Hang on, Cam sent back. “Bree,” she said aloud, “do you think Beth’s bracelet is real silver?”
“Huh?” Beth and Bree said together.
“Just wondering.” Cam tried to sound casual.
“Let me see that,” Bree ordered Beth.
“No way.” Beth started to pull her hand away, which was all the incentive Bree needed to grab hold of her wrist. The moment Bree touched the silver band, a bouquet of daisies sprouted in Cam’s mind. She could practically smell their sweet earthy fragrance.
Through the power of these elements, let change be done, she silently recited. Where once there was evil, now harm none. Where once there was darkness, now shine a light. That Bree may seek what is just, what is right. Let her see goodness where before she saw ill. With loving-kindness may her heart fill.
“Poor Skeevy Stevie,” Bree suddenly announced. “He is so the insecure show-off.”
Oh, no, Cam thought. She’s shining her light on the wrong customer.
But a nanosecond later, Bree added, “I’m not gonna sit here and let him hurt Nadine just ’cause he’s hurting.”
Kristen and Beth watched goggle-eyed as Bree, tiny and determined, stomped across the lunchroom, shoved the snickering, tray-clutching bully out of the way, and invited a very startled, very grateful Nadine to join her at the Six Pack table.
Kudos and congrats, Camo! Alex memoed her sister.
“Hey!” Thwarted and confused, Stevie hollered after the girls, “Whaddya do that for?”
The jeering laughter around him took him by surprise. His face reddened darkly as he spun away from Bree and Nadine to scowl at the lunch bunch taunting him. His grip on the overloaded tray became so tight that his knuckles whitened. He was shaking with rage.
Make that humiliation and embarrassment, Alex realized, studying the boy.
He was a bully and a clown and undoubtedly deserved to be treated with contempt, to be laughed at and rejected. But his defeat was hard to watch.
Especially since, without warning, Alex seemed to be seeing through his eyes!
As if she’d inhabited Skeevy Stevie’s skin and was looking out, Alex saw the kids in the lunchroom laughing and pointing, calling out insults, and, worst of all, rolling their eyes in disgust or, with a wave of their hands, dismissing him. Only it felt as if it were happening to her.
And it hurt. She could feel her chest tighten, her heart begin to race. With each quickened pulse, tears pushed up out of some bottomless pit of sorrow in her gut.
She was literally feeling his pain.
As if from far away, she could hear Dylan saying, “Yo, forget him.”
Which was what everyone now seemed to be doing. They went about their business — eating, talking, laughing, shouting, and pointedly ignoring Stevie.
Shaken, Alex’s mind returned to the body she’d left sitting beside Cade at the skateboarding slackers’ table. From there she watched Stevie making his way out of the lunchroom, head down, shoulders slumping.
“Feel like a walk?” Cade asked, picking up his tray and pushing back from the table.
“Sure,” Alex said uncertainly.
“They’ve sent the imposter back,” Miranda happily reported to Rhianna.
“And bonus,” Ileana declared, “they did it with kindness, compassion, justice, and love!”
Rhianna frowned at the twins’ keyed-up guardian.
“Okay, scratch the love part and add that they did it after one failed attempt,” Ileana acquiesced, tossing her head and flinging back a cascade of shimmering blond curls. “But certainly they showed amazing compassion and kindness. And they learned from their mistake.”
Rhianna was not in the best of moods. They’d buttonholed her as she was leaving her home. She’d been on her way to the Village Plaza, indeed had been looking forward to meeting Lady Fan there for an early-bird dinner, and did not welcome the interruption. “And this surprises you?” she asked curtly.
“Of course not,” Miranda said.
“Hello.” Ileana rolled her eyes. “It’s the first week of their Initiation and they just handled a completely unsanctioned situation superbly. They used wisdom …” She held up her thumb. “Intuition …” She added her forefinger. Then stopped, frustrated. “Come on, Rhianna. Be fair. Smoking out Amaryllis and then finding a way to help the evil little imp escape Thantos’s wrath has got to be worth big points!”
“For most fledglings, yes,” Rhianna agreed, reluctantly pushing back the door to her cottage and leading her surprise guests inside. “But of Artemis and Apolla, one expects no less.”
“So they’re being punished for being brighter than other fledglings?” Ileana complained. “What?!” she added as the twins’ mother kicked her.
Miranda’s attempt to caution the rash young witch pleased Rhianna. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth as she led them to the glass-front cupboard that held Cam’s and Alex’s viewing boxes.
Each gold container was inscribed with the girls’ Coventry names under the crowned bear crest of the DuBaer family. There was an opening in the shape of a pentagram, a five-sided star, at the top of each box.
As Lady Rhianna unlocked the cabinet, Miranda’s hand reached toward the containers, as if by touching them she could touch again their maker. It was Aron, her murdered husband, father of the twins, who had crafted the boxes, as he had their daughters’ sun and moon charms, in the days before their birth.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rhianna caught the gesture. She removed the boxes carefully, one at a time, and handed the first to Miranda. Then, so as not to embarrass Aron’s widow, and to appear evenhanded, she gave the second box to the twins’ impulsive, tactless, and, most bewilderingly, Karsh-appointed guardian, Ileana.
In a golden bowl on the shelf above the viewing boxes were sparkling crystals and precious and semiprecious stones of every shape and color. Rhianna dipped her plump hand into the bowl and drew out a fistful of stones.
“Apolla deserves at least three points for intuition, for flushing out Amaryllis,” Ileana declared.
“Artemis as well. They both treated the girl with compassion,” Miranda reminded her daughters’ Initiation Master.
“For uncovering not only who, but why —” Rhianna began, trying to ignore them.
“At least two points for wisdom, then. Two stones, surely,” Miranda broke in.
“And courage,” Ileana said. “It took great courage and even trust!”
“Courage certainly deserves several points. Don’t you think?” Miranda asked Rhianna.
The old witch rolled her eyes in exasperation. “The boxes,” she demanded.
Ileana and Miranda held them at arm’s length. With mind-boggling speed, Rhianna picked a number of stones from her hand and deposited them into the containers.
The plink-clink, click-clack of pebbles hitting thick gold pleased Miranda, though neither she nor Ileana had been sharp enough to see how many stones the old witch had awarded nor into whose boxes they’d been dropped.
“Listen up,” Rhianna curtly commanded. “This is how it is. For waylaying the bully in the cafeteria, Apolla earns two stones. For feeling the bad boy’s pain, three for Artemis. For working together, two more each. And for gloating —” Rhianna upended the boxes and shook a stone out of each — “that’s a minus two.”
After returning the boxes and bowl to her cupboard, Rhianna hurried to her door. Grabbing Miranda’s hand, Ileana rushed to catch up with the Exalted Elder. “One more thing,” she called out.
“I think not.” Rhianna quickened her pace, leaving the door to her cottage ajar. “Not now. You’ve already taken too much of my time.”
“Time is just the issue!” Ileana chased after the quick-striding witch.
“What the child means,” Miranda intervened, “is we were wondering when you’re planning to convene the Initiation?”
Rhianna hurried on. “The thirtieth and the thirty-first, of course,” she huffed, without turning around or slowing dow
n.
“But —” Miranda called after her. Ileana released her hand and raced ahead, holding up the hem of her midnight-blue gown.
“Wait up, your esteemed eminence,” the twins’ guardian called as respectfully as she could manage. Politeness did not trip easily off her tongue. But if ever there was a time to catch flies with honey, this was it. “Lady Rhianna, I’ve been thinking —”
“Always a dangerous thing!” With a huge sigh, Rhianna whirled to face the women.
“No, really — why must their forty-eight hours have to be the day before and the day of their birth dates?” Ileana continued, “Why not hold the Initiation at the full moon, as Apolla believes it will be? You know that their mainland family is planning a gala celebration for their birthday —”
“Rhianna, dear friend.” Miranda joined the fight. “Why not honor their adoptive parents by allowing the party to take place as planned?”
“They are already honored by having been chosen to rear extraordinary children,” Rhianna said curtly.
Ileana shook her head. “You don’t understand. You just don’t get it! Emily, the mother, has gone to such pains —”
Rhianna’s large downy wings bristled as if preparing to unfurl. “Enough!” she commanded. “The DuBaer twins are bright and resourceful enough to meet any challenge put before them. They must be!”
“And so they are,” Miranda asserted. “You are right, of course. They’ll find a way to deal with the situation.” She turned to see how Ileana was taking the rebuff.
But Ileana’s focus had shifted. Someday I’ll have wings like those, she mused, staring at Lady Rhianna. Or maybe not, she decided unhappily, since they were granted only to those who had been of extraordinary service to the community.
And really, what had she done to deserve such marvelous appendages? Nothing of merit. She’d merely acted as a mentor to Cam and Alex. Which had been easy given how intelligent, talented, and teachable they were.
Lady Rhianna was watching her, waiting.
“All right, point taken,” Ileana said with rare humility. “It was insolent of me to suggest bending the rules. That’s what ruffled your feathers, isn’t it?”
Lady Rhianna seemed taken aback. “Well, well, well,” was all she could say as she studied the beautiful and vain young witch who had given away her childhood to care for and protect Apolla and Artemis.
Over the next week, Alex and Cam practiced their magick at every op. Never before had they been so tuned in to the various problems of their classmates and peers. The knowledge of their “viewing” made them take notice. It was totally empowering.
Her sight now nearly as good as her phenomenal hearing, Alex shielded Dylan from a stealth trip-up attack by Caroline Ledbetter. The freshman girl’s unrequited crush on Dyl had turned to anger. The “Astral Glow” Alex sent had surrounded Dylan with a blinding burst of light — which kept Caroline from seeing her quarry, let alone sticking out her foot and sending him sprawling headfirst into the cafeteria trash can.
When an unprepared Beth got called on to stand and deliver in Biology, Cam tried a telepathic forwarding spell. By sending her best friend a visual of a random man in one of those Save The T-shirts, Beth blurted out, “Manatee,” the correct response to a question about an endangered sea mammal typically found in the southern hemisphere.
With way too much studying to do, Alex considered casting a spell to make her English teacher forget to give out homework. In the end, she decided against it. Mrs. Conner was one of those passionate types who loved what she taught and was more stoked than her students when a kid really “got” a poem or story or essay. Alex opted against less homework in favor of not messing with Mrs. Conner’s teaching plan or her head.
Cam came up against a different moral dilemma. A player from the Salem Wildcats, Marble Bay’s toughest opposing team, was having a miserable game and getting hammered more by her own ticked-off teammates than by Cam’s peeps. Desperate and defeated, the girl stood between Cam and an easy goal.
Cam’s competitive nature wanted to win both the game and the gratitude of her pumped-up teammates. To kick the goal or kick the girl’s self-esteem up a notch? A split-second decision gave the edge to compassion over competition. Cam purposely blew the shot.
And when Cam saw eyes roll as Briana described her father’s “fabulous” last visit — a trip Cam knew had been another brutal no-show — she laid a Truth spell on her bud. The magick got Bree to confess to what really happened: Her dad had chosen a Caribbean cruise over his promised visit to his daughter — and had caught a mystery ailment that had all the passengers barfing their way back home. Bree and her audience totally cracked up over the props payback.
On October thirteenth, Alex aided hapless Hannah Priestly, the least-talented girl in math class. During a math team contest, Alex guided the girl’s hand to write on the blackboard DM, as the correct abbreviation for Decimal, while her teammates incorrectly wrote DC, or DEC. Alex glowed when the teacher said, “Only one of you is correct,” and Hannah looked around cluelessly. The teacher said her name, and her teammates rushed her and raised her high in the air, as if she’d just won the World Series.
Becoming a full-fledged witch was going to have its extremely cool moments, Alex thought.
And then, without warning, an image of Stevie Hitchens crossed her mind. A snapshot of how she’d seen him last — a sorry, slumped figure slinking out of the cafeteria. The utter opposite of the amazed and ecstatic Hannah.
* * *
Wisdom.
At home that afternoon, Cam decided to look up the word.
Alex came into their room and caught her flipping through the big dictionary. “What’re you trying to find?” she asked, proud of her vocabulary know-how, her language skills. She could probably help Cam with any definition she needed. She was a writer, after all. Well, a songwriter anyway.
