“I’ll get the organ lady to play something lively while we take five,’” said Fluffy’s dad. He strode off.
“We could grab a garbage bag and chuck ’em, Fluff, if you want,” said Justin, who had come back to see what the commotion was all about.
“Yes,” Luna agreed, stepping forward. “The church looks nice enough without flowers.”
Fluffy raised a hand. “Please, gals. Don’t come near me in those dresses,” she implored. Her skin was already beginning to swell. “Oh, no!” she wailed, touching her hands to her face. “Excuse me. I think I better take a minute to cool off.”
She picked up her skirt, stumbled outside, and plopped down on the church steps, her head in her hands.
“Justin, you and I are going to find some trash bags and get rid of these flowers,” said their father briskly. To the girls, he pointed his finger and said, “You two stay with Fluff.”
As soon as the girls were left alone, Luna turned worried eyes on Claire. “Oh, Clairsie, there’s nothing funny about this.”
Claire looked at Luna and Luna looked at Claire. Neither of them liked what they saw; a frowning girl in a bumblebee dress up to her wrists in fat pink warts.
“I was thinking,” Luna began softly. “You know how sometimes you try to do the right thing, but instead it gets scrambled up by accident into something wrong? Like Justin’s love powder. That was an honest mistake.”
“Or, sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t get you any credit. Like making old Ms. Fleegerman her new letters,” Claire reflected. “But we did it anyhow. And then there’s doing something right that make you feel worse, like your rose for Angelica.”
“But sometimes, the right thing gives back a thousand times, like with Grampy,” Luna said. “We lent an umbrella, and we got back a grandfather!”
“And sometimes,” Claire said slowly, “sometimes doing something right is more like making a good investment in the future. I mean, if Fluffy steals Dad to Texas, we can’t do anything to stop her.”
“Right,” agreed Luna reluctantly.
“Because no matter if we’re in Philadelphia or Houston, Fluffy’s part of our family now It’s her Destiny, whether we like it or not.”
“Right,” agreed Luna.
They were silent for a moment. It was the closest the twins had ever come to a moment of ESP. Then they knew exactly what to do.
They linked pinkies and walked outside.
Fluffy was still slumped on the steps, her head in her hands.
“Hey Fluff.” As Claire spoke up, she placed her hand dramatically on her heart. “Please don’t be sad. We can fix this.”
Fluffy turned. Her face was teary and puffy. “Gals, step back. I mean it. My complexion can’t handle those darn bee dresses.”
“Give us fifteen minutes, okay, Fluffy?” asked Luna. “We promise we can undo every thing.”
Fluffy dropped her head back into her hands. “We should have eloped to Las Vegas,” she muttered.
It was no use talking to her. The twins dashed back into the church and pulled their mother from the pew.
“Mom, maybe you could ask Grampy to sing a few songs from his nightclub act to distract the congregation? There’s going to be a small delay,” Luna explained.
“Oh, dear,” said their mother. “Fluffy’s got last-minute cold feet?”
“Something like that,” said Claire.
They ran out of the church and down the block. Tower Hill Middle School was always open on the weekends, for sports and band practice. They dashed backstage and tore off their bumblebee costumes. Then they put on their Princess and the Pea ladies-in-waiting costumes. Luna buttoned up Claire and Claire buttoned up Luna.
“Much better,” Luna said.
On the way out the door, they passed by 5A to pick up the decorations. They did not expect Ms. Fleegerman to be at her desk.
“What are you girls doing here?” she asked.
“We’re going to a wedding and we had to change into our bridesmaid dresses. What are you doing here?”
“I’m correcting papers,” said Ms. Fleegerman.
She tried to look strict, but only managed to look lonely.
“Actually we were looking for you, Ms. Fleegerman. We wondered if we could borrow some of these classroom decorations,” said Claire. “Our dad is getting married in ten minutes.”
“Well, I never planned on lending these out,” said Ms. Fleegerman.
