T*Witches: Kindred Spirits (15 page)

Whoops. Gotcha
, Alex sent back, embarrassed.
“Look, Als. No hands. Duh!” Is that what you’re trying to say?

Cam rolled her eyes as Alex held both necklaces,
one in each hand. But the hammered gold charms made to fit together as one whole were not reacting as they usually did. They were not pulling toward each other as if they had a life of their own. They were as cold as the cave floor, not heating to a glowing warmth. Clasping them, looking straight at Cam, Alex began, with a sinking heart, to recite the un-morphing incantation.

I’m not feeling anything
, Cam sent nervously.

I know
, her sister admitted.
Me, neither. It’s not working. No juice
.

Try again
, Cam pressed, hoping it wasn’t because Alex was trying something alone that they’d always done together. This had to work, she thought, unsure of what other options they had. Ileana and Miranda couldn’t help; their powers were sapped. Karsh was gone. Thantos and Idiots, Inc. wouldn’t. And Shane? Iffy at best.

The tip of her nose was twitching nervously. Her tiny teeth were chattering. Cam so did not want to leave the cave like this. Equally horrific: If Alex couldn’t help her, then they couldn’t help Jason.

No! Cam thought — this is
not
how this ends. She was Camryn Barnes, the girl who got what she wanted. She was also Apolla DuBaer — one half of the most promising sister act ever.

Epie was clanking around the floor, struggling with the chains that bound her. Sersee, still nursing her
wound, was ignoring them for the moment. Neither would stay that way for long.

I promise
, Alex said, though she had no idea how she’d keep it,
we’ll figure something out —

And then she felt it.

Her back pocket was heating up, as if she’d leaned back against a warm oven.

Cautiously, she reached inside and drew out the amulet she’d found in her parents’ house, the one Nathaniel had been holding in the portrait at Crailmore, the gold disk with its dancing bear, which she’d planned to give to Ileana.

Cam had not seen it. She had her eyes squeezed shut and was trying to will a vision to come to her. She wanted more than a hazy premonition, a hint, or a clue. She wanted a detailed picture of the future: a visual promise of what was to be.

Alex turned the warm medallion in her hand, afraid to look at Cam in case the charm didn’t work. But it continued to heat up in her hand, feeling very much like her moon charm did. As she rotated the amulet, the DuBaer crest glinted in the candlelight, flashing across Cam’s stressed hamster face.

Anxiously, Alex began the unmorphing incantation.

All at once, Cam, her face lit by the glimmering
amulet, gasped. And saw herself
as
herself, free of Sersee’s curse. Back in her own body!

“Good magick that lights the night …”
Alex recited, holding the disk on which her family crest had been lovingly carved.

“Moon and stars that make the sky bright …”

She heard her own voice getting stronger as it reverberated off the walls of the cave.
“It is time for Apolla, a good and compassionate witch

To return to her human form
,

To make the switch

From hamster back to Camster, this I request
.

To join Artemis and do what she does best —”

Alex stopped for a second. Was there an echo in here? Or was … Cam reciting it with her? Was it possible? Cam!

Alex spun toward her sister. On her own two sturdy legs, her face mirroring not just Alex’s features but her glowing joy, Cam was back. Their arms reached out at the same moment, their tears dampened each other’s shoulders.

“Thank you, thank you,” Cam murmured, wondering if she’d really created a vision that had turned to reality.

“Thank Aron,” Alex responded, showing her sister
the DuBaer amulet. “This was his. Nathaniel must have left it to him. I found it in the cedar chest.”

“Let’s use it to bring Jason back,” Cam said, stroking the panther’s head.

“Let’s get out of here first,” Alex decided. “We’ll take him with us.”

“Good plan, twinsies. I bet he’ll be thrilled to know you’re witches … just like us!”

Cam paled. “Oh, no,” she murmured.

“Oh, yes,” Sersee cackled wickedly.

“Never mind the Queen of Mean,” Alex urged, taking Jason’s collar.

“Love to hang with ya, Sers, and you, too, Gold-wrapper.” Alex grinned at the chain-encased, wriggling Epie. “But you know … errands to run, spells to cast, wrongs to right, lives to ruin! Like yours.”

Inspired, she handed Cam Jason’s leash and whipped the baby blanket from around her own neck. Skullcap, she thought, sniffing the herb-packed panels of the quilt.

“What do you know of skullcap?” Sersee demanded, trying to lift herself with her one good arm.

They ignored her.

Alex clung tightly to their grandfather’s amulet.
“Good spirits that dwell within these caves,”
she improvised.
“Ancestors who here went to their graves —”

She paused and Cam picked up the thread.
“We call
upon the heritage that is ours … to put these Furies to sleep …”

Alex shrugged.
“For hours and hours?”

“Good enough!” They each drew a pinch of skullcap from the quilt and together let it rain down on The Furies.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A BUMPY ENDING

Cam and Alex dashed back through the twisting tunnels of the enormous caverns, the panther at their heels. They’d reached the slippery steps leading up to LunaSoleil’s basement when Alex flung her arm out, blocking Cam.

“What do you hear?” Cam asked.

“Someone’s … wait, no, there are two of them,” Alex replied. A huge grin spontaneously erupted on her face just as the trapdoor above them flew open.

Hovering at the top of the steps were their beloved guardian and the woman they were just beginning to know but already loved. Ileana and Miranda.

Startled gasps gave way to a torrent of questions, answers, expressions of joy and relief — all tangled up, since everyone spoke at once.

Neither Miranda nor Ileana had actually heard Cam’s anguished cries for help, but both women sensed that the twins were in trouble. Ileana rejected her witchy senses, still not trusting her instincts.

Miranda trusted them completely.

She’d run from Crailmore, found Ileana, and together, the women made a beeline for LunaSoleil.

Miranda put a consoling arm around Cam, studying her daughter, who had all the symptoms of having been transmutated. Her eyes were glassy, her skin sickly pallid, her hands shook pitifully. What had she become and who had cursed her? Involuntarily, Miranda shuddered.

Apolla and Artemis — her babies, hers and Aron’s, had been forced to tread on very dangerous ground. They’d been exposed to powerful, dark magick that no one their age, especially the uninitiated, should have gone through. The twins were out of their league. Worse they might not be able to save themselves the next time around. She wanted them to stay, but Miranda knew they had to go back to the mainland, their best chance of staying safe.

She was about to tell them when she was interrupted
by Ileana, who’d knelt down to study the panther. “I see you managed to adopt a pet while all this was going on.”

Before Cam could explain, Alex jumped in, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “He’s not exactly a pet.” She deliberately turned to Miranda. “Uh, Mom … Cam would like you to meet her boyfriend.”

Cam elbowed her with more force than necessary.

Which led Alex to rub her arm and giggle, “Bad hamster!”

Miranda was stumped. Ileana lifted her clear gray eyes to Cam and said gently, “They did this to a friend of yours?”

“We didn’t have time to un-morph him. We’ll do it now.” Cam took Alex’s hand and clasped her sun charm.

Ileana leaped to her feet. “Bad plan!” she announced.

“Huh?” Now the twins were stumped.

“Before you show off,” their guardian witch said, “think for a moment. Together, you have the ability to return your friend to his proper form —”

“We have to,” Cam interrupted, her voice catching. “They used him; they hurt him.”

Miranda understood now. “The moment he takes his true form, he will remember everything. He’ll have questions, of course. It’s your choice, Apolla. Are you ready for that?”

Cam wasn’t. In her eagerness to make Jason whole and human again, she hadn’t considered the side effects. “So what do we do?” Her stomach twisted at the possibility. “We can’t leave him —”

“Speaking in
your
native tongue —
duh!
” Ileana rolled her eyes. “No one is suggesting that. Sit down, my brave, foolish fledglings.” She softened, hearing Karsh’s voice in her head, then reached for Miranda. “Come. You and I may be weathering a ‘power outage,’ but there’s much we can teach them.”

Miranda hesitated. “What you’re about to teach them is well above their level: tracker skills. We probably —”

“They’re quite advanced, I assure you,” Ileana explained. “I say we go for it.”

“Let’s,” Miranda decided, a little of her own rebellious nature coming back. She liked the feeling.

And so, under the guidance of the women they trusted and loved, Cam and Alex repeated the incantation that brought Jason back painlessly to his human form. While he groggily shook his arms and stretched his neck, they learned a spell to wipe out memory. With oil of valerian root, which Miranda contributed, and a foggy green crystal from Ileana’s herb pouch, the twins chanted the incantation. And Jason, blinking at Cam as if trying to bring her into focus, seemed to fall asleep. Lastly, they
cast the transporting spell to return him to his friends and what was left of the vacation he should have been enjoying.

Back at Ileana’s, Cam and Alex got ready to go. Miranda and Ileana were in the front room waiting to escort them to the ferry.

While Miranda looked on with amusement, Ileana lugged her furniture back to where she’d had it before Cam’s restless reorganizing fit.

“When I need a decorator,” their stylish guardian grumbled, “I’ll send for Emily Barnes. Of course,” she quickly tagged on, “I appreciate everything you did here, especially the cleanup. That was a real gift.”

“Speaking of —” Alex began.

“— we have another gift for you,” Cam finished.

Ileana, who normally adored gifts, was somehow ill at ease. “What for?” she cracked. “My generous hospitality?”

Cam clarified, “Just for being our cousin.”

Alex opened her hand. The DuBaer family crest sparkled, glinting in the late afternoon sun. “Welcome — officially! — to the family.”

