“We’ll leave a note for Mrs. Bass,” Alex answered without hesitation. “She’ll warn the sheriff and the school —”
But Cam had moved on to another worry. “What if Evan decides to go alone? What if he doesn’t come and get us tonight?”
They could hear the pickup warming up in the driveway. “We’ll go with him now,” Alex said. She threw open a window and hollered for Evan to hang on a minute.
“Thanks for waiting,” Cam said, climbing into the truck.
“Peuw!” Alex made a face. “Clean your wheels much? Hey, where’s Luce?”
Cam couldn’t control herself. “Ugh, something stinks,” she blurted, then tried to be subtle about holding her nose.
“Evan?” Alex said uncertainly.
Their driver turned toward them.
“Fredo!” they both screamed at the skinny man with the wispy whiskers, wearing Evan’s knit cap and black sweatshirt.
“Uncle Fredo to you,” he smirked.
“So it was you. I knew it!” Cam shouted.
Alex tried to open her door, but it was locked. “Let us out!” she cried, rattling the handle.
“No way are we going anywhere with you!” Cam railed, though she was feeling faint.
“Where’s Evan?” Cam demanded, shaking but so angry she stopped pinching her nostrils — and immediately regretted it.
“My dear nieces,” Fredo began in his high-pitched whine.
Alex pulled off her steel-toed boot and aimed it at the windshield.
“This is your friend’s property. Think twice, Artemis!” He jerked his thumb toward the back of the truck. Evan and Lucinda were laid out on the flatbed, with a waterproof tarp pulled up to their chins.
“Did you kill them?” Alex asked, panicked. “Like you killed Ike?”
“Certainly not! Who’s Ike? Oh, you mean your daddy?” Fredo said mockingly.
“He wasn’t our father,” Cam shouted. “And you know that! He’s just this freak Sara married before she adopted my sister.”
“Forgive me.” Fredo smiled, his thin mustache stretching like a worm across his upper lip. “You girls have had so many fathers, I get confused. Well, I didn’t exactly kill the Ikey one. No, that rag-wrapped package was a gift from the master.”
“A gift? Yeech!” Alex was disgusted. “What master are you talking about?”
“My gifted brother, Thantos.” Fredo looked delighted with his pun. “He wished only to save you the inconvenience of having Ike interfere with the guardianship hearing. He knows how fond both of you are of David Barnes, yet another adoring daddy —”
“So Thantos murdered Ike?!” Cam gasped.
“Did I say that?” Fredo put a finger to his lips. “I don’t believe I mentioned murder, did I? I’m not authorized to discuss that. Just to say that he’d given you a present. Gotten Ikey out of the way. For you. A gift. You really ought to get to know him. He’s very generous.”
“With corpses!” Close to gagging, Alex tried not to inhale while putting on her boot. It was impossible. “So what are you supposed to do now, turn into a giant lizard and whisk us off to Thantos-ville?”
He can’t! Cam suddenly remembered.
Forbidden. Alex recalled Ileana’s message. Under threat of severe pain and punishment.
“Would that I could,” Fredo said aloud at the same time. “It’s not permitted. No more. Farewell, scales and claws, fiery breath and fearsome growl,” he recited wistfully. “No, I’ve got to bring you to him through my own resources — which my brother is always reminding me are mighty slim.”
Suddenly, Fredo seemed less terrifying. He was too … small, thin, putrid-smelling, Alex thought. If they could wake Evan and Lucinda, the four of them could easily overwhelm him.
We could, Cam agreed. But do we really want to? Or should we use him to help us help Evan?
What did Ileana say? Alex asked.
“The nice thing about having heartless, evil-tempered uncles is that if you want somebody out of the way, you always have help,” Cam recited.
“I would be delighted!” Fredo screeched unexpectedly. “Delighted to help you — in exchange, of course, for your cooperation!”
“No way!” Alex declared. A nanosecond later, realizing that their uncle had invaded their thoughts, she began to tremble.
Cam quickly grabbed her hand, steadying her — and said, with sugar-sweet innocence and sympathy, “A brother who’s always dissing you? Gee, Uncle Fredo, what kind of brother is that?”