Cam jumped at the question as if she’d been caught doing something smarmy.
“Nothing. Um. Just something. You know, just curious …”
But Alex was already at her shoulder, peering at the open page, which began with the word wide-awake and ended with wild bergamot. “Wild bergamot’s a purple-flowering plant.” She couldn’t help showing off — courtesy of two hours of ferocious cramming with The Coventry Catalog of Herbs and Sundry Flora.
“No. I was just checking out —”
“Wisdom,” Alex read her mind and jumped in. “Wisdom? Why?”
“I was just wondering whether the episode with Bree and Nadine fell under wisdom or intuition — or for that matter, trust, courage, or honesty,” Cam confessed, sounding frustrated.
“You’re grading yourself!” Alex laughed. “Why am I so not shocked? I mean, who but a control freak like you would have to figure out —”
“What points I earned? Hello, who but me has a right to know?” Cam responded heatedly. “Anyway, here’s what it says. Do you want to know?”
“The business with Amaryllis,” Alex said, “I figure that was intuition, big time. Plus a dab of honesty and maybe even trust on my part, since I ’fessed up about getting initiated —”
“I know. I gave you points for that,” Cam said.
“Excuse me? You’re grading me, too?!”
“Chill, Alex. So far you’re doing okay. Here it is. Listen to this. ‘Wisdom: having the power of discerning and judging properly what is true or right; showing such power…’ blah, blah, blah … ‘to make or to become aware or enlightened.’ O.M.G.!” Cam paused, surprised. “Listen to this. The last meaning. It’s labeled archaic — as in ancient, old-fashioned, outdated. ‘Having knowledge of magic or witchcraft!’”
“That’d be us.” Alex announced, “So we’ve aced wisdom on all counts.”
Just then, once again, Stevie Hitchens crossed her mind. “Kind of,” she amended, no longer smiling.
“By the way, know what today is?” Cam asked, shutting the dictionary.
“Tuesday,” Alex answered flatly.
> “The thirteenth!”
“And this news should shake me because?” Alex prompted.
“Hello. Three days to the full moon, remember?” Cam said. “We should be getting the call to Coventry anytime now.”
That being the case, Alex thought, she had some quick and serious work to do on Stevie Hitchens.
CHAPTER NINE
THE CALL
Friday the sixteenth came and went. The full moon had shone gloriously into their room. And while Alex slept, Cam had sat up at the edge of her bed, fully dressed — in one of her favorite cashmere sweater sets — determinedly waiting for the call.
It never came.
And then another Friday — the twenty-third — rolled by. And still no word from Coventry.
Cam and Alex had continued to cram. They had memorized and practiced some awesome spells at home and at school. They’d created new incantations, most of which worked surprisingly well. Their talents were definitely improving — particularly Cam’s mind-reading ability. As for hunches and premonitions, Alex had experienced at least three, counting the one in Dylan’s room when she’d seen Amaryllis’s face.
Stressed out by waiting, Cam had tried to figure out how their viewing might be going. She doled out points to herself… and to Alex. By her reckoning, they were neck and neck now.
But a week ago her twin had bounded into the lead with a single act of trust and courage. She’d befriended Stevie Hitchens.
And gotten him to apologize to Nadine.
With whom he fell in love!
Now the two of them held hands in the hallways and neither the new girl nor the bully sat alone at lunch anymore.
Alex swore she’d used no magic to accomplish this. She’d done nothing but hide a topaz stone in Stevie’s backpack — topaz being a gem of courage, excellent for dispelling fear and insecurity with the light and warmth of love.
Cam had caught up to her sister just days ago. And it was Beth who’d provided the opportunity.
All of a sudden, Cam’s laid-back best was obsessing about a business trip her mom was supposed to take. The trip itself was a week away. It had never been a big deal before. Now Beth couldn’t let go of it. She kept saying she felt lonely already. And — as if it were the most brilliant idea she’d ever had — how cool would it be if Cam and, okay, Alex, too, bunked in with her?
T*Witches: Destiny's Twins Page 7