T*Witches: The Power of Two (13 page)

Beth was just leaving when Alex strutted back into the room, showing off her raggedy Mountain Girl outfit.

"I don't know what you guys are really up to," the lanky girl said, one hand on the doorknob, "but I'm outta here."

"Please, Bethie. Come with us," Cam urged.

"Where, to a medical lab? Sorry I'm going to skip that one. Well, it's been real," Beth said, shaking her head at Alex. "Not unlike that outfit."

"It's the kick, no?" Alex teased, twirling. She felt a stab of sorrow in her gut, the blue-white chill of Beth's distress. The tall, gangly girl was feeling abandoned, Alex realized, left out.

"Seriously," she said quickly. "Come with us. Don't miss out on the lab adventure of a lifetime. Who knows, you might turn out to be my long-lost cousin or something."

Beth hesitated. But, glancing at Cam for encouragement, she caught her best friend shooting her look-alike pal a grateful smile. Beth knew she was being silly, oversensitive, unreasonable. But it hurt, seeing them so comfortable with each other, so close.

"Hang with us. Please, Beth," Cam said.

"Yeah, we'll all get tested," Alex kidded. "They just take a little blood. Dave says all they need is like one cell or something to see if and how we're connected."
"Dave?" Beth stiffened. "Oh, are you and Cam's dad on a first-name basis already? Supposedly you just met him yesterday. I've known him practically all my life. And I still call him Mr. Barnes."

Feeling more excluded than ever, and avoiding Cam's eyes, Beth turned to leave. "Well, have fun, you guys," she said too brightly. "Anyway, I really do have to run. I'm baby-sitting."

"Who's the lucky tot?" Cam asked. "One of your regulars?"

Beth paused. Cam was making lame conversation, pretending everything was, normal. "Jenny McGuire," she finally responded, referring to one of her seven-year-old neighbors.

"Taking her to the duck pond?" Cam probed, adding for Alex's benefit, "We've got this amazing park in the center of town—a huge tire playground, cookout spots, hammocks, and this pond with lots of ducks. Maybe later, we'll stop by, we can show Alex..."

"I don't know if I'll take her there. I haven't given it much thought," Beth brushed off the question. "I have to pick her up in a few—so, anyway, bye."

"Is there a chill in the air, or was she just totally bummed to see me?" Alex asked, a moment after the door slammed behind Beth.

"She's not usually like that," Cam said, distressed. "I think she's just—"

"Jealous?" Alex asked. "Wow, I'm getting good. I didn't even have to read your mind for that one."

While Dave filled out dozens of forms for the DNA test, Emily sat uncomfortably in the waiting area of Biogentech labs with the girls, her beloved daughter and the gray-eyed stranger who looked so much like Cam, but was not.

The unknown girl, Alexandra Fielding, was wearing scissored jean shorts and a T-shirt that looked like it hadn't been washed in ages. The girl herself had been sniffing at the shirt whenever she thought no one was watching.

Emily disapproved. Of the child's careless clothing, her offensively dyed hair, her angry independence. And, most of all, of how her presence, her very existence, had unlocked a painful family secret and destroyed the peace and stability of their home.

Yet there was something about the girl that Emily wanted to embrace and protect.

"Are you okay?" she asked, touching Alex's choppy hair, which felt surprisingly soft, like the warm pelt of a wild creature.

Alex pulled her head away. "Sure," she said. Emily's gentle touch unnerved her, felt too weirdly like Sara's caresses.

"We're fine, Mom," Cam said snappishly. It was the first time her daughter had called her Mom since discovering that she was adopted. "Shush," Cam said, eyes fastened on the TV across the waiting room, which was tuned to CNN. "I want to hear this."

As they seemed to be doing every fifteen minutes, the news channel was rehashing the few facts and endless opinions about the dreadful disappearance of Marleigh Cooper, a girl just three years older than Cam.

Alex was squirming, trying to fight back the rising tide of anxiety building in her stomach. She tried to focus on the magazines in the waiting room, on the other patients, anything besides the real reason they were here. Finally, her eye fell on the same TV screen Cam seemed to be glued to.

