Before attending his funeral on Coventry, Cam had never seen a dead person. Her terror had dissolved the moment she’d set eyes on the ancient warlock, at peace in his plain pine coffin. His unlined face was smiling — or so it had seemed at the time. Even in death he’d continued to teach her, to show her what was to be feared and what was not.
She left Aron’s room and asked Amaryllis for directions to the cemetery.
“Which one?” the servant had inquired, then hastily amended, “You must mean the DuBaer cemetery.”
But when Cam told her who she wanted to visit, Amaryllis directed her to the southern portion of the island where the Antayus graveyard was located. There, among the simple plaques laid flat in the earth that marked the departed, Cam found the one she’d come for. She knelt beside it and brushed off bits of dirt that had blown onto the tablet. The new grass planted only weeks ago had started to poke though the fresh earth. Soon it would surround the old tracker’s stone.
“Karsh,” she whispered, as if that were the only way he might hear her, “I don’t know who else to talk to. I know you’re … well, not here anymore.” Cam licked a salty tear that had trickled to the corner of her mouth. She sat beside the grave, hugged her knees, and poured her heart out.
“I’m so mixed up. I thought I finally understood who I was and what I had to do, thought I knew who was bad and who was good, and that I would always choose right over wrong. Now it’s all turned inside out.
“You taught me to fear Thantos, who wanted us dead. But he says it’s not true. He wants us to be a family. He says he loves my mother and wants to marry her so that we could be a family again. Karsh, is this what my father would have wanted?”
Cam sat there in solitude for a long time. She felt peaceful after a while. She’d gotten no real answers to her tortured doubts but realized it was important that she figure things out for herself. And knew, too, that she would, in time. She traced the name on the gravestone with her forefinger and voiced one last question.
“What I did to Sersee … it was terrible, I know. But she tried to kill me, more than once. Didn’t she deserve it?”
Cam shifted her weight and something crinkled in her pocket. It was a folded piece of paper that, when she unwrapped it, read: An’ it harm none, do what you will.
Her father, as a schoolboy, had written that. Had Karsh, or his spirit, meant for her to find it just now? Was that his answer? Witches don’t curse people, they don’t make others suffer, they harm none.
She had harmed the girl.
Cam brushed the dirt from her pants. She would find Shane and undo the spell, return Sersee to her own body. It didn’t matter what the diabolical witch had done. Neither Karsh, nor either of her parents, Aron or Miranda DuBaer, would have wanted her to seek revenge.
Cam was about to leave the cemetery, when her eye fell on the grave-marker just a few feet from Karsh’s. Beatrice Hazlitt DuBaer. What was a DuBaer doing here? Weren’t all of them laid to rest in the grander sanctuary on the other side of the island?
“My wife,” someone said unexpectedly.
Cam spun around. “Thantos? What are —?”
“Looking for you,” the burly tracker responded. “My staff told me I might find you here, and I wanted to be sure you hadn’t gotten yourself into any other life-threatening situations.” He eyed her, then chuckled. “I am capable of a joke, you know.”
Cam gestured toward the plaque. “Was she Ileana’s mother?”
He nodded. “She died in childbirth. She rests here because that was her wish. As hard as I tried, I could never make her feel like part of the family. She asked to be buried here, among her own kind.”
“Is that why there are no pictures of her at Crailmore? No mementos …” And no one, she thought, ever spoke of this woman. But for this simple headstone, it was as if Beatrice DuBaer had never existed. Cam thought of Ileana. No wonder —
Thantos put his arm around her. Cam didn’t flinch this time or make any move to pull away. “I heard what you did to the Tremaine girl.” He was speaking of Sersee. “Good for you. A DuBaer does not allow herself to be taken advantage of —”
Cam was about to challenge that, when Thantos stopped and abruptly stood up. “We have company.”
“Where is she, Thantos?” Ileana snapped, strikingly beautiful in her royal-blue cloak.
“How lovely of you to join us.” Thantos looked right through his daughter, as if she didn’t exist. It was Miranda, who stood behind Ileana, that he welcomed. “I was just telling Apolla about —”
Miranda cut him short. “We tried to find Alex. She’s not where you said she’d be. Where is my daughter?” Her tone was suspicious, borderline nervous.
