T*Witches: Double Jeopardy (10 page)

Startled, Fredo’s sons turned toward him together. The wizened warlock was standing between them and the stunned girls. Together, as mindlessly as they did everything, they hurled their rocks at him.

Alex shrieked as Karsh went down. Cam held the tree to keep her knees from buckling. They saw Karsh crumble. His magnificent golden cape fluttered about him, then settled over his face like a shroud.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE IMPOSSIBLE

Tsuris and Vey were examining the fallen warlock.

Cam didn’t have to concentrate very hard at all. Every cell in her body seemed to be focused on the brothers with white-hot rage.

Alex had to slow her mind to choose just one torture for them. She settled on a broken branch a few feet behind them.

“Light it,” she ordered Cam, not bothering to whisper or send her wish silently.

“I’m on it,” her sister replied as the tip of the dry wood nearest Tsuris and Vey burst into flames.

It had never been easier for Alex to make something
float, turn, and fly. The burning branch tumbled toward Fredo’s sons.

Vey felt it first. “Hey!” he shouted, turning to see what had crashed into his back. What he saw, even before he felt it, was fire gnawing his too-tight T-shirt and hungrily attacking his trousers.

Tsuris was less lucky. The flying limb lit his scruffy bleached head. It must have made him feel, Alex thought with satisfaction, like she’d felt when the smarmy bully was leading her around by the hair.

This was the scene Ileana limped into a moment later. At first she saw only the hopping, flapping, flaming villains. But as they tore past her, heading for the bay, her tired gray eyes beheld Karsh’s fallen body. Like a thermometer plunged into snow, the little color she had left drained from her.

Cam and Alex took her hands, as much for their own comfort as for hers. Ileana pushed them away. Without taking her eyes from Karsh, she removed her shoe and, barefoot, not noticing the sharp pebbles, pine needles, and twigs in her path, she walked slowly to him.

The ancient tracker was breathing with difficulty. His every gasp resounded through the forest, which slowly seemed to thicken again with the density of spirits.

Cam saw them. Her eyes wide with awe, she watched gauzy figures weave through the branches. They dipped and sailed, each passing low over Karsh, then swirling away, as if in pain, to form a circle within the circle.

Alex heard them. Moaning mournfully, keening, calling to one another. Among them she recognized the single voice she’d heard earlier. The one that had begged her not to lead him who loved her — him, who she now knew was Karsh — into danger.
Abigail Antayus
, another specter called the ghostly name,
he is of your clan
.

Ileana knelt beside Karsh. Her cold hands gently brushed the dirt from his brow, tenderly touched the almost-invisible indentation where one of the stones had found its mark.

“Goddess,” Karsh wheezed, trying to smile.

“No,” Ileana whispered. “Save your strength —”

“No need,” he said, closing his eyes. “Dearest child. Listen.”

Over the terrible screaming in her head, above Cam’s inner voice and her own, both crying,
No, no, no
, Alex strained to hear Karsh’s words.

“Why Thantos denied you is … more complex than you know,” he rasped. “There is a curse, Ileana. And a hope. Your future and the twins’ destiny is bound to it —”

Cam tugged at Alex’s hand. “I want to hear him,” she said. “Come with me. I want to be near him.”

“Yes, come.” Ileana beckoned them. “Come quickly.”

They crossed to the center of the circle, where moonlight fell onto Karsh’s once fearsome but now serene face. They knelt beside him, across from Ileana, waiting for him to speak again.

Clutching Cam’s hand, Alex waited. Staring dry-eyed, empty, at his moonlit features, Ileana waited.

With his last breath, Karsh whispered, “Children, dearest ones, it is written. All is written.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE RETURN

Ileana arrived at her own cottage at daybreak. Karsh’s old friend Lady Rhianna had insisted that she get some rest.

Rhianna was an impressive witch in the best of times; she was positively fearsome and overwhelming now in the worst. She and the Exalted Elders of Coventry’s Unity Council would see to Lord Karsh, the buxom witch decreed. To his corpse, Ileana reminded herself. Lord Karsh, friend Karsh, father and counselor, was dead.

