T*Witches: Kindred Spirits Read online

But that wasn’t why she’d been brought to her knees, devastated and debilitated.

  Just before Karsh died, she’d gotten what she’d wished for all her life: to know who her real father was. Karsh had promised to tell her one day. Before he could, she’d found out. The one person on Earth she hated more than anyone, her sworn enemy, the vile Lord Thantos. He was her father.

  That was the moment Ileana had lost it, ceased being herself.

  To say the least.

  She seemed to have lost the supernatural skills and hypersharp senses that had made her an outstanding witch.

  So it was very likely that the feeling she had, that Cam — or Alex — was wandering into dangerous territory, was totally wrong. Meaningless. A fear fueled by guilt.

  Ileana should have been the one showing the twins around Coventry. She was, after all, their guardian. She should have been introducing Cam and Alex to those who’d heard of but never met, them: to the Exalted Elders of the Unity Council, to Karsh’s many friends and grateful fledglings, to the island’s best and brightest youngsters …

  Instead, she paced the slate floor of Karsh’s cottage, tracing with the soles of her feet the grooves the old man’s tread had worn into the stones. Her orange tabby cat, Boris, lay in the corner, watching her.

  Ileana’s once flawlessly shimmering hair was still a mass of knotted curls. She hadn’t rinsed the rust-colored spots from the blue gown she’d worn for far too long. The blotches were bloodstains. Karsh’s.

  Her bare feet were rough and dusty. She had cleansed them in soothing herbal baths but had no desire to choose or don a pair of proper shoes. In addition to the loss of her ability to cast spells, transmutate, transport herself, and sense trouble, Ileana seemed to have forgotten how to take care of herself. She’d accomplished nothing since returning to the island with her guardian’s body.

  Back and forth before Karsh’s desk she strode, staring at the book Forgiveness or Vengeance. Carefully, she avoided glancing at the tall chair behind the desk. She could imagine the disappointed look the old warlock would be giving her if he were still here, if he were sitting in that carved wooden monstrosity, his bony fingers folded in a tent before him.

  He would have suggested in his commanding way that Ileana ought to have made time to show the twins around the island.

  Ordinarily, she would have.

  But nothing was ordinary anymore.

  Karsh, who’d been the only parent she’d ever known, was dead.

  The twins’ mother, Miranda, had returned to Coventry after an absence of fourteen years.

  And the sickening revelation about Thantos … she would not go to that place.

  From the desktop, the grieving witch again lifted the book in which Karsh’s journal was hidden. It took all her energy to carry it as far as his armchair, less than a foot away.

  On his deathbed, Karsh had spoken of a curse. Ileana had begun to wonder whether it might have something to do with a mysterious sleeping sickness. Every time the pale witch picked up Forgiveness or Vengeance, her arms felt leaden. When she tried to read his words, her eyelids grew unbearably heavy. Though she fought to stay awake, sleep always won. Thus she’d examined only two paragraphs of the story Karsh had urged her with his dying breath to read:

  Ileana, precious goddess, guardian of Apolla and Artemis, my future has been shown to me and time is short. Therefore, I write this in haste. But, be assured, I am driven by love and truth, not fear.

  By now, of course, you know that Lord Thantos DuBaer is your father and that Aron and Miranda’s twins are your cousins. You and they share the greatness and danger of being DuBaers. What you do not know is that you carry, as well, the blood of another noble line, the Antayus clan.

  * * *

  This was the passage that always confused and tired Ileana. How could she be an Antayus? Impossible.

  She knew that Karsh — respected mentor, mighty tracker, renowned and beloved warlock — was of the Antayus clan. But as Karsh himself confirmed in his journal, Ileana’s vile father was a DuBaer. Her mother’s maiden name was Beatrice Hazlitt.

  And Hazlitt, as everyone knew, was neither a noteworthy nor noble name. In fact, it was Beatrice’s lack of fine lineage that had turned Thantos’s mother, Leila, against her.

  If her father was a proud DuBaer and her mother a lowly Hazlitt, how then could Ileana carry the blood of the mighty Antayus clan?

