“And died,” Ileana interrupted.
Ileana glanced at Beatrice’s simple grave, at the lilac sprig she’d left on the tarnished bronze plaque. Only then, seeing the pale blossom awash in the scarlet blaze of sunset, did she realize how late in the day it was.
After a moment, her sullen frown faded and her head cleared. “Of course I’ll go,” she told Miranda, suddenly elated at the idea of carrying Beatrice’s fearsome legacy, the Antayus Curse, back into the DuBaer fortress.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A WARNING IN THE NIGHT
“Did you hear that?” Alex woke with a start and poked at her sleeping sister.
Someone was in the hallway just outside the bedroom. Was it Ileana? Home after all? Alex started to relax.
Then she heard whispers. Cackling giggles.
Outside, more footsteps — among them the strange, unsteady loping of a four-footed creature, a wobbly beast with paws like a cat. Boris? No, this thing was bigger, heavier, and struggling for balance.
Whoever was in the house was not Ileana.
Whatever was outside was not a pet.
A sickening stench wafted through the open window. Like rancid, wet cat fur had been sprayed with aftershave. Alex almost hurled.
“Cam,” Alex whispered urgently, leaning over and shaking her twin. “Wake up! Someone’s here.”
Cam burrowed under her pillow and swatted Alex away.
The twins were wiped. The last eight days had been a full-on shock-o-rama and it had taken a major toll on them. When Cam returned from seeing Jason off, she’d found Alex fast asleep on Ileana’s deluxe, double-king-sized, goddess-worthy bed. She hadn’t had the heart or the energy to wake her twin, even to tell her about Jason — or the wooden sign she’d found on her walk with Shane. She’d barely dragged herself to the bed.
Now Alex was shaking her.
“What?” Cam said groggily. “Go away, I’m sleeping.”
Someone’s in the — Alex started to telegraph.
She didn’t have to finish. In a flash, Cam bolted upright and whirled to face the window. She grabbed Alex’s hand. Breathing rapidly, she blurted, “It hurts! It needs us!”
“What? What needs us? What do you see, Cami? Are you having a vision?”
“No, more like a dream. Of eyes — just eyes, eyes with long dark lashes, floating in the air. Alex, I know those eyes.”
Alex was afraid to ask. “Whose eyes?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ve seen them before. Some … animal. Or person. It’s trying to find us. It’s wounded. And it’s scared.” She swallowed. “What’s out there, Als?”
Alex didn’t get a chance to answer. A thunderous roar rocked the room. The unsteady footsteps she’d heard before were sprinting now toward the cottage. Its paws were pounding the earth, as if it were about to blast right through the window and attack!
“Run!” Cam screamed. “It’s coming.”
They raced toward the door and then crashed into each other, stopping short at the exact same sound — sickening, terrifying, and unmistakable: the screaming of a creature in excruciating pain.
Fast as she and Cam were, Alex knew they would not see it. It had turned away already. She could hear it darting back through the bushes, the sound of its aching roar fading as it ran away.
Their own terror up-ticked as they started after it. The moment they rushed out the bedroom door, Cam slid, skidded.
A circle of something gritty — soil, gravel, sand? — was on the floor. It trailed from Ileana’s bedroom down the long hallway and led straight into the sitting room. The scent was familiar to Alex, from Ileana’s garden. Nightshade? Jimson weed? Nettle? She couldn’t remember which one had smelled this way. All she knew was …
Cam knelt and picked up some of the coarse powder, rubbing it between her thumb and fingers, about to inhale the grains
… it was toxic! “Stop!” Alex shouted, sweeping the particles from her sister’s hand. “It’s a poisonous herb. I can’t remember which one but —”
“— it’s connected to whatever just happened,” Cam finished Alex’s sentence.
“As you would say —” Alex clenched her jaw and strode toward the front door where the “trail” ended. “Duh.”
“Someone was trying to lure us outside.” Cam ignored Alex’s knee-jerk diss. “Unless this was meant for Ileana.”
Alex’s hand froze on the doorknob.