Boris, Ileana’s marmalade cat, waited on the doorstep. He looked bedraggled and forlorn as he rubbed against her torn blue hem. Everything looked forlorn,
every creature on the island, as if the news of Karsh’s passing had arrived before their procession had.

Such a sad parade it was. Ileana, silent, bereft, guided by the dark and solemn Rhianna — who had come at once, who’d known a moment after it happened that the beloved warlock was dead — and by Lord Grivveniss, another who had felt the empty wind of Karsh’s passing. Six young and sturdy bearers, two witches and four warlocks whom he had counseled and tutored, carried the bier on which he lay — Karsh in his golden shroud.

The moment they’d touched foot on the island, the crowd began to assemble. Many had been waiting at the dock for their arrival. The procession passed through columns of mourners lining the path to the Council Dome. Which was where Lady Rhianna had issued her order to Ileana — to leave the Elders to their sad task and to go home and rest.

Now she found she dared not enter her own door. Her house had been ransacked by Karsh’s murderers. Her hand on the latch alone was enough to set her stomach churning, roiling with hatred and a burning ache for revenge. Such emotions, Karsh had taught, would rob her of what strength and power she still owned.

Ileana turned away from her home. Accompanied by a mournfully yowling Boris, she walked barefoot
along the well-worn path from her door to Karsh’s cottage.

He was still there. His earth-sweet scent and robust spirit filled the little house. Ileana allowed herself to take it all in, with her burning eyes and gentle touch — his teapot on the stove, his form carved by time into the worn leather armchair beside the fireplace.

She felt the fragrant scratch of drying herbs hanging from ceiling beams, the cool marble of the counter on which sat potions and oils, seedlings and blossoming flowers, the myriad stones and candles he used to heal and help.

She ran her hand over the cluttered bookshelves, over the cracked spines of countless thick volumes, until a shocking vibration, an almost electric charge, shook her cold fingers as they passed over the flaking cover of
Forgiveness or Vengeance
.

The charge tingled through her entire being. She pulled the book from the shelf and carried it over to Karsh’s chair. The moment she sat, exhaustion overtook her. Images, voices, feelings came with such force and speed that she thought, like Miranda, grief would drive her crazy.

Why she thought of Brice now was incomprehensible to her. With so much else to make her miserable, why should his handsome face, his eyes begging her forgiveness,
come to mind? Because, now more than ever, she imagined Karsh’s voice rasping,
You need love, my stubborn goddess. And this man, this warlock, loves you
.

No, Ileana told herself, told the imagined voice of Karsh, the one man she’d completely loved and trusted. Karsh. Now even he had abandoned her.

Appalled at her own selfishness, Ileana shook her head, trying to rid herself of such a shameful thought. She must be going mad. Miranda had. Miranda, the woman she’d so admired, in her youth the nearest thing Coventry had to a princess.

Where was Miranda? Ileana could not remember seeing her among the mourners this morning. Suddenly, she feared for the twins’ mother. Already weak and unsettled, would the terrible news of Karsh’s death throw Miranda back into madness?

As swiftly as Ileana’s concern rose, it ebbed. She hadn’t seen Thantos, either, she realized. Maybe they were together — “comforting” each other at Crailmore, the ugly gray castle overlooking the sea.

Thantos’s fortress. Ileana’s birthplace. The stone citadel where her mother, Beatrice, had died.

It’s more complex than you know
, Karsh had begun to explain to her.

Ileana closed her eyes now and let the memory of his words wash over her.
Why Thantos denied you
is … more complex than you know. There is a curse … and a hope. Your future and the twins’ destiny is bound to it
—

The volume in her lap seemed too dense and heavy to open. She knew that inside it she would find the answer to Karsh’s riddle. He had written it down. Knowing he was to die, he had spent his precious last days concerned with her welfare and that of the T’Witches.