  Ileana sank back into Karsh’s worn leather armchair. His sweet peppermint-and-thyme scent still clung to it. She longed to read more of the journal, to fulfill Karsh’s dying request. But again, her weary eyes began to shut.

  “Help me, Karsh,” Ileana whispered as her closed lids locked out the little daylight left in the room.

  Help me, Karsh.

  She had whispered, spoken, even shouted those words for as long as she could remember. It was a habit not easily broken. Not even by Karsh’s death, it seemed. Against the black screen of her closed eyelids, colors began to swirl. Red, orange, purple. A sunset sky. Seen through strange black stripes … thick poles of wrought iron blackened by age … the bars of a prison window! Ileana was wracked with a deep, deadly coldness, the bone-chilling damp of a musty jail cell. The sunset she saw through the high prison window, she suddenly understood, was the last she would ever see. Whoever she was, wherever she was, she was doomed. Her execution would take place at sunrise.

  Ileana fought to awaken, but something held her back, held her down. She was shackled to the stone floor. Heavy chains cut into her ankles and wrists.

  “Confess!” a shrill voice demanded. “Repent!” a merciless one ordered. “I accuse Abigail Antayus,” a third called out. A girl’s voice, this last one, a mere child. “She’s the one who enchanted me!”

  Ileana woke with a start. Drenched in perspiration, her heart palpitating wildly, she sat up abruptly in Karsh’s chair and tried to shake the terrifying nightmare from her mind. Her hand had fallen asleep. It tingled with pins and needles. She tried to lift it from the open book on her lap. Looking down upon it, she saw in Karsh’s precise, cramped handwriting the sentence: It began in Salem in 1692 …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE BEGINNING

  Ileana, beloved child, here is the tale as it was passed down to me. This much is history:

  The Salem madness erupted when two little girls, nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, began behaving oddly — screaming curses, having “fits” or seizures, and falling into “trances.” The girls and their friends, who began displaying similar behavior, had been listening to scary tales told by the Parris’s Indian-Caribbean slave, Tituba.

  Elizabeth, Abigail, and their friends were examined by local physicians — among them the eminent doctor Jacob DuBaer — and it was decided that they were under the influence of the devil.

  The children were then subjected to terrible pressure and disgusting concoctions meant to “help” them reveal the names of Satan’s followers, the witches who were causing their suffering. The terrified little girls named Tituba and two other women, one ill-tempered and disliked in the community, the other a helpless and possibly deranged beggar woman.

  Thus it began. Soon, other “witches” were revealed. They were imprisoned, tried, and with few exceptions, found guilty and executed. Many who were named as witches were women whose behavior or financial circumstances — in other words, their independence — marked them as different from what was expected of them in the 1600s.

  Our great ancestor Abigail Antayus Stetson was such a one.

  At least four things set Abigail apart from the other women of Salem. She was a brilliant physician, though only allowed to tend to women. Though married, she was known and called by her maiden name. Her husband, Samuel Stetson, a ship’s captain, treated her as an equal in all respects. And Abigail had a handsome dowry, which Captain Stetson allowed her to keep and spend as she wished.

  So she was educated, esteemed by her husband, and wealthy in her own right. All of whi
ch went against what was considered right and proper in the Salem colony. There were many who believed that Samuel was too easygoing with his young wife, that he was too charmed by her beauty and brilliance. They grumbled that young Abigail, with her healing herbs and potions, had cast a spell over the admired captain. Why else would he let her wander the town at all hours tending to the sick and needy rather than keeping her at home where she belonged to care for her own family?

  One who led the complaining chorus was Dr. Jacob DuBaer. This black-bearded bachelor used leeches, bloodletting, and harsh tonics in his practice. And was outraged that so many of Salem’s women — and too many of his male patients, as well — preferred Abigail Antayus’s methods to his own. In 1690, Samuel Stetson was killed during a storm at sea. Married at 17, widowed at 25, Abigail was left with three small children to care for and a tidy fortune, which many a man wished to share. Among those eager to wed the “poor widow woman” was Jacob DuBaer. But Abigail refused him.

