* * *
Cam had met Shane Wright last year. Met and fallen for him. Who wouldn’t? He was buff, blond, bewitching … and bad.
She had to keep reminding herself of that. Bad as in a bad guy, selfish guy, dangerous guy. Warlock guy.
Shane was capable of using his witchy gifts in service of evil. Hadn’t Cam seen it happen? Hadn’t she and Alex been on the receiving end of his tricks and treachery?
Shane lived on Coventry Island, the mystical, windswept island where Cam and Alex had been born. And where they still had family. Including, they’d only recently found out, their biological mother, Miranda DuBaer.
The little island abounded with family, friends … and foes, Cam reminded herself.
Not so long ago, Shane was among them. An enemy.
He’d hooked up with a sketchy crowd. He’d followed the wrong leader. But he’d confessed, owned all his bad. He was ready; he wanted to reform. He needed Cam to help him do the 180.
Shane’s e-mails were as startling and irresistible as he was. I never realized how close I was to the edge, to spending my life serving evil, the opposite of our purpose as witches, he’d written. And then I met you, and you showed me. I am here to help, to heal, to use my knowledge of the craft for others, not for selfish reasons.
Cam hadn’t responded at first — but her silence didn’t deter him. It was understandable if she couldn’t forgive him, he acknowledged. He wasn’t sure he even deserved forgiveness. The enormity of the wrong he’d done perhaps was unforgivable. It would be okay if she never wrote back.
The wrong he’d done had been enormous. Shane had played her. He had won her trust and then betrayed her so recklessly it had almost cost her and Alex their lives.
But his e-mails were so apologetic, he seemed so miserable and hopeless that in a forgiving moment — remembering his smile, his twinkling eyes, how she didn’t have to hide who she really was, how her heart danced every time she saw him — she finally did reply.
She didn’t remember exactly when Shane had suggested she write back to him on a screen no one knew or could access. Nor when he’d first started urging her to return to Coventry. But a week ago, he’d written.
You are everything I want to be. Can be. I need you, Cam. Please come back to the island… to me. Even for a little while. Can you find it in your heart to believe me? To believe in me?
He wanted forgiveness, redemption.
Tonight, Cam thought, she was of a mind to give it to him.
In person.
Alex knew nothing of this clandestine correspondence. If she had, Cam’s spiky-haired twin would have gone ballistic. Cam could hear it now: “How could you? After what he did? Ever hear the expression, ‘Those who forget are doomed to repeat’?”
Cam hadn’t forgotten any of it. But Alex didn’t understand. In spite of everything that had gone down, she still had strong feelings for Shane. He wanted forgiveness.
“Who wants forgiveness?”
Startled, Cam jumped. “Wanna give me some warning when you’re eavesdropping?” she huffed at her sister, quickly shutting down her computer.
Alex shrugged and raked her dyed locks with black-painted fingernails. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she blithely announced. “Technically, I shouldn’t be able to. You should’ve sensed me coming up the stairs and closed your private e-mail down before I showed up.”
“Why are you home so early anyway?” Cam demanded defensively. “Don’t you and Cade have lots of catching up to do?”
Alex plopped down on her bed and kicked off her scuffed mocs. “Take the sarcasm down a notch, okay? I thought I was being unselfish. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Alex tapped her forehead. “Post-premonition pounding? Major headache. Wanted to see if you were okay.”
“So you knew.” Cam smiled, trying not to gloat. “I saved a kid from getting his fingers blown off.” Arms crossed, she leaned back in her swivel chair.
“You da witch,” Alex said.
“Als … you know what? I think I’m getting some hyperhearing of my own. I heard those kids from way far off.”
“Mad props.” Her twin applauded lazily.
“And first time ever? I did it alone.” Cam snapped her fingers and drew an imaginary victory arc in the air.
“Not to take the ‘umph’ out of your triumph, but that’s not quite the way it went down.”
“Translation?” Cam asked.
Peeling off her hooded sweatshirt, Alex said, “We, you and me, T*Witches Unstoppable, Inc. We intervened and saved the kid.”
