T*Witches: The Power of Two (3 page)

"Mom!" Alex gasped, astonished, shocked, proud. "That was awesome!"

"What?" her mother said, her voice muffled by the towel.

"The spoon. The way you hurled that sucker!" The words were hardly out of Alex's mouth when a sudden chill raised goose bumps on her pale arms and an alarming certainty bristled the hair on the back of her neck.

Her mother hadn't tossed the spoon. Her mother hadn't touched it.

Karsh was too impatient to wait for the ferry. With an effort that made his bones ache, the old warlock transported himself across the great lake.

The moment his boots touched Coventry Island, he found himself wondering if he had done the right thing.

The best way to reach young witches, he'd found over the years, was to let them know that some good soul needed their help. Their natural desire to be useful would do the rest.

Karsh had used this method to test the skills of hundreds of fledglings. He'd point them toward trouble and see what they could do.

None had ever come close to Apolla's and Artemis's abilities. He'd seen Artemis deftly deal with a rude classmate, and even though she did it quite by accident, Apolla blinded her rival in a soccer game, causing the player to stumble and fall.

So Karsh had tried to convince Artemis to stay close to poor Sara and he'd hinted to Apolla that the celebrity was in danger.

But had he truly done all he could to carry out Ileana's wishes? Or had his stubborn belief that the young ones should never have been separated in the first place wormed its way into his intentions? Karsh massaged his throbbing temples as he hurried through town, scarcely aware of the greetings called out to him.

As one willing to die to save Aron's daughters, he had done what he thought best. As one pledged to serve their headstrong guardian, he'd probably fallen short. In truth, Karsh had to admit, this attempt to keep the girls separate had been half-hearted at best.

Had he placed them in harm's way, then? In Thantos's way? Was Ileana right? Did their desperate uncle want them both or not at all? Did he want to harness their power to increase his own?

Of what possible use could the youngsters be to such a powerful man—a man who'd achieved boundless success in the world beyond Coventry Island? A captain of industry, a millionaire several times over?

It was impossible to know. The foul tracker had left the island long ago. Fourteen years ago, Karsh marveled, mere days after Karsh had found protectors for the infants.

Bees drifted lazily among the wildflowers lining the path to Ileana's cottage. Her orange cat, Boris, napped on the slate doorstep. Karsh stepped over the indolent creature and rapped at the cottage door. "Ileana, where are you?" he called dutifully.

There was no answer. I'll just leave her a note, he thought, relieved.

"Oh, for pity's sake," came a drowsy voice, "I'm here, in the forest, Karsh."

He heard her hammock creak as she stirred.

Shading his eyes, the troubled trickster gazed into the shadowy woods. "Still sleeping?" he called, spotting her.

"Well, I
was.
" Ileana stretched lazily.

Karsh made his way through the herb garden, absentmindedly taking stock. He saw tender violets, which sweetened all about them; basil, known for bringing wealth; burdock for cleansing negative feelings; roses for use in love magic; purifying lavender, courage-inspiring thyme, peace-giving chamomile, and victory-enhancing laurel. The fragrant plants looked pleasingly lush. Even in his nervousness, Karsh was impressed by the bounty of Ileana's garden.

He wondered if she used fertilizer or incantations. A bit of both, he guessed, feeling surprisingly proud of her.

He, alone, was responsible for Ileana's training—as he had been for dozens of young witches and warlocks before her. He interfered only when she, or the course of action she chose, was dangerously wrong.

She'd come a long way in every area of her training, except social, Karsh lamented. Bright and beautiful as she was, Ileana was still vain, self-centered, and well, disrespectful.

"Oh, no, don't tell me you've been out scaring children again." Her silvery laugh sealed Karsh's chagrin. "You're too ancient to go about with an unadorned face, old trickster—"

Karsh sighed. "I would not have been heeded in disguise today. I needed to be myself. I made an appearance. Two, actually. One physical, the other in a dream. While you, your witchness—"

"Goddess." Ileana yawned.

Arguing with the hotheaded Ileana was too tiresome, however. So he gave in to her silliness.