“It’s … unfair,” Alex chimed in, eyes wide and watering from his stench. “If you and Lord Thantos are brothers, why should he get to tell you what to do?”
“He’s the smart one. Or so he thinks,” their rank uncle brooded. “He said if I shape-shifted into a lizard again, I’d be finished. Of course, he didn’t say I couldn’t turn someone else into a raging reptile.” Fredo brightened abruptly. “Especially to freak and frighten one who richly deserves it.”
Her stepfather’s arm — the green boils and clawlike hand. Alex felt weak. “You tried to turn Ike into a lizard,” she accused.
“I am but my brother’s servant.” Fredo giggled nervously. “I couldn’t have guessed that his prey was such a weak-hearted nervous Nellie. Truly, I’d rather have morphed myself.”
“But Thantos knew. He knew Ike could be scared to death,” Cam whispered, horrified. “He killed him.”
“He willed it.” Fredo bowed his head respectfully.
Alex shuddered, thinking of Sara’s hapless husband. How Ike must have been tortured and taunted. How terrified he must have been. Mean and selfish as Ike was, she wouldn’t have wished such an awful end on anyone. But now she fixed a tender smile on her face and assured her unctuous uncle, “You’ll morph again. Who wouldn’t want to become big, powerful, pimply, and awesome? I’ve got an idea!”
“Of course,” Cam echoed, as though the same thought had just occurred to her. “Uncle Fredo, Lord Thantos wants you to bring us to him. He’d be so grateful if you did —”
“Grateful? He’d totally bug,” Alex exclaimed. “Ha! That would show him how wrong he was about you.”
“So here’s the deal,” Cam said. “You help us rescue our friend Evan —”
“And we’ll make sure that Thantos won’t harm you,” Alex interrupted, before Cam promised more than they’d deliver. “Not one little bit.”
“So if I help you, you’ll come back with me?” Fredo couldn’t hide his excitement.
“Hmmm,” Cam mused, “now what could Uncle Fredo possibly do that would frighten those snakes and stooges?”
Realizing that their uncle could tune into their thoughts, Alex tried hard not to concentrate on the answer — which was that they could convince Fredo to morph again, killing two lizards with one stone. In his mean green beast mode, their uncle could scare DJ and the Applebees and infuriate Thantos at the same time.
“Okay,” she announced, surprised at how confident she sounded when inside she was jelly — over Ike’s death, the hideous trip to the morgue, knowing that Thantos had killed again. “Wake up Lucinda and Evan, make sure they get home okay, and we’ll meet you tonight at this frontier park called Big Sky.”
“Really?” Fredo said warily. “You would come with me?” Fredo wriggled out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the back end of the truck to revive Evan and Lucinda. “You’d tell my brother that you came because I demanded it? That would be sweet. I can just picture the look on Thantos’s face.”
“I can picture the one on Ileana’s,” Alex whispered.
“We’re not going to summon her again, are we?” Cam asked nervously. “She said she was busy —”
“Wake up and smell Uncle Fredo,” Alex cut her off. “After we get him to disobey his cranky bro by going reptile again, who’s going to take him home to Coventry Island? Not me. We need all the help we can get and — when it comes to capturing Fredo — so does Ileana.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A PROMISE KEPT
“But I just left them!” the beautiful gray-eyed witch cried when Lord Karsh told her she’d been sent for again by the twins.
In the snow-drenched boots she hadn’t had time to take off, Ileana squished back and forth on the stone floor of his cottage, angrily arguing a case she knew she’d already lost.
“I was on my way to visit Brice Stanley on the set of his new movie. I only stopped by to see how you were doing.”
Lord Karsh’s friend, the exalted elder Lady Rhianna, was watching her through twinkling dark eyes. Plump, brown, and dimpled, she had always reminded Ileana of a potato. It was hard to believe that the dimpled dumpling was head of Coventry Island’s powerful Unity Council.
In her absence, Rhianna had been caring for the bedridden tracker — who, Ileana noted, seemed disgustingly happy to be doted on. Now, Rhianna said, “Why don’t I give you two some privacy.”
Yes, why don’t you?! Ileana seethed silently, knowing that Rhianna would have no trouble reading her mind.