Cam felt a wave of panic. “Alex is missing?”
“No, no!” Thantos assured the women. “Of course she’s not. Did you go to the —”
“We went everywhere you told us to,” Miranda responded. “The Barneses’ home, to that boy’s house, to the apartment of the little Coventry girl —”
“The Coventry girl?” Cam tried to figure out who they meant.
“Her name is Michaelina,” her mother answered. “She’s one of the young witches who tormented you and Alex. She’s now in Marble Bay, where she’s befriended your sister. You didn’t know?”
Marble Bay? How could that be possible if Michaelina was doing “community service” here?
Duh. Sersee had lied about that, too. How new.
“You sent us on a wild-goose chase,” Ileana accused him. “If you’ve harmed her —”
Cam blurted, “No!”
Three pairs of eyes stared at her questioningly. But Cam responded with a question of her own. “If something bad happened to Alex, I’d know it. Wouldn’t I?”
Miranda put her arm around Cam’s shoulders. “I hope so.”
Thantos rolled his eyes. “Oh, the lot of you! Come here. I’ll show you where she is. From the inside pocket of his cape, he withdrew a gold lighter. He tossed a handful of herbs into the flame while reciting the Situator incantation.
There in the firelight, was Alex. She wasn’t alone. Someone, Cam suspected Cade, was cupping her sister’s chin. For a split second, Cam wondered if she should blow out the flame. If this was about to get R-rated, she was sure Alex would not want an audience. But just then, the vision faded.
“I’m going to get her,” Miranda said decisively, turning to leave.
Thantos pulled her back. “Save your strength, Miranda. You just got back. Let me send a servant. It will be faster and not tiring for you.”
Even Cam noticed that Thantos said nothing about Ileana. Did he have any feelings for her at all?
“No, in fact, he doesn’t.” To Cam’s embarrassment, Ileana answered her silent question. “It’s only appropriate that my father demonstrates his apathy for me as he stands at my mother’s grave,” Ileana continued. “He believed what Leila DuBaer told him — that Beatrice Hazlitt wasn’t good enough for him. Not even in death would he have his wife — my mother — among the DuBaers.”
Cam was puzzled. “But…” She turned to Thantos. “You said Beatrice asked to be buried here.”
The statement set Ileana off; she went ballistic. Red-faced with rage, she turned on Thantos. “Is that what you told her?”
Miranda jumped in. “Calm down, wait… surely Thantos didn’t —”
But Ileana would not be comforted. Her gale-force diatribe had only just begun. It was aimed at Cam. “Ask him, your dear uncle Thantos, to tell you the real reason he cast her out. Ask him to tell you about my mother’s family, who ‘her kind’ were. Ask him to tell you why he married someone against his mother’s wishes — and why he deserted me, his own flesh and blood. And then, Apolla, ask him how he dared usurp what isn’t his. What is yours. And your sister’s! And mine!”
Ileana now spun toward her father, glaring at him, daring him to respond. But he wasn’t looking at her.
Cam was floored. It wasn’t just the bile Ileana had spewed �
�� she could barely follow that. It was the way Thantos had watched Miranda throughout his daughter’s attack. He was studying her face, trying to gauge her reactions, her feelings.
Cam’s mother was upset, but peacemaker was her default mode and she fell into it. She reached for Ileana, but the infuriated witch wasn’t having it. To Thantos, Miranda said quietly, “You might have considered options other than casting the child out completely. No matter how much pain and sadness you were in.”
Thantos drew himself up to his full, intimidating height. “I did what I thought safest and best. I was not in my right mind. I was crazy with grief over the death of my wife. It was my idea, after all, to place Ileana in the care of the good and wise Karsh.”
It was Miranda’s turn to gape. “Rubbish! That was Aron’s idea, not yours.”
Ileana gave a bitter laugh. “How surprising. You coopted an idea of Aron’s — as you have all your life. You have always coveted everything he had — including his wife. And now his children.”
Cam thought she was going to gag. She remembered the notes from Thantos’s earliest teachers. He’s copying Aron again. So … did Thantos not love Miranda? Had he been lying about that and about loving Cam?
