“Totally.” Cam pasted a wan smile on her face.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I followed the crowd to that auditorium or whatever it was.”
Cam exhaled finally, when Jason told her he’d arrived only to hear the very end of her eulogy and none of what Alex had said.
“You must have been close to the old guy who died,” Jason probed, “this Lord Karsh.”
She paused. “He was … like a grandfather —”
Jason’s eyebrows arched. Why weren’t Cam’s parents there?
“— to Alex,” Cam finished. A half-truth was better than a whole lie, she told herself.
“Oh.” Luckily, Jason acted like that explained … some of it.
“He sort of brought us together,” Cam continued carefully, hoping Jason wouldn’t demand details. He didn’t, but his next question tripped her.
“Was he royalty … or in some kind of club or cult? What was that lord stuff about?”
“Oh, no, it’s not a cult,” she rushed to assure him.
“This place is really weird.” He laughed nervously again. “I feel like I just slid into another dimension.”
Cam had never considered how to describe the people of Coventry to, well, her real-life family and friends. She’d never had to.
Today, her luck had run out. Now she had to deal. Jason needed an explanation that would satisfy him, prove to him that she wasn’t in danger. In other words, she needed to tell a lie convincingly. Anything to get him to leave. Now would be a good time.
“Well, at least the ferry guy was wrong.” He leaned back, tipping his chair. “There’s no such thing as witches, so that can’t be it. I mean,” he tried to joke, “there’s not a pointed black hat or cauldron in sight!”
Cam swallowed and hoped he didn’t notice. “It’s a kind of a special … community,” she offered. “The people here — they’re great — they’re just different. Different in a good way,” she clarified. “They’re dedicated to helping others, to doing good things with their lives.”
Jason looked doubtful. “Is it a commune? Like a hippie flashback?”
Excellent comparison! “That’s a really good way to think of it,” she said.
“Then what’s up with all the secrecy?”
Oops, another question Cam was not prepared for.
“Jase?” Cam leaned in toward him and, because she didn’t want to make eye contact, reached for the orange basketball charm that hung around his neck. “Sometimes, people are scared of what they don’t understand. And it can get weird, you know?”
“I guess.” He didn’t seem to follow.
“So this part of our — I mean, Alex’s life, she wants to keep it on the down-low. People already think she’s weird! Imagine if all this got out.” Cam felt like a traitor for that but pushed on. “You’re … amazing. I mean, for coming here. I … don’t know what to say. But anyway, I’m fine. Alex is fine. Not in any danger. No cause for concern. Basically.”
He wasn’t buying it. It was written all over his face. “You can probably still catch your friends in Florida,” she said hopefully.
His jaw tight, he stared at her. “You want me to disappear,” he said finally. “What are you hiding? Another guy?”
Cam was startled. Where had that come from? Jealousy was so not one of their issues.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, it’s obvious you came here for a funeral. It’s hard, I can see that, and why you were crying at the airport. But I keep feeling there’s more. I can’t shake the idea that you’re in trouble. Maybe you don’t want my help, but why are you pushing me away?”
“I need to do this Alex-family thing,” she finally said. “I appreciate that you came after me, but honestly? There’s nothing you can do here. You should just catch up with your friends and party like you planned. We can deal with all this bizarre stuff when we get back.”
“Cam?” He put his hands on her shoulders as he got up to leave. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. But I don’t know if there’ll be a ‘we’ by that time. If you can’t be open with me, maybe there never was.”
Cam’s heart was breaking when, at the pier, she hugged him tightly. The ferry was approaching. She felt Jason’s lips brush the top of her head. Had she been able to look into his soulful eyes and kiss him, she might have wiped away some of his doubts. But somehow she couldn’t. She’d been shocked to see him and touched, but not grateful. She’d tried to make him understand … but she’d deceived him.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. For lots of reasons.
Surely, Shane wasn’t one of them.
If Alex, the twin with the sharply honed hearing, was being followed instead of Cam, she might have deciphered the whispers of the watchers just then. She’d already caught their catty cracks at the funeral.
