The two amulets had always been used in tandem, to magnify their magick. Now Alex feared Cam might use hers to set off a battle of wills.
But her twin didn’t reach for her gold charm. Her twin, Alex suddenly realized, wasn’t wearing the powerful necklace at all. She must have taken it off when she met up with Cade.
Taken aback but relieved, Alex ordered: “Undo it, Cam! Undo the spell. Right now!”
As if the sound of her voice had roused him, Cade blinked. The film that had dulled his eyes lifted. “Hey,” he said, looking at Alex with a radiant smile, “there you are. I’m …” He turned his head, twisted his neck as if the muscles were tight. “I don’t know what happened. I… I just started feeling … strange. Like instant flu or something —”
“Poor baby,” Cam said tenderly to Cade. “That’s why I walked you here. You were standing in front of your locker looking totally sick and desperately in need of TLC. Well —” she crooned, grinning like a demented smiley face, “have a nice day.”
“We’ve got to talk,” Alex said after school that day, crashing into their room and winging her backpack onto her overburdened bed.
“You said it!” Cam spun around in her computer chair to glare at her sister.
“What’s going on?!” they demanded at the same time.
“Excuse me?” Cam said indignantly.
“Right back atcha!” Alex growled.
“Okay. Time-out.” Cam made a T sign with her hands. “Why does Emily think I don’t want a sweet sixteen party?”
“Duh, let me think.” Alex laid a finger along her cheek exactly as Cam had done during their kitchen confrontation. “Because you told her so?”
“No way!” Cam was exasperated.
“Right after you told her I’d rather be dead than go to a sweet sixteen party.”
“Put on your pj’s, Alex — you must be dreaming!”
“And I suppose I dreamed up your flirting with Cade today?”
“Like I dreamed up your telling Beth I thought she needed to get her hair cut by a person instead of a hay mower? I couldn’t believe you came to soccer practice this afternoon and said that right in front of me! Everyone thought you’d gone mental!”
“Soccer practice? I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” Alex snapped back. “I didn’t go near your Six Pack of snotty sycophants —”
“Sycophants? What’d you interrupt your Coventry reading for, a quick dip in the dictionary? Oops, I forgot. You’re not getting initiated —”
“Oh, really? Who gave you that flash?”
They were breathing hard, glaring at each other, their hands balled into fists, mouths moving faster than their brains.
A familiar fragrance wafted off Cam — a clean, crisp scent of chamomile, rosemary, and sweet violets, the scent Alex recognized as her sister’s. Which reinforced the certainty that the stinging spicy odor that had hit her on the bleachers had not been Cam’s. Nor had it been Cade’s warm, fresh scent.
Alex felt the hot rage draining from her. “Cam, don’t you feel it? Something’s up,” she blurted.
“Something’s off,” Cam agreed. Her hands uncurled, her hunched fight-or-flight shoulders dropped as she faced … her sister. Her identical twin. Her Alex. “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
Alex’s metallic-gray eyes never left Cam’s. “The only thing radically new in our lives is that our Initiation’s started. Maybe whatever’s going on is part of that. I mean, do you think this is some kind of test?”
“Not a bad idea.” The thought, spoken aloud in a strong, ringing voice, was Lady Rhianna’s. The Coventry Elder was staring into a large, jagged crystal. In the faceted stone she, and the impulsive young witch breathing down her neck, had seen the twins facing off at each other.
Rhianna sneezed — then frowned accusingly at Boris, the marmalade cat in Ileana’s arms. “Someone is playing a trick on Camryn and Alexandra,” she managed to say before sneezing again.
“It’s unfair, unjust!” Ileana cried with such passion that Boris leaped off her, screeching and hissing, his orange hackles raised. “Someone is setting them against each other. Forcing them to act out of anger,” she fumed.
Rhianna raised her eyebrows. “A topic you know a bit about,” she chided.
But the beautiful young witch didn’t take the bait. “We’ve got to warn them. This is not a rehearsal — they’re being viewed right now!”
“So they are,” the Elder continued, relieved that the cat, to which she was allergic, had scampered away. “And even though we didn’t plan this, I say we don’t interfere. It will be a perfect — if unexpected — test of intuition for them to flush out and deal with this wild card they’ve been dealt.”
