T*Witches: The Witch Hunters (6 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE HUNTER’S TALE

Cam couldn’t wait. Okay, maybe Alex was right; maybe Mr. Golem wasn’t the Witch Hunter, but the answer, Cam was convinced, was at the school. It was either someone who worked there, or someone who could sneak in.

As she approached Marble Bay High, she saw two cars pull out of the staff parking lot. One she recognized as Principal Hammond’s, the other was being driven by Golem.

Cam turned away quickly, bent down, and pretended to be tying her sneaker. She was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her. Golem was her strongest suspect — should she follow him? How, on foot? She shook her
head, trying to clear it of idiotic ideas. It was better that he was gone, she decided. She waited until his car disappeared from view. It was nondescript, old, and dark, but something told her it wasn’t the one that had nearly rammed the limo.

Relieved, she scrambled to her feet and checked the lot again.

Only three vehicles were left. Two she recognized: the beat-up station wagon in which Mr. Hadley, the basketball coach, hauled sports equipment, and the red VW with the vanity plate 123 ED, which everyone called the “math-mobile” because it belonged to Eletha Denadio, who taught advanced calculus. Cam couldn’t immediately ID the third car.

A blast of sweat erupted on her forehead a second before she realized that it was — or might have been — the dark car driven by the Witch Hunter the night of the premiere. Parked in the staff parking lot.

Against the urge that said “run,” she headed toward the parked car. Its glass was tinted but, with her hand hooding her eyes, Cam stuck her face against the front window. On the seat was an ordinary leather briefcase, a stack of blue test booklets, and a striped scarf.

Well, what had she expected to see, a photo ID driver’s license?

The sun was falling fast. Already the trees surrounding
the school were casting long-fingered shadows. Cam rubbed the nose smudge she’d left on the windshield with her sweatshirt sleeve and hurried toward the soccer field. Like many of the Meteors, she had a key to the gym door for after-practice lockup. She used it now, wondering if she’d run into the girls’ coach or anyone else who might have lingered behind to use the sports center.

Her sneakers squeaked as she hurried across the polished basketball court. She thought about Jason, almost sniffed the dead air in the locked gym as if expecting to catch a whiff of his soapy neck, his clean, dark curls. The thought of him warmed her, made her smile, but only until the memory that he’d soon be leaving caught up. She was out in the hall, blindsided by self-pity, when a door at the end of the corridor slammed and she froze in fear.

They’ll be here soon,
she heard a voice say.
One final check.
And then she realized that no one had spoken aloud. She had read someone’s mind. Not Alex’s. Not one of the “witchy” members of the Six Pack. His mind. The Witch Hunter’s.

Determined footsteps echoed in the near-empty corridor. Cam flattened herself against the tiled wall, hiding as best she could at the end of a bank of lockers. Her heart seemed to have leaped into her ears, thudding deafeningly,
blocking out all other noise. By the time it quieted, the footsteps and the sound of his thinking were gone.

She hurried through the fire door leading to the basement. Mr. Golem’s office and work area were locked up. It wasn’t those rooms Cam was interested in anyway. It was the dark closet at the end of the hall. Something was pulling her there. And the door to that was wide open.

Cam stopped. Once more she mashed her back against the wall, trying to make herself invisible. It occurred to her, as her spine hit a quartet of insulated pipes running behind her, that someday, probably after their initiation, she and Alex might actually be able to do that. Cast some crystals, a pinch of herbs, mumble the right incantation, and
poof!,
they could hide in plain sight.

For now, however, they were uninitiated fledglings and, despite the fact that people were always saying how advanced they were, Cam didn’t exactly feel like an expert at anything. Except maybe pushing past fear. If practice made perfect, she’d have that bad boy down in nothing flat.

The open door at the end of the hall hadn’t budged. No light went on inside. No Witch Hunter came out. The coast was as clear as it was going to get. Cam dashed toward the closet.

She was barely in the door when she was hit by a spell of intense wooziness. She fell to her knees and, putting her hands out, she pitched forward. A canvas bag stopped her fall.

But not her dizziness.

The airless closet seemed to spin.

The ache started in her head. A tightening band of pain wound itself around her brow.

A vision. Just what she needed, she thought irritably. As if she weren’t rattled enough, she was going to see something new, something bad.… Something, she realized, cringing with terror, that was pushing its way up through the leather-trimmed bag.…

His young wife and infant daughter had died in the crash. The crash that he had seen coming and done nothing to prevent. He had been driving and thinking. The radio talk show was merely background noise, like the sleet outside. As monotonous as the thumping windshield wiper. They were on their way to Appleton for Thanksgiving dinner with his in-laws.

