T*Witches: The Power of Two (6 page)

Saddlebrook Ranch was massive. "Horse Whisperer Deluxe," Beth called the huge lodge with its soaring ceilings and oversized log furniture. It had its own stables, tennis court, and even a private spring-fed swimming pond.

It also had its own strange vibe, Cam thought. A vibe that was especially strong every time she passed the portrait in the living room. Maybe it was the great height at which the painting was hung, or its subject's dark stare and cold smile, that made it seem so menacing. And disturbingly familiar.

"Is that the guy who owns this place?" Cam asked her dad, the day after their trip to Big Sky. She was on her way to meet Beth at the tennis court. Hugging her racket, shivering slightly, she paused before the painting.

"I don't know," Dave admitted. He was wearing boxer swim trunks as flashy as his Hawaiian shirt, and had a towel flung over his shoulder. "I never actually met the man. He's a friend of a client I defended. Hey, you're all goose bumps. What's up?" he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder.

"He looks like someone," Cam said softly, remembering the burly man in the wheelhouse shadows.

"Well, if he's our mysterious host," Dave chuckled, leading her toward the door, "then he
is
someone. One of your major someones. Head of some powerful corporations, mega-rich—"

I think I saw him yesterday, Cam wanted to say, but didn't. Instead she hugged her dad and, as he set off to join her mom at the pool, Cam hurried across the manicured lawn toward Beth, who was practicing serves.

She'd decided, Cam reminded herself, to will herself to drop the whole Ferris wheel episode. The eerie eavesdropper, the bony old man, and, especially, all the weird stuff that had happened with Montana-girl. It was bad enough she was freaking; she didn't need to advertise the fact to friends and family. Chalk up yesterday to a possible flu symptoms mixed with jet lag and soccer guilt.

By the time she got to the court, she'd half convinced herself that the only connection between Saddlebrook's Major Someone and Big Sky's Mr. Weirdo was that they were both evidence of her near mental meltdown.

When Cam put her mind to something, she was usually successful. Today, her goals were to crush Beth, minimum two out of three, and to totally delete from memory everything that might, or might not, have happened yesterday. She would've done it too, if Beth hadn't suddenly displayed a seriously annoying stubborn streak.

Her best bud chose their tennis match to begin needling Cam about her "townie twin." At least Beth got props, Cam reluctantly admitted, for not bringing the whole deal up in front of her parents.

"You guys are the same height!" Beth pointed out, as she too easily connected with a Cam-slam just inside the baseline.

"So are about half the other fourteen-year-olds around the globe," Cam contended, hitting to Beth's backhand, forcing her bud to hustle to connect—which the leggy girl did a lot more effortlessly than Cam anticipated. "Your point?" she demanded, missing Beth's return.

"My point—exactly! It's thirty-love," Beth announced the score gleefully, then served again. Smashing the ball past Cam, she added, "You've got the same body structure, too—"

"Which means nothing. Come on, Beth, can't you see how you're reaching here?" Cam retrieved the missed ball and tossed it back to Beth, who served again.

This time, Cam executed an awesome if totally accidental drop shot. Which forced Beth to breathlessly bolt to the net. Where she managed to shout between gasps, "I've never seen... two faces... so identical."

"Let it
go
, Beth," Cam warned, feeling her determination to move on crumbling. "Just drop it."

Somewhere in the back of her head, a little voice asked why she was getting so upset.

"And Cami, the eyes. She's got to be your twin."

Cam raced forward. Ignoring the voice, ignoring the ball, she met her bullheaded best bud at the net. "No, she doesn't!"

"My game!" Beth exulted, then she cleared her throat and got serious. "Okay, look. Can I ask you something? Promise you won't get mad?"
Instead of growling, "It's too late for that," Cam frowned and grumbled, "Go for it."

"Something else that's been sorta bothering me." Beth paused, embarrassed. "Remember in biology? The stuff on genetics? You know, two blue-eyed parents... well, the odds are pretty slim that they'd have a kid who didn't have blue eyes, too. And yours are—"

Cam cut her off. "Logic takes a holiday in your hypothesis. Gray is a shade of blue."

"And your intense shade of gray—well, it's exactly the same as hers."

"Coincidence alert! That's all it means. Can we get back to our match now? I'm about to fry you, Fish-sticks."

Cam turned on her heels and stomped back to the service line. She smashed a wicked serve over the net.

Beth hit it back smoothly. "I think she's your twin. Your biological twin," she asserted.

"Do you even know what you're saying? There's been only one of me in my family for like, ever! That means, what, that my parents got rid of a twin?"

"Maybe she was kidnapped," Beth offered.

"Kidnapped, right. Like Marleigh Cooper?"

"It's possible," Beth insisted.

"No, it isn't. If anything like that happened, I'd know. Finding a kidnapped baby—hello, their whole lives would be all about that. You know my parents."

"But do you?" Beth challenged.

"What are you talking about?"

"Maybe you were adopted," Beth blurted out.

"Maybe you're insane!" Cam snapped.

"Cam, there
is
no other rational explanation!"

"Rational? You want rational?" Cam threw her whole body into her shot, slamming the ball so hard, her tennis racket went flying—right at Beth, who ducked just in time, then skidded and fell on the red clay court.