"Vanished," the announcer was recapping. "The singer left her seat at the soccer game to get better reception on her cell phone. And she hasn't been seen or heard from since. Every day, the mystery deepens."

The actual lab work took practically no time. It was waiting for the doctor to test them that ate up half the day.

It was midafternoon by the time the girls were tested. As promised, there was nothing painful about the procedure. A lab technician took blood samples from each of them. She said she'd be running three different tests and would notify the family when the results were in. "Although," she added, looking from Alex to Cam. "I'd say chances that you two are closely related are pretty good."

"We're going to wait to talk with the doctor," Emily told them, when they walked back out into the marble-floored, icily air-conditioned reception area. "Why don't you girls go out? It's such a gorgeous day. We'll be here for a while."

And find out before us? Cam brooded. And lie to me again, like you did all my life?
"Don't worry." Dave smiled at them. "We'll tell you the absolute truth, just as soon as we know. Which won't be for at least ten days—"

"Promise?" Cam asked.

"Absolutely," Dave said.

When they were outside, standing on the sun-drenched steps of Biogentech, Alex said, "Nice going, dude. Looks like your ESP is kicking into high gear."

"What makes you say that?" Cam asked.

"Your dad didn't say that out loud, that stuff about telling you the truth—"

"But he must have," Cam argued. "I heard him—"

"Exactly!" Alex grinned. "You're getting good at it."

"Really?" Cam didn't know whether to be excited or alarmed. She settled for confused.

"Okay, where are we? And what is there to do in this town?" Alex looked up and down the street. A row of shady elm trees dappled the quiet avenue. Flower baskets hung from the whitewashed porches of charming old houses. A salty sea breeze ruffled Alex's hair and delivered to her senses the spicy-sweet tang of well-tended gardens. "You could have your own theme park here," she teased. "Only instead of Big Sky, you'd have to call it Too-Cute World. What kind of trouble can we get into in a place this quaint?"

"Actually, I know just the thing—"

"The last time someone said that to me," Alex reminded her, "I wound up on your doorstep."

"No, remember that duck pond I was telling you about? We could walk over," Cam ventured.

"And meet up with Beth, right? You're pretty sure that's where she's baby-sitting," Alex said, adding, "you're all bummed about her."

"Look, it's weird for her," Cam started to explain, "but if you don't want to..."

"Weird for
her
, huh?" Alex shook her head. "In the lottery of weirdness, she hasn't picked a single number."

"'Cause you've already got the winning ticket?" Cam knew what Alex was thinking.

"More like the losing one."
Cam felt a stab of guilt. "I didn't mean—"

"Anything by it. I know. Forget it. Suddenly, I have this uncontrollable urge to visit a duck pond."

"Who knows if she'll even be here," Cam murmured as the look-alike teens entered the pond area of the park. Which was, Alex thought, exactly what she imagined it would be. Green, clean, a picture-postcard scene. Just like all of Marble Bay—or what she'd seen so far.

So far... as in, far away. From everyone who mattered.

Cam put her hand to her forehead to block the sun from her eyes and scanned the area. Clusters of kids were kneeling by the pond, using remote controls to guide toy boats in the water. Joggers, dog-walkers, kids on scooters, and Rollerbladers shared the path that circled the pond.

Doesn't anyone have to work around here? Alex wondered, surveying the panorama. On a bench across the pond, she spotted a woman who looked uncannily like her mom. Alex's heart leaped for a second—then turned to stone as she remembered that Sara was gone. Anyway, she reminded herself, even if they'd had a place like this in Crow Creek, Sara wouldn't have been there, reading a book, relaxing on a bench. Two jobs didn't leave time for lightweight luxuries.

The more she saw of Marble Bay, the less she liked it, Alex had decided, when a quick-thudding sound, like a steady drumbeat, interrupted her thoughts. She turned toward the noise, and saw Cam waving and hurrying toward Beth, who she'd just spotted.

She was at a picnic table, talking to a carrot-topped kid whose arms and legs were bird-thin. The thudding noise was coming from the child. The little girl's head was down. She was chomping on her fingernails, her legs swinging to the speed-pulsing drum sound.

It was the child who'd attracted her. It was the child's heart she was hearing. The girl was frightened. But her head was down and whatever she was thinking was turning inward, not out. Alex couldn't make out the words.