Her twin’s momentary paralysis pushed Cam forward. Opening the front door, she seized Alex’s arm and they stepped outside together.
Strange scents mingled in the dark, as confusing as they were frightening. The bittersweet poison of deadly nightshade and, again, the putrid musk of damp fur and stinging aftershave. And another odor, a new and scary scent hard to identify.
Alex heard Cam gasp. She turned to see her sister staring at Ileana’s front lawn, her phenomenal eyes cutting through the darkness.
“What?” Alex whispered, shivering. “I smell it, but I can’t see it. What is it?”
A wooden post had been set into the lawn. Attached to the top was a scrap of yellow cloth. Its edges were ragged, as if it had been torn from a larger piece of fabric. On it, crudely smeared in bright red, was a message:
Go home while you can.
It was written in blood.
Cam choked back the scream lodged in her throat. “The watchers! They were here,” she whispered, though no one was listening now, or watching. She was sure of it. “They were in the house, right outside our door. We didn’t even sense them.”
Alex stood motionless. Only her eyes moved from the warning message on the bloody cloth to the woods beyond. Her tone, when she finally spoke, was clipped. “We have enemies here. With their own magick.”
Cam hugged herself. She was shivering.
Alex seethed, “If Tsuris and Vey did this, they are roadkill.”
“Scratch that,” Cam said, the shock beginning to wear off. “This is not the work of Two-Doofus, Inc.”
“You’re right. Whoever did this is smart and trying to show us he — or they — can scare us into leaving.”
“Done deal.” Cam turned and started for the cottage. “Sunrise? I’m gone.”
Alex grasped Cam’s elbow hard and swung her around. “No deal! Sunrise? We stay, and nail whoever did this — throw down some T’Witch power!”
Cam frowned. Her sister led with her heart, her emotions, her anger — never with her head. “Look,” she said, going into Cam-rational mode, “we may be talented, or whatever they say we are, but even if we do figure out who wants us gone, we don’t know enough to fight them.”
Alex’s jaw was set. “Then let’s be quick learners, Barnes, ’cause we won’t be stealthed again. We have every right to be here. We were born here!”
Cam tried to squish the thought …
Too late. Alex heard her. “What sign? What house? What are you thinking about?”
Half an hour later, dressed for the chilly night, they set out into the darkness. Clouds moved across the pale moon, but Cam easily retraced the path she and Shane had taken.
“You sure we’re going in the right direction?” Alex asked. She was hyper, wired, skittish. The scent of the wounded animal that had almost attacked them was still in her nostrils. Anxiously, she waved her flashlight across the thick brush, wielding it like a light-saber.
“I know where it is,” Cam said calmly. “I deliberately kicked it under a big rhododendron so I could find it later.”
After a few minutes, Cam pointed triumphantly to a bush of dark green, shiny leaves ripe with purple flowers. Everything was as she’d left it — the tree root, the indentation of the plank in the soft earth, the scuffed imprint of Cam’s fall. Even the streak of her kick was clear.
Only the board was missing.
Alex got down next to Cam and helped her rummage around under the rhododendron. “It’s gone,” she fumed, standing and brushing mud from the knees of her jeans. “I wonder who took it. Let’s play the n
ame game, or should I say the Shane game? Wonder-warlock obviously wanted to be sure you didn’t find it again.”
“It wasn’t necessarily Shane,” Cam contradicted, giving up the search. “It could have been … some animal.”
“Right. Some artistic, wood-craving beaver ignored all the other branches in the forest and decided he wanted one with a weird design on it.” Then Alex softened. “Okay, look, even if Shane swiped the wood, he can’t hide a house. I say we find it.”
“It was torn down — years ago,” Cam said numbly, “according to Shane.”
“Hmmm, to believe or not to believe? That is the question — not. I say we look for it. Which way?”
“Well, there are supposed to be some caves over that way.” Reluctantly, Cam pointed into the darkness. “They’re interconnected. I bet they lead to Crailmore.”
“The DuBaer compound. Aron and Miranda probably lived nearby. And you did find the sign right over here.”