Cam’s face grew hot with barely contained annoyance. “How do you figure? I sent a message. You didn’t respond.”
“Didn’t I?” Alex arched her eyebrows — purple today, to match her hair. “Why do you think your sun charm started to buzz and vibrate?”
“You’re taking credit for that?” Cam was astounded.
“I heard your telepathic shout-out. Only I wasn’t close enough to get there in time. So … preserving my well-deserved rep as the quick-thinking twin, I tried something new. Hanging on to my amulet —” Alex demonstrated as if she were doing a show-and-tell project for a remedial class. Holding her gold half-moon charm in front of her sister’s reddening face, she zipped it back and forth on its chain. “I sent you an awesome incantation — if I do say so myself. And? It worked. Eureka!”
Cam had had it. “No, you reek-a,” she shot back. “Or your explanation does, anyway. I don’t believe you.”
“Whoa, petulant much?” Alex imitated Cam-slang.
Surprised at the acidy lump in her throat and its sudden companion, salty tears, Cam turned away, trying to hide her face.
When had she turned into a crybaby, a vulnerable, lonely loser? Where was Winner Cam, the stylish and social soccer star everyone looked up to? She so hated feeling helpless.
Clearly Alex had not expected the sob-fest. She crossed the room and began gently massaging Cam’s shoulders. Which made Cam feel even worse. It took everything she had not to shrug off Alex’s sympathetic touch. Self-pity was bad; being pitied was off-the-charts worse.
“We worked together, but you really own this one. You sensed it first.” Alex was backpedaling. “It was your premonition, Cam. If I had been there instead of you, those kids would have been in big trouble. Remember, I don’t get premonitions.”
Much later, when Cam closed her eyes, it wasn’t visions of victory, or fireworks, or even Shane playing in her head. It was a verdant landscape, a calm place … a woman in a lavender cape, her hair twisted in a long auburn braid, whispering … what? Cam strained to hear.…
CHAPTER THREE
THE HIDDEN DOOR
“Golden slumbers fill your eyes … And I will sing you a lullaby…”
Someone was singing, stroking her hair. The light touch drifted to her cheek, tracing her cheekbones. She was a child again, safe, secure.
A breathy voice whispered, “You can’t imagine how happy it makes me that you came to visit. Can you hear my heart racing?”
“Alex is the one with the hyperhearing,” Cam mumbled drowsily.
“I know which twin you are, my daughter.” Miranda DuBaer, Cam’s birth mother, was perched on the bed. Miranda in person matched the dream Miranda: long auburn hair braided down her back, lavender cloak and all. Beyond her mother’s looming, beautiful face, Cam saw a mullioned window set deep in thick stone … and the gilded walls of an unfamiliar room, a room curved to fit inside an enormous rounded tower.
The soaring tower of Crailmore. Which could only mean … Cam was really on Coventry Island?
Had she … dreamed herself here? Was that possible?
Miranda smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. “You seem a little dazed, disoriented. I’m not surprised. Even on the day you were born, it look you longer to awaken than your sister.”
“How long have I been here?” Cam asked, flipping over onto her back and rubbing the sleep from her
eyes.
“You were exhausted when you arrived yesterday and went straight to bed. So, not very long at all.”
Arrived yesterday? Cam blinked once more, and it all came back to her. She had gotten here not by magick but manipulation. Dave and Emily were away; they’d never know she was gone. As long as Alex agreed to cover for her.
Cam had told Alex the truth. She needed to go there. She wouldn’t say why, which flipped Alex’s skeptic switch. But when Als suggested that Cam was going only to see Shane, Cam had totally denied the charge. She claimed she simply needed some time alone with Miranda. Cam had invited Alex to come along, but knew her twin sis would never skip town while Cade was around. So they’d made a pact. Alex would do the coconspirator thing if Cam agreed to be back well before the Barneses’ return. Furthermore, Cam would contact Alex if she got into trouble.