"Beth!" Cam callout out as, trailed by Alex, she came within shouting distance of the pair. "Hey, I hope you don't mind us crashing. Kinda figured you'd be here."

Beth could never mask her feelings. In spite of what had just gone down between them—Cam's bff was clearly stoked to see her. Even if she had brought Alex along.

Beth waved back. "So, how'd the DNA thing go?"

"We won't know anything for a while," Cam answered. "A couple of weeks, I think." Her phone rang. "It's Bree," she mouthed after answering it. She motioned for Beth and Alex to come over and listen with her.

Whatever Brianna Waxman had to say held less than zero interest for Alex. The nervous, carrot-topped tot, however, was another story. As Beth listened to Cam's call, Alex eased herself onto the picnic table bench next to the child.

The little girl was staring down at her hands, fingernails ragged and red. Although she must have known Alex was there, she didn't look up.

"Hey, I'm Alex Fielding. And you're Jenny, right?"

The child didn't respond. But the beating of her fluttering heart grew louder, more panicked.

"You're really sad, aren't you?" Alex pressed gently.

Jenny shrugged. "I was a bad girl," she said.

"Impossible," Alex contradicted the child. "The minute I saw you I knew you were nice. I heard your heart beating fast, and I said to myself, why is that good girl feeling so..."

"Bad," Jenny said.

"Well, sad is what I was thinking," Alex said.

"That rhymes," Jenny noted, glancing up at last. "Sad and bad..."

And also mad,
Alex heard the girl thinking.
I did a very bad thing and now I'm sad. And Marleigh is gone. And everyone's gonna be mad at me.

"No, they aren't. I'm not," Alex assured the girl.

Jenny looked up suddenly. "Hey, you heard me," she said. Then she saw Evan's necklace, the tarnished little skull hanging from the chain around Alex's neck.

Alex felt Jenny stiffen beside her. Felt a wave of cold fear shudder through the child.

"Jenny, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked.

"You're not nice," the little girl said suddenly, squirming away from Alex. "You're bad. You're bad, too."

"Wow, they're on to him. I can't believe it!" Beth rushed back to the picnic table. "Alex, listen to what Bree just found out."

"It's a Marleigh bulletin, right?" she guessed.

"When Marleigh and I were talking at the game," Cam came over and filled in the blanks. "She said something about a 'fan' of hers who'd been sending spooky e-mail—"

"And the FBI found him!" Beth was pumped. "Well, I mean, they traced the source of the e-mails. They all came from the same computer. Which just so happens to be located right here. In Marble Bay!"

"At the Music & More store," Cam explained.

"Marleigh's mother told the police about the stalker letters she'd been getting," Beth explained.

"And rumor has it, according to Bree, that they were sent from a computer at the Main Street M & M," Cam finished.

"How heinous is that?" Beth demanded, mindlessly stroking Jenny's hair.

Cam's stomach knotted. What did this mean? That her hunch had been dead-on? That Marleigh really
had
been snatched by some sicko who idolized her? The memory of the singer's pale face, when she'd told Cam about the fan who signed his name "Devoted," came flooding back.

Could Cam have prevented anything bad from happening if she'd stayed in town? If she'd listened to the wrinkled old man when he'd said,
"Don't go. She needs you now."
Those were his words.

But if she hadn't gone on vacation she wouldn't have met Alex.

She needs you now.
Those were the same words I heard, Alex was thinking, that's what the man in my dream told me. But that was before I even knew about Marleigh's disappearance.

Startled, Cams eyes widened. She zoned in on Alex, who smiled at her. "Did you just say—?" Cam started to ask.

"Didn't say. Thought," Alex answered aloud.

"Shush," Cam whispered. Okay, this whole mind reading thing was weirding her out. Even if there was something extremely cool about it.

"The cyber-psycho probably kidnapped her. She's in trouble," Alex said.

"Or was," Beth added, holding Jenny close to her, as if to shield the already frightened child.

Cam struggled to keep the rising panic out of her voice. "Listen to us. If jumping to conclusions were an Olympic event, we'd be Team Gold. We have no idea if any of this is true."

"Don't we?" It was Alex.