He had been thinking how lucky he was. How miraculous it felt to be a father. How a few short months ago, he’d been just a lucky guy married to a beautiful, sweet-tempered girl; an ordinary man, he’d always thought, except for the fact that he had stronger hunches and intuitions
than his friends, and that the probability of his premonitions being right was better than theirs. He felt things they did not — and wouldn’t want to, considering the headaches that came along with those feelings.

Those were the ordinary thoughts he had until he noticed an eighteen-wheeler half a mile away on the other side of the highway. Saw its lights only, through slanted gusts of snow.

A sharp sting behind his eyes made him wince, he remembered.

His gloved hands tightened on the steering wheel.

What if? He found himself wondering as the stab of pain spread out like a mask behind his eyes. What if that truck on the other side of the highway, separated from them by a length of snow-covered turf and a low railing, suddenly skidded on the plowed highway?

What if, he lazily wondered, the massive truck, carrying a double-decker rack of new cars, hit a slick spot and jackknifed across the meridian?

The pain forced his eyes shut. What opened them was the crash. His car hitting or being hit by a bright, shiny electric-blue station wagon that had flown loose from its second-story moorings.

Helen, his adored young wife, was dead. Lydia, barely three months old, was dead. But he had survived. For what? Why had he lived when everything precious to
him had died? Of what use would he be to anyone or anything ever again?

Elfman gave him an answer. Elfman, the meddling warlock he met two years after the crash.

The Witch Hunter had gone to a seminar about ESP. He had emerged from a terrible mourning period feeling useless but edgy. He was back at work, but his job no longer interested him. He felt as if he was searching for something or someone to burn up his restless energy.

A friend of his had read about the seminar and gotten him a ticket. Because, the friend said, he couldn’t hide at home forever … and ESP, wasn’t that what all those hunches and premonitions were? Didn’t he want to find out more about it? About why he always knew what was going to happen when no one else in their crowd did?

He had not told the friend about seeing the deadly crash before it happened. He had told no one about spotting the massive truck looming through spears of sleet when it was much too far away for him to have really seen it.

But he went to the seminar. And there he met Elfman, the aptly named warlock. Small, wrinkled, white-bearded, with twinkling — yes, twinkling — water-pale eyes.

“Sami Elfman,” he introduced himself in the lobby
during a break. “ESP is a gift, is it not?” he said, sounding casual, just making conversation.

“Or a curse,” the hunter had responded.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Elfman said softly. “It was indeed a terrible loss. One that can never be forgotten or repaired. But your heart, broken as it may be, is still strong and open. And there are so many in the world who need its protection and care.”

His head swam. How did the old man know about his loss? Or his heart? How could a stranger guess how he longed for a task, a cause, a mission — something to lose himself in. Or something to help him find himself again.

The bell sounded, signaling that the break was over. With an oddly comforting touch of his hand, Elfman scurried back into the auditorium and was, in an instant, lost in the crowd.

That had been in late November.

In early spring, he had gone to another event: a paranormal convention. He found himself searching the crowd for Elfman. It wasn’t just a hunch he had that the old man would be there, it was a desire, an unexplainable need to see him.

“I have something for you,” was the way the old warlock announced his presence. He took the hunter’s arm and led him through the crowded aisles. There were
dozens of exhibitors in the convention hall. A tiny Chinese woman, Lady Fan, Elfman called her, was manning the Herbal Health and Healing booth. She swept back a curtain at the rear of the cubicle and he and Elfman entered.

They talked for some time. But all he recalled of the conversation was that it began and ended similarly with the words, “A child needs you.”

The child was a baby girl. An infant witch, Elfman said, who had been put up for adoption by her family. Before the astonished hunter could echo “an infant witch?” Elfman hurried on. Why would parents do such a thing? Because the child, at fourteen months, had proved … well, Elfman hemmed and hawed … precocious.

Precocious?

She seemed bright beyond her age, able to … well… do things a normal fourteen-month-old would be incapable of doing … things that even, say, a baby witch would not dream of doing.

There it was again. Tossed in as if it were nothing. Witch.

Elfman was vague as to exactly what precocious things the baby was able to do. But her parents, he continued, had grown nervous and uneasy around the tyke, he supposed. They had worried that they would not be
able to take care of such a … such an advanced child. They had asked Elfman if he could find a better home for her.

That was, the warlock explained, shortly before they died. In a fire. From which the child was rescued. Well, actually, had Elfman mentioned that the child was … precocious?

Proof: She had crawled out of the house moments before it had collapsed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A FRIEND IS WAITING

She didn’t want to open the bag. It was all she could do to tear her clammy hands off it. Cam’s palms were all pins and needles, vibrating painfully. She stood up. Her head was reeling with the awful dream, the nightmare that seemed to have seeped through the canvas. All she wanted to do was scrub her hands. Wash them clean of the Witch Hunter’s story, and get home as fast as she could.