Cam, though, had neither glimpsed nor heard them. She’d felt their presence during her walk with Shane. Now, wrapped up in her unexpected little drama, Cam hadn’t even sensed them.
Too bad for her. Too, too tasty for them.
They called themselves The Furies. Sersee was their natural leader, Epie and Michaelina, her faithful followers.
Had Cam and Alex grown up on Coventry, they’d have known these girls. They’d have known what they were up against and why.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. At other times, it’s a death sentence.
“Life is just full of unexpected surprises,” Sersee said gleefully to Epie and Michaelina. “I didn’t think the saga of the princess power twins could get any more interesting. But apparently, it has. How touching was that little reunion?” Sersee cocked her head. She smiled in delight.
The violet-eyed witch wasn’t the smartest or most talented teen on Coventry. She’d been passed over when Karsh had chosen his fledglings and hadn’t impressed talent-scouting Thantos as Shane had.
Sersee had not forgotten either of those slights.
What she lacked in intellect she made up for in cunning. She was wily and played to her strengths: most notably, her ferocious beauty. Her dense tangle of jet-black curls fell nearly to her waist; her pale purple eyes were framed by long black eyelashes and dramatically arching eyebrows. Her porcelain skin was flawless, but little about her was soft. Beyond slim, she seemed all sharp jutting angles, all elbows, shoulder blades, cheekbones. Strikingly tall and thin, demanding, and issue-ridden, she’d have totally been an anorexic model on the mainland. On Coventry, she had higher goals.
Territorial, two-faced, and tricky, many of her performances were worthy of Academy Awards. Shane was her boyfriend, her property. She’d needed him, and she’d gotten him. In his eyes, her role was the wickedly fun-loving, good-hearted beauty. And she’d made herself totally available to him.
Those who crossed her found her playing a very different role.
And the Shane-struck twin, whether she knew it or not, had crossed her.
As far as Sersee was concerned, the minute Camryn had taken that walk with Shane she’d doomed herself.
Witnessing the tender good-bye scene between Cam and her homeboy was like a delectable dessert with an even sweeter surprise inside: a weapon Sersee needed. “Go now — on the ferry,” she instructed Epie, the duller of her lapdogs. “Let’s be sure … the Marble Bay boy … Jason … doesn’t get far.”
“What do you mean?” Epie was clueless.
“What do you think?” Sersee mimicked. “Prevent him from leaving Coventry.”
Sersee’s sarcasm flew over Epie’s head. “Why?” she asked.
“Why? Why are you so thick!?” Sersee demanded. Epie wasn’t following her logic, so she explained, “Insurance. Think of Cam’s boy-toy as an insurance policy.”
“For what?” The still blank Epie wanted to know.
Sersee’s violet eyes flashed menacingly. “To make sure the new little darlings of Coventry don’t overstay their welcome.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SECRETS AND CURSES
On the windswept side of Coventry, surrounded by
iron gates and impressive statues, generations of DuBaers and other important families were laid to rest.
Some miles to the south, in a less grand graveyard, Karsh had been buried among his ancestors and, although it was known as the Antayus Cemetery, alongside witches and warlocks from dozens of different clans. Here, simple plaques laid flat in the grassy earth marked the graves of both the great and the anonymous dead. And here Ileana came on the afternoon of Karsh’s burial.
The mourners were gone. The living had left. Clutching the warlock’s precious journal, the young witch rested with her back against a tree between the fresh, flower-decked mound of earth warming Karsh’s old bones and the bronze plaque that marked her mother’s grave.
Beatrice Hazlitt DuBaer. The only DuBaer in the Antayus Cemetery, thanks to Leila DuBaer, Ileana’s strong-willed grandmother. The arrogant old witch had undoubtedly insisted that Beatrice, her son Thantos’s low-born wife, be banned from the DuBaer family plot.
On her mother’s marker, Ileana had laid a sprig of lilac from her garden. She had gone back to Karsh’s cottage after the graveside ceremony and found that she could no more be alone than she could stand to be among people who wanted to talk to, console, or pity her. So she had taken the book with her and come to the graveyard to be among the dead.