And Karsh
had
known he would die. He had put on his funeral robes himself. The embroidered gold cloak. The medallion he’d worn when, years before Rhianna’s appointment, he had headed the Unity Council. His beautiful bare features, timeworn, weathered, but carved with the same depth and integrity as his soul. He had known.

But would he have died had he not followed her? Was it the time or the place that had assured his death? If he’d stayed safely on Coventry …

Impossible.

Impossible that Karsh would have left the twins in the care of a powerless witch, even if she was their guardian. Impossible that he would not have rushed to their aid whether it meant his death or not. Such was his depth and integrity; such was his soul.

And who would guard them now? Their mother? She, who knew less of them than any disinterested schoolmate or salesgirl would know, whose knowledge
was filtered through Thantos’s self-serving tales, whose magick powers lay shattered in the ruins of her once-awesome mind?

Would Ileana, sworn to help and heal them, be up to the task? Weakened by all the things Karsh had tried, over and over, to caution her against — self-pity, rage, jealousy, resentment, the desire for vengeance …

How could she do her job now? How, without ridding herself of the very flaws that seemed to be her birthright — the ugly legacy of Thantos DuBaer, her father?

Too many questions, too few answers. Ileana’s eyes closed. As she drifted off to sleep, her hands rested on the book, which contained her real inheritance — the truth, which Lord Karsh Antayus had bequeathed her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

GUARDIANS

The Marble Bay police delivered Dylan, Alex, and Cam home. To Dave and Emily, who’d been alerted immediately that their missing son had been found, the black-and-white squad car in the driveway was a prayer answered.

Not that Emily hadn’t nearly passed out. Only the buoyant sound of Dave shouting, “He’s okay! The girls, too! Em — they’re all safe!” kept her from losing consciousness.

Emily flew to her son, smothering him with hugs and kisses, scolding him for running away, brushing back his hair to check the scratches on his face, and finally
shuffling him inside the house — all through tears of joy and relief.

Dave hugged the twins, then hung back to talk to the police officers who had ferried the kids home. They informed him of the cell phone calls they’d gotten from Camryn and that they’d found his family right where his daughter said they’d be — on the shoulder of the road, near the woods outside of Salem.

Dylan’s return led directly to a full confession-session — one that Cam and Alex neither wanted nor were asked to be part of. They heard bits and pieces of Dyl’s download, enough to know that their brother was coming totally clean with his parents, delivering the good intent, the bad carry-through, the ugly ending.

“Your heart was in the right place, but your head was in the clouds. How could you think you could do this alone?” Dave struggled to keep the emotion out of his voice, but it was clear he was proud of his son. “Your mother and I admire you for trying to stop an evil, evil man, but —”

“You could have been killed!” Emily was still an emotional wreck and did little to hide it.

All the while, Dylan sat on the sofa between his parents. His head was in his hands, but the relief in the house was palpable. Cam and Alex felt it, too, especially
because neither Dave nor Emily seemed to take much notice of them.

Which was just the way they wanted it.

Numbly, silently, Cam and Alex trudged upstairs, twin faces wearing one mask of sorrowful bewilderment. Their shock had yet to yield to full-out grief. Neither of them had the energy to talk or the will to think — let alone care very much about what was on the other’s mind.

Cam went straight to the shower and turned it to
HOT
. She scrubbed so hard, red splotches broke out all over her fair skin. The smudges from the tree “Cousin” Vey had pushed her against came off easily, as did the mud from the woods. That was surface dirt. Ridiculous, irrational as it was, what Cam wanted most was to scrub away all that was underneath, all the events of the past year.

She wanted to go back. Press
REWIND
, then tape over the frightening drama her life had become. Just to be Emily and Dave’s daughter again, Dylan’s big sister, alpha girl among her friends, A+ student at her school, boy-magnet, and soccer star. That couldn’t be too much to want; it was everything she’d had.