"Goddess, lady, your magickship, obstinate elf! Get up and get over yourself Ileana. The children are in danger—"

"My babies? Both of them?" She sat up abruptly, blinking her steel-gray eyes. Though fourteen years had passed, Karsh thought, she looked no older than her charges.

"In danger of
meeting
," Karsh finished his sentence. "That's all I meant." He was tempted to say more, but what was the use? They'd been all through this. She believed they were safer apart; he'd always thought they should be together. But up until now, no harm had come to them. "Apolla is going west," he announced.

"West is a big place, Karsh," Ileana responded, annoyed but fully alert now.

"West to Montana," the old tracker explained.

"Whose bright idea was that?" Ileana swung her slender feet to the forest floor, brushing leaves and twigs from her peacock silk robe.

"Whose idea, indeed," Karsh said meaningfully.

"If this is Thantos's doing," she raged. "If he brings them to harm—"

"I tried to talk Apolla out of it," Karsh reported. "I warned her that her new friend would be snashed—"

"Snashed?" Ileana was waiting for an explanation.

Karsh grinned proudly. "It means taken, stolen. It's what they say these days."

"
Snatched!"
she corrected him. "Why don't you speak plainly?"

"I like to keep up-to-date on language," Karsh asserted. "I also alerted Artemis. Of course, it's possible that Lord Thantos is behind this. But it's also possible, oh, grumpy goddess, that the time simply has come. They have the power. They're already using it. Ah, but together, they'd be capable of so much more."

"Which is exactly why Thantos must not find them together," Ileana insisted.

"But if he did—I'm just saying if—wouldn't their combined strengths serve them better than if each encountered him alone?"

"Thantos, that black-bearded, murdering hulk of a warlock, is a tracker, Karsh. A monstrously accomplished, shape-shifting tracker. The joined magick of two little girls, no matter how talented they are, could never defeat him."

"I've seen them." Karsh couldn't help smiling. "They're awkward and untrained, it's true, but also remarkably gifted. And, Ileana, they're not babies anymore."

MARLEIGH STILL MISSING!

The headline on the
Montana Mountaineer
blared the shocking news. Worse, there was no update on her Facebook page, her twitter feed. This was not good.

From the front seat of their rented minivan, Cam's mother, Emily, read the story aloud. "It's been four days and still no sign of the young recording star who disappeared Friday from a high school soccer match in suburban Massachusetts."

"Unbelievable." At the wheel of the van, Cam's dad, Dave, shook his head. "A famous kid, a teenage celebrity, just vanishes in broad daylight. No one saw anything, no one heard anything—and still there's no sign? I'm not buying it."

But there
had
been a sign, Cam thought, leaning forward from the backseat to read over her mother's shoulder. The old skinny guy she'd seen in the stands, he'd tried to tell her someone was in trouble.

She needs your help
, he had warned.

Or had Cam imagined it? Had she just spaced at the championship game, been flattened by stress, crumpled in the crunch? And what? Conjured up a scary old guy from her dreams who no one else seemed to have seen or heard?

"It's so surreal," Beth said, startling Cam. Chin propped on the backrest of the front seat, Beth absently twirled a strand of thick, curly hair. "I mean, we were there."

Emily Barnes turned to smile at them. "And now we're here. On vacation. And we're going to have a wonderful time—"

"Or else," Dave teased, his bushy mustache accentuating his grin.

"It's really a terrible thing." Emily shut the paper. "What must her parents be going through? I can't think of anything worse than losing a child."

"Dylan thinks we should have canceled," Cam said. Her brother, a year her junior, was spending the month at X-treme Sports Camp in the Berkshires. As soon as he'd heard about Marleigh's disappearance, he'd called Cam. "How can you leave now? This is the biggest thing to hit Marble Bay ever. And you, actually
talked
to her."

"There was no point in canceling our vacation." Emily glanced at them again, her pretty blue eyes peering from under her blond bangs. "What could we have done? Besides, the town is completely overrun with reporters and tourists."

