T*Witches: The Witch Hunters (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

SERSEE ON THE ROCKS

They knew who had taken Karsh’s journal — the treacherous and talented young witch who had tried to destroy the twins. Now she had stolen their birthright, the only proof beyond doubt of what was rightfully theirs.

As they made their way toward the shore where Ileana had seen the girl in her vision, Ileana and Miranda were torn by warring feelings. Their minds knew their mission: to track the thief and get back the book. But their emotions flashed between anger and excitement.

The anger was reserved for the dangerous urchin, Sersee.

The waves of excitement that shot through them
were for the miracle of their returned powers. Precious skills they’d thought were lost forever had returned — maybe only a few, maybe only for a moment, but something wonderful had happened. Ileana had had a vision; Miranda had known the culprit’s name.

What remained to be revealed was why the criminal, cave-dwelling imp had chosen, among all of Ileana’s precious things, a book? That book! Of what value could Karsh’s revelations be to such a single-minded, self-serving child?

“Look there, up ahead.” Miranda pointed to the girl. Ahead of them, standing at the crest of a sea-battered cliff, Sersee stood still as stone. Her black hair tangled and twirled like seaweed battered by tides. Her violet cape flared and flapped wildly in the wind. She looked much as she had in Ileana’s vision — but not exactly the same. For one thing, the book was gone. For another, the girl, who would certainly have heard them coming, hadn’t even turned her head to look at them. She stood too still.

“Something’s wrong,” Ileana said, her voice falling to a whisper.

“Has she been … transformed? Put under a spell?” Miranda asked cautiously.

You call yourselves witches?

Ileana and Miranda both picked up the sarcastic, unspoken
grumble. It was coming, naturally, from the frozen girl.

Duh. Of course I’ve been transformed. And if one of you passing geniuses doesn’t undo the spell, I’ll be a pillar of salt by morning
—

Ileana approached the motionless young witch. Clasping her hands behind her back, she slowly began to circle Sersee. “My, oh my, what a sad predicament,” she mused, her lips barely holding back a grin.

Miranda drew near. “She’s paralyzed,” she said, sounding disgustingly sincere to Ileana. “How awful. Ileana, we must do something.”

Yes. You must.
Sersee sent the angry, urgent message.
It is your duty as witches to heal, to help
—

“Oh, it is, it is,” Ileana agreed. “However, I, for one, see no reason to hurry. Particularly since you can tell us now — before we warm your blood and ignite your senses again — why you broke into my cottage, why you stole — ”

Never,
Sersee swore.

Ileana bristled and might even have struck the insolent little witch had Miranda not laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t. Please,” she urged. “The child has been through enough.”

What?
Sersee was as surprised as Ileana by Miranda’s
intervention.
How do you know?
she snapped defensively.
You, a DuBaer, who lives in luxury at Crailmore, an initiated “Lady,” accepted and respected by all?

“We would like to help you,” Miranda assured her a bit brusquely. “Were we not on such an urgent mission ourselves, we would gladly free you from this wretched condition —”

“Are you crazy?!” Ileana sputtered. “Free her? Why I’d sooner laminate her —”

Suddenly, the cliff was alive with shadows. Ileana felt them, then saw a fire. In the midst of black smoke and leaping flames, a man stood with his fist raised, shouting curses. In a heap at his feet was a woman with flowing black hair. She clutched his legs, begging for the life of her child. Suddenly, Ileana was overwhelmed by waves of despair and pity. She saw an infant crawling through the woods, her tattered clothes singed and still smoking.

The tiny child, she knew, was Sersee.

Stunned, she turned to Miranda. The twins’ remarkable mother seemed to have had no vision, no unasked-for trip down the evil urchin’s memory lane. Did she know the girl’s history or was she merely being Miranda, blindly kind and trusting?

As if the placid witch had heard her, Ileana noticed for the first time a glint in Miranda’s metallic eyes.

“But before we come to your aid,” Miranda was telling Sersee, “we must find Lord Karsh’s journal. If only you knew where it was; if only you could help us — ”

Ninnies! Of course I know where it is. Only release me from this heinous state and I’ll tell you everything! Right now! This stinking, wretched wind is killing my complexion. And don’t even ask what it’s doing to my hair!

“No fear,” Miranda assured the girl, as Ileana’s head commenced to pound. “I have herbs aplenty to soothe your beautiful skin and revitalize your raven hair. Only tell me, child, while Ileana prepares her un-morphing spell, where is the journal now?”