“It’s a bad idea,” the twin’s guardian asserted hotly. “A very bad idea! Someone is cheating! Someone with a stake in ruining my charges’ Initiation!”
“My charges! So it’s all about Ileana.” Rhianna pulled a cloth purposefully over the crystal. She was scowling at Ileana but couldn’t help remembering that the girl, the beautiful and impetuous child, had been Karsh Antayus’s adored fledgling.
As it always did when she thought of her old, now-departed friend, Rhianna’s heart softened. “Lady Ileana,” she began. Then her eyes twinkled as she recalled what Karsh had confided to her, that the brazen young witch had rejected the title. No lady was their Ileana.
Rhianna cleared her throat but could not hide her smile. “I understand you prefer to be called goddess.” She tried to sound serious.
Ileana’s jaw dropped. She got as far as “But how —?” Then realizing that it must have been Karsh who’d told Rhianna, she burst into tears.
Which nearly brought tears to Rhianna’s eyes as well. “Yes, yes,” the wise old witch said, honking into her handkerchief. “We all miss him, Ileana. And we all share Lord Karsh’s certainty that Aron’s daughters are most magnificent fledglings and destined for leadership —”
“If that black-bearded, two-faced, cold-blooded brute doesn’t find a way to stop them,” Ileana shot back.
Rhianna raised her brows again. “I assume you’re speaking of your father?”
“Who else stands to gain if Apolla and Artemis fail their Initiation? Of course it’s Thantos who’s behind this.”
“Does this mean you believe they can fail?” Rhianna asked pointedly. “You, their guardian and champion? Surely you know them as well as anyone.”
Ileana saw the tricky old witch’s point. And had to consider it. Did she think that Thantos, her merciless father and the twins’ uncle, could best them? Well, he’d certainly put in a good effort.
Ileana remembered the first day of the infants’ lives, when she and Karsh had hidden in the snowy woods with the babies, listening to the approaching clatter of Thantos and his bloodthirsty horde. He had not found them then. She recalled Karsh’s tale of how the twins had discovered each other, when once again, they’d escaped their uncle’s trap. And later, in Marble Bay when her treacherous father had tried to lure the twins to him. And again and again.
Thantos had known all along that they, not he, had been chosen to lead their family. They and only they, two bright, still vulnerable young witches, fledglings, stood in the way of his grasping what he believed, wanted to believe, belonged to him — the wealth and power of the DuBaer dynasty.
He also knew, as did everyone on the island, that once the twins were initiated, their destiny — and his — would be sealed.
“Maybe he’s just been unlucky so far,” she told Rhianna, knowing how unlikely that sounded.
As they always did when her feathers were ruffled, the Exalted Elder’s wings suddenly unfurled. The whoosh of wind, a sound like the slap of sails filling in a squall, made Ileana jump back.
“First of all,” Rhianna sternly lectured, “we do not believe in luck! We create our own good fate through right choices and actions.”
It was all Ileana could do not to roll her eyes at the old saying.
“Y
es, it was your grandfather Nathaniel’s wish, and your guardian Karsh’s mission, to place the girls where they might do the most good — at the helm of your extremely powerful and, may I say, increasingly troublesome family. They have but to pass their Initiation — which you and their mother assured me they will do with flying colors — to take their rightful place in our community.”
“Of course they’ll pass,” Ileana blurted. “But why should they be subjected to different and more difficult tests than other fledglings?”
“Because I say so,” Rhianna declared, leading Ileana to the door. “And I, not you, Ileana DuBaer, am their Initiation Master — exactly as Lord Karsh intended for me to be.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE THIRD TWIN
“Do you think we were triplets?” Cam asked skeptically.
Alex shook her head. “No way. Everyone on Coventry, including our mother,” she pointed out, “says we were twins. No mention of a third party.”
Someone was playing them. Someone witchy. They’d been talking about it all weekend, trying to figure it out. Now, standing in front of Cam’s school locker Monday afternoon, the debate continued.