Ileana followed Rhianna to the door, slammed it shut behind her, then turned at once to Karsh. “Clearly you’re much improved,” she huffed. “In fact, after two sips of Lady Potato’s chicken soup you should be well enough to answer the twins’ SOS yourself!”
“It’s not my job, Ileana,” Karsh said gently. “You are their guardian. You must help them.”
“And you are my guardian and must help me!” Ileana sat at the hearth and pulled off her boots. “I’ve put off my visit to Brice for months!” she wailed, massaging her frigid toes.
Karsh smiled affectionately at the furious, forlorn young witch. “Now as always, Ileana, your first duty is to the twins. But, of course, if I can help —”
“Fine. I’ll go!” Ileana pouted. “But only under one condition — that you answer a question for me finally.”
“Very well,” Karsh agreed.
“I am …” Strangely uneasy, Ileana glanced down, away from her guardian’s expectant face. “I am … related to them, to the twins? Aren’t I? The color of our eyes … well, it’s unusual, isn’t it? It’s the same color Lord Aron’s eyes were. Was he my father?”
Karsh sighed. “You are of his family,” he answered after a pause in which Ileana was certain he could hear her loudly beating heart. “But, no, Aron was not your father — ”
“But then why — ”
“I’ve kept my part of the bargain,” Karsh insisted, cutting short her question. “Now you must keep yours. Tell the girls to meet you …” He hesitated thoughtfully, then seemed to come to an important decision.
Ileana waited anxiously, sure that Karsh had changed his mind, that he’d decided to tell her more about her family. Her stomach flipped in disappointment when all the old warlock said was: “A few miles outside of Crow Creek, there is a delightful glen where warm water flows. Alexandra knows the place and so, I trust, does Camryn by now. It’s the place where I gave Sara the infant Artemis, fifteen years ago. That is where they should meet you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ANCESTRAL VOICES
“I don’t suppose our guardian goddess mentioned how we’re supposed to get there,” Alex grumbled, buttoning her jacket and reaching for the woolen scarf hanging on the coatrack in Mrs. Bass’s hallway.
“Sara’s stream in fifteen minutes.” Cam shut her laptop. “That’s all she wrote. Nothing about transportation.”
As her sister bundled into her hot-pink ski parka, Alex stared gloomily out the window. There was no way they could get to the stream that fast.
It was almost four o’clock. They were supposed to meet Evan at Big Sky at five-thirty — Evan and Uncle Stinko. The winter sun had already set. Only a full moon shining on sparkling snow lit the world outside.
“Transportation, transportation,” Alex mused.
“Did you write the note to Mrs. Bass?” her sister asked.
“Mm,” Alex said, distracted.
“The note about what’s going to happen tomorrow?” Cam persisted.
“Of course.” Alex turned suddenly from the window. “Cam, the spell book, didn’t it have —?”
“The Transporter.” Cam understood at once.
They scrambled to find the velvet purse and the little book Ileana had left for them. Cam turned quickly to the page. “Here it is: the Transporter!”
In addition to reciting the incantation, what they needed, the book said, was fire for enthusiasm, passion, and desire —”
“We can light candles,” Cam decided, racing for the four candleholders on the dining room table. “And mugwort,” she read, returning, “the traveler’s herb.”
“Mugwort?” Alex ran into the kitchen and checked the spice shelf. No mugwort. The closest thing to it was marjoram. It would have to do. “Okay, what else?” she asked, sprinting back to Cam with the herb.
“A magick circle. We’re supposed to sit inside it, facing east. What are you doing?” Cam asked, aghast, as her sister opened the spice jar and sprinkled a sloppy circle of marjoram flakes onto the clean floor.
Pulling the knit cap from her jacket pocket, Alex drew it over her spiky platinum hair, then stepped into the circle and sat down. “East? That would be —” Carefully, she adjusted her direction. “Okay, what else?”
“Just the incantation. I’ll read it over once, all right?” Cam said. “Then we’ll do the whole thing together.”
“We haven’t got a lot of time,” Alex decided. “Light the candles.”
