T*Witches: Double Jeopardy (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

A THREAT REALIZED

There was a police car in the driveway of Cam and Alex’s house.

A small crowd had gathered.

Dave was talking to one of the officers.

Along with a worried neighbor, a second cop was trying to comfort Emily, who was sitting on the front steps, crying.

Miranda
, Alex thought. Were the police looking for her? Had she escaped from the clinic rather than been released? Was this another trick of Thantos’s — to give them a “taste” of their mother, then call the police to have her put away again? Was she considered dangerous? Even as these possibilities crossed her mind, Alex rejected them.

Cam cut through her sister’s panicked musing with one word:
Dylan!
They dropped their bikes. Alex whisked up Miranda’s quilt, and they ran toward the house.

“Is that them?” the policeman asked Dave.

“Yes,” Dave said, hurrying across the lawn to them.

Emily stood up too fast. The second officer, a short, strong woman, caught her as she stumbled backward.

“Are you all right? Where were you?” Dave demanded.

“We … took a ride,” Alex answered lamely.

“Over to Mariner’s Park. What happened?” Cam watched the officer and their neighbor ease Emily down onto the steps again. “Is Mom all right?”

Mom. The word came so easily, so rightfully. The amazing woman in the park had given birth to them, but Emily Barnes had been Cam’s mother for fifteen years!

“How do you think she is?” Dave demanded. “Where’s Dylan?”

The twins looked at each other.

What are we supposed to say, in a Dumpster?
Cam silently asked Alex.

No way
, her sister argued.

“Dylan,” Dave repeated. “Where is he? Was he with you?”

“No,” Cam blurted. “He’s probably in —”

“Trouble, right?” Alex cut her off. “I mean, if he
doesn’t get home fast. Uh, last time I saw him, he was in his room. I spoke to him —”

“When?” Emily came over, steadied by the policewoman.

“Last night. Just before we went to PITS.”

And about five minutes before that hulking maniac Thantos broke into our room
, Cam silently wailed.

“Did he seem disturbed, angry?” the policewoman asked.

“Well, yeah —” Alex looked at Dave.

“As we told you,” Dave said, “we gave him a dressing-down last night — about his skipping some classes at school, spending too much time on his computer and not enough on homework. Nothing radical. Nothing to warrant this —”

“The window in his room was open,” Emily said shakily. “You see, I went in early this morning —”

“At the crack of dawn,” Dave explained. “After last night’s scene, she couldn’t sleep.”

“And he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been to bed at all. The window was wide open and the blinds were rattling.” Emily was wringing her hands. “Dylan’s computer was on. The screensaver was flashing — the one with the snowboarding scenes. But he wasn’t there. So I went into the girls’ room —”

“And they were out, too,” Dave took over. “But at least we knew they’d slept there —”

“Dylan’s window was open?” Cam asked.

“And his backpack and ski jacket were gone.” Emily’s eyes teared up again. “We called everyone we could think of. And unless his friends are lying —”

“Which I don’t believe they are,” Dave assured the policewoman. “We haven’t a clue as to where he is or what kind of trouble he may be in.”

“So you were the last to see him, Alexandra?” The other officer had joined them.

“I’m Camryn.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, clutching the quilt with its faded fragrances and colors. “I guess.”

“And you had no reason to think he was planning to run away?”

“Run away? Dylan? No way,” Alex insisted.

“That’s what I told them. Dylan’s not like that. He wouldn’t have crept out a window.” Impulsively, Emily took Alex’s hand. “You know him, he’d have walked out the front door and slammed it behind him. I … I felt almost relieved when I saw that you two were gone as well. I thought you were all together.”

Emily patted and released Alex’s hand and turned to Cam. “I tried to reach you. I called your cell phone number.
But it was here, in your bag, in your room. I couldn’t believe you’d leave it behind.”

Dave ran a hand through his thick dark curls. “And not leave us a note.” He stared hard at the twins. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked. “A premonition, a hunch, anything?”

The images returned to Cam, the ones Thantos had created so vividly. As Dave and Emily went inside with the police, Cam envisioned the Dumpster again. It was parked behind a store.
The Cand … on
was written on the iron box in fading letters.
The Cand … on
—

Got it!
Alex hollered.
The Cand-le Connecti-on
, she told her sister.