"You know," Dave mused, "this whole 'disappeared diva' angle is just too pat. It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out to be a publicity stunt."

"Cam is sure Marleigh was kidnap—" Cam's sharp elbow to the ribs stopped Beth midsentence.

"What makes you think that, princess?" her dad asked.

Dave Barnes was a lawyer. But not, Cam liked to point out, one of those shark types. He was seriously sensitive and often took on cases for people who couldn't afford his firm's usual fees.
Pro bono
it was called, and Cam was super-proud of him.

Except for his shirt.

He was actually wearing the Hawaiian monstrosity his office gang had given him as a vacation going-away gift. They'd meant it as a gag, Cam was sure. But here he was, wearing it.

Ordinarily, she'd never think of lying to her dad. Right now, however, she couldn't tell him the truth.

What was she supposed to say? That a skinny old white-haired guy she'd been dreaming about since childhood had suddenly appeared in Marleigh's seat and urged Cam not to go to Montana? That he'd hinted Marleigh would need her help? That he'd said something like, "She's going to be snashed." Which sounded a lot like snatched. Which, last time Cam had checked, still meant taken, grabbed, stolen, or kidnapped.

Right. That would go over as big with her folks as it had with Beth. Especially with no-nonsense Mom, whose goal in life was to produce healthy, well-balanced children.

"I don't know," Cam said, shrugging and fiddling with her baseball cap. "Nothing really. It's just a hunch, an intuition." She tried to make light of it. "You know, my famous sixth sense."

"Oh, I forgot," Beth intoned suspensefully. "She... sees... kidnapped... people."

"You put the 'un' in funny," Cam muttered, wishing desperately that her best friend, or someone—anyone—besides herself, had seen the bony old guy in the stands. What was Beth going to do next—remind her how she'd blown the game? One goal was all they'd needed. Instead she'd heard his scratchy voice, seen his face, and she'd frozen. Single-handedly causing Marble Bay to lose the tournament. A whole season down the drain. Because of her.

Despite Dylan's belief that they should have stayed home, Cam thought, getting out of town, not having to face her teammates, was the best thing she could have done.

Still, something about this vacation was creeping her out; something other than wondering if she'd gone around the bend; something weirder than hallucinating an aging gremlin who might or might not have predicted Marleigh's disappearance.

Usually, her family went to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for two weeks of golf, tennis, and tanning. But this summer they'd accepted the invitation of a grateful client of her dad's to spend time at his resort ranch in Montana. Saddlebrook, the rambling place was called, and the guy who owned it had a strange name. Sot Naht. Which Dylan, of course, had morphed into Snot Knot.

At first, Cam had been grateful to be far from Marble Bay, scene of her infamous freeze and possible mental meltdown. She'd been psyched that Beth was along. They could have fun anywhere. But since they'd arrived, she'd been feeling even more spooked than she had at the game. There was something about being here, in the wide-open spaces of Montana, that made her feel unsettled. Lonely even.

Right. Lonely, when she was around almost everyone who mattered to her. Definitely, she was losing it.

She'd meant to ask her dad how he knew this Snot Knot guy. In the living room of the lodge, there was a huge portrait of a burly, well-dressed, bearded man. A man with burning black eyes who, she assumed, was Mr. Naht. She wondered what business he'd had with her dad.

"Earth to Cam. Your vote, please?" Her mom's voice interrupted her thoughts. "We've got two choices. We could go to the frontier theme park over at Crow Creek. It's supposed to be an authentic re-creation of life in the 1800s. Or, there's a fascinating conservation walk..."

Instantly, Cam clicked back to the reality zone. Some things never changed. Like, her mom on a mission. There had to be some edu-aspect to their vacation. It was a Barnes family requirement.

That's what she was doing
—Cam wanted to remember—
she'd been smiling at the back of her mom's salon-perfect blond 'do, when the vote was taken. That's what she'd been thinking—how her mom was so flawless and predictable—when a totally random decision was made. Where to spend a few hours on vacation. A simple little decision that would change her life forever.