The hulking tracker silenced her thoughts with a fierce look. She blinked but did not turn away. “Why was it best to place Ileana with Karsh?” she asked. “Why didn’t you raise your own daughter?”
“He’ll never tell you the truth,” Ileana sneered. “He’ll say he was not fit to be a father. But you can read for yourself. Lord Karsh wrote it down. All of it.” Ileana untied her cape and took from a pouch beneath it an old leather-bound book. Cam could see that it was filled with parchment sheets. Where had she seen the volume before? Where had she seen the pages?
“No!” It was Miranda. “Not yet, Ileana. We decided. We would wait for Artemis.”
So that was it. That was the big deal? She was not going to see Lord Karsh’s writings without Alex. Cam kept her voice steady. But she knew what effect her words would have. “What’s in there, Mother?”
Miranda paled. It was the first time Apolla had called her Mother. Whatever she’d meant to say fell away. The ethereally beautiful witch just folded, choked up. She could not answer her daughter.
But Ileana could. She held up the journal. “Your family history, that’s what’s in here. Your legacy, yours and Alex’s. Your destiny.”
“Or,” Thantos bellowed so loudly, they all jumped. “Is it in here?”
They whirled as one, to see, in his large hard hands, an identical book.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BETRAYAL BY FIRE
Alex was waiting for Ileana. Her guardian had put her on standby for a fast trip to Coventry. But she hadn’t said exactly when liftoff would be. So when the phone rang, Alex jumped on it.
But it was Michaelina — trying to talk Alex into coming to work. Word of the “psychic waitresses” show at PITS had spread. Customers were requesting her. “So get in here. This is the land of tips aplenty.”
“Enjoy,” Alex responded. “I’ve got to go to —” She stopped. Trust Mike? Even Cade had advised against it. And he didn’t know half the half-pint’s tricks.
“But it’s not time yet,” Michaelina mused aloud. But it was her thoughts Alex heard, not her words. And they were panicked: She can’t have been called to the woods yet. Not without me being told.
Did she mean Salem Woods, Alex wondered. Was the spirit of Sara supposed to get in touch with Michaelina before telling Alex it was time to return to Montana?
“Please, please,” Michaelina begged. “You can’t leave me here alone. The place is mobbed. It’s not fair. You’re the one who thought up working for Pie in the Sky. Just come by for a minute. Please. It’s sooo important. I mean, I’ve got something for you. Something you need and will really, really like. You don’t even have to come inside. I’ll meet you out back.”
“I can’t stay,” Alex warned the imp, intrigued despite her distrust.
“Outside,” Mr. Tagliere told her twenty minutes later when she arrived at the pizza place. Motioning to the back door, he said, “She’s on break. Been working hard today, double the load without you.”
The rear door of PITS opened onto a set of metal stairs that led to the delivery alleyway. The day had turned dreary. The morning’s light clouds had become thicker, threatening rain. Mike was sitting on the top step, counting a wad of bills.
Alex was impressed — and wary. “You made that much in only a few hours? What’d you do, turn the tables over every fifteen minutes?”
Mike grinned. “No need to rush our devoted patrons through their lunches. I used another kind of magick to build the Michaelina — and Alex — fund. Told ya I had something you needed.”
Alex was afraid to ask. Who had Mike cheated, the customers or Mr. Tagliere?
“No one,” she protested. “No one all that much, anyway.” She claimed she’d written the checks accurately. But by the time they went into the cash register, they’d been … um … slightly altered. Less money due the restaurant, more money in Mike’s pockets. A bill for twenty-four dollars with a five-dollar tip, she explained, had magickly changed to fourteen dollars for the till and ten for Mike … and, of course, for Alex, too, she added again. “I told you I had something you needed.”
Alex was outraged. “How could you do that? I don’t know about Coventry, but here on the mainland, that’s stealing. It’s a crime — punishable by law.”
Michaelina tried to trump Alex’s upset with self-righteousness. “I brought more customers in. They came to see me — and you. It’s a game; it’s entertaining. It’s only fair that I get more of the proceeds.”
“That’s twisted. Besides, I may not be an initiated witch yet, but I know we’re not supposed to use our powers to cheat people!”