  Like your own father, dear Ileana, your great ancestor Jacob was a jealous and unforgiving man. Two years later, in 1692, he took his revenge by naming Abigail as one of the witches of Salem.

  He wasn’t exactly wrong. Indeed, Abigail was a “witch.” Her creed, like ours, was to embrace and nurture all the creatures of Gaia, or Mother Earth. She practiced her healing in keeping with our purpose: so that all things might grow to their most bountiful goodness.

  Of course, you will recognize those words as one of the principles inscribed upon the Dome …

  Of course, Ileana thought, feeling unexplainably tired again, she had stared up at those words as a child sitting on Karsh’s lap, snuggling against his black velvet vest. The memory overwhelmed her. A river of unshed tears mounted inside her head, making it too heavy to hold up.

  As Ileana drifted off to sleep, Karsh’s journal sliding gently from her lap, another young witch was hearing the saying for the first time.

  “So that all things might grow to their most bountiful goodness,” Cam repeated, savoring the words.

  “You never heard that?” Shane guided her over a fern-filled bog in the woods. “It’s one of the sayings carved into the Unity Dome.”

  The grip of his firm hand, the intensity of his twinkling eyes, the obvious delight he took in teaching her about the island were more confusing than comforting.

  Several times, Jason’s face, his loving, concerned expression, his distress at the airport, returned disturbingly to Cam’s mind. It was a handsomer face than Shane’s — but no way had she ever felt this way around him. “The Unity Dome,” she repeated, bringing herself back to the present. “I haven’t been there yet,” she told Shane. “We’re going there for the … service.”

  “Karsh’s funeral.”

  Cam nodded. “So Coventry was settled in the 1700s.” She tried to get Shane back on track. He’d been telling her about the island.

  “As a refuge from prejudice and bloodshed on the mainland,” he explained. “The first to arrive were escapees from the witchcraft trials. And some people of mixed African and Caribbean blood, slaves or free citizens who brought with them Chango rituals and Voodoo spells. Lord Karsh’s ancestors were among them.

  “Later, from the frontier, white settlers with special gifts — healers, rainmakers, water dousers — and Native American shamans, or medicine men and women,” he added tactfully, “and immigrant Chinese soothsayers. Lady Fan’s family — she’s one of the Elders you’ll meet tomorrow. Her family arrived in the 1800s during the building of the intercontinental railway. They all found their way here. To freedom.”

  “You know a lot about this place.” Cam was impressed.

  “You will, too,” he assured her, “by the time you’re initiated.”

  If I’m initiated, Cam thought, then quickly changed the subject. “Is Crailmore near here?”

  “Crailmore’s to the north and west, about as far as you can get from here and still be on Coventry.”

  “My … Miranda’s there,” she told him.

  “I know,” he said gently.

  “Shane.” Cam stopped suddenly and touched his arm. “You would tell me if you thought she was in danger, right? If you thought Thantos was harming her?”

  He looked at her strangely. “Of course. But you’re her daughter. You’d sense if she was in danger.”

  Cam wanted to believe him.

  Then she felt it again. The certainty that they were being followed. Or watched. She whirled around and zoomed her telescopic eyes as far through the heavily wooded area as she could. She was able to see a great distance, tunnel-visioning through the dense canopy of leaves.

  Nothing.

  “Stop,” she instructed him. “Just stay still for a second. And tell me you don’t sense someone watching.”

  He hesitated, then let out a long sigh. “Sorry. But, no.”

  “So I’m being … childish … paranoid?” Cam asked, though now she knew she wasn’t.

  Shane leaned against the knotty bark of an oak tree. He was clearly trying to decide whether to tell her something or not. After a moment, he smiled — a signal that he’d made up his mind not to—and slid down the rough trunk of the tree, motioning for her to sit with him.

  Cam lost track of time as Shane chewed on a fallen pine needle and described how he’d grown up here among family, friends, teachers. He was a star, more gifted in the ways of the craft than his friends or relatives. His giftedness was noticed — and, he thought, rewarded — by one of the most powerful warlocks on the island, Lord Thantos DuBaer.