“It’s sort of an emergency,” explained Luna. “All the wedding flowers died. Something to do with the air-conditioning.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.” Ms. Fleegerman looked around her room. “I always did think it was too bad that nobody except fifth graders could see these decorations.” Her brow furrowed. “I’m not really dressed for a wedding, but … all right. I’ll bring them over.”
“Thanks, Ms. Fleegerman!” they chorused. Quickly, they bundled up the basket of proteas and other decorations into boxes. Then, with minutes to spare, they dashed back to the church.
Inside, it did not look very wedding-ish. Accompanied by the organ, Grampy was singing “Old Black Magic” while Justin walked up and down the aisle tossing the dying flowers into a big green trash bag. People were whispering and looking confused.
“Sugar, is there still going to be a wedding?” asked one of Fluffy’s sisters.
“Absolutely,” said Claire.
Carefully, the girls and Ms. Fleegerman strung the leis like garlands along the pews.
The congregation ooohed when Ms. Fleegerman placed her potted proteas on the altar. Fluffy, who had crept back inside the church, watched in wonder.
“Much better,” said Claire, surveying the church. She gave her dad a thumbs-up and nodded to the organ player.
Everyone took their places.
The wedding march started.
The girls walked tall.
And Fluffy looked radiant.
It wasn’t until Fluffy and their father were standing at the altar and the minister asked for the rings that the girls remembered.
The vow-forget spell!
“I don’t know how to undo it,” Claire whispered through gritted teeth.
“Try thinking of love or something,” Luna whispered back.
Claire thought of all the things she loved-loved-loved. Gymnastics and Hawaii and the word hugger-mugger.
Luna thought of all the things she loved-loved-loved. Painting and beautiful voices and Adam Chow, maybe.
They held their breath as the minister asked Edith Hortense Demarkle if she took Louis Bundkin to be her husband.
There was silence. A small silence that swelled to deafening pitch.
I do—I do—I do! thought Luna
I do—I do—I do! thought Claire.
“I do!” said Fluffy finally, in a happy jolt of remembering.
“I do!” said their father, even though it wasn’t his turn, yet.
And that’s when the girls learned something very important; that the power of love is far greater than the power of spells.
The groom kissed the bride, and everyone broke into cheers.
At The Aubergine, there was music and dancing. Their mother danced with Steve and Justin. Justin danced with the girls and Grandy. Grandy danced with Grampy, who also danced with their mother, Claire and Luna, all of Fluffy’s sisters, and even Ms. Fleegerman. And Ms. Fleegerman taught everyone how to do the hula.
“Gals, I don’t know how you did it, but thanks for helping to make this the best day of my life!” Fluffy squeezed each twin tight.
“Anytime, Fluff,” said Luna.
“Yep, you just tell us where and when, and we’ll show up,” added Claire with a grin.
Steve had whipped up a delicious banquet.
“This is the best veggie dip I ever had,” said Claire. “I love it!”
“That’s my special guacamole,” Steve said. “The trick is to use fresh avocados.”
Avocados! Quickly, Claire gulped a large sip of water.
“This was a very nice wedding dinner,” complimented Grandy as she passed by the table where the twins were sitting. “I’m especially looking forward to the cake.”
“It might not taste very good,” said Claire sorrowfully, glancing across the room to where the spell-salted cake sat on its own table strewn with rose petals. “We hope everyone is in too good a mood to care.”
Grandy smirked. She crooked her pinkie toward the cake and chanted:
Your warts tell stories of defeat
That twinnies have been less than sweet.
A salty cake will taste all wrong
Come back, sweet cake, and warts, so long!
“How did you know?” asked Claire, watching with relief as her warts shrank up and disappeared.
“A grandmother knows these things,” Grandy said. “But I am proud of you girls. Today, you did something good, smart, and tricky. Plus, you did it with wits, not witchcraft. Most importantly, you used love to undo a Destiny Change spell. And so …” Now Grandy was holding a wicker basket that seemed to have materialised out of nowhere. The twins hardly dared to look inside.
Curled up in the basket were the two most adorable striped kittens the girls had ever seen. One was gray with black markings and one was black with gray markings. Around each of their necks was the prized silver star.