And to read about them.
She opened to the page where she had left off. The saga of Jacob DuBaer and Abigail Antayus continued.
In order to bring charges against Abigail, Karsh had written, Jacob convinced several of his patients that their “rebellious” children were bewitched. He chose patients whose daughters were under the care of Abigail Antayus. It wasn’t hard to draw a connection between Abigail’s ministering and the “devilish” behavior of the little girls. But it proved difficult to get the children to testify against the beloved young doctor.
Difficult for an ordinary man, but Jacob DuBaer was no more ordinary than Abigail. Like her, he was a witch, a warlock afraid of being discovered. All his days as a doctor Jacob had turned his back on the craft, believing that he owed nothing to Earth or its creatures. But now, fear and vengeance drove him back to the old ways. So when threats and foul-tasting tonics failed, Jacob relied on magick. And succeeded. Two young girls swore that Abigail Antayus had enchanted them.
The good young physician was arrested.
But, as happened in rare cases, instead of other accusers coming forward, the court was flooded with angry citizens testifying to Abigail’s charity and good character. After holding the widow in prison for one week, the judges were forced to declare her innocent and release her. They did so with a stern warning and, at the suggestion of her chief accuser, forbade her to practice doctoring in Salem from that day forth.
A punishment Abigail could not abide.
She and her young children left Salem for Marble-town, a village some miles away, which, in the late 1800s, was renamed Marble Bay. In Marbletown, Abigail continued to aid the poor and needy, training her daughters and son to do likewise.
Jacob DuBaer pursued her. Shamelessly, he urged her to unite their powerful families through marriage. When Abigail refused him a second time, he brought his charges of witchcraft to the court in Marbletown.
Here, Abigail had no relatives or friends of long-standing, no patients of any influence in the community. And here, Abigail was tried, found guilty, and, at the tender age of twenty-seven, hanged from the oak tree in what was then known as Witches Hill and is known today as Mariner’s Park.
Mariner’s Park in Marble Bay. Ileana knew it well. And knew that Karsh’s legendary ancestor had died there. It was one of the Sacred Sites. It was also where the wise old tracker had given Camryn — the infant Apolla — to David Barnes, a protector.
As a young teen, Camryn had begun going to that exact spot in Mariner’s Park. She’d never been told of its history — her history — yet somehow she’d sensed its power and had made it her retreat.
All that Ileana knew. Now Karsh was telling her that she, too, was related to the famous young doctor? How was that possible? It was her ancestor the treacherous Jacob DuBaer who’d had Abigail Antayus put to death. What branch of that family tree had produced Ileana?
As if to ask him, Ileana glanced at the warlock’s fresh grave. A soft breeze ruffled the flowers mounded there. Roses, peonies, lilacs, lilies … But the scent that came to her was a powerful essence of peppermint and thyme. Karsh’s scent.
The pain of loneliness and loss stabbed Ileana anew. She pictured him dying in the woods of Salem. Bleeding from the rocks her idiot cousins, Tsuris and Vey, had thrown. She heard again his last gasped words: “It is written. All is written.”
With an aching emptiness, the bereaved witch returned to Karsh’s writings. And found the beginning of an answer.
After the hanging, the widow’s three children were scattered, given to “righteous” witch-fearing families who “cleansed their souls through toil.” In other words, dear Ileana, three little ones who had known only generosity, kindness, and love were put to work as servants in the households of people who hated their kind.
The family who took in Abigail’s oldest son was named Hazlitt — this child whose true clan was Antayus. But more of this later.
Later?! A bit of the fiery old Ileana awoke. Merciless trickster, she felt like shouting at the grave, where now the flowers fluttered as if chuckling. Impatient fledgling, she could imagine Karsh silencing her. With a sigh, she turned the page.
Abigail’s eldest son, a boy of eight when he was orphaned, vowed at eighteen that the DuBaer family would suffer as his own had. With his brother and sister, he cast a powerful spell.
A pledge.
A curse.