  “He took me in and trained me,” Shane confessed. “I spent years learning from him, under his guidance.”

  “You lived at Crailmore?” she ventured.

  “No. But every afternoon I’d spend with Thantos’s trainers in the caves beneath Crailmore.”

  “Caves?”

  “Underground, miles of them.” Shane made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Sacred and secret caves. It’s said that spirits of the dead can be summoned from there, that the walls hold long-buried secrets.”

  “Hmmm,” Cam mused. “If walls could talk —”

  “On Coventry, sometimes they can,” Shane teased, flashing one of his disturbingly handsome, dimpled smiles at her.

  “There’s a maze of interconnecting underground tunnels on the island,” he continued. “At one time, it was an underground railroad, a safe harbor for witches and warlocks who feared they were being hunted.”

  Ping! She felt it again. The word “hunted” tripped her inner alarm. She could practically feel eyes boring into her back. Someone, or something, was watching.

  Shane stood abruptly. “We’d better get you back. We promised your sister.”

  They took a different path back, this one narrow, rocky, and dense with thick, jutting roots of ancient trees. Still, it was odd that Camryn-the-Coordinated should fall. One foot unexpectedly got caught under a half-buried plank of wood. She lost her balance and did an embarrassing face-plant into the dirt.

  She wasn’t hurt. But that wasn’t the reason she refused Shane’s outstretched hand.

  Wood was not a conductor of electricity, yet Cam had felt a slight shock, an electric tingle shoot up her leg as she’d tripped. It grew stronger now as she pulled the board out of the earth and examined it carefully.

  “Are you going to set it on fire?” Shane teased. “Punish it for tripping you?”

  Cam ignored his attempt at cute.

  Covered with a decade’s worth of mold and dirt, the old plank could have been any random piece of wood in the forest.

  Cam knew it wasn’t.

  She squinted. Even with her extraordinary eyesight, she could barely make it out, but something — a sign, a symbol — had been carved into the wood. “Do you see this?” She stood up and handed it to Shane.

  He turned it over a few times and shook his head. “See what?”

  Using her fingernails, Cam tore away more layers of impacted dirt. The board was very faded, washed by years of m
oisture. Still, she could tell. Once, someone had lovingly carved a design into this worn plank. Once, it had been a sign, perhaps hung over the doorway of someone’s home.

  Instinctively, her fingers felt for the necklace she always wore, a delicate gold chain bearing a sun charm. It fit precisely into Alex’s moon charm, forming a perfect circle. The linked images, sun and moon, were the same design she could see in the plank she’d tripped over. There were words carved under the design. LunaSoleil, French for moon and sun.

  “My parents’ house is around here, isn’t it? Can you … can we see it?” Trembling, Cam looked up into Shane’s now-shaded eyes.

  He turned away from her. “It was torn down years ago.”

  He was lying.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A SAD GOOD-BYE

  This much Ileana would do. She would take the twins to the Unity Dome to say a final farewell to the old warlock they all had loved.

  For this she had bathed scrupulously. She had perfumed her scrubbed skin with rose water. Shampooed her hair with an infusion of flaxseed oil, aloe, and rosemary, then unknotted her tangled white-gold tresses with the wide-toothed comb Karsh had carved for her. Long ago. When Ileana was a child, younger than Alex and Camryn were now.

  When she called the twins from the gate of her cottage, she could see in their eyes the wonder and approval she hadn’t allowed herself to feel.

  “Ileanna,” Cam whispered, awed. “You look … beautiful.”

  “Like a goddess,” Alex blurted.

  Ileana’s jaw tightened as she fought back emotion. “Not half as good as Lord Karsh deserves.” She’d tried to sound crisp, matter-of-fact, but it had come out a weepy whisper. To pull herself together, she studied the twins severely. Cam was wearing a long, delicate dress that seemed familiar to Ileana, a gossamer gown of palest pink with slender shoulder straps.

  “It’s yours,” Cam confessed, hoping her guardian witch would be okay with her choice. She really had no clue what was considered proper for a Coