T*Witches: The Power of Two (2 page)

"Some guy," Cam quickly added. "Just some weirdo."

Tonya turned to the photographer. "Okay, we're ready now. Everything's perfect."

Later, when the picture went viral, Cam would notice that Tonya was the only one smiling.

"The game's gonna start in a second, Marleigh. We better go back to our seats," Tonya announced minutes later, when she was satisfied that the photographer had taken enough shots.

Beth extended her hand. "It was really cool meeting you. Maybe later we can—"

"Yeah, right. Later," Tonya snorted. Throwing her arm around Marleigh's shoulder, she started toward the bleachers. Not before the superstar glanced back at Cam and waved.

"What'd diva divine say?" Kristen strolled over with Brianna.

"Yes, what was your audience with Chica Plastica like? Did she at least say something important—like where she got the cashmere wrap?" Bree faux-gushed. "As if I didn't know. I'm so all over that brand."

Before Cam could answer, the whistle sounded for the second half. The Meteors took the field again.

"How cool is she?" Beth caught up to them. "I mean, wasn't she, like, so... I don't know... real?"

"Which part?" Brianna asked, all sugary innocence. "Her nose? It's definitely been done. Eyes? Custom contacts. And that blond-on-blond hair? Weave job."
"No way!" Beth protested.

"The ultimate brain-boggler is how Tonya got Marleigh Cooper here in the first place. It's not like
she
has any showbiz connections," Bree, whose dad was a Hollywood producer, asserted.

Beth shrugged. "I've heard that she hangs out with this kid who works at the Music & More store—maybe that had something to do with it."

Bree scoffed. "You mean the slacker who always wears that skull earring? As if he has any pull. He's a lackey."

"Anyone about soccer?" It was Kristen. "Eyes on the prize, girlfriends. It's gonna take some serious hustle to win this game."

"Which we are
so
gonna do," Cam promised.

The Salem Wildcats had other ideas. Thanks to Lindsay Luckinbill, their top scorer, they managed to block every move the Meteors made.

Finally, near the end of the second half, Lindsay got between a pass from Kristen to Beth. Snagging the ball, the Wildcat star headed downfield with it. If she scored, Salem would break the tie—and take the game.

Cam was already on the case, racing after Lindsay, when Bree squealed, "Mojo girl, put the hex on her!"

Yeah, right, Cam thought, pounding behind the speeding 'Cat.
Slow down, Lindsay, so we can win. Blunder and stumble. Let the fun begin.

Excuse me? Where had that come from, Cam asked herself, as Lindsay drew within kicking distance of the goal. When had she started thinking in rhyme?

Unexpectedly, Lindsay glanced over her shoulder, as if trying to see how far behind her Camryn was. It was a fatal mistake.

Cam was very close, near enough for her startling gray eyes to lock on to the Wildcat's green glare.

Lindsay skidded abruptly. Squinting, blinking, she twisted her head away from Cam's stare, her concentration broken. And, instead of kicking the ball, she tripped over it!

The girl did a total face-plant into the field.

And came up, with a blade of grass stuck to her cheek, completely ballistic.

"Foul! She blinded me!" Lindsay bellowed. "I mean... she tripped me! Barnes pushed me!"

I did? Cam zoned into total confusion as a time-out was called. Why else would Lindsay stumble and fall? No way could it have happened just 'cause Cam had
thought
about it—or
wished
she would.

Cam didn't protest. She couldn't. She had no clue what had just taken place. Except that the 'Cats were awarded an indirect free kick.

As Lindsay set up for her freebie, Beth trotted up to Cam, looking grim. "You didn't really push her, did you?"

Cam grimaced. "I don't... I mean, no. I would never do that. Right?"
Worried, wary, Beth studied her best friend as Lindsay's kick did its job: whacking the ball in the bucket, putting the Wildcats in the lead by one point.

The one point, as it turned out, they needed for the win.

Because a few minutes later, with the ball back in play, rocketing toward Cam, and the field wide open for the cleanest, easiest goal anyone could have made, it happened again.

She heard the voice. His voice.

Don't go. It's too dangerous. She needs you now.

She? Stunned, Cam closed her eyes. Who needs her? Beth? Tonya? Marleigh?

Marleigh, she thought.

She's going to be snashed.

Snashed? What did that mean? Had she heard it right? Her eyes flew open. She turned toward the stands. A redheaded blur caught her eye. She honed in on the movement and saw a little girl, a carrot-topped kid not more than six or seven, rushing along the bleachers.

By the time Cam's gaze returned to the spot where the pop star and her fan club president had been cheering, Marleigh Cooper was gone.

But Tonya was still there, talking on her cell phone. Tonya and a lanky, bone-white man, dressed all in black.

Cam recognized his face. For years, it had been haunting her dreams. Now here it was, in her waking world—paper-thin skin, pasty pale. Deep sunken eye sockets stared straight at her. What was he doing here? What did he want?

Somewhere, far away, she thought her teammates were shouting, "Kick it, Cam! Boot it! Don't just stand there! Tie it up! This is the GAME!"

But it was as if someone has pressed the pause button.

Cam stared, mouth agape, cold sweat streaming from every pore. Soaked, her scarlet jersey stuck to her ribs, but her mouth was dry as dust. No words came when she tried to scream.

Hundreds of shrieking fans in the stands, dozens of players on the field. Didn't anyone else see him? How could the dream face be here? Was she dreaming now?

A sickening feeling of frigid dread flooded through her again. Please, she wished, let it be my wild mind, let it be, like Mom says, my overactive imagination.

"Snap out of it, Cam! Now!" Beth Fish was in her ear, leading a shrill chorus of their teammates. "What are you waiting for? Do it! Kick!"

Cam tried to focus. She forced her attention back to the field. The ball was in position. Summoning all her strength, she willed her foot to fly out and send the ball hurtling toward the goal.

It never happened.

Frozen in place, Camryn Barnes, the player formerly known as Marble Bay's ace forward, was wide awake—and caught in the icy grip of a very real nightmare.

Artemis, arise! She needs you. Go with her.

As if carved of bone, a chalk-white face, all glaring planes and shadowy sockets, grinned at her.

Alex's eyes popped open. Sunlight blasted through the rust-stained, broken blinds of her cramped room. It stung her pale gray eyes. Dazed, she squinted against the glare.

She was drenched in sweat. Her choppy, blue-streaked hair, dyed to startle and offend, was soaked. Her heart thudded, pumping fiercely against the torn, now-soggy T-shirt she'd worn to bed.

The sheet beneath her was tangled. It gripped her ankle.

Where was she? Who needed her? Who was she supposed to go with?

Then she heard the strangled gasps, the wheezing, and she realized who needed her. She smelled coffee brewing and the bitter fumes of her mother's first cigarette of the day. And she knew she was home.

Home for Alexandra Nicole Fielding was the rented trailer she shared with her mom twenty-five miles from what passed for civilization in Crow Creek, Montana—the nearest McDonald's.

Hardy Beeson, the Fielding's' rancid landlord, called the leaky rust bucket a "modular dwelling." But the kids at Alex's school knew it for what it was.

"Trailer trash," Ina Barrow had called Alex and her friends. But she'd only said it once—in the gym, about nine months ago, right after Alex turned fourteen.

She never would say it again.

Not after the basketball Ina had been holding leaped suddenly, sprang up out of Ina's own two hands, bloodying her nose, knocking Ina Barrow out cold.

That was when they'd started whispering that there was something weird about Alex, something witchy.

"Mom! Are you smoking?" Alex called. Then, sitting up abruptly, she smashed her head against the shelf above her narrow, built-in bunk.

Alex threw her hands over her head and ducked.

Books and magazines rained down, along with a couple of CDs. Last month's issue of
People
—the one with Marleigh Cooper on the cover—tumbled into her lap.

Marleigh Cooper. White-blond hair. Blue eyes rimmed with thick black lashes. Skin flawlessly white over gently jutting cheekbones.

There was something about the young singer... something about the whiteness of her face, her white teeth, pale skin... delicate bones.

Alex remembered the dream face, the one she'd dreamed before, the skinny old man's face. His lively eyes buried in deep dark sockets, his voice a whispery rasp.

No way, she thought. The dream face was frail, ancient, scary looking. How could anything about Marleigh Cooper, who was only a few years older than Alex and famously beautiful, who seemed so nice, such a genuinely good person, remind her of that haunted grin?

Then the last book fell.

Luckily, it was a paperback. It bounced off Alex's head, tumbled over her protectively raised arms, and landed in her lap, eclipsing Marleigh's photogenic grin.

"Oh, nuts," her mom called, a chuckle in her raspy voice. "Did you bet beaned by the shelf again? Are you okay?"

In a heap of books and bedclothes, Alex laughed. "I asked you first," she hollered, then frowned, as her mother's gut-wrenching cough started up again. "Mom, you said you were quitting!" she called, picking up the paperback in her lap.

Myths and Magic of the Ancient World
was the book's title. She'd checked it out of the library and had started reading it for a five-page report. Which, of course, she'd blown off.

But the book...

The book had been due back weeks ago! Great. She'd probably owe her entire minimum-wage salary in fines by the time she got it back to the library.

What was up with her? She'd gotten seriously spacey lately. Even her friends, all two of them, had noticed.

Evan, who worked with her at Big Sky, the bogus frontier "theme park," had developed the annoying habit of rapping on Alex's skull, going, "Hello, anybody home?" And her best bud, Lucinda, opened practically every other sentence with, "Girlfriend, are you with me?" Which was so getting on Alex's one last nerve.

And now she was having these whack dreams again.
Artemis, arise.
She had heard that grating voice before.

As clearly as she had heard Andy Yatz a couple of weeks ago.

Alex had passed the studly senior in the school hall the day after she'd gotten her long hair chopped and colored. She could have sworn he'd called her a babe. She'd recognized his voice.

Only Andy hadn't actually said a word out loud.

Lucinda, who'd been standing right there, had assured Alex of that.

Alex flipped restlessly through the library book, searching its pages. But, cadet that she'd become, she didn't have a clue what she was looking for.

The wracking cough began again, muffled this time. Her mother was probably holding a dishtowel or something over her mouth. Without glancing up from the paperback, Alex yelled, "Put it out, Mom!"

Then she saw it. There it was in the book. The name—Artemis!

Artemis, she now remembered reading, was the goddess of the hunt, a fierce and vengeful warrior princess of the ancient world. But also a protector. Lady of wild things, the ancient Greeks had called her. Protectress of dewy youth. Animals and children were sacred to her. According to legend, Artemis ruled the moon, while her dazzling twin brother, Apollo, was guardian of the sun.

That explained it. Alex closed the book and got out of bed. She wasn't going mental after all. The name, the voice, she'd just had her weird dream again—only this time, she'd read about Artemis and incorporated the legendary goddess into her dream.

But, Alex thought as she shuffled out of her closet-sized room and started down the narrow hall toward the kitchenette at the other end of the trailer, that didn't explain how she knew what Andy Yatz was thinking. Or why a basketball she'd merely looked at while thinking hateful thoughts had wound up braining bigmouthed Ina Barrow. Or any of the other strange stuff that had been going on lately.

She'd started Crow Creek Regional this year. Was it the school? Was there something poisonous in the walls, like asbestos, that could cause weird things to happen?

She'd tried to figure it out before and, any way she looked at it, the answer was always the same. There was nothing wrong with the school. There was nothing menacing lurking in the building or hidden inside the puke-green walls. It was her. There was something hazardous in her.

Her mom was standing at the two-burner stove, scrambling eggs. And smoking, of course. Alex stood behind her, frowning, wishing someone or something could get her to quit.

The cigarette suddenly fell out of her mother's mouth and landed in the frying pan, sizzling. "What in the world?" her mother gasped. Then, glancing suspiciously over her shoulder at Alex, trying to hide a smile, she said, "Very funny. Cut that out."

"Don't look at me, I didn't do it," Alex vowed. Although it was exactly what she'd been thinking of doing, yanking the butt out of her mom's mouth and trashing it. "What time's your appointment?"

"At the clinic? Around three, I think." Her mother grabbed the crumpled dishtowel lying on the chipped Formica counter and used it as a potholder. "And you're not taking off from work, okay? I can handle this just fine by myself."

"Mom, I want to go with you. I had another totally weird dream—"

Fishing the soggy cigarette from the frying pan, her mother pointedly cut her off. "So what was that crash?" she teased. "Girl meets shelf again?"

All Alex heard was the wheezing between her mom's words. "Naturally. What else would it be?" She forced herself to sound cheerful, too. "I thought you asked Beeson to take it down."

"Hardy Beeson? Only about ten times. I'd do it myself if the bolts weren't so rusted. Your daddy would've had it off and out of here in five minutes."

Yeah, and if he hadn't split on us, Alex thought but didn't say, we wouldn't be stuck in one of Beeson's overpriced tin boxes.

"Mom, let me go with you today." She quickly changed the subject. It had been more than six years since her dad, Ike Fielding, had left. She'd been barely eight years old. But she still didn't like talking about it.

They'd never exactly been rich, but things had gone downhill fast since Ike disappeared. The bank had foreclosed on their runty little house and people had come out of the woodwork demanding money they claimed Ike Fielding owed them. Even working two jobs—daytime at the laundry in town and nights at a greasy diner—her mom could barely keep up.

"How'd you become such a worrywart?" her mom asked cheerfully, as if she'd read Alex's mind. "I didn't rear you that way. And didn't you say Evan's driving you to Big Sky this morning?"

"He'll be here in ten minutes," Alex suddenly remembered. She grabbed a slice of white bread from the bag on the table. I'll call you later at the laundry. You can have the eggs. I'm not all that hungry."

"Since when?" Her mother forced a laugh. "You were born hungry."

"Oh, yeah, right. Is there any peanut butter left?" Alex stared in the half-refrigerator that sat under the counter. It was pitiful. A pint of milk, a jar of jelly, a ball of wilted lettuce, two puckered tomatoes, and a just about empty jar of store-brand peanut butter.

Something was up. Her mom, Ms.-together-we-can-do-anything, was not taking care of business. However little money they had, there'd always been food—delicious, nutritious, lick-your-plate-clean food, and lots of it. Sara was positively witchy in the kitchen. She could turn Cinderella's coach into a pumpkin pie.

Alex grabbed the peanut butter and a spoon. She was leaning back against the counter, scraping the last lumps out of the jar, when they heard a truck pull up.

"Is that Evan?" her mother asked.

Alex's nostrils flared as a rank odor assailed them. "No," she said, before she even peeked out the window.

A skinny man with leathery skin and two wisps of greasy gray hair plastered over his bare, sunburned dome climbed out of a shiny red pickup. "I knew it," she muttered. "Ugh. It's Hardy Beeson."

"Oh, no. I told him we're not paying a penny more for this place. He hasn't fixed one thing he promised to." Alex's mother began to cough again, so violently that she bent double over the stove. She pressed the crumpled towel to her lips, trying, uselessly, to stifle the noise.

"Sit down, Mom," Alex ordered. "I'll talk to him. You just sit and rest now."

The metal trailer door rumbled as Hardy Beeson pummeled it with his fist.

Involuntarily, Alex sniffed the air. The sour stench of the man grew stronger—the smell of burnt animal, basted with gasoline and sweat. She recognized Beeson by it, the way a wisp of baby powder told her Lucinda was near, or the rich sweet smell of dark chocolate was Evan.

"Just a second," Alex called. Pulling the stool out from under their two-seater table, she eased her mother onto it.

With a grating squeal, the trailer's door screeched open. And there was old Hardy, his hand already reaching for the money he believed due him. "Now, Sara—"

"Why didn't you wait?" Alex demanded, the smell of him making her want to gag, making her dizzy. "I said, 'Just a second.' I didn't invite you in."

She set the peanut butter jar down on the yellow Formica. The spoon still sticking out of it rattled, sounding nearly as irritable as she felt. "And don't call her Sara," Alex warned, turning to face the leathery landlord again. "She's Mrs. Fielding to you."

Beeson ignored her. "We ain't gonna argue about a couple of dollars. Sara—"

The peanut butter spoon, trashy aluminum with a cheap, red plastic handle, was suddenly sailing past Alex's ear. Whizzing like a whole hive of hornets.
Ping!
It bounced smack off the middle of Hardy Beeson's wide forehead, leaving a big welt.

Hardy reeled backward, hanging on to the narrow doorframe with two hands. Stunned, he shook his head gingerly, trying to come back to his senses—or the pure meanness he mistook for reason. "I'm finished with you two," he hissed, backing down the single step. "I'm finished tryin' to be fair." The door slammed shut behind him.