“And I have just the right names for them. Something to honor this special day” Luna leaned close and whispered in her sister’s ear.
At first, Claire frowned. She loved the sound of beautiful words, and those names were not even pretty.
Then she thought about it a moment longer. Right now, sure, these kittens were adorable, but they would grow up to be working cats. Witch cats like Wilbur, who also had a plain (but serviceable) name.
No, adorable names would not suit these witch cats at all.
“Edith and Hortense,” she said, staring into the basket. “I guess I could get used to those names. And these kittens are very fluffy.”
Hortense stared up knowingly. Her humanspeak was already quite good.
And Edith closed one eye and yawned.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Witch Twins Series
1
Who Needs Zest?
“IT’S HOT ENOUGH TO slap your grandmother!” exclaimed Claire Bundkin to her identical twin sister, Luna. They were sitting together on the outdoor platform of the Philadelphia train station, waiting for the northbound local.
Luna frowned. “Claire, that’s not a very nice expression,” she said. “Especially since we’re about to see our very own grandmother in less than an hour.” She waved her folded-paper fan in front of her warm face and sighed.
“It’s hot enough to kick a nun,” Claire responded. “Hot enough to punch the post-man!”
Luna’s frowned deepened. She did not like thinking about kicked nuns and punched postpeople, but it was too hot to argue. Besides, she felt uncomfortable enough from the dose of greasy sunscreen that their mother had rubbed into every exposed inch of her skin earlier that morning. “You’ll thank me later. Most permanent sun damage occurs before age twenty,” Jill Bundkin had warned. (Their mother, who was a doctor, knew a lot of grim medical statistics.)
To Luna, who was ten, twenty seemed too old to bother thinking about. Twenty was years past the most important things, like becoming a teenager or getting her ears pierced. And it was way, way past the next five weeks that she would be spending at Camp Bliss.
There was no turning back now. In less than twenty-four hours, their grandmother would be driving the twins all the way down to Bluefly, Virginia, to spend one whole month plus one week at camp. Their mother was on call at the hospital this weekend; otherwise she would have taken them. Their father, a newspaper reporter, was in California on special assignment.
Neither twin had ever been to camp. But both girls had spent hours studying the Camp Bliss pamphlet trying to get the idea of it. They imagined themselves galloping over the “rolling green fields,” playing tennis on the “professional, all-clay courts,” stitching bead belts during “freestyle crafts time,” and, most important, making friends with other campers, “girls ranging from ages eight to fourteen.”
When it had been months away, Camp Bliss had seemed like fun to Luna. Now she was dreading it. Why had she ever thought camp would be a good idea? First, she did not like to venture off to new, strange places. Second, she was not very talented at sports, especially sports that involved balls, rackets, and nets. Last and worst, she was not that good at making new friends. She could never come up with the funny joke or the right questions that broke the ice.
In fact, she figured that except for maybe some talent at belt-beading, she would be all-around blah at Camp Bliss.
The train pulled into the station.
“Air-conditioning!” yelled Claire with relief as she leaped through the door and shinnied into her seat, feet up with her back against the window. She pointed. “Go across, not next.”
“Duh-uh.” Luna huffed as she took her seat across the aisle. It was too hot to sit next to her sister, or anyone else. She put her overnight bag in the empty seat, so that nobody else would make the mistake of sitting next, either.
“Whew!” Claire lolled her tongue and panted like a dog. “I’m glad our trunks were sent ahead to Virginia. I would pass out if I had to pick up anything heavier than a glass of iced tea.”
“Think of poor Justin,” Luna reminded her. Their older brother, Justin, had been hired for his very first summer job working as a grocery delivery boy. He told them he needed to gain some muscles if he wanted to try out for eighth-grade football next year. So far, Justin had lost two pounds. He blamed it on too much sweating.
“I’ll get it back in million-dollar biceps,” he told his sisters. “When you come home from your girlie-girl camp next month, you won’t even recognize this guy. And it’ll cost each of you five bucks if you want me to carry up your junk from the car.”
