T*Witches: Dead Wrong (9 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FAMILY MATTERS

“Did you see that? Was I born to be huge, or what?” Fredo crowed, tossing Kyle aside.

“Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable,” Alex suggested, “like yourself.”

“Just in case one of Thantos’s spies is around,” Cam reminded their uncle, holding her nose as politely as possible. “That lizard look is off-limits, remember?”

“Oh, all right.” Fredo sulked. “But my brother will forgive me everything, once I bring you to him.” Slowly, with obvious regret, he began returning to his human form. Which was no great improvement, Cam noted, on his revolting reptile appearance.

She was glad that Evan and his mother hadn’t seen
the changing. They were both inside the cabin. Mrs. Fretts had passed out cold, with her head on Evan’s lap. Evan, exhausted and still groggy from the gas fumes, leaned against a wall, resting his eyes.

“I love being a lizard,” the twins’ shrinking uncle confided. “And I’m good at it, aren’t I? Colossal!” With a semimorphed claw, he swept back his thinning, greasy dark hair. “So, are we all set?”

“Almost,” Alex said. “No hurry, right?”

“Yeah,” Cam agreed. “Why don’t we chill and chat, you know, about the family?”

“Which family?” Fredo asked coyly, brushing leftover lizard skin from his Coventry cape. “Yours, hers, ours? There are so many.”

“Ours,” Alex said. “Which, rumor has it, includes a certain beautiful guardian witch —”

Fredo’s squinty eyes grew large. The smile left his face at last. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said nervously. “I never said a word about it!”

“We’re talking about Ileana, of course,” Cam persisted. “Whose child is she? Is she our sister? Was our father married to someone else, before he met our mother?”

“Or is Ileana Miranda’s daughter by a previous marriage?” Alex asked.

“No,” Fredo said.

The word, rumbling with an echo that sounded most un-Fredo-like — aggressive, angry, impatient — was followed by the sudden meowing of a cat.

The twins looked down and there was Boris. Wet, scruffy, shaking with cold, he glared at Fredo. They looked up again, and there was Ileana, in not much better shape than her pet. It was her decisive “no” that had reverberated with Fredo’s.

“What is this?” Fredo demanded, backing away from Boris. “Who invited the party poopers? Did you forget that I’m allergic to cats — particularly to that one?”

Boris hissed and hunched his back. Fredo began frantically scratching his scrawny arm. “Go on, go on, try to best me as you did last time we met,” he taunted Ileana. “This time, you will not have the twins’ magick on your side. They are going with me — voluntarily!”

“Um, Fredo —” Cam began.

Their goat-bearded uncle could not be silenced. “All your power, both inherited and learned, may be strong enough to hurt me, Ileana, but you’ll never overcome our combined strength. I am just one against you, but with the daughters of Aron and Miranda on my side, there’s nothing you can do.”

Ileana shook her head in disgust and turned her back on their skinny uncle. “Do you know how far away
Mexico is?” their guardian growled at Cam and Alex. “And how warm?”

“Is that where you went?” Alex asked.

Cam snapped her fingers. “You went to visit Brice, right? He’s supposed to be starring in the movie that a friend of mine’s father is producing —”

“Not Eric Waxman?” Ileana wrinkled her nose.

“Waxman, that’s it,” Cam affirmed. “He’s my friend Brianna’s father —”

“Father?” Alex sneered. “He’s as good a father as Thantos is an uncle.”

Ileana sighed. “We were having such a marvelous time until he showed up, unannounced, uninvited, and unwanted!”

“May I have your attention, please?” Fredo demanded, frantically scratching his ankle.

“Not now,” Ileana grumbled, waving him away. “Just stand still and be quiet and I’ll tell Boris not to rub against you.”

“Yes, goddess.” Fredo bowed slightly, then straightened and stood still as a statue.

“Ileana.” Cam had an idea. Alex instantly seconded it. “We’ve got a favor to ask.…”

Ileana tapped her pale chin thoughtfully as they outlined their plan. Basically, it called for Ileana to spook
Eric Waxman and send him sprinting from Mexico to Marble Bay full of gratitude and dad-itude. To make good on the promise he’d made to Brianna, his daughter.

“Bonus: You’ll have more downtime with Brice,” Cam clinched the request.

“Brice?” Fredo brightened maliciously. “Oh, yes, one of my brother’s lackeys —”

The twins and their guardian whirled on him. “Brice Stanley?” Alex asked, shocked.

“The movie star?” Cam wanted to clarify.