Cam sat up and stretched luxuriously. Her eyes took in the gilded room, the sunshine pouring through the tall window, the welcoming smile on Miranda’s face. Cam grinned happily. She’d been sleeping on the softest, biggest bed she’d ever seen. She was in a total comfort zone, blissed out. I was right to come here, she thought. Then it hit her. This was —
“Right,” Miranda affirmed. “Your father slept in this very bed —” She ran her slender fingers over the quilt as though it might still hold her murdered husband’s warmth. “When he was about your age. That’s why you feel so peaceful and protected here. Aron is gone, but strong magick is still here. His magick.”
“Is there some special meaning to the shape?” Aron’s room, wide where the bed was, narrowed into a V at the door, like a pizza slice.
Miranda explained that the family’s sleeping quarters came together to form a sacred circle. All the bedrooms connected. The doors on either side of Aron’s room led to those of his brothers, Thantos and Fredo. “Your grandparents wanted their three sons to be close. This was one way of trying.”
“Yet failing, epically,” Cam said sarcastically. In the Super Bowl of dysfunction, it was victory DuBaer.
Cam scrambled out of bed and rushed to the window.
Crailmore was the most imposing structure on the island; the fortress had been in the DuBaer family for generations. In this generation, it was ruled by Lord Thantos, head of the family. By default — de fault being Uncle Fredo’s. The skanky brother-with-the-fewest-marbles had murdered the twins’ father — sidebar, because he thought that’s what Thantos wanted him to do.
Cam did not understand why Miranda still trusted the dangerous tracker. Then she shuddered. Was the hulking black-bearded warlock nearby?
“Your uncle is away,” Miranda said stiffly. “But he’ll be back shortly. And you really have nothing to fear.”
Startled by her mother’s easy eavesdropping, Cam tried to scramble her thoughts, which at the moment were: Ba-ap! So wrong. Try again. Safe and Thantos don’t belong in the same sentence.
Thantos. The premonition came over Cam so quickly her knees buckled. To keep from falling, and to keep Miranda from realizing she might, Cam pressed down hard on the windowsill. Her vision blurred. Dizziness gave way to nausea. A sheen of perspiration swathed her. She saw a book. Its cover was of old cracked leather.… Inside it were pages of aged parchment … and a hand, a smooth, confident hand was writing on the parchment.… Thantos was the only word she could make out.
“He knows you’re here,” Miranda was saying as Cam’s vision faded.
She held her head, which was pounding furiously, and tried to focus on her mother. “Who knows? Thantos?”
Miranda’s expression was troubled. “No. The boy. The blond child, wild and untrustworthy —”
It took Cam a moment. Shane! It was Shane her mother meant. She’s not gonna stop me from seeing him, she thought, panicked.
“Stop you?” Her mother seemed genuinely surprised. “No. Just be cautious around him.”
“And?” Cam was waiting for the rest of it. The part Emily would have stressed: “We trust you. We know you’ll use good judgment.”
It didn’t come.
Instead, Miranda moved on. “I wish Artemis could have come with you. I was just thinking of her. Of summoning her here.” She offered a beautiful kimono to Cam.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Cam asked, poking her arms through the robe’s flowing sleeves. How shallow was she that the kimono’s fabric, as soft and light as a rose petal, sidetracked her for a moment. “I mean, aren’t I enough?” She quickly regrouped.
“Of course!” Miranda seemed astonished that Cam would even ask. “This is not about you not being enough. I have something to tell you —”
“Go for it,” Cam urged.
Miranda shook her head. “Not now. This needs to be told to the two of you, together and face-to-face. We’ve planned it, Ileana and I. When she returned from her trip, we were going to come and see you.”
Ileana was Cam and Alex’s cousin and the guardian appointed to protect the twins, ever since the day that Aron died and Miranda suffered an emotional breakdown.
“This important thing you have to tell both of us at the same time. We were here, on Coventry, for Lord Karsh’s funeral. Why didn’t you tell us then?”
“Because,” Miranda said gently as she headed for the door, “I didn’t know it then.”
Cam hadn’t meant to snoop. But this was her father’s room. She’d been robbed of the chance to know Aron DuBaer. This, she decided after she’d dressed, was a way to begin.