Cam led the way unenthusiastically. Buried in her own thoughts, which came through loud and clear to Alex, she was all about: But why would Shane move the sign, and why did I just know he was lying when he said the house had been torn down?
“Because he has something to hide?” Alex ventured, thinking about seeing the skeeve in the arms of the black-haired witch. “Bet you’re sorry now that you cut out on Karsh’s funeral to get in Shane’s face about —”
“Shane? You think I left the funeral because of Shane?” Cam spun to face her sister. “I already told you —” She stopped. Ooops. No, she hadn’t.
“Jason?! He followed us — and was there at the funeral?” Alex was floored. Then she remembered b-ball boy’s dash to the ticket counter when she and Cam were boarding.
“Back up, why would you think my leaving the funeral had anything to do with Shane?” Now Cam was curious.
“Hello. Because of the … Look!” Alex’s flashlight beam caught something red glinting through the trees. A dash in the mirage’s direction proved it to be …
“A stained-glass window.” Cam stopped alongside her sister and stared awestruck at the piece of crimson glass dangling from the high window of a stone tower in the middle of the woods.
Without another word, they thrashed through bramble and brush until Alex’s flashlight clanged against something metallic. “It’s a gate. Or was,” she said, illuminating a panel of rusty wrought-iron spikes.
Cam’s shoe found a second section underfoot. It was lying on a slab of cobblestones, timeworn and green with moss. Looking down at it, she saw that there was a rectangle cut out of this piece of gate exactly the shape and size of the board she’d found. She reached for Alex’s hand and was met halfway by it. Together they moved along the remnants of a cobblestone path toward what they now knew stood just beyond the trees.
The path led them to a crumbling rock wall and through a stone archway buckling under a dense tangle of wild roses.
As they passed through the archway, the clouds that had darkened the night shifted. Moonlight illuminated a breathtaking sight. Before them, a magnificent ruin reared. The remains of what had once been an imposing stone cottage, a country home easily twice the size of Ileana’s LunaSoleil.
Still clutching each other’s hands, Alex and Cam walked slowly toward the house. The cobblestone path disappeared as they picked their way through a bramble of overgrown weeds, flowers, and wild herbs, which had once been a lovingly cared-for garden.
Aside from the electric tingle that had shot through her the moment the house came into view, Cam was unexpectedly impressed. A clear picture hadn’t formed in her mind, but she’d never imagined something as big and clearly once beautiful as this. It wasn’t as showy as the estates in The Heights, Marble Bay’s most exclusive district, but it definitely rivaled her home.
“It is your home,” Alex cut in, awed. “Cam, we were born here.”
Cam did feel surprisingly moved, psyched, and proud. Her eyes had begun to tear. She didn’t want Alex to notice, so she turned away and pretended to be casually checking out the moonlit casa.
While it was easy to see how amazing the cottage must have been, up close it was clear that time had taken a fierce toll on the place. There were gaping holes in the wooden shingles of the dormers and roof. White mold dappled the rest. Ivy, out of control, strangled a dilapidated chimney, while a wisteria vine, its purple flowers dangling like bunches of grapes, its branches grown thick as arms, crushed the front of the house, blocking the front door and covering the mullioned windows.
The windows that were not closed off by nature had been boarded up; a few, high up like the broken stained-glass pane Alex had spotted, hung jagged, dangerous, and out of reach.
“No way in,” Cam was about to conclude, until she noticed something that felt out of place. At the back of the house was a large mound of leaves, twigs, and rocks — a mountain, too carefully constructed to have been blown there, by wind and rain. It was covering something. Cam telescoped through the pile, then kicked away the leaves. “Alex!” she called out excitedly. “There’s a cellar door — and someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep it hidden.”
“Score! You go, tracker girl!” Alex was by Cam’s side in a flash. She reached over to pull the double doors open when a familiar feeling of dizziness stopped her. She knew what would follow: The ringing in her ears would mute every sound of the forest, of the night, of her sister’s voice drifting toward her now from far, far away. Was Cam saying, “Wait, no … stop?”