But something held her there, staring at the satchel. What was it holding, what was it hiding, that had released the twisted tale?

She unzipped the bag with trembling fingers. And there they were: a black robe and, in two pieces, the
blade and the handle — the scythe the maniac had gripped at the premiere.

The Witch Hunter’s hooded cloak and menacing weapon had been hidden in her school, in Mr. Golem’s closet!

Shaken, Cam raced out of the building. On the school steps, she paused to gulp night air into her depleted lungs and thought she heard Alex calling to her.

Oh, please, Cam, please. Get home soon.

Oh, please? That didn’t sound like her sister, Cam thought, wiping her hands on her boot-leg jeans as she rushed along the dusk-dark streets. A block from home, she heard it again.
Hurry. Please.
This time she recognized the voice.

Dave was in the hallway, carrying a cup of coffee, when Cam raced through the door. “Whoa,” he called, protecting his cup, clutching it with two hands. “You have a visitor. In the den.”

Before he asked the question, Cam answered it. “I’m okay. I’m fine. When did Sukari show up?”

Dave blinked at her, then shook his head. “Naw,” he said, “I’m not even gonna go there. Yes, it’s Sukari. And she got here about five minutes ago. I told her you were out. She said she’d wait. Said you wouldn’t be long. I assumed you two had spoken.”

Cam didn’t bother to deny it. In a manner of speaking, she thought, they had “spoken.” She had been able to hear her distressed friend’s call.

Things really were changing; her powers were on the rise. It was a good thing, too, she thought. After her eerie experience in the boiler room closet, she could use all the magic she could muster.

Sukari was on her way to the den door when Cam entered the room. The tawny girl had a piece of paper in her hand. She threw her arms around Cam and whimpered, totally un-Suke-like, “I don’t know what’s going on. Oh, Cam, I need help. I’m scared. I think I’m going off the deep end.”

“It’s that kind of night,” Cam couldn’t help noting. A wave of comfort, of almost hyper-confidence, had washed away her trembling fear the minute she’d set foot inside the house. Being safely home, in the familiar surroundings of the den, knowing Dave was near and Emily somewhere upstairs, probably, was just what she needed. She hugged Sukari, then held the girl at arm’s length. “I never thought I’d hear you say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ Not you, AP answer girl —”

Sukari managed a shaky smile. “Yeah, you wouldn’t think so, would you? Did you get one of these?” she asked cautiously, showing Cam the paper. It was a copy of the e-mail from the Witch Hunter.

“Of course,” Cam answered. “See?” She pointed out the long list of people it had been sent to at the top of the page. “Everyone got it. It’s someone’s idea of a joke.”

“But it says the Witch Hunter, Cam. It’s from that nutcase at the premiere.”

“Not. You’ve been hanging with Amanda too long, girlfriend.” Cam turned away so Suke wouldn’t see how sick it made her to flat out lie. “Where is gullible-girl, anyway?”

“I… I tried to tell her … I tried to explain,” Sukari said miserably. “But she doesn’t get it —”

“There’s something about you Amanda doesn’t get?” Cam laughed.

“Lately. Yeah.” Sukari crushed the e-mail and threw it into her backpack. “I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

But she managed. Nervously, in stops and starts, half-sentences, and trailing thoughts, Sukari explained. When school started this year, she’d felt fine. Regular. She was psyched about getting into Spenser’s Advanced Placement. She’d heard he was tough but supposedly a terrific teacher. And he had been, Sukari admitted. Totally terrific. Until…

Here, Sukari put her head in her hands. Until, she continued, she’d begun to know the answers to his tests —

“Well, duh, of course you would,” Cam interrupted. “It’s science. It’s your subject.”

“No, that’s not it,” Sukari protested. “I knew the answers before I actually saw the tests. I don’t mean I knew-knew. I just sort of had a feeling about what he’d be asking. And I was right. Crazy right. It was as if I’d seen the tests in advance. I think that’s what Spenser thinks. But I didn’t. He kept asking me how I knew. And I kept saying it was just a feeling, you know? But even I knew it was more than that, Cam. It was like I was getting like you —”

Cam stiffened. “Like me? What do you mean?” she demanded, surprised at how defensive she sounded. Almost angry. Only it wasn’t anger. It was the jumble of emotions — fear topping the list — that came whenever she realized, understood, or “got” something she didn’t want to know.

And she’d just gotten who the Witch Hunter meant when he had said, “All three of you.”