“Yes!” Cam exclaimed. The Candle Connection was a franchise peddling every kind, size, fragrance, and color candle under the sun — towering pillars, floating flowers, beeswax, dripless, round, square, triangular, animal-and vegetable-shaped candles, tapers, and tea lights, plus lacy sachets, scented oils, bath beads. They hawked candles the way the Colonel sold chicken. There were at least eight of them in a ten-mile radius of Marble Bay. One of them was right downtown.

“But with all that’s going on, can we leave now?” Cam asked her sister.

“Let’s see. Today is Sunday. No trash pickup.” Alex
pretended to weigh the options. “Tomorrow’s Monday. Guess we can wait till tomorrow when the garbage truck shows up —”

Remembering that iron-jawed assassin was all Cam needed. “You made your point,” she said. “I vote for now.”

They were heading for the sidewalk where they’d left their bikes when two things happened at once to change their plans.

One: Jason Weissman pulled up. Tall, dark, and crazy for Cam, the hottie who’d once worked at PITS had been cruising by and seen the small crowd breaking up and the police car in the Barneses’ driveway. In response to his concerned “What’s up?” Cam wondered if he could give them a lift to The Candle Connection.

Alex rolled her eyes, knowing the boy would give them a lift to the moon if Cam offered him the honor.

Two: As they wheeled their no-longer-needed bikes back to the garage, Alex’s extraordinary hearing and sense of smell went into overdrive. At first she thought it was the quilt she’d flung over her shoulder that was giving off the distinctive sharp scents. Then she realized that someone was hiding in the shrubbery that separated the Barneses’ property from their neighbor’s, someone who smelled of jasmine and fear.

“Whoops, we’d better tell my parents we’re taking off,” Cam said. “They’re freaked enough.”

“No probs. You go with Jason. I’ll hang around and let them know you’re okay.”

“And?” Cam asked suspiciously.

“Busted,” Alex conceded. “Before you take off, could you kind of subtly focus your outstanding orbs into the bushes and tell me who’s crouching there?”

Cam spun around.

“Oh, that was casual,” Alex grumbled.

Her twin scarcely heard her.
It’s a girl
. Cam sent a mind message.
The one who came to school all beat up
—

“Kenya Carson?” Alex whispered. “The kid your crew was talking about at PITS? She’s supposed to be in Dylan’s class, right?”

What is she doing here?
Cam marveled.
Why is she hiding?

CHAPTER TEN

HIDE-AND-SEEK

The girl who stood in front of Alex seemed nothing like the spunky snowboarder chick who occasionally freestyled with Dylan and his bud Robbie Meeks.

Chewing on her nails, brown eyes darting frantically, Kenya wasn’t as bruised and jumpy as she’d been a week ago. Which was when she’d showed up at school telling one person that a bad day on the slopes was responsible for her black eye, scraped knee, and chipped tooth, and swearing to another that she’d tripped on the stairs.

She was having the same get-it-straight trouble today.

She said she’d come by to see Dylan and that finding
a police car in the driveway had totally freaked her. She didn’t know why she’d ducked behind the bushes, she just did.

Fair enough. Maybe she was afraid the cops would take one look at her and arrest her parents, Alex thought, remembering Kristen’s child abuse rant. She could buy that.

What set Alex’s alarm ringing were Kenya’s dumb answers to what she’d wanted to see Dylan about. Ranging from “I don’t know” to “borrowing a book” to “homework help,” the jittery girl couldn’t lie and look Alex in the eye at the same time.

“Run that by me again,” Alex suggested.

“Okay, okay. I just wanted to catch him before —” Kenya stopped and switched from nail-gnawing to lip-nibbling. “Not
before
,” she corrected herself. “I mean, I just needed to talk to him, you know?”

“Not really.” Alex cocked her head and listened intently.

Kenya’s brain was a babble of fears, excuses, questions, and pain. Alex was having a hard time cutting through the hysterical mess to find out what the wigged-out girl was really thinking. She’d caught one complete sentence —
How could anyone think my parents did this to me?
— when a weird click-clacking noise broke her concentration.

Alex glanced over at the police cruiser.

Did the cops have a laptop? Were they using some handheld computer device? The officers weren’t even in their car, Alex realized; they were still inside with Dylan’s panicked parents. She looked up at the blond boy’s window, half expecting to see him at his desk, hunched over his PC. But he was gone. MIA. And probably in bigger trouble than Emily and Dave could imagine.