“My Brice?” Ileana gulped.

“The very one,” Fredo insisted, rubbing his arms and keeping an eye on Boris. “How he idolized Thantos — and obeyed him unquestioningly.”

“I don’t believe you,” Ileana said, but Cam and Alex could see, could feel, that she did, and that Fredo’s revelation had shaken her.

Cam remembered how awful it was finding out that Shane was working for Thantos. The handsome young warlock had been sent to harm them but had stayed to help. Shane had refused to kill at her cruel uncle’s command. Maybe Brice Stanley, too, would disobey and abandon Lord Thantos.

“Yo, hold up,” Alex insisted. “Idolized and obeyed. Past tense. How long ago did this happen, Fredo?”

“Not that long ago —”

“I don’t believe you.” Ileana tried to remain haughty. “Let’s go. I’m transporting you home. And then I’ve got business — and pleasure — to take care of south of the border.”

“
You’re
taking me home? But you said …” Fredo looked pleadingly at Alex and Cam. “You said you’d come with me.”

“We said,” Alex reminded him, “that we wouldn’t let Thantos hurt you.”

“And we won’t,” Cam promised. “You’ll have Ileana’s protection, all the way back to Coventry Island.”

Fredo gazed at Ileana, letting his situation sink in. “Oh, very well. Brice was just a boy,” he told his traveling companion. “Very young. His parents were sick and sent him to the fortress to be reared. That was when my mother, Lady Leila, was still alive —”

“Fredo, what about our mother?” Cam asked anxiously. “Thantos said he could take us to her.”

“And you believed him?” Ileana shook her head at them.

“He can and he will,” Fredo declared, “if you come with me now.”

Cam and Alex looked at each other, then turned to Ileana.

“She is a stranger, a nobody! I am your relative,” Fredo burst out. “Would I want to hurt you?”

“You are no longer children,” Ileana said stiffly. “The decision must be your own.” She snapped her fingers and Boris jumped into her arms. Then she turned away from them as if preparing to leave. “Oh, all right,” they heard her grumble as she swung back to face them. “I am your relative, too —”

“Who told you that?” Fredo looked around frantically. “It wasn’t me. I’d never say a thing like that! Relative, ha! Not from
our
side of the family!”

Ignoring him, Cam asked softly, “Ileana, was our mother your mother, too?”

“No,” their guardian said, “though I often wished she were. When I was a child, I longed for Miranda to be my mother. She was kind and beautiful. I remember growing angry with her when she told me that she and Aron were going to be parents. I became very jealous —”

“When did you see her last?” Alex asked.

“You already know. My lord Karsh told you. I saw her the day you were born. Karsh and I found your father. It was a great tragedy — for all. You see, I worshiped Lord Aron. He was brilliant and strong and his eyes were as gray as mine — and yours, of course,” she added. “I dreamed that they’d adopt me one day. And Karsh told me they hoped for it, too. Who knows what might have happened.…”

“What did happen?” Cam urged gently. “What happened to our mother?”

“I don’t know,” Ileana confessed. “We brought her your father’s robe, his bloodstained cloak. Lord Karsh and I stayed with her while she mourned and tore her hair. We stayed as she howled and screamed and rubbed her face into the bloody fleece of the cloak she had so lovingly made for him. We stayed and held you so that you would be safe — and, as we watched, Miranda went mad.”

“A crazy woman,” Fredo cackled suddenly. “That’s who your mother was. Dangerously demented. Incurably insane. She needed to be locked up!”

“And my mother?!” Ileana whirled ragefully on Fredo. “What do you know of
her?
”

Fredo’s pasty skin bleached to a slick and sicker white. The dark orbs of his squinty eyes darted madly, as if looking for a way out of their sockets. “W-why ask me?” he stammered. “I am not your father!”

“Who is?” Ileana demanded.

Trembling, terrified, Fredo fell to his knees in the snow. Staring defiantly at Ileana, he put his fingers to his lips and made the gesture of a key turning in a lock. “My lips are sealed,” he pledged.

Ileana’s hands flew up, her fingers raked the air between
herself and Fredo. Her beautiful lips twisted into a snarl. There was no doubt that a terrible spell could fly from them.

“What does it matter,” their uncle squealed, “whether you kill me or Thantos does?”

“No,” Cam shouted.

“Ileana, don’t,” Alex begged. Without thinking, they dashed to her and threw their arms around her waist.