She was astonished at all the accolades, certificates, awards, and trophies her father had won when he was a boy. Cam’s heart swelled with pride. Was it any wonder she was a winner, too? At least that was what Emily often insisted. “You’re amazing. An athlete graced with brains and beauty — you’re a winner, baby,” her adoptive mom used to say, shaking her head in wonder. “I don’t know how you do it.”
Emily’s praise had sometimes embarrassed Cam. Now she thought maybe her gifts were not something she’d done, but a wonderful genetic legacy from this amazing man.
Aron had been an idealistic young warlock. Awarded a special citation for being the youngest ever to complete initiation, he had written of his goals: to use his talents, and the family inheritance, to help the world’s people. Cam kept only one souvenir, a note Aron had scrawled, which she found in a dresser drawer: An’ it harm none, do what you will.
Her uncles’ rooms told different stories. Fredo, the youngest, had papered his walls with posters of monsters, Godzilla-sized lizards, giant rattlesnakes. Inside his desk drawer were letters from instructors and private tutors urging him to try harder. One memo struck an eerie chord. “Fredo is easily led. We must encourage him to think for himself.”
Oldest brother Thantos’s room was a self-obsessed braggart’s den. Its theme was mirrors. Cam counted seven of different sizes and shapes on the walls, closet doors, atop his desk, and on the bureau. Even as a child, Thantos was his own biggest fan.
He did admire Aron, though — if you believed imitation the sincerest form of flattery. Cam chuckled at the number of items in his room labeled PROPERTY OF ARON DUBAER — from a bag of crystals to a spell book, even homework. It was easy to see where Aron’s name had been crossed out and replaced by Thantos’s. One instructor wasn’t fooled. Thantos has been copying Aron again, was scrawled in red ink across a theme paper.
Cam could barely wait to share this stuff with Alex.
She was about to head back to her room when a picture caught her eye. She lifted the framed snapshot of three boys — tall, stout Thantos, athletic, smiling Aron, little Fredo with his head down, squinting in the sun. Cam ran a finger over her father’s handsome young face. Returning the photo to its place, she accidentally hit a silver hairbrush that had been next to it. With a discomfiting clatter, the brush fell behind the dresser.
She was on her hands and knees, peering under the furniture, when she saw something odd and out of place. Inching the dresser away from the wall, she discovered a strange hatch, a door about four fee
t high, one that a child might go through. But why was it hidden? She reached to open it —
“Camryn, are you dressed yet?” Miranda called from the hallway.
Cam felt like a thief caught in the act. She quickly pushed the bureau back into place and bolted through the door that linked Thantos’s room to Aron’s.
“You’ve got male,” her mother quipped, knocking and then entering Aron’s room again a moment after Cam got there. “That’s spelled m-a-l-e.”
Shane! Cam’s heart leaped.
Miranda stood back and allowed Cam to dash past her. “Please,” her mother’s soft voice called after her, “be careful.”
Cam promised she would.
But she wasn’t.
CHAPTER FOUR
KISS, INTERRUPTED
Be careful.
No one had to warn Alex. She’d been telling herself just that since Cade had come loping back into her life. Don’t get in so deep that you can’t get out. Leave an emotional escape hatch. Do not — she pictured road signs as she pedaled her bike — yield, let your defenses down. Do not let him get to you. Do not expose your heart. It’s too —
“Earth to Alex —”
— Fragile. Too late. Kaboom, she’d already fallen.
Cade was riding beside her, their wheels, Alex noted, rotating in sync. “If I were a mind reader —” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his black-lashed blue eyes.
Alex gripped the handlebars tightly.
“— I would know why you’ve got that determined look on your face. Why your eyebrows are knit in concentration, your lips pursed. Why we’re biking side by side, yet you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
He’d been talking to her? Hyperhearing girl? “Oh, man,” she moaned, “my bad.”
“Nah,” he contradicted. “There’s nothing bad about you —”
She turned away. Not so he wouldn’t see her blush. To stop the free fall she was in.
T*Witches: Split Decision Page 2