To retrieve that, Cam thought, she’d be more than willing to give the rest back: the stranger named Miranda, the fierce witch Ileana, even Alex if she had to. And him, too. The gentle soul who’d always understood when no one else seemed to. It was too hard to even think his
name. To form a picture of Karsh was to fall apart. It would mean she’d have to confess what she now knew completely: Heartache was more than an overused song lyric. The pulsating muscle called the heart actually could ache. She could feel it.

Cam turned off the shower and stepped out onto the plush bath mat. As she shook the water out of her hair — forcefully, angrily, violently — she screamed silently,
No! No! No!

No! This could
not
have happened. Not to Karsh.

This could not
be
happening. Not to her.

Scaring herself suddenly, ridiculously, a manic laugh escaped her. Cam pressed the towel tightly against her mouth, her face, to muffle the sound.

Maybe this wasn’t happening, she thought crazily. What if all of it — from the day she’d met Alex to now — turned out to be just some big, weird, beyond-bizarre dream?

What if, like a character on a TV soap, she’d wake to the reality that none of this had actually occurred, that maybe the rickety old Ferris wheel on which she’d thought she’d first seen a girl who was identical to her had really crashed, leaving Cam in a comatose state all this time?

AMAZING BUT TRUE
, the tabloid headlines would read,
COMA GIRL WAKES UP
!

Wrapping herself in a soft, thick terry robe, Cam
slid to the floor, her back against the bathtub, head bowed, knees pressed to her face.

In the next room, in a nearly identical position, Alex had curled up on Cam’s window seat. She’d swiped Miranda’s quilt from the pile of clothes Cam had dumped on the floor and pulled it tight around her. It hugged her shoulders. Alex’s scalp still hurt from Tsuris’s cruel hair-pulling. Her eyes burned, too, from unshed tears.

She had tried to shut down, to feel nothing. She feared that if she let them, her emotions would come flooding in and surely drown her. In one short year, Alex had lost so much: her beloved Sara and — even though she despised him — the stepmonster, Ike.

And now Karsh.

Ileana, though alive, was a basket case; ditto, Miranda. They could not comfort her now.

Gone, too, was the life she used to know. A harder life, but a simpler one for sure.

Yet when Alex thought about going back, she knew she couldn’t. She was different now. She had changed. She would never be as innocent, as naive, as dumb again.

And yet, how dumb had she actually been? She’d heard the voice calling out to her:
If you love him, go back. For the sake of him who loves you, go now. Do not lead him this way
.

She’d heard the words and hadn’t known who they
were for or what they meant. Defying its warning had gotten Karsh killed.

Someone was coming up the steps. Alex was too wiped out to leap up and bolt the door. It didn’t matter anyway. The person about to enter was someone she could probably deal with.

“Harry?” a soft voice called. Dylan poked his head into the room.

“Hey, Dudley,” Alex answered flatly.

They were stupid names they’d made up for each other. Dylan had jokingly dubbed Alex “Harry Potter,” since she was an orphan coming to live with them; Alex had retorted that that had to make him wicked cousin Dudley. Only between themselves had those “sick-names,” as they called them, stuck.

Dylan went straight for the window seat, forcing Alex to squeeze over. She threw her arm around the boy, who rested his head on her shoulder.

For a while, neither spoke.

Then Dylan said, “It just seemed —”

“Like a good idea at the time?” On automatic, Alex finished the cliché. Staring out the window, she said, “You gotta know, Dudley, that was a stupido stunt of epic proportions.”

“I know,” he said. “I should never have gone alone —”

“Ya think?” Alex said sarcastically.

“I’m an idiot, right?” the contrite boy offered.

“Yeah, but you’re our idiot. The Barneses’ village idiot.” Alex tousled Dylan’s hair. “It takes a village to raise an idiot.”

Dylan shrugged. “I’m grounded.”

Alex pretended to be shocked. “Whoa, that’s harsh, bro. But you know what? I hear the warden clomping up the steps. You’d best be gone.”

Alex wasn’t kidding. Dylan dove for the bathroom that connected their rooms — startling Cam — and just missed his father by a nanosecond.