Their guardian’s hands relaxed, alighting gently on the girls’ heads. “Never,” she whispered, stroking their hair, “would I have harmed him. I am a witch, not a demon — no matter who my father may be.”

Her shoulders fell. And Boris leaped off them. Hissing and spitting, the orange cat jumped onto the foul warlock’s scrawny neck.

By the time Ileana led him away, their uncle was covered in oozing hives. His eyes were swollen, his nose red. And his throat was so inflamed that he couldn’t have answered another question no matter who asked it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

GOING HOME

“Excellent!” Cam grinned big into her cell phone and blocked out the airport noises all around her. She listened to Bree describe the belated party her dad was finally going to throw for her. Due to some “glitch” on the set of his movie, Mr. Waxman had some unexpected time on his hands.

“It’ll be the kick!” Brianna raved. “A weekend-long bash at the Boston Ritz, with major concert tickets for Saturday night. And now you can come, you’ll be back from winter break.”

Cam laughed. “Celebrating your fifteenth birthday is something we were always meant to do together,” she said. “All of us.”

A sharp pang twanged her gut. Talking to Bree led to thoughts of Beth, Sukari, Amanda, and Kristen, too. Her friends. Yes, she’d spent the last week with Alex’s heart-homies. Getting to know them, helping them, had brought her closer to Lucinda and Evan. But that didn’t make her miss her own BFFs any less.

Then, another eureka moment walloped her: This is what it’s been like for Alex in Marble Bay. After eight months, Als was mostly cool with the Six Pack, but no one could ever replace …

“Wha?!” Cam yelped out loud and spun around to see Evan, who’d just lightly connected with a karate kick to her shin. On his left, Lucinda was giggling, and on his right, Alex, commanding: “Get off the horn, Barnes! Ticktock, the plane’ll be boarding and, as you would put it, ‘Good-bye much?’”

Then she pinched the phone from Cam and singsonged into it, “See ya later, Breezie-gator,” adding a little more sarcastically than she’d meant to, “Oh, and BTW, thanks for including me in the invite to your party.”

Cam didn’t hear what Bree said next, but Alex did. As she ended the call, Brianna softly whispered, “Fly safe, you guys.”

And Alex smiled in spite of herself.

“I heard your karate is way improved,” Luce said, as
the foursome hustled toward the long line waiting to clear security. Lucinda gave Evan a light punch on the arm and props for his smooth moves the other night.

The boy lit up. “I never felt anything like it,” he admitted, shaking his head. “It was like some generator got switched on inside me. All of a sudden there was this new power source. I guess when you get really angry,” he mused, “like when someone is threatening your friends or family, you get this surge of energy, like supernatural strength, like —”

“Magick,” Cam finished as Alex impulsively slipped her arm around her Raggedy-Ann-haired best, and nodded to Evan. “You really did kick butt, dude. You’re a hero now — the boy who saved Crow Creek High.”

Evan stuck his thumbs in the straps of his overalls and shrugged. “You guys deserve the credit. Except for a couple of choice karate moves on my part.”

“Boy’s head is going to get as big as his hair,” Alex teased, tugging a rope of Rasta curls. Best of all, along with his threads and dreads, Evan’s yummy chocolate smell was back.

The acrid burning odor, Alex realized, had probably come from his worrying so much about fire. And from holding inside what he so badly wanted to blurt.

“How’s your mom doing?” Cam asked him.

“I meant to tell you.” Evan grinned proudly. “I’m driving her up to rehab this afternoon. She’s going to get help. I think your showing up — and everything that happened afterward — kind of gave her the push she needed.”
And,
Alex heard him add strictly to himself,
she was so ashamed of not being able to help me
—

Luce laughed, but Alex said gently, “No, dude. It’s because she’s so proud of you. She’s always wanted to be there for you and the kids.”

They were next to go through the metal detector. Alex pressed her lips together and tried to push back the feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. She hugged Evan fiercely, burying her head in his chest. “Good-bye,” she said, “and don’t —”

“Do anything you wouldn’t do?” Evan’s voice was thick with emotion, too.

Cam planted a good-bye kiss on Lucinda’s cheek. “You guys,” Luce said as Alex moved in to give her one more hug. “I’m gonna start bawlin’ if you two don’t go ahead and get moving, now.”

“Tell Andy my sister says ‘bye,’” Alex teased, winking at Luce.

As the twins made their way to the boarding area, Cam’s cell phone rang. It was Mrs. Bass. The librarian had wanted to drive them to the airport, but realized how important
it was to them to say their special good-byes to Evan and Lucinda.

