“I don’t know if we need to bother, you guys,” Piper said, folding a pair of chinos over her arm. “I mean, it’s not like we can’t handle ourselves with a demon or a warlock. I think it’s all the witch wanna-bes we should really be concerned about.”
Piper suddenly had a mental picture of a bunch of Missy Stark-like hippies dancing naked around a bonfire. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and she hoped her imagination was very far from the truth. She wasn’t going to be taking her clothes off for anything. Especially if a warlock might strike at any second. Now that would give the underworld something to gossip about.
“They have a point, honey,” Leo said, jarring Piper out of her silly stream of thoughts. “Better safe than sorry, right?”
“We can call you if we need you,” Piper told him, adding her chinos to the mess of clothing in her bag. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Piper, I don’t understand,” Phoebe said, an edge creeping into her voice. “Sixteen witches have disappeared without a trace. How can you be so casual about this?”
“They are Wiccans, not witches,” Piper corrected almost sternly. “And I’m not being casual about it. I’m just being…confident.” She dropped a pair of shorts into her bag and tossed her hair over her shoulder nonchalantly. “I know that whatever this thing is, we’re going to be able to deal with it.”
“I’m glad you’re so sure of yourself, Piper, but from what Phoebe tells me, these people aren’t just run-of-the-mill Wiccans,” Cole interjected hotly. “If they have the powers their friends say they do, then they are witches and Wiccans, and they couldn’t protect themselves.”
“Cole, calm down,” Piper said, spreading her fingers out in front of her. “Everything is going to be fine. No one is going to get hurt.”
She spun toward her closet again, figuring the conversation was over, but no one else moved. Piper felt a little sliver of tension curl its way through her spine, and she turned slowly to look at them.
“At least, no one is going to get hurt if you all leave me alone and let me pack,” she said through her teeth.
“Fine,” Phoebe said, rolling her eyes. She and Cole swept out of the room, leaving Piper and Leo alone once again.
“You okay?” Leo asked, concerned.
“I’m great,” Piper said. “I just think all this talk of vacations has made me realize that I need one.”
“Well, you’re kind of getting one,” Leo suggested helpfully.
Piper simply grunted as she slapped closed her half-packed bag. “Yeah,” she said sarcastically. “I wish.”
Chapter
4
“Can you believe this place?” Phoebe asked, her eyes wide open in wonder as Paige drove her two sisters down the Strip in Las Vegas. It was pitch black out, but the bright lights of the Strip were almost blinding. Paige could see everything around her in stark detail. It was almost brighter than daylight.
“No, not really,” Piper replied from the back-seat of the sweet convertible the sisters had rented at the Las Vegas airport. She pulled her cardigan on as a breeze lifted her hair from her neck. There was a slight chill in the air that none of them had expected. Apparently the desert nights weren’t quite as hot as the desert days. “I mean, we’ve seen some strange things in our day…,” Piper continued, staring out the side of the car.
She eyed a couple of showgirls who were walking down the sidewalk in gold lamé bikinis with long turquoise feathers rising out of their headpieces. They had on four-inch heels and towered over the man who walked between them, chewing on a cigar and stuffing a thick money clip back into his suit pocket. A couple of girls dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz strolled by smoking cigarettes, and a pack of guys in Hawaiian shirts stopped them to try out their pick-up lines.
“I think it’s cool,” Paige protested, leaning her arm on the top of her door and taking a nice deep breath of the fresh, dry air.
It was a perfect, clear night, and the tourists were out in droves, walking in groups from one casino to another, holding little plastic cups of their winnings. People kept stopping and pointing out various sights to their friends—the huge pirate ship in front of Treasure Island, the monstrous columns surrounding Caesars. Each casino was more elaborate than the last. Paige had seen pictures and movies of this place all her life, but none of them had done the city justice.
For one, Las Vegas was immaculately clean. There wasn’t a piece of stray garbage in sight. No graffiti. It was like someone had just come through and steam-cleaned the whole place. And the lights, while admittedly way, way over the top, were actually kind of beautiful. In a spectacular kind of way.
“Oooh! Look at that!” Phoebe exclaimed, grabbing Paige’s arm. “All-you-can-eat breakfast buffet! A dollar ninety-nine!”
“You’re kidding,” Paige said, taking her eyes off the road long enough to check out the huge neon sign. Then she saw another: ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT SURF ‘N’ TURF! $2.99! And another: NON-STOP EATS! $1.99! Paige started to salivate right there behind the wheel. The tiny little meal they’d been given on the plane hadn’t exactly done it for her.
“We may need to buy ourselves some bigger clothes while we’re here,” Piper said wryly.
Paige and Phoebe laughed as Paige pulled to a stop at a red light right in between four of the biggest casinos on the Strip. The MGM Grand was ahead to the left—huge and green and shimmering like its own Emerald City. To the right was the Excalibur, which was definitely Paige’s favorite. It was a big white castle with colorful turrets and a wizard—Merlin most likely—looking down from one of the highest windows. Maybe it was Paige’s old obsession with fairy tales, but she really wished they were staying at the Excalibur.
“Paige, I have to say, getting a convertible was an inspired idea,” Piper said, leaning back and stretching her arms out across the back-seat. She tipped her face toward the sky. “I haven’t been this relaxed in weeks, even if there is a witch-kidnapping fiend on the loose.”
“I’m glad, Piper,” Paige said, glancing in the rearview mirror with a smile. She bit her tongue to keep from letting out an “I told you so.” Instead, she said a silent thank-you to the powers that be that her sisters finally seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. Especially Piper. She’d been so grumpy before they left, Paige was starting to rethink the intelligence of her plan. She had visions of herself listening to nothing but biting remarks from Piper for the next few days and briefly considered orbing to Alaska and forgetting the whole thing.
“You guys! Check it out!” Phoebe exclaimed as Paige hit the gas again. They were passing by the mini skyline that made up the New York, New York casino. A replica of the Brooklyn Bridge served as an elevated sidewalk, and there was even a mini Statue of Liberty and an Empire State Building. A roller coaster came roaring by, making its way around the outside of the casino, its passengers screaming and laughing. “That’s it. I’m moving here,” Phoebe added. “I had no idea this place was going to be so cool!”
“I wonder which casino we’re staying in,” Piper said, pulling the Gathering of the Covens info sheet out of her inside jacket pocket. “It says ‘four-star accommodations.’ Do you think they’ll have a masseuse?”
“Probably,” Paige said gleefully, glancing down at the directions in her lap. “Maybe we’ll even have a Jacuzzi in our room!”
“I’m tellin’ ya,” Phoebe said, flipping the visor down. “These Wiccan people really know how to do it up.”
She pulled a lipstick out of her purse and started to fix her makeup as Paige turned down a side street, leaving the main strip behind. Paige glanced at her directions again, making sure she’d gotten it right. All the biggest casinos were on the Strip, right? So where, exactly, were these directions taking her? Glancing in the rearview mirror again, she saw that Piper was resting with her eyes closed once more. That was probably a good thing. If Piper saw where they were going, she’d probably start getting all worked up.
And for no reason, Paige told herself, making anoth
er turn. There has to be some huge hotel back here, or another casino that’s just off the Strip. It says “four-star accommodations.”
“Hey, it’s really dark,” Phoebe said, looking away from the visor mirror for a moment. Little concerned lines formed at the top of her nose as she looked around. “Paige, where are we going? Where’s the city?”
“Uh…I don’t know,” Paige said uncertainly. “I’m just following the directions.”
“Are you sure?” Piper asked. Suddenly her face was right between Paige’s and Phoebe’s as she leaned in from the back-seat. “There’s nothing out here.”
Paige bit her bottom lip and tried not to get too worried. But Piper was right. They were definitely outside the city limits now, and there weren’t even that many streetlamps to light the way. What kind of four-star hotel was out in the middle of the desert?
“I don’t like this,” Phoebe said, glancing back toward the glowing city. “This feels wrong.”
“Maybe we should turn around,” Piper said. “You know…start over.”
“You guys, I know how to follow directions,” Paige said, her face heating up slightly.
“Well, you must have done something wrong,” Piper said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
As irritated as she was, Paige was about to admit that her sisters could be right and turn the car around, when she saw the shadow of something on the side of the road up ahead.
“Wait!” Paige exclaimed. “I think I see a sign up there! Yeah. I think this is where we make our last turn.”
Paige rolled the car to a stop next to the large sign, which stood at the end of a dirt road. It wasn’t very well lit, so Paige turned on the car’s brights so that she and her sisters could read. The moment she saw the words painted on the rickety wooden sign, her stomach turned and she swallowed hard, dreading the total meltdown that was about to take place.
“‘Welcome to Tumbleweed Campground,’” Phoebe read slowly, as if she couldn’t herself believe what she was saying. “‘Las Vegas’s only four-star camping facility.’”
There was a smallish piece of paper tacked to the bottom of the sign, flapping in the breeze, that read WELCOME TO THE GATHERING OF THE COVENS! Whoever had written it had run out of room and had to squeeze in the word covens by making the letters progressively smaller and smaller. Definitely not a sign of a well-organized event.
“We’re staying on a campground?” Piper asked incredulously.
Paige turned to look at her sisters, trying to ignore the daggers shooting out of their eyes. Suddenly she was glad that neither of them had the power of deadly sight.
“Well…it makes sense when you think about it,” she said with a hopeful smile. “You know, part of being a Wiccan is communing with nature, and…honestly, I think that’s something that we don’t do enough of.”
“Nice cover, Paige,” Phoebe said, slumping back in her seat. “You better just hope they have toilets in this place, or I am calling Leo to orb me straight home.”
“So much for the masseuse,” Piper said. She sat back in her seat again, and Paige put the car into gear and started down the long, winding dirt road toward the campground. For the next few minutes not a word was said between them. Apparently the positive-thinking portion of this vacation was officially over.
Phoebe pulled her rolling suitcase along the bumpy dirt path behind Piper, Paige, and Marcia Farina, the coordinator of the Gathering of the Covens. Every time the bag hit a rock, it tipped over and Phoebe had to stop, turn around, and struggle to right it again. As they passed by large khaki tents and little groups of Wiccans, Phoebe tried to smile politely, but she couldn’t help feeling entirely out of place. Which was interesting, considering she and her sisters may very well have been the only true witches there. She just wished she had been forewarned that this was going to be a camping trip. She would have worn cargo pants and sneakers instead of a colorful ankle-length skirt and heeled sandals. And she definitely would have brought a backpack.
“I’m so glad you girls could make it!” Marcia said with a high-wattage smile that seemed more than a little bit forced. Her short black hair was blowing all over the place in the desert wind, but she didn’t seem to notice. She clutched a clipboard in front of her shimmery purple shirt and practically skipped as she led them along. For a middle-aged woman, Marcia was kind of hyper. Normally Phoebe would think her energy was sweet and inspiring, but this energy seemed to stem from nervousness. Marcia was definitely a little wound about something. “So many covens canceled this year, I wasn’t even sure we were going to be able to have the event.”
“Why did they cancel?” Phoebe asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer. She yanked her bag over a lump in the path and hoped they were close to whatever tent they were going to be calling home for the next few days.
“Oh…the kidnappings,” Marcia said with a wave of her hand, as if she just didn’t want to think about it. “They thought the Gathering would be a prime attraction for whoever is doing this. You have heard about the kidnappings, haven’t you?”
“We have,” Piper said calmly, tucking her hair behind her ear and adjusting the strap of her own heavy bag.
“And you’re not concerned?” Marcia asked.
Phoebe looked at her sisters before choosing her words carefully. “Well…we can take care of ourselves,” she said finally.