“Strange as it may be!” Cam added.

Ileana’s hand flew to her lips; her electric gray eyes widened. She turned away so no one would see them grow misty.

When she turned back, Miranda had cupped Cam’s face with one hand, Alex’s with the other. “This, Artemis and Apolla, is what I’m proudest of. The talent, the power you were born with. But the kindness, the selflessness, and the compassion; this is a gift no one can give you. Use it well.”

The four women set out for the ferry — Alex in her frayed denim jacket hoisting her backpack; Cam, back in cargoes, wheeling her rollie — each buried in her own thoughts.

Cam was disappointed and blamed herself for all that had happened. Jason would forget all this. She wouldn’t. She’d caused him unbearable torment. Worse, she’d fallen for Shane, a deceiving skeve. A liar. With Jason, what you saw was what you got. It was all right out there.

“Sis,” Alex busted into her head. “Try this. How about, with Jason, what you see is what you
want
to see. Maybe the boy has layers, depth, secrets you don’t want to see.”

“Thanks, Oprah,” Cam cracked.

The “normal” girl from Marble Bay had arrived here feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Like ET, an alien who only wanted to go home. Instead, a part of her finally admitted what Alex seemed to have embraced from the start. They had two homes. The one they were going
back to and the one to which they would surely return. Two halves of her heart that made a whole. Like herself and Alex.

The twin uprooted from Montana had arrived here and connected immediately. But Coventry was not exactly the paradise she’d thought it would be. This island of witches and warlocks, its history, its people, its magick held frightening secrets. Only some were buried underground. She and Cam had been sent away long ago because the island wasn’t safe. What Alex now knew was that Coventry might never be safe for them.

Coventry would remain a mystery. Like Shane. Like Michaelina. Like why the truth-inducer spell didn’t work on her.

“Are you sure of that?” Ileana had tapped into her brain.

When Alex explained, Ileana pooh-poohed her. “Rubbish! You got that right out of my spell book. Of course it worked.”

“I thought so, too, at first,” Alex protested. “She seemed to be spilling everything. Then she betrayed me. How do I know which was the true Michaelina?”

Miranda softly said, “Maybe they both are. Listen to me. No one is just one way, one-dimensional. Not even your uncle Thantos, though you might like to think so. Like anyone else, a witch can be confused, unsure of
what and who she really believes. You ordered her to tell the truth — perhaps she did. In Michaelina’s mind, she may have been merely exploring her options.

“The first one that appealed to her, that spoke to the rebel in her, was most likely Sersee. Then she met you. My guess is the two of you captivated her, piqued her interest, and probably got her to question her loyalty. It’s a start —”

The thought popped into Alex’s head so unbidden and so quickly she couldn’t squash it.
For a certified wacko, Mom’s pretty smart!

“I HEARD that!” Miranda put her hands on her hips and pretended to be angry. She wasn’t very good at pretending.

Which sent all four witches into a major fit of giggles followed by the tightest, longest, most loving group hug ever.

“All’s aboard that’s goin’ aboard!” Forgetting for a moment where they were, the quartet looked up, startled, as the ferry pulled up to the dock, its captain covered with bruises.

“That happen often to you?” asked Alex, pointing at the welts on his arms, although she knew the answer.

“Whaddaya, some kinda witch doctor? Happens all the time,” he groused. “My last run of the day, some witch
put a spell on the lake, messed my vessel around. I got bounced, nearly capsized.”

Hence the nickname Bump. The flabby Cap was used to bumping around his boat like a pinball, courtesy, Cam guessed, of The Furies and other mischievous sprites on the island.

“S’why I don’t spend any more time around here than I need to. No, sir.” Then Bump bellowed, “Didja hear me? All ya witches, get on yer broomsticks and move it.”

Never prouder to be witches, Cam and Alex — the T’Witches, born Apolla and Artemis — did just that.

Ileana walked Miranda back to Crailmore, turning down the invitation to come inside. She had no interest in seeing Daddy Dearest or hearing his warped version of history, particularly his lies about Karsh and Nathaniel’s friendship.

The beloved trickster wasn’t here to refute the hulking tracker. Well, Ileana thought with a toss of her luminous blond locks, Lord Karsh Antayus might no longer be alive, but his memories, his truth, lived on in his precious journal. He’d bequeathed it to her, Ileana, the daughter he’d never had but reared with all his wisdom and love.

And all he’d asked of her was to be generous of heart, to read the pages he’d written for her, to share
them with Cam and Alex, and to keep the girls safe so that they might fulfill their destiny.

Limited powers or not, nothing would stop Ileana from granting his last request.

Nothing!

Except this: When she arrived at Karsh’s cottage, and went to retire the precious journal, it was not where she’d left it.

It was gone.