Apparently, she hadn’t let go of something that was bothering her. She asked to speak to Alex.

“Sure.” Cam shrugged and handed the phone over.

Mrs. Bass spoke quickly, in a way that made Alex realize the woman had struggled with whether or not to divulge this. And had clearly decided that if she didn’t get it all out now, she never would. Alex tensed.

Signaling Cam to move closer to the phone, Alex waited nervously.

“Now that Isaac is gone,” Mrs. Bass began, “I feel I really should tell you.”

Alex began to feel a tightening in her stomach. What new Ike revelation was about to be dumped on her?

“I feel Sara would have wanted you to know.” Mrs. Bass took a deep breath. “In fairness to the man’s memory.”

What had fairness to do with it? Alex thought. Where did fair ever fit into the Ike equation?

“Alex …” Mrs. Bass paused. “Isaac didn’t walk out on you and Sara.”

Alex laughed. “Right. He
ran
out.”

“He begged to stay, but your mother had made up her mind. She kicked him out,” Doris continued.

“Because he was a gambler, a loser, a …” Alex ticked off the reasons. What was the difference?

“She never told me why,” Mrs. Bass explained, “but knowing Sara as well as I did … it had to be something pretty monumental. She’d always intended for you to be brought up with two parents. But something made her change her mind.”

In the background, Alex and Cam could hear the announcement that their plane was boarding.

“I just thought you should know,” Mrs. Bass said.

Alex’s spiked head rested against the plane’s window, her gaze fixed on the tweedy pattern of the seat back in front of her. She listened to but didn’t look directly at Cam in the aisle seat next to her.

“Why do you think Mrs. Bass decided to drop that little detail now?” Cam didn’t have to read Alex’s mind to know her sister was obsessing about that last phone call.

“What’s to think about?” Alex responded glumly. “She obviously had this need to go all ‘truth, justice, and the librarian way.’ My mom told me Ike bailed. Bass says no, Sara sent him packing. It changes nothing.”

“And just leads to more questions that may never be answered,” Cam finished the thought for her twin.

“Speaking of.” Alex flexed in her seat, intent on
changing the subject. “Our guardian’s got a few issues of her own in search of answers. Like the famous Brice Stanley — warlock, movie star, Ileana crush-puppy, and tool of Thantos?!”

Cam shuddered, remembering Shane. “I feel her pain, I really do.”

Alex considered. “You’d think the brilliant Ileana would have sensed that Brice was hooked up with our murderous uncle.”

“Maybe love dulls our senses? She’s so into him. But if anyone can figure it out, Ileana can. That’s our … what? Cousin, aunt, random relative, guardian?”

“That’s our goddess,” Alex declared, laughing — knowing, as Cam did, that the truth, whatever it turned out to be, wouldn’t hide from Ileana for long. The most talented and tyrannical witch they knew would simply not allow it to.

Alex had no clue how long she’d slept. What she did know was: The plane was in the air, en route from Montana to Massachusetts. It hadn’t stopped. Yet someone had gotten aboard who hadn’t been there before.

And, though she’d awakened smiling, a tear was running down her cheek.

Someone had visited her — the same pale and gentle, raspy-voiced old man who’d been tapping into her
dreams, talking to her, guiding her, for as long as she could remember.

Karsh.

The ancient warlock hadn’t sneaked into her slumber in quite a while. Today he’d returned, as real to her as the sleeve of the plaid flannel shirt on which she was now wiping her tears. And this time, this visit, she’d been able to talk to him.

“Child,” he’d said soothingly, “let me ease your struggle.”

And she remembered saying, “If Mrs. Bass knew that Sara kicked Ike out, why’d she wait until he was dead to tell me?”

“Ah, Artemis, surely you must know. As long as Isaac Fielding was alive, he was a threat to you. Your protector, Sara, discovered that. The librarian merely did what Sara wanted: promote the idea that Isaac chose to leave.”

“But wasn’t he a loser, a gambler, a creep? Didn’t he steal all our money? Why else would she have thrown him out? Why would she have chosen to live in poverty?”

“He did take the money,” Karsh assured her. “He was furious that she wanted him out; his pride was wounded … enough to vengefully make off with Sara’s savings. But he wasn’t all bad, Artemis. No one is all bad — or all good. Isaac Fielding had many faults. The gambling, an illness, was one of them. But when he
wasn’t sick, he worked. And he brought in enough money to keep Sara and you sheltered, clothed and fed.”