Marcia laughed. “That’s the spirit. I’m glad you girls aren’t intimidated. If you let yourselves be intimidated, then the bad guys have already won, am I right?”
She stopped and looked at them for approval, and Phoebe simply smiled. “Exactly,” she said.
“Now, this is the dining hall,” Marcia explained, quickly changing gears. She pointed behind her to a long, low cabin. “Mealtimes are marked on the itineraries I gave you when you arrived.”
Thank heaven for that, Phoebe thought, glad to know she wasn’t going to have to be cooking her own food over an open flame.
“Let’s keep moving,” Marcia said.
She was off again like a shot, and Phoebe yanked on her suitcase behind her. Marcia pointed out a few bathroom cabins as well, and Phoebe started to relax a bit. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. It wasn’t a big, flashy casino, but at least there was some version of indoor plumbing.
“Well, here we are! Tent number thirty-two!” Marcia trilled, stopping in front of a large army-green tent. It had a solid wooden frame, and the cloth covering was securely tied to the ground all around the perimeter. It looked sturdy enough.
Phoebe looked at Piper and Paige. “Well, go ahead in,” she said.
“I think Paige should go first,” Piper said with a sardonic smile.
“I think I will!” Paige said brightly.
She thrust aside the door flap and stepped inside. Phoebe heard some fumbling and a muffled “Ow!” but a moment later a light emanated from within the tent. Phoebe and Piper exchanged a look. Light was good.
“Hey! This is pretty nice!” Paige called out, sounding genuinely impressed.
Phoebe walked inside and was surprised to find that the tent was very spacious and clean. The floor was made of solid, packed dirt, and one cot stood against each of the three full walls, covered with pillows and bright white sheets. Paige had lit a lantern that stood on a small table against the back of the tent, and there were two more lanterns in the corners. Phoebe walked over to the nearest cot and hoisted her bag up onto it. It creaked loudly and sagged in the middle, but that was to be expected. Phoebe had packed for a whirlwind casino vacation and for some demon butt-kicking. It was hard to down-size with two such different missions in mind.
“Well, thanks again for coming,” Marcia said, holding the door flap up. “If you have any questions, you can see either myself or Ryan Treetop. He’s the owner of the campground, and I share his office while I’m here. I’ll see you at the meet-and-greet tonight.” She started to step out, but paused and popped her head back into the tent. “Oh! And don’t forget, you
’ll need to let me know if you want anything special said at the rededication ceremony.”
Phoebe looked at her sisters, but they both appeared as clueless as she was. Even Paige’s face was blank.
“Rededication ceremony?” Piper asked.
Marcia stopped once again and looked at them, confused. Paige pressed her eyes closed in embarrassment, and Phoebe realized that anyone who showed up at this Gathering was probably supposed to know what a rededication ceremony was.
“Um…what do you mean, ‘anything special’?” Phoebe asked.
Marcia came all the way back into the tent and stood up straight, holding her clipboard against her chest. “I’m sorry, I thought you were aware of the tradition,” she said, making Phoebe feel like a kid who had just given the wrong answer in class. “Each year at the Gathering all the covens come together on the night of the summer solstice and rededicate themselves to the Wiccan craft and to the Goddess and the Horned God.”
Piper let out a little snort, and Phoebe and Paige both leveled her with a glare. The last thing Phoebe wanted was for this woman to think they were laughing at her. They had to blend in as a coven that was actually into this stuff. Covering quickly, Piper started to cough and turned her back on Marcia, searching through her bag and coming out with a water bottle.
“Sorry,” she said after taking a long drink of water. “The dry air gets to me.”
Marcia looked unconvinced, but she was apparently willing to let it slide. “As I was saying, each coven usually submits a passage to be read at the ceremony,” she said, directing her comments to Phoebe. “It makes it more personal.”
“I see,” Phoebe said with a smile. She could tell Piper was struggling to keep from cracking up laughing, so she reached out and grabbed her sister’s wrist in an attempt to ground her. “I’ll write something up as soon as I can.”
Something Wiccan This Way Comes Page 4