Five weeks was such a huge amount of time to be away, Luna thought. Justin probably would be unrecognizable when they returned. The longest she and Claire had ever been away from home had been last summer, when they had gone fishing with their father on Orange Clam Island for two weeks. Even then, they’d had at least one parent, in case of emergency.
Camp Bliss had no parents. Just kids and counselors.
“I hope Mom won’t be too lonely without us,” Luna said quietly. “Maybe one of us should have stayed in Philadelphia.”
Claire looked at her, puzzled. “She’s got Justin.”
“Well, but poor Dad doesn’t have any one.”
“Dad’s in California,” Claire reminded her. “And when he comes back, he’s got Fluffy.” Fluffy was Claire and Luna’s brand-new step-mother. Her real name was Edith Hortense. Fluffy was just one of those terrible childhood nicknames that had stuck into adulthood.
Now Claire leaned forward and wagged a finger at Luna. “You don’t really want to go to camp, do you, Luna? Crumbs, I knew it! You’ve got no zest for adventure!”
“Whatever!” Luna answered, but then she couldn’t think of what else to say. She turned her head toward the window and listened to the conductor call the names of the stops that led all the way out to Bramblewine, the thirteenth stop, which was where their grandparents lived.
Maybe Claire was right. It was true that Luna did not like being caught by surprise. When she checked out a sad or scary book from the library, she read the last chapter first, just to be prepared. When she took a test, she made sure that she read the directions twice. When a spell called for a pinch, she measured out an eighth of a teaspoon. And she always, always liked her pencil to have a fresh eraser on one end and a sharp point on the other.
She liked to think of herself as careful. Cautious. Not zestless.
“Bramblewine!” shouted the conductor. As usual, Claire and Luna were the last two passengers left on the train. Nobody ever came all the way out to Bramblewine. In fact, most people did not ev
en know there was a thirteenth stop. That’s because Bramblewine was a rather mysterious place. And their grandmother, Five Star Head Witch Arianna of Greater Bramblewine, was one of Bramblewine’s most mysterious residents.
“Hello, twinsicles!” Grandy called now, leaning out the window of her dusty old Lincoln Continental. She was wearing her green-quartz-and-blue-topaz necklace and she’d had her hair beauty-parlorized, but her eyes looked a little squidgy.
“I’m still recovering from our Fourth of July party,” she explained with a yawn as the twins climbed into the car. “We had almost a hundred people over. Your grandfather must have flipped two hundred soy burgers. You’ll both have to sit in back, since Wilbur needs to stretch. Last night he swallowed a champagne cork, and he hasn’t been himself since.”
Wilbur was Grandy’s cat, who often ate things he shouldn’t. Grandy said the inside of his stomach probably looked like the bottom of the sea. Right now, Wilbur was asleep in the front passenger seat, snoring peacefully on his traveling cushion. He did not even twitch when Claire poked him.
“Hey, why weren’t we invited to your party?” asked Claire.
“No kiddies allowed. Which reminds me, girls, how are your kittens?”
“They just had their shots,” said Luna. “Mom promised that she would take good care of them while we’re gone.”
“Mom says kittens are too much effort and she wishes you hadn’t given them to us,” said Claire. Luna elbowed her. Claire never knew when to keep her mouth shut.
Grandy did not seem to care. “A witch needs a cat,” she said. “Your mother is not a witch, so she can’t be expected to understand.”
“Hey, Grandy, when did you know Mom wasn’t a witch?” Luna asked.
“I knew the minute she was born, because she started to cry,” said Grandy. “When a witch is born, she sneezes.”
Claire, who (like Luna) was a one-star witch, faked a sneeze, and then fake-sneezed all the way to their grandparents’ house. She was really getting on Luna’s nerves today.
“She’s just excited about camp,” said Grandy, after Claire had jumped out of the car. Following the sound of Grampy’s tractor, she sped down to the garden. “Claire has a love of adventure.”
Witch Twins Page 8