“Could it be a clone then?” Cam said. They’d gotten that far in their thinking. “Someone going around trying to make me believe she’s you — and then impersonating me when you and I are not in the same room. But how?”
“And who? And why?” Alex added. “And what am I supposed to have done today?”
The twins had called a tentative truce Sunday night so they could check out some of the reading material they’d rescued from the green garbage bag — which Alex had insisted she’d never seen before. She also, she’d claimed, had no intention of quitting, of ducking out on their Initiation, no matter what Cam had hallucinated.
“You insulted Bree at lunch,” Cam reported. “She was bragging about how valuable her advice was to her father and how he’d hired this studly star for his new movie just ’cause Bree told him to.”
“And I ruined her life how?” Alex waited for the explanation.
“You said, ‘Get over yourself, Pinocchio — your surgically improved nose is growing. Your dad couldn’t care less what you think.’”
“Ugh, that’s ugly,” Alex agreed. “And ‘you’ did your usual diss on my outfit.” She struck a pose, showing off the flannel shirt covering her sleeveless black tee, scruffy jeans, and scuffed Doc Marten boots. “You called me a goth cow, which I thought was way much and so out of date.”
“Okay, let’s review,” Cam proposed, lowering her voice as a crew of noisy juniors swept past. “We can’t be in two places at once —”
“Unless,” Alex mused, “we stumbled into some kind of spell. You know, like, said the wrong thing without realizing it or handled a weird combo of crystals and herbs —”
“We checked the books,” Cam reminded her. “There wasn’t one spell in them that could have given us personality transplants.”
Cam shook her head. “I mean, I know for absolute certain that I never put a spell on Cade. Please. That is so ridiculous. I mean, you saw me in the lunchroom, right? When would I have had time to get all next to him and then put him in a trance? Wasn’t me,” she asserted, pulling her art portfolio out of her locker. In about fifteen minutes, they would be in two places at once — they’d be in two different classrooms.
“Yes, and …?” Alex prompted, having picked up on Cam’s thought.
“The thing, the clone, whatever it is, only attacks us when we’re separated,” Cam explained. “Which we will be again the minute you’re in chem lab and I’m in Mrs. Wagner’s art class … unless —” Her striking gray eyes lit with sudden inspiration. “Unless we hang together —”
“Right.” Alex made a face. “I’ll just cut lab and show up unexpectedly for art with you. And my excuse will be?”
“No, no. We can’t stay together physically. But what if —” Cam was on it — “we keep in touch telepathically, check in every couple of minutes?” Even though she wasn’t a fabulous mind reader, Cam had been able to tune in to her sister’s thoughts for a while now.
“Sounds like a plan,” Alex said, “especially since the bell’s about to ring.”
A few minutes later, standing at one of the sinks in the chemistry lab, Alex heard Cam ask, Having a good time, Madame Curie?
Excellent, Alex sent back. Wearing rubber gloves and safety goggles really does it for me. How ’bout you?
There was no answer.
Cam, Alex tried again. You okay?… Hello, can you hear me?… Cam, what’s up?… Come on, you’re freaking me.
“Hello, I’m right here,” an impatient voice said. Alex looked up to see her sister glaring at her across the lab table. The moment she caught Alex’s eye, her expression changed to one of terrible pity.
“What are you doing here? How’d you get out of art?” Alex asked, looking around for Mr. Calio, the chem teacher. He was working with a couple of kids at the other end of the room.
“Oh, Alex, I’m so sorry —” Cam bit her lip, looked away, then turned bravely back to her sister. “It’s awful. But you’ve got to know. I just went to my locker to get my portfolio —”
“Another portfolio?” Alex asked. “What happened to the one you had before?”
Cam blinked at her. “It doesn’t matter. There was a note in my locker. From Cade. I don’t know how to tell you this —”
Alex’s heart flopped, fell like a busted elevator plummeting down a chute. “What?” she said.
“It’s over. He wants to break up with you, but he’s afraid that you’ll totally tank. He’s really a nice guy, Als. He’s just not all that wild about you anymore.”
It wasn’t Cam.