That in every generation, an Antayus would cause the death of a DuBaer son. The boy was driven by misery and anger, but the curse has stood through time. No generation has been spared….
“Ileana?”
The witch looked up, doubly startled by what she had just read and by the unexpected presence of Miranda DuBaer.
Quickly shutting Karsh’s journal, Ileana scrambled to her feet. “Where’s your keeper?” she rudely asked, looking for Thantos.
Miranda’s gray eyes, so like Ileana’s, so like the twins’, registered hurt, but her smile held steady. “I am alone. Are you angry with me?”
Surprised by Miranda’s directness, Ileana’s impulse was to deny that anything was wrong, to lie and say, “Of course not.”
“I know you’re disappointed with me,” Miranda added. “But are you also angry?”
“Yes,” Ileana owned. “I don’t understand you. I don’t know you anymore. When I did, when I was a child, you were the most protective and loving woman I’d ever met. I wanted to be just like you. I dreamed that you were my real and secret mother —”
“I loved you very much, Ileana,” Miranda interrupted. “When Beatrice died in childbirth, I tried to take her place.”
“Well, it seems you have. I mean, you’re practically married to my father, aren’t you?”
“Ileana!” This time Miranda’s smile did disappear.
“Your daughters arrived here yesterday, and you’ve made no attempt to spend time with them. You know I’m …” It was hard for Ileana to admit it, but she forced herself. “I’m not well. My powers seem to have … diminished … quite a lot. I’m in no condition to guide and protect them.”
“I know,” Miranda said gently. “And I …” Ileana caught Miranda’s jumbled thoughts: And I am diminished, too. My powers. My heart. I was afraid —
“Afraid of what?” Ileana demanded.
Shaken, Miranda reached out to take Ileana’s hand, but the younger witch refused, spitefully crossing her arms. “Afraid that I am useless, worse than useless to them.”
“Worse than useless?” Ileana scoffed, thinking of her own powerless state. “What could be worse than useless?”
“Dangerous,” Miranda murmured, then quickly changed the subject. “As for getting to know them … my �
� the twins, I was just on my way to your cottage. That’s where the twins are staying, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but you’ve taken the long way around, haven’t you? This cemetery, the Antayus Cemetery, so different from the lavish park where your husband and parents are buried, isn’t exactly on your way. Or did you come to pray over Karsh?”
“That was one reason,” Miranda answered. “The other is, I thought I might find you here.”
Ileana realized Miranda had more to say and waited.
With a deep sigh, Miranda faced her. “I am tired,” she said, her beautiful eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Tired of sorrow, secrets, and curses.”
“Curses?” Ileana asked cautiously.
“The Antayus Curse,” Miranda confirmed.
That Aron’s sheltered widow had known all along what Karsh had only entrusted to Ileana after his death was painful.
Miranda saying it out loud rattled Ileana and made crystal clear the meaning of what she’d just read. Beatrice had been a Hazlitt. The Hazlitts were one of the three families that gave their names to Abigail’s children. Beatrice Hazlitt was of the Antayus clan.
Leila DuBaer, Ileana’s shrewd grandmother, must have known. And been afraid that Beatrice would carry out the curse. That was what Leila had objected to. Not Beatrice’s lowly birth, but her dangerous heredity. That was why Leila had tried to convince her son not to marry Beatrice. She did not hate Ileana’s mother, she feared her.
Miranda intercepted the younger witch’s troubled thoughts. “Yes, yes,” she cried. “That’s it exactly. And I witnessed it. I saw how Beatrice was treated — scorned, derided. I pitied and defended her.”
Too many revelations. Ileana’s head began to swim. She was drowning in them.
“I was on my way to your cottage,” Miranda now said, “to extend an invitation … to dinner at Crailmore tomorrow, a family dinner, Ileana,” she hurried on before the surprised young witch could angrily refuse. “I hope … no, I urge you to accept. The twins deserve a chance to know their heritage, to see Crailmore for themselves. They will need your help and encouragement. It is your ancestral home, too, Ileana, the place where your mother lived —”
T*Witches: Kindred Spirits Page 5