Ileana eyed Miranda with bleary admiration. The wily woman was playing Sersee! She had lapsed into good cop/bad cop without blinking an eye. While Ileana had stood there holding the vinegar jar, Miranda was luring Sersee with honey.

But what had she just said? While Ileana prepares her un-morphing spell? Right. An uninvited vision was one thing, but just how, Ileana wanted to know, was she supposed to make magick, activate the frozen brat all on her own? Did wily Miranda even want her to break the spell? Together, she and Miranda had taught the spell to Cam and Alex; together, she and Miranda had discovered
who had stolen the journal and where the guilty party was.

That was it! Ileana’s gray eyes widened in wonder. That was the key, the secret. Together. Just as Cam’s and Alex’s abilities increased when they were together, so had her wilted powers blossomed anew in Miranda’s presence.

Your precious book is on its way to the mainland,
Sersee told them,
in the hands of the most disloyal, deceitful, double-crossing warlock Coventry has ever seen, the same treacherous tracker who cast this spell on me. Three guesses. Could it be Thantos DuBaer, Thantos DuBaer, or Thantos DuBaer? Buzzzz, your time is up. The answer is … the ungrateful, underhanded Thantos DuBaer!

Miranda gasped involuntarily.

Told you so,
Ileana couldn’t help thinking.

Hello! I’m waiting,
Sersee’s snotty inner voice insisted.

Miranda glanced at Ileana. “We are honor-bound,” she said. “I gave my word and we must do as I promised.” But she looked distraught, deflated suddenly. And Ileana realized it was not because Thantos had possession of the book. Perhaps he meant to return it, naive Miranda mused. No, it was the sudden knowledge that he had
done this, paralyzed a wayward child, which revolted Miranda.

Ileana took her hand. “I have crystals and herbs in my pouch,” she told Miranda. “Why don’t you begin the incantation while I arrange them?”

“Do you think we can?” Miranda asked, distracted.

Sersee heard her and freaked.
Oh, no.
The trapped girl’s panicked thoughts came through to them.
Please don’t tell me that you two are as “DuBaer” as the Hulk? You’re not going to un-morph me, are you? You’re going to leave me like this. Don’t get me wrong, when I said deceitful and underhanded, I meant it with total respect.

The ceremony, the spell-casting, exhausted Miranda and Ileana.

At its end, they stood over Sersee, who had collapsed and lay in a heap at their feet — a heap that reminded the weary Ileana of the woman in her vision.

But Sersee was not pleading. Her body had simply forgotten its purpose. It would take a minute or two before the collapsed girl could move properly again.

Seeing her this way, vulnerable and breathing hard like a cornered animal, struck a chord in Miranda. “I remember you,” she said, surprising herself and Ileana. “It was shortly before Aron was killed. You were —”

“An orphan,” Sersee broke in. “I was … on my own.”

“Yes, it was terrible. We had all seen the smoking ruins and believed that you’d perished with your parents. You were so tiny, so bright, so alone —”

“You might say nothing much has changed,” the young witch pointed out.

CHAPTER TEN

MENACING MESSAGES

Cam’s knees grew weak. The writing was on the wall. Literally. There, on the side of the school that faced the soccer field, was a message painted in red.
IT’S EASY TO WIN WITH WITCHCRAFT.

“Golem!” Cam whispered to Alex, who had walked onto the field with her. “He’s got to be the Witch Hunter.”

“You had a vision?” Alex asked, surprised.

“No,” Cam confessed. “It’s just the paint —”

“Something tells me not,” Alex whispered quickly, as Bree, Kristen, and Beth trotted onto the field behind them, suited up for practice.

Kristen was first among Cam’s teammates to notice the sign. “Cool,” she said, “or it would be if we were the Wildcats.” The Salem Wildcats were the Marble Bay Meteors’ arch soccer rivals.

Beth inspected the red painted message. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’s going on around here?”

Cam seized on Kristen’s comment. “It’s probably some lame Salem joke to rattle us before the semis. You know — Salem, witchcraft, that kind of thing. Where are ’Manda and Suke?” she asked, hoping to divert her crew.

“Amanda’s got a dental, and Sukari’s got a mental,” Bree quipped.

“Which means?” Beth wanted to know.

“Which means,” Bree’s shadow, Kristen, piped up, “that Amanda is at Dr. No Pain, No Gain, and Sukari’s doing extra-credit work in Dr. Frankenstein’s chem lab.”

Cam’s nostrils twitched involuntarily.
Chem lab,
she found herself thinking.