“Did she love him?” Alex heard herself asking weakly.

“She did, my child, she did. She would have put up with his vanity, problems, and get-rich schemes … until it happened.”

Whatever had happened, Alex knew, was the reason Sara turned her back on Ike. “It had to do with me, didn’t it? You have to tell me what it was.”

Karsh smiled — at her quickness, her cleverness, Alex sensed — and then he confirmed her gut feeling. “Isaac saw you do something … remarkable. You didn’t realize what you’d done. You were merely a child, a cranky, overtired little girl having a temper tantrum in a store. You wanted a small, silly, but extraordinarily expensive doll. Sara correctly said no. Yet somehow the doll ended up in the shopping cart at the checkout counter.

“Isaac had seen you staring at the toy but knew you hadn’t touched it. He had seen something with no rational explanation. His greed and scheming took over. He wanted to test you, to see if you could do it again, to train you. To see if he could make money —”

“— illegally, by stealing stuff?” Alex was stunned, repulsed.

Karsh had nodded then, sadly. “Sara was appalled.
Her husband’s true colors had come out, and she knew she could never again trust him to be around you. There was really no decision to be made.”

“So she cut him loose,” Alex concluded.

“She chose to work two jobs, to be a single mother. And she chose to tell you only about one side of the man. The dark side. She wanted to be sure that even after she was gone, you would never seek him out.”

Alex understood. Sara had chosen poverty over comfort, being alone over love, possibly even death over life. The cigarette smoking that led to her lung cancer had probably been fueled by stress as well as nicotine.

“All to protect me,” Alex marveled aloud.

“That was her destiny. She was your protector, Artemis. That is why I chose her.”

Now
Alex
was awake. Karsh was gone. Sniffing back a final tear, Alex turned to Cam, eager to share the old warlock’s revelations.

But her sister’s seat was empty.

While Alex had dozed, Cam had tried to read, to listen to music, to watch the movie she’d already seen at the multiplex, but nothing could distract her.

As we watched, Miranda went mad,
she kept hearing Ileana say. And then Fredo’s vicious voice piping up:
She deserved to be locked up!

Nothing seemed to happen by accident in her world,
not since she and Alex had found each other. So what did it mean, what was she supposed to do with these stunning discoveries?

Slowly, methodically, Cam tried to put the pieces together to remember everything they’d been told about their mother. Her name was Miranda. She was kind, adored, beautiful, and wildly — or was it madly, Cam sorrowfully wondered — in love with their father. Miranda had found the perfect partner in Aron, the brilliant gray-eyed young warlock who, the newspaper had said, was the founder of a “multimillion-dollar technology empire” — that their uncle now headed. She had lost Aron the very day Cam and Alex were born. Karsh and Ileana had found him and brought Miranda his lambs-wool cloak. And their mother’s grief had turned to madness. Now she was gone, vanished. Neither Karsh nor Ileana knew her fate. They assumed Miranda was dead, lost forever to those who loved her.

Only Thantos acted differently. Their villainous uncle insisted he could take the twins to Miranda. Which didn’t mean Miranda was alive, Cam had to remind herself. Either the evil snake meant he could take them to her grave — or he could summon up her spirit. She and Alex had accidentally brought the spirit of their grandmother, Leila, to the sacred stream. No doubt that’s what the deceitful Thantos meant.

The more Cam pondered, the surer she became. That had to be it. If Miranda were alive, she would have come looking for them.

And yet, no one had ever said for sure that she was dead. Her body had never been found.

Even under the fleece airline blanket, Cam had become chilled. Her sight had grown blurry and her head began to ache. Probably from thinking too much, she tried to tell herself. But all at once, a vision she’d had — when was it? months ago — came flying back at her like a boomerang.

Blinding brightness. A woman bathed in white light. A long chestnut braid down her back. Staring, watching, waiting …

The light, the brightness? The woman had been looking out a big window, as if inside a greenhouse.

“Put the pieces together, Apolla. You can do it. You must do it. It is your destiny.”

The voice, Karsh’s raspy whisper, had invaded her vision then. Or was it a vision? No, she had fallen asleep after all. And their guardian’s guardian, the faithful old warlock who had known and loved her parents, had come to her. Not to answer her questions but to guide her in using her own powers. He had come to urge her once again to trust her premonitions.

It was then that Cam had gotten up to stretch her legs. As she walked back to her seat now, she saw Alex
popping up, looking around for her. Before she could say anything, Alex said, “Karsh came to me. I know why Sara kicked out Ike.”