Cam did, placing them on the floor near her sister and, as Alex set the candles at the four sides of the circle, Cam read the spell — which ended in: “Good magick like air and water flow, transport me body and spirit now.”
A sudden breeze tickled Cam’s neck and set the candle flames flickering. She looked around for the open window. When she turned back, Alex was gone!
“Cam?” In her arctic gear, Alex stood in the warm fog beside the stream. Blinded by beads of sweat flowing like a waterfall from under her woolen hat, she called out again, “Cam? Where are you?”
A minute later — auburn hair standing on end like electrified dandelion froth, eyes, ears, and nose wind-burned and raw — her sister landed. “It worked!” Cam exclaimed. “Is she here yet?”
With the roar of a tornado, the fog before them swirled and twisted. “Who are you? Who dares disturb my peace?” a voice boomed from the spiraling mist.
The voice was not Ileana’s. It was deeper, more commanding, yet breathless, wheezing with age.
The twins peered at the churning vapor and together saw the hazy form of a woman take shape. Though she was holding a cane, her back was ramrod straight. Eyes closed, she stood tall and resolute and utterly without gentleness, like a blind warrior, wounded but not bowed in battle.
“Um, sorry,” Alex croaked, tearing off her hat, trying to blink away the salty, stinging perspiration. “I’m Alex, er, Alexandra, and this is my sister, Camryn —”
“And we didn’t mean to disturb anyone,” Cam said, taking Alex’s hand. “Uh, do you think you could tell us —”
“Like who you are?” Alex asked.
“I am Leila,” the ancient spirit replied. “Do you not know me?”
Alex gulped. “Well, um, Leila, I can’t see you all that clearly. Cam’s the one with the —”
“Impudent fledgling,” the old woman hissed. And at that, her eyes flew open. “Brazen as my boys!”
Cam gasped. Leila was not blind. Her eyes were wide and piercing and gray — metallic gray, outlined in black. Her eyes were identical to Cam’s and Alex’s and Ileana’s. Staring at the imperious shape in the mist, Cam began to make out its other features: iron-gray hair, a strong, still-beautiful face etched with deep creases of age. And under brooding, dark eyebrows, those stunning eyes, chilling and familiar.
“Your boys?” Alex asked.
“Aron was my favorite,” the woman warrior said, “my bright angel.”
“Aron? You knew him?” Cam’s eyes burned again, from the strain of squinting
through the fog, she guessed. Or was she crying?
“He was my son!” the voice boomed again, then broke pronouncing the name. “Aron … I loved him best. Thantos, my eldest, was too much like me — ambitious, unyielding, and vengeful. Fredo — ah, where did he come from, my poor Fredo? My youngest and last child. Perhaps I was too old. He was never right, never as bright as the others.”
Alex wondered if Cam was seeing this, hearing every word of it, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the apparition.
“Where are my grandchildren?” the spirit cried out. “Where are Aron’s girls? Fredo had two sons, dullards and demons like himself —”
“But we’re Aron’s daughters,” Alex said, glad to feel Cam’s hand squeezing her own reassuringly.
“The women of our family.” Ignoring or not hearing them, Leila continued. “They are the true heirs of the noble DuBaer dynasty. My granddaughters, beautiful and wise beyond their years — Artemis. Apolla. Proud Ileana …”
Cam glanced at Alex. Ileana?! Alex nodded, stunned. That’s what she said.
“And Miranda, my beloved daughter-in-law, once the most brilliant and powerful of them all…”
“Miranda? She’s our mother!” Cam cried out.
“Did you know her?” Alex asked. “Is she …”
“Alive?” Cam exclaimed hopefully.
The ancient woman seemed to see them for the first time. Her strong features softened. Her gray eyes lost their metallic glint. “Apolla, Artemis,” she said, acknowledging them at last, “my dear ones.” She sighed then, exhaling an apple-crisp scent of autumn leaves and the fragrant loam of earth.
“What happened to our mother? Why did she leave us?” Alex asked, even as Leila’s warm breath caressed her, ruffling her spiky hair, making her eyelids irresistibly heavy.
“Does Ileana know where she is?” Cam, too, fell under the spell of the ghost warrior’s soothing sigh.
T*Witches: Dead Wrong Page 8