The coach’s whistle put an end to her guesswork. Cam hurried onto the field with the rest of the Meteors. Alex had planned to hurry home to check her computer for news on Cade’s whereabouts. But once more, suddenly, she knew!

Her tracking system revved into action again. A
whoosh of wind seemed to blow past her ears. Cade was in London, it said. And then a second, louder rush of air carried the news that he was at the airport. Cade was on his way! She knew it — as strangely and surely as she knew that Mr. Golem was not the Witch Hunter.

Sukari was crying. Cam and Alex ran into her in the girls’ room after school. The minute she saw them, she blew her nose and put on this big phony smile. “Yo, wassup?” Suke tried for upbeat.

“Right back at you,” Alex, no fan of subtlety, said. “Wassup yourself?”

The tall girl sighed deeply, her shoulders sagging.

Cam elbowed her sister out of the way. “Suke, are you okay?”

“Does she look okay?” Alex asked irritably. “That’s mascara running down her face. You think she’s trying to pass for a zebra?”

“It’s Spenser,” Sukari wailed. “He’s, like, totally turned on me. He used to be all nice and encouraging, you know. I thought he liked me. But he’s, like, all over my case now.”

“About what?” Cam asked, wetting a tissue under a stream of sink water.

When Sukari hesitated, Alex intercepted her thought,
then silently blurted it out to her sister:
He wants to know how she gets all his quizzes right.

Sukari glanced curiously at Alex. “He thinks I’m cheating or something,” she said.

Cam squeezed the tissue and handed it to Suke. “He actually said that?”

Sukari looked from Alex to Cam and back again.
Don’t make me say it,
Alex heard her plead.

Cam was waiting for an answer. “I mean, he didn’t come right out and accuse you, did he?”

The bathroom door swung open. “Sukari!” It was Amanda, her tone, first annoyed, turned to concern. “I’ve been waiting for you outside. Suki, what’s the matter? Are you crying? Oh, no. Don’t let him get to you.”

“Him?” Alex echoed. “Yo, Amanda, how do you know what we were talking about?”

“Excuse me?” The usually placid little redhead put her hands on her hips. “You know, for a Scorpio you’re way overdefensive. I know what Suke’s upset about because she’s my bff and she tells me everything and even if she didn’t, I have a sixth sense about these things.… And, anyway, it’s been going on all semester.”

“What has?” Cam jumped in.

“This push-pull thing she has with Spenser.”
Amanda took the damp tissue from Sukari’s hand and reached up with it to wipe the mascara spills off her best friend’s cheeks. “One day he’s wild for her — she’s the best thing to happen to science since Madame Curie; the next, she’s plotting to destroy the universe.”

Sukari nodded. “He’s been acting weird recently —” She stopped, hesitating.

Since the day after that dumb premiere,
Alex heard her thinking. Or had it been Amanda’s thoughts she’d picked up? Now she was totally confused.

“This place is a heinous hotbed of weirdos this year,” Alex said, leading them on.

“You’re right,” Amanda picked up. “There’s Spenser, the wild-eyed lab rat, Mr. I’m-all-rational-and-scientific. Except if you get perfect scores on his tests three times in a row he goes ballistic.”

“Is that what happened with Suke?” Cam asked. But ’Manda was on a roll.

“And then there’s Shenky in Mrs. Hammond’s office. She’s supposed to be school secretary, not hall-pass monitor.” Amanda shook her head. “What an agenda. She nailed Bree three times last semester.”

“And what about Golem?” Sukari wrinkled her nose. “There’s something, like, so …
unsavory
about the man. He’s … well, just plain sneaky.”

“Golem.” Cam looked pointedly at Alex, who shook her head.

“Or Spenser,” Alex shot back.

“Or Shenky,” Amanda piped up. “I mean, is this an institution of higher education or just an institution … like a zoo?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GROWTH SPURTS

“Als, something is happening,” Cam announced that night when they were back in their room after dinner.

“Yo, give me news, not history,” Alex grumbled, falling into the computer chair, which practically held her butt imprint since the day Cade had e-mailed that he was returning to Marble Bay.

“No, I mean, really. Something’s changing … inside me.”

“Hormones,” Alex cracked dismissively.

“Alex. I can hear voices, voices other than yours, okay?!” Not normally one to give in to radical impulses, Cam seized the back of her sister’s chair and spun Alex to face her. “I’m getting new abilities, new witchy skills —”

Red-faced with indignation, Alex was about to go off on her twin when, slowly, what Cam had said penetrated her Cade-crowded brain. She took a breath, crossed her arms, leaned back, and said, “Okay. You got my attention. Spill.”