Cam was as shocked as Beth. Mortified, she hurtled over the net to her fallen friend. "I can't believe I just did that. I am so sorry—"

Slowly getting to her feet, Beth brushed red dust off her shins and waved Cam off. "Forget it. No damage done. Everything's all right—"

"No," Cam asserted suddenly. "Everything's not all right. Everything's wrong. Weird. Whack." A lump formed in her throat, strangling her voice, flooding her eyes with tears. "Bethie," she whispered desperately, "I think there's something wrong with me."

They were sitting on the little bench at the side of the tennis court. Beth, visibly shaken, passed Cam the water bottle, and urged her to drink. "You're probably just dehydrated," she ventured. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with you. A spooky thing happened, that's all. Anyone would be freaked if they came face-to-face with—"

"It's not just that," Cam said reluctantly.

"Of course it is! Camryn Alicia Barnes, you are the most totally together person in the whole world. I have firsthand knowledge of that, being the best friend of the most totally—"

"I saw a face, all pasty white, a creature," Cam started.

"—together person in the... a creature? Oh, you mean Alex. Well, her hair was monstrous, but calling her a creature—"

"Beth, please listen," Cam urged. "In the stands. At the game. That's why I didn't make the goal. Something happened, something
is
wrong with me."

"You just choked. It's unusual for you, but it happens to the best of us. Which, may I remind you, defines you. The best of—"

"I didn't choke. I saw a face in the stands, and I just knew—"

"A bleacher-creature? That's what lost the game for us?" Beth studied Cam skeptically.

"And I knew something was about to happen. Something bad."

Beth cleared her throat. "Let's review. We're about to win the most important game of our soccer careers. You're in position to nail it for us. But instead of kicking the ball, something forces you to look up into the stands. Where you see—what? A pasty-white, uh, creature. And so you freeze. Well, who wouldn't?" Beth dabbed gently at Cam's flushed face with a towel. "And then, I'm thinking aloud here, this old man—what? Kidnaps Marleigh? Is that about it?"
Cam didn't respond.

"Cami," Beth added, "can you hear how that sounds?"

"The old guy didn't kidnap Marleigh. It... he... was trying to tell me something. Warn me that she was in danger. Beth, it's not as if this hasn't happened before. I even told you about it."
Beth scrunched her forehead. "You did?"

"Back in fourth grade, remember, about the bony-faced guy from my dreams? The one who called me Apolla? My parents said it was just a bad dream—"

"I vote for that one," Beth interrupted, trying to lighten the moment.

"You didn't believe me then. You still don't." Cam shook her head. "But what about my premonitions? How sometimes I can, you know, like 'see' what's going to happen. Isn't that kind of the same thing as seeing someone?"

Beth thought about it. "I don't know, Cami—"

"Remember last fall?"

"I was just thinking about that," Beth confessed. "You totally saved my life."
They had been on their way home from school on a street red and yellow with crunchy fallen leaves. Beth stepped off the curb. At the exact same moment, Cam saw what she could not have seen. And grabbed Beth's arm. And yanked her back.

A nanosecond later, an out-of-control car screeched around the corner and totally destroyed, ripped to pieces, the backpack Beth had dropped.

One backpack-turned-roadkill. One friend saved. Thanks to Cam's "seeing" the car seconds before it rounded the corner.

The two of them had stood there on the leaf-thick sidewalk, screaming, shaking, hugging each other, hearts thudding with panic and relief.

In a funny way, Cam felt a lot like she had that day. Now, too, she sensed that something was coming, screeching around the corner, speeding unstoppably toward her. Something even stranger than having a nightmare come true; more important than saving your best friend's life.

Her mom was gone by the time Alex woke up the next morning. So was the letter from the clinic. On the kitchen table, there was a crusty sweet roll her mother had probably snagged at the diner last night, a couple of orange slices, and a note asking if Alex could please catch a ride to work with Evan or Lucinda. It was signed with five X'd kisses and a blot of purple lipstick.

Which for some dumb reason made Alex want to cry. It was all she could do not to pick up the stupid note and press the dorky imprint of her mother's lips against her own.

By the time she climbed into Evan's pickup, Alex had decided not to talk about her mom's condition. It wasn't exactly a decision. It was more like a superstition. It wouldn't be real unless she said it aloud.

They drove to Big Sky saying the usual dumb things. Evan led off with "Another day, another dollar-fifty." But instead of getting annoyed at his lame sense of humor, Alex was grateful. She'd had enough surprises. Ordinary was fine with her today.

And ordinary it was. No emergency phone calls from her mom. No rides self-destructing. No sudden appearance of clones from across the country. Not for three whole days. Then, on Sunday, Lucinda brought Alex's midafternoon junk-food rations to the back door of the ticket booth. A bag of greasy fries and a trickle of warm cola, floating brown and flat, in a cup of chipped ice.

"Hey, what happened to that hunch of yours?" Alex chose that exact moment to rag on Luce. "Where's the Boston bean queen, or did you have an ESP meltdown?"

Shoving the cardboard tray at Alex, Lucinda grumbled, "Very funny. Oh, and by the way, thanks for being such a fabulous friend, Lucinda, and bringing me a snack." Then she stalked away.

"Thanks, Luce," Alex, embarrassed, called after her. Then she turned back to the ticket window and looked up.

Her very own face stared back at her from the other side of the booth. It was Camryn.

"I know you're busy," she blurted, "and we're on the way to the airport. I just wanted to..."She let it trail, shrugged, pushed a piece of paper through the window slot at Alex, and took off.