The shrill ringing stopped abruptly. Into the gap of silence roared something frightening and familiar: someone — or something — groaning in pain, begging to be set free. The wounded beast that had raced toward Ileana’s house! It seemed to be directly below her, underground. And she smelled again the noxious stench of fear, fur, and blood, which someone had tried to cover up nauseatingly with cologne.
Cam had tried to warn Alex, but she, too, was paralyzed. An icy chill swirled around her. She panted and shivered, goose bumps raised on her arms. And as always when she was about to have a vision, everything blurred, then all at once, came into sharp focus.
Cam saw a dark tunnel, thick stone walls sweating with moisture, grottoes formed into the walls. And some kind of sleek, furry animal trapped, being taunted by frightening figures.
The caves! The caves Shane had said ran under much of the island, that’s what she was seeing.
The next sensation Cam felt was her twin’s hand squeezing hers. The vision faded.
Unnerved, sweating in the cold darkness, Cam was ready to bolt for the second time that night. “We can’t go in here,” she whispered unsteadily. “That was a warning.”
“And?” Alex challenged, shaking off her fear, advancing toward the doors.
“And maybe we should heed it!” Cam swallowed. “Or at least come back in the morning.”
“When what? You can have the same vision in the daylight? Leave your wuss cap at the cellar door. Get a grip and help me open this.”
“I’m not being a wuss!” Cam declared. “In case you’re not counting, this is the second warning we got tonight!”
Alex put her hands on her hips. “Oh, please. That lame poison trail trick was a prank meant to frighten us. Big whoop. What we just experienced was a sign. Karsh taught us that. They tell us what we have to do.”
“That someone needs us,” Cam conceded. She did not want to be needed, not now, not here on Coventry Island. “Alex, we’re not ready,” she pleaded, wanting more than ever to go —
“Home.” Alex finished her thought. “This is it, Cam-a-lot. Our real home. And whatever’s waiting for us inside, or underneath it, ready or not — here we come.”
CHAPTER NINE
LUNASOLEIL
They descended the set of rickety steps into the basement. It was pitch-black and, save for the creaking sounds they made coming down, absolutely still.
And absolutely wrong.
The house had been boarded up, left sunless, bereft, barren, abando
ned. Just the shell remained, testimony to the lively, joyous haven it once had been.
So why did Alex detect a mix of ammonia and some kind of wood polish, as if it had been cleaned recently? Cam’s eyes, adjusting easily to the dark, confirmed it: not a cobweb or dust ball in sight. Someone had secretly been taking care of this house, and had gone to some trouble to hide the entrance.
This basement, which might have been used for storage, was empty now. A lonely narrow staircase in the far corner led upstairs.
That, too, seemed wrong. The vision Cam had just had, the cries Alex had just heard had come from under the earth, not above it.
Cam scanned the wooden floor, then searched for some kind of hidden opening in the walls. Nothing so far.
She was interrupted by the sound of Alex-the-impatient bounding upstairs. In a flash, she was at the top — frozen, terrified of crossing the threshold into the main living area. Cam hurried up beside her. Together they gently opened the door.
Instantly, they were bathed in a warm, comforting, welcoming feeling. It was, Cam would describe it later, like being in a house of worship: sacred and safe, separated and protected from the outside world. Like the strong embrace of a father, the nurturing arms of a mother. This was Aron and Miranda’s home.
This, according to Karsh and Ileana, was where they had been born. The vast space they were staring at now must have been a warm wonderful room. Brilliant sunlight would have streamed through the skylights and picture windows, now sadly boarded up.
In a corner was a handsome daybed of carved mahogany. Without turning to face her, Alex put an arm around her sister and they walked cautiously together toward the beautiful divan. There, beside it in a corner stood a uniquely beautiful cradle. Made of bent willow branches, it was wide enough that two infants might easily have rested on the plump cushion inside it.
Years and years ago, before memory, she and Cam had slept side by side in the beautiful handcrafted cradle.
T*Witches: Kindred Spirits Page 6