So who was tapping on a keyboard? “Can you hear that?” she asked Kenya.

“What?” the flipped girl asked.

“A computer,” Alex said. “Someone’s on a computer —”

Kenya went ashen. “He told you,” she cried. “Dag, I can’t believe it.”

“Who told me what?” Alex asked.

But Kenya, bandaged knee, sore cheek, bruised eye, and all, tore out of there without another word.

Alex hoped Cam was having better luck.

Not so far.

Cam and Jason had checked out three different Candle Connection locations and hadn’t found a Dumpster that matched the one Thantos had shown the twins.

“I don’t get it,” Jason said after the third stop. “I
mean, I know you get these wild hunches. And you said your brother mentioned a Dumpster. But how do you know it wasn’t that green one we saw behind The Candle Connection on Pierce Street?”

“Um, because …” Cam tried to come up with something believable. “That one was … plastic,” she mumbled as they pulled up behind The Candle Connection superstore in the mall outside of Salem.

She didn’t say that she’d developed a reverse game of hot-or-cold, that at the earlier sites, she’d felt a dull warmth, but that as they’d approached this mall, her hands and feet had felt strangely icy. And that now as they pulled into the parking lot at the back of the buildings, chills were rattling through her.

“It’s h-here,” she managed to stammer.

“Where?” Jason asked, scanning the lot.

“You must have passed it,” Cam told the confused boy. “Go back.”

Jason did a U-ee and headed back in the direction they’d come from.

“There it is!” Shivering, Cam was hugging herself, staring at the gray metal Dumpster hidden from view behind piles of boxes. “Over there. See — there’s the store.”

Jason could see The Candle Connection sign on the
warehouse-sized building but not the Dumpster, the massive iron box with its half-worn-away logo. But, following Cam’s directions, he parked near the trash, then watched, scratching his handsome, dark-haired head, as she bolted from his car and raced through an obstacle course of refuse behind the store.

Shaking with cold, Cam scaled the hill of rubble hiding the Dumpster and peered down into the box. At first, almost relieved, she saw nothing important. Huge green plastic bags surrounded by bubble wrap, wrapping paper, bottles, and cardboard cartons.

Then a bit of twinkling gold metal caught her eye. She telescoped in on the object.

There, wedged between a plastic bag and a collapsed carton, was Dylan’s earring.

Her heart froze. Was she too late? Had her brother already been mashed by the iron jaws of the truck? Was Dyl fill — as in landfill?

Cam climbed into the Dumpster and scrambled to retrieve her brother’s earring.

“Are you okay? He’s not in there, is he?” Jason called breathlessly. He’d run over the moment she’d disappeared from sight. “Camryn, answer me!”

“No, he’s not here,” she said, climbing out, holding up the tiny gold earring, “but he was.”

*   *   *

Jason dropped her off at home.

Alex was in the kitchen, preparing a cup of tea. “For Emily,” she explained. “She’s a mess. So,” she asked anxiously, “anything?”

Cam noticed Miranda’s quilt slung like a shawl over Alex’s shoulders. “It just feels good,” her sister dismissed her questioning glance. “I didn’t get much out of Kenya. She was, like, radically unhinged. And then I said the magic word
computer
and —
poof!
— she took off. Cam, what happened? What’s the matter?”

Cam held out Dylan’s earring.

Alex threw down the tea bag she’d been dunking and hurried to her twin. “Where did you get that?”

“It was in the Dumpster, Als.” Cam was shaking. “The Dumpster Thantos showed us.”

Alex took off the fragrant, faded quilt and wrapped Cam in it. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said softly but firmly. There was no thought of sharing this stunning info with parents or police. The news, Alex pointed out, was way beyond weird and would require even weirder explanations. Plus, Cam believed, the less Dave and Emily knew about the twins’ witchy powers, the safer her adoptive ’rents would be.

All they had to do was find and rescue Dylan before it was too late.

If it wasn’t too late already.

“We need help. We’ve got to find Dylan,” Cam said, climbing the stairs, feeling slightly warmer and less frantic huddled in the quilt. “Got any ideas?”

“Nine-one-one Karsh and Ileana again. Give them another heads-up,” Alex suggested. “Call in the Coventry cavalry.”