Just five minutes ago at her locker, Cam had been wearing her sun necklace. This … this creature … wasn’t. And her gray eyes were cold, colder than Cam’s had ever been. And again there was the scent of nettles and jimsonweed. A fragrance Alex remembered, she was sure now, from her last trip to Coventry.
She wasn’t that experienced with scrambling her thoughts, but she closed her eyes and pictured an iron door and willed it to slam shut over her brain.
Score one for intuition! The scheme must’ve worked. The Cam clone before her, pretending concern but really gloating, seemed to think that Alex had bought her story.
“Dude, I can’t believe it,” Alex said, glad that the odor of the girl, or whatever it was, had set her eyes stinging again. A few tears would go a long way toward convincing the pretender of Alex’s misery — which had obviously been sham Cam’s goal.
“Are you mad at me for telling you?” the phony asked, not able to hide the hope in her voice. “I mean, just ’cause Cade chose to confide in me.…”
Whatever this Cam-copying creep was after, Alex was over it. She wanted to get rid of the counterfeit and check in with her real twin. Who knew what miserable hoax the two-faced twerp might’ve pulled on Cam?
But Alex played along. “Yeah. I’m mad at you, okay? I’m so mad that I’m —”
“Not going to Coventry, right?” The clone pulled a dejected face, but her eyes were alive with expectation. “You don’t even want to be initiated, do you?”
Bingo! That took care of why. Someone didn’t want Alex taking her witch vows. All she and Cam had to figure out now was who and how.
“Yo, dude, you have so got my number,” Alex told the girl who would be Cam. “I wouldn’t set foot on Coventry now if… if… if some enchanted nut ball begged me to!”
Her make-believe “twin” looked confused.
“No Initiation, no way!” Alex insisted. “Now hasta la vista, babe, before Mr. Calio catches you here.”
* * *
“Well, that really worked,” Cam groused when they met on the front steps of the school. “I heard you for a minute, then there was nothing but static. I almost ran out of class to find out what happened.”
“But you didn’t because?”
“You know,” she accused. “You sent
that snotty note saying I was a lousy mind reader and you didn’t need my help.”
“Cami, that wasn’t me. I didn’t send any note.”
“Excuse me. I think I know your handwriting,” Cam insisted. But after a beat, she added in a whisper, “It was her, wasn’t it?”
Alex nodded. “Our new ‘twin.’ The deal is she’s here to turn us against each other,” she continued, heading down the walk to the street, “and, more important, to keep us — or maybe just me — from going through with our Initiation. I’m sure of it. Now who would want to keep us from going back to Coventry?”
Cam didn’t have to think about it. “First guess? Uncle T. Although I can’t imagine him turning himself into one of us. He’s way too arrogant —”
“But he wouldn’t think twice about sending someone else to do his dirty work. It’s practically become a habit with him,” Alex pointed out. “Bottom line, the ringer doesn’t want one or both of us to show for our Initiation.”
“You know, Als,” Cam said hesitantly, “sometimes I’m not sure I want to go through with it, anyway. … I mean, what’s really in it for us?”
Alex stared hard at her sister — if it was her sister, she thought.
“Hello, it’s me,” Cam shot back, waving her hands in front of Alex’s face. “Cam I am, Cam I am — I do not like always being in a jam!”
“Cute.” Alex was convinced. Their unknown nemesis didn’t have much of a sense of humor. They’d passed PITS, their favorite pizza hangout, and the CD superstore Music & More, and were walking up the hill toward home. “Well,” she began, responding to Cam’s query, “first of all, they say our magick’ll get much stronger —”
“Do we need it to be?” Cam asked.
Abruptly she flashed back to how she’d saved her best friend Beth’s life. And halted a trio of preteen troublemakers playing with firecrackers from blowing their hands off. And, yes, it was clear that the stronger her powers were, the easier it would be to play Wonder Cam, showing up for kids who needed help.
“But you said before, maybe this … thing … wants to stop just you — or me. Why would that —” Before she finished the question, Cam knew the answer: She hadn’t rescued the pyromaniac brat pack alone last summer. She, in person, and Alex from a distance together had conjured up the spell that saved the kids. And together they’d once stopped a calamity at a Ferris wheel. The common adverb? Together.
T*Witches: Destiny's Twins Page 3