“Can I come in?” Dave asked gently.

“Mi casa es su casa,”
Alex said.

“You all right?” Dave searched her face for signs of bruising.

“I’ll …” She almost said, “live,” but choked on it. Alex quickly averted her eyes so Dave wouldn’t suspect she was about to lose it.

“Cam in there?” he asked, nodding toward the open door of the bathroom.

“Daddy …” Still wrapped in her robe, Cam suddenly ran over and pressed her face against his shirtfront. Dave wrapped bearlike arms around his daughter and
patted her back as he used to when she was little. That’s when Cam broke down.

“He’s dead, Daddy,” she wailed. “Karsh is … he … got killed.” She pulled away and looked into her dad’s eyes. “Karsh, who gave me to you —”

Dave swallowed hard. He’d realized the girls were upset, emotional — but after what the cops and Dylan had just told him, he figured it was all about their daring rescue. He’d come upstairs, in fact, to tell the girls that thanks to Cam’s 911, the perv had been picked up and would soon be behind bars for a long time. He’d come to congratulate them. It hadn’t occurred to him he’d be comforting them. Feeling his own grief about the strange but kindly man who’d entrusted the baby Cam to him would have to come later.

Now he patted Cam’s back and gently said, “Oh, baby, this is your first brush with death. I’m so sorry.” He reached out to include Alex in his embrace. To his surprise, she actually allowed him to put an arm around her shoulder.

It wasn’t until later, after all the phone calls — from Dave’s and Emily’s friends, from Cam’s and Alex’s pals, from the newspaper wanting an interview with Dylan (which Dave nixed) — that Cam and Alex were finally ready to talk.

“It’s our fault, Cam.” Alex fell onto her bed, where Miranda’s quilt still lay. Her voice full of remorse, she tried to explain what she’d heard the spirits tell her. She said she should have told Cam, told someone…. Maybe then, Karsh wouldn’t be dead.

Cam was so not buying it. It wasn’t about dodging blame, she insisted as she paced the room, shaking her head. “Als? I don’t know much about what’s happened, or why. But in my bones I know this. We didn’t kill Karsh. It was his time. He knew it; Ileana knew it. We’d have known it, too, if we’d grown up on Coventry; we’d have recognized the burial robe. But we heard what he was saying and the way he was talking.

“Karsh was our tracker, the man who kept us from going crazy when we were kids. He was a wise, brilliant, kindly human being who just happened to be a powerful warlock. The Karsh we knew would have chosen to go out this way, shielding Ileana, protecting us.”

Alex’s tears fell on Miranda’s quilt.

Cam planted herself on her bed, drew her knees to her chest, and rocked back and forth. For a while, she was quiet. Then she whispered, “Alex? I’m freaked. Thantos — and now those hideously creepy cousins — they’re so not done with us. Please don’t think I’m selfish, but I’m really scared. Who’s going to protect us? Who’ll be our guardian?”

With a defiant swipe, Alex blotted her eyes on the quilt. She inhaled its sweet fragrances and lifted her chin. “I will.”

“Will what?” Cam stared at her twin.

“I’ll be your guardian, your protector — and you’ll be mine,” Alex declared.

“Can we do that? Protect ourselves?” Cam wrinkled her forehead.

“The other choice would be?” Alex began to feel stronger, surer of herself. She leaped off her bed and jumped so hard onto Cam’s that her sister bounced.

“Here’s the sitch, Sista T’Witch,” Alex teased. “In this corner, we’ve got one glitzy but grieving guardian-goddess. In the other? A messed-up mom. Baddies of all ages and abilities — plenty we probably haven’t even had the pleasure of meeting yet — are after us. And remember,” she said more seriously now, “what Karsh said, about there being a curse.”

“A curse and a hope,” Cam remembered. “Ileana’s destiny and ours are tied to it.”

“Like it or not, want it or not.” Alex tilted her head toward Cam. “It’s up to us now.”

Cam tilted hers so that it touched Alex’s. “And we are so up for it. All of it.”