Michaelina shrugged. “Here’s a tip for you, free of charge. Sometimes our powers are best served when we use them to serve ourselves.”
Alex crossed her arms. “We’re going back in there and you’re giving Mr. Tag every last dime you owe him.” She got up and was reaching for Michaelina’s hand when a dizzy spell hobbled her. She gripped the handrail hard, to keep from fainting.
Arise, Artemis. The time is now. You are needed!
The voice was definitely not Ileana’s. It sounded more like Sara’s spirit had, but impatient and commanding.
Where am I needed? Who are you?
Michaelina stood next to Alex, clutching the railing just as hard, trembling. She, too, had heard the demand.
You don’t recognize me? I’m Sara, your mother. I told you the time to leave would come quickly. Hurry now, get to the woods. The transporting spell is ready to be cast. It will take you … to where you are needed.
Alex knew that Mike would hear her telepathic response, but it couldn’t be helped. I can’t go yet! I have to go to Coventry Island. Cam — Apolla — my twin sister is there, and Ileana is coming for me. I’m not ready —
I will say when you are ready! the voice roared. You have no choice, Artemis. You must go to the woods. I await you there.
Quickly, Alex turned away from Michaelina and desperately willed her thoughts to be scrambled, secret, and undecipherable.
Because the voice was not Sara’s.
If Alex had told Sara that someone needed her help, her mother would not just let her go, but urge her to. She would never have asked Alex to turn her back on the person, never have spoken to her so sternly. Whoever had called her, whatever she’d seen in Salem Woods, could not have been Sara Fielding or her ghost.
Alex was devastated. Her anger dampened by disappointment and heartbreak.
But who was this brash imposter? Only one way to find out.
She grabbed Michaelina’s wrist and told the awestruck pixie, “We’re going to Salem. This time, you’ll be paying the cab fare. You can afford it.”
No matter what Alex said to her, Michaelina refused to stray from the same script she’d been reciting for da
ys. She didn’t know anything about Shane and Cam. She really was here looking for a second chance. She’d thought Alex would help her, be her friend. She had no idea why Alex had turned on her this way.
Mike’s words were lies, but the fear in her emerald eyes was very, very real. Whatever was freaking her was her secret. She was much more skillful than Alex in scrambling her thoughts — and now whatever was scaring her was tucked safely away, out of Alex’s reach.
It was daylight. The woods shouldn’t have been as foreboding as they had been in the dead of night. Maybe it was the rain, then. The skies had opened, and inside the forest, it was dark, dreary, and muddy. The thick canopy of leaves overhead kept Alex and Mike from getting completely soaked. It was easy to find the exact spot they’d been to the day before: The circle was still there. The rain had not washed away the line Mike had cut into the earth; it remained defiantly deep and defined. Alex squinted at the thicket of trees where “Sara” had appeared hours ago. Was someone hidden in there now? She headed over but hadn’t gotten very far when a voice cried out: “Get back! You must remain inside the circle.”
Angrily, Alex retorted, “I refuse to stay inside the circle.”
“Fine!” the ghostly voice snapped. And then a figure appeared from behind the trees. A large, round creature draped in what could have been a billowing, velvet tent. “The choice is yours, Artemis: You can die in these woods or obey my command and return to the circle.”
Alex was too astonished to be angry. “Who are you? What are you? What do you want?”
The “spirit” tossed back the hood of her cloak. Alex gaped at the ebony curls — familiar, yet so out of place on the swollen thing before her.
“Sersee?” she whispered.
“You will obey me, Artemis DuBaer!” A sudden shock of flames erupted from the transformed witch’s puffy hands. Alex staggered backward. Feeling seared and raw, she landed inside the circle, tumbling and falling. Sersee’s heat wave had felled Michaelina, too. The tiny girl came to rest beside Alex, clearly not of her own free will.
Her face bright red and beginning to sweat, Mike gingerly picked herself up and glared at her sister Fury. “What are you doing in that flesh bag? She knows who you are. You can show yourself now.” Sersee didn’t answer, then Mike suddenly gasped, “Oh, no!” Then tried to hide her grin. “She didn’t! You let Apolla DuBaer do this to you?”
T*Witches: Split Decision Page 11