Sukari backed off. Literally. She took two steps back, then spun away from Cam. “Nothing. I don’t know. I mean,” she said, slowing down, trying to figure it out as she went along, “like your mojo, you know? You know, how you can feel things before they happen sometimes? Like in soccer, it’s as if you can read the other team’s mind; you guess exactly what play they’ll make.… It’s
like that, Cam. I just have this feeling, this sense, about what’s coming next. And it’s freaking me to the max. But what’s worse is, it’s freaking Mr. Spenser, too. Last week, he called me a witch! In class. In front of everybody.”

Cam, Alex, and Sukari made three.

Only Suke wasn’t a witch. That much Cam was sure of.

“That jerk called you a witch in class? Inappropriate, bordering on harassment much? I’d report —”

Sukari paled. “No — I’m probably making too much of it. I don’t want to cause a big thing.…

Cam sighed.
You didn’t cause it,
she wanted to scream. Her mind raced. Sukari had come to her—somehow the AP ace had sensed, known, that if anyone could understand, Cam would. And be able to help. And isn’t that what her gifts, her powers, were supposed to be for?

Cam gave humor a shot. “Okay, then, play along with him. Bring a Nimbus 2000 to class tomorrow.”

Swing and a miss. Sukari’s eyes were beginning to fill with tears. Time to get real.

She didn’t go into all of it. She talked about how some people — without mentioning Dave, or Alex’s adoptive mom, Sara, or others she and Als had run into — were just hyper-aware, supersensitive to what was going on around them. Their radar was keener, their instincts sharper, their intuition dead-on.

“Like you,” Suke said.

“Um, yeah, sort of,” Cam responded. She’d half expected Sukari to argue or ask how she knew all this, or insist on proof. But the stressed-out girl was just grateful to hear that she was not alone.

Cam didn’t discuss the hierarchy. Didn’t say that these people were called Sensitives.

Or that they were capable of rearing and protecting fledgling witches and warlocks, but not of becoming one.

Or that, when a Sensitive accepted a fledgling to rear, he or she became a Protector.

Rearing and protecting? Cam shuddered violently. Without thinking, she rubbed her still-clammy hands together. And wisps of the Witch Hunter’s story seemed to rise out of them.

He’d known the truck was going to crash. Like Dave, he’d met a witch, probably a tracker, at a healing and magic convention. And he had been given a fledgling witch to rear. So he had gone from Sensitive to Protector.

But what had happened? Why had he turned against all witches?

“I’m a scientist,” Sukari was saying. “My dad’s a doctor, my mom’s a researcher. How am I supposed to accept this … this …”

“This gift,” Cam finally said. She sat down on the
den’s beat-up leather sofa and pulled Sukari onto the cushion next to her. “Okay, listen up,” she said, hanging on to the stressed girl’s cold hands. She explained gently, lightly, leaving lots out, what a blessing it could be to kinda “know” things, sense stuff.… Especially, Cam added, if you were a scientist. She reminded Suke of the banner posted in their ninth grade science class:
IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE.
A quote from Albert Einstein.

Sukari was nodding, buying it, squeezing Cam’s hands gratefully. “I’ve always been very intuitive,” she agreed. “And empathetic. My dad says that’s what will make me a great doctor.” Then, all of a sudden, she shook her head and leaped up. “Okay. Let’s say I accept your premise. That this sudden mojo gift is a good thing. Then why is it bugging Mr. Spenser so much?”

What had Karsh told them once? When you point a finger, you’ve got three pointing back at you. And Ileana? She’d said something similar: If you can name it, you can claim it.

Spenser had seen something of himself in Sukari, something he obviously didn’t like.

The same must be true of the Witch Hunter, Cam realized. He must have experienced something upsetting, too. Something to do with witches. With the infant witch the tracker Elfman had placed in his care …

And then she knew. It was so obvious. So easy. The scent of chem lab they kept smelling. How could she not have guessed? Alex was right. Mr. Golem wasn’t the Witch Hunter. …

Cam could hardly wait to dash upstairs and tell her sister what had happened in the school basement, and what she’d finally figured out.

But as she walked Sukari to the door, the girl said, “One more thing. Cam, how come it’s happening now? Why did I suddenly start getting all these … feelings, the premonitions and stuff, this semester? It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

Not unless, Cam thought, you were a twin who’d been scared and lonely but hiding behind this mask of raging popularity — until your other half showed up to make you whole … and to jack up the powers you’d always had but were too afraid to use for anything but helping a pal or winning a soccer game.

Proximity. That was the answer. Nearness. Being with another who shared your gift could set in motion a whole new level of skill.

That’s what had happened for her and Alex.

It was happening to Sukari because of Mr. Spenser.