And Cam did. She told her sister, again, what Alex had refused to hear before — that ever since their return from Coventry Island, her senses, her extrasensory perception, her “mojo,” had kicked up to a new level.

Before, only the eyes had it. Cam’s intense gray eyes had been capable of seeing and searing. Now her hearing, even her sense of smell, she thought, had … well,
awakened.

She didn’t have Alex’s abilities in those areas. She didn’t have Alex’s finely tuned ears and nose, her easy mind-reading skills or animal-sharp scenting. But lately, she’d heard sounds, muffled sentences, random words that she knew had sprung from the thoughts of people around her. And just this afternoon, Cam reported, when they were talking about Sukari in chem lab, something had tickled her nostrils. Not an actual smell, but the idea of a smell…

“Oh, forget it!” Cam threw herself across her bed. “I don’t know what’s going on or how to explain it, not even to you. It’s like I’m having this weird psychic growth spurt. And, please, Alex, or Artemis, or whoever
you are, spare me your sarcasm right now. It’s bad enough I’m about to be outed by some freak at my school —”

“Oh,
you’re
about to be outed?” Alex jumped in with two Doc Martens-wearing feet. “Like you’re the only hot dog on the grill? Well, I’m right there, too, Ms. Oscar Meyer. For instance, my future-seeing powers may not be as hot as yours, but my On-Star is smokin’. Whatever is going down around here, Apolla, it isn’t your solo show. It’s you and me — and some poor third sucker — who are being haunted and taunted by said freak. Who, trust me, is not the antisocial maintenance man at
my
school.”

“How would you know?” Cam demanded, sitting up, steaming. “And what was that crack about On-Star? You totally lost me —”

“If only,” Alex shot back. “I’ll show you how I know. Watch this.” She whirled back to the computer console. “I haven’t checked e-mail since this morning, when there was nothing from Cade online. So now, before I even glance at my messages, let me tell you that he is at Heathrow Airport in London, either about to board a plane or already on one. He is heading U.S.A.-ward this minute. And I know that because? Yo, I’m having a witchy little growth spurt of my own!”

Like a concert pianist, Alex let her poised hands fall, one on the keyboard, one on the mouse. She opened her e-mail screen, then scrolled through the messages. There it was, new mail from Cade.

She was about to click open his note, when Cam, who’d come up behind her to scan the screen, hollered, “Wait! What’s that? Open that one!”

Subject: Your Time Has Come! Sender: WitchHunter1.

Alex glanced over her shoulder at Cam.

“Come on, hurry up. Open it,” her sister urged, reaching for the mouse.

Alex swatted Cam’s hand away and double-clicked. As she did, she again felt a noisy breeze blowing past her ears and cheeks. The spiky hair on her head didn’t stir, but goose bumps prickled the nape of her neck as if a rasping wind had actually blown through the sturdy walls of their bedroom.

Cam’s sudden whisper made things worse. “Als, I smell something … garlic and —”

“Rotten eggs,” Alex confirmed. “Rotten eggs. Sulfur. Science lab …”

Cam felt sick. She grabbed the back of Alex’s chair. “What does it say? Hurry!”

“Read it and weep,” Alex growled angrily.

Cam blinked, trying to clear her sight, which had become blurry. Finally, she focused on the screen. And saw:

WITCHES, BE WARNED. YOU CANNOT HIDE IN MARBLE BAY. TOMORROW ALL WILL KNOW YOUR NAMES.

The message had not just been sent to Alex and Cam. They saw that it had gone out to every kid in the sophomore class.

“Tomorrow?” Cam grasped her throat as if choking on the deadline. “What can we do between today and tomorrow? It’s seven o’clock, Als. We’ve got to find him now. Find him and stop him!”

Alex couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even think. Her head had begun pounding. She lowered it and closed her eyes. In the blackness, her sense of smell came even more vividly alive. The stench of burnt eggs, of stinging chemicals, clogged her nostrils. She swallowed and felt her stomach heave.

Moving blindly from desk to dresser to chair to wall, she made her way to the bathroom. There, she fell to her knees, resting her now-burning brow on the cold porcelain of the sink.

She must have lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes again and struggled to her feet, the sky
outside the narrow bathroom window had turned the flaming pink of dusk. And when she lurched back into the bedroom she shared with Cam, her sister was gone.

Alex didn’t have the strength to call out or go looking for her. She fell back on her own bed and waited for her balance, body, and mind to return.