream, Leila
…

They each took a deep, crystal-cold breath and, as one, expelled a blast of icy air. Derek flew! He tumbled backward like a celestial gymnast, a dark, spinning shadow in the sky. Then he landed — headfirst, on his soaked, misshapen hat — in the wobbly cart at the top of the Ole Wagon Wheel.

“Score!” Cam shouted, high-fiving her twin.

The door to the cabin opened, spilling lamplight onto the snow. “Well, well.” Kyle Applebee grinned grimly. He was carrying a red container. “Who let the Twisted Sisters out?”

“The Karate Kid’s got company,” Riggs called, following his brother outside.

“Where’s Evan?” Alex asked. But Cam was already on the case, staring at the log cabin, trying to penetrate its walls with her uncanny gray eyes.

Kyle was glaring at them. “How’d you get in here? Where’s Derek?” he snarled, looking around for his crony.

“He’s up —” Alex said, smiling defiantly.

“— to no good,” Cam quickly cut in. A second later, she gasped. Evan was inside the cabin. A woman clothed in black was slumped against him. It was Mrs. Fretts. Wrapped in Kyle’s greasy parka, Evan’s mother was crying softly on her son’s shoulder.

“They have his mom,” Cam reported.

Spilling gasoline from the red plastic container he held, Kyle whipped around and glared at his brother. “I told you to keep that door shut!”

“You were out at the trailer, weren’t you?” Alex demanded, remembering the gasoline smell.

“Wouldn’t be no trailer left,” Riggs snarled, “if someone hadn’t dumped your old man out there. We were going to use the place for practice. Burn that dive down.”

“But not with some stinking stiff inside. We woulda got nailed for murder,” Kyle added. “Who’s gonna believe we had nothing to do with it?”

There was a sudden commotion in the shed. Mrs. Fretts dove outside, shaking her fist at the Applebees. Evan grabbed her before she fell. Gently, he led her back toward the cabin but she refused to go inside. She leaned against the wall, arms stubbornly crossed, her distressed face trying to find a threatening expression.

“You know what?” Kyle addressed the twins, pretending to be laid-back about finding trespassers on his turf and one of his crew missing. “You want to stick around and watch? Cool. But you only get to see the previews. You won’t be around for the show.”

“Is that a threat?” Alex challenged.

Riggs reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. “That answer your question, Alex?”

“Guess so,” she told the grinning boy in the black head scarf.

Okay, she could probably make the gasoline can fly out of Kyle’s hand, Alex thought. Although his grip on it was pretty tight. And Cam might be able to bend the barrel of Riggs’s gun, which was no cheap toy. But they could seriously use a hand right about now.

Or, even better, a claw.

Didn’t happen to see Fredo in that vision, did you?
Alex silently asked her sister.

I think we’re on our own,
Cam said.

“Let them go.” It was Evan. “They don’t know anything. What are they going to do, report you for attempted tattooing?”

“Too late, kung fool,” Kyle said.

“It’s going down tomorrow,” Riggs reminded Evan. “We don’t need any heat between then and now —”

“Riggs, don’t you get it? If you hurt them,” Evan tried to explain, “you’ll have a lot more heat.”

“Really?” Kyle said. “How do you figure? I mean a couple of tourist girls disappear in the woods. Happens all the time. Too bad the sheriff’s office will be so busy trying to find them there’ll be nobody left to patrol the football field.”

OMG,
Cam thought suddenly,
this is it. This is when
it happens.
She recognized not just the place, but the time, the moment.

The woman in black was Evan’s mom, looking chunky in Kyle’s parka.

Derek was no longer in the picture; there were only the two boys that she’d seen.

The full moon, which had played peekaboo with the clouds all night, was now totally visible and very bright —

And Kyle was holding the red container.

Smiling his broken-toothed grin, he pushed the gasoline can at Evan. “Just take it,” he said. “You got to. It’s too late now.”

As he’d done in Cam’s vision, Evan pushed it away. “No. No way, man. No.”

“Okay, listen up,” Kyle said. “I’m through playing. Here’s the way it is. I’m not torching the school. Riggs ain’t doing it. And neither is that Chicken Little, DJ —”

“You the man.” Riggs laughed at Evan.

“That’s right,” his brother backed him. “You’re going to do this thing. So take it.” Again he shoved the red can at Evan. “Yo, Crouching Tiger, it’s one of them deposit things. You bring the gas can back empty tomorrow, we return your moms.”

“Take it!” Riggs shouted, pointing his gun at Evan’s
head. “Let’s go, bro. Time to move on to the bonus round. And, man, what a bonus we got ourselves. You gotta set the gas
and
barbecue old Crow Creek High, or we get to keep your mama
and
the Troublemint twins.”

“Uh-oh,” Cam murmured. “Lucinda wasn’t kidding — ”

Kyle turned to glare at her. As he did, Evan made his move. Arm stiffly bent, one leg cocked, he shouted, spun, and kicked out. The martial arts move, meant to knock the gun out of Riggs’s hand, totally missed, but Evan’s fierce karate cry at least startled the hefty boy into nearly dropping his weapon.

“Lucinda wasn’t kidding?” Alex asked.

I had this premonition flash a second before Evan acted up,
Cam explained.
Lucinda wasn’t kidding. He really does bite at karate.

Alex felt her anger rise, fueled by her love for Evan. Before Riggs had steadied himself, before Kyle took in what had gone down, she whispered to Cam, “Grab your necklace. Let’s send the boy some juice!”

Cam rubbed her sun charm. Alex held tightly to her moon amulet. They felt the electric jolt rush through them and — focusing on Evan’s shoddy boots — they passed their parents’ powerful energy to the desperate boy.

Evan’s foot lashed out again. And connected. With
Riggs’s jaw. The boy fell backward. The gun flew out of his hands. It landed several feet away in the deep snow.

There was no time to gloat. Kyle tossed the gasoline can to Evan. Automatically, instinctively, Evan caught it. The flammable liquid splashed all over his clothes and face, temporarily blinding him.

Kyle backed away, laughing. “Practice makes perfect,” he shouted, hunting for something in his sweatshirt pockets.

“He’s looking for his lighter,” Alex cried.

“He won’t find it,” Cam assured her.
It’s in his parka — which Evan’s mom is wearing.

But Kyle remembered. He turned toward Mrs. Fretts, who began shrieking in terror.

Riggs stirred. Lifting his head from the ground, he massaged his jaw and tested his nose. “Oh, man,” he murmured, shifting his nostrils. “What is that?” He inhaled once, then fell back into the snow.

Alex caught a whiff of the odor at the same time.

“Get off me, get off me!” Evan’s mother tried to swat Kyle Applebee away.

“Leave her alone,” Cam ordered, rashly aiming her fiery eyes at the bully.

Kyle shoved Mrs. Fretts hard against the shed and tried to search the pockets of the jacket she was wearing.

Evan’s mom cried out.

Cam felt the vengeful heat gathering in her eyes. A single blink would send a bolt of flame at Kyle’s scraggly ponytail.

“Wait! No!” Alex warned her, as Evan, his hooded sweatshirt soaked with gasoline, ran blindly toward his mother’s screams.

Cam quickly lowered her gaze from Kyle’s ponytail to the snow at his feet. But suddenly a putrid odor assailed her. “Whoops!” she gasped as Kyle’s snakeskin boots burst into flames.

Alex tackled Evan, to keep him away from the fire. “Get out of that sweatshirt,” she urged. Eyes stinging and shut, Evan rolled in the snow, wrestling off his sweatshirt as Kyle, trying to stomp out the boot blaze, danced wildly closer to them.

All at once he stopped. He wrinkled his nose. And gasped.

Evan hurled his gas-soaked sweatshirt. It landed on top of the red can.

There was an unearthly roar. The ground rumbled beneath them. And Alex, lying facedown in the snow, recognized the ripe swamp stench of Uncle Fredo, who, she peeked and saw, had recklessly morphed into his favorite but forbidden form.

Better late than never!
Cam grumbled, seeing — and smelling — the monstrous lizard.

Freed from his feeble body, practically giddy with glee, Fredo lifted Kyle Applebee off the ground. The ponytailed bully yelped once, then promptly passed out, his boots still aflame.

Fredo grinned madly. Mrs. Fretts slid to the ground, covering her face and howling.

“Put out the fire. Blow out his boots,” Cam called as her uncle lurched closer to the gasoline can hidden by Evan’s sweatshirt.

Cam, Alex, and Evan flattened themselves against the ground as the repulsive reptile batted at Kyle’s burning boots. They only dared look up when they heard the hiss of crackling snakeskin fizzling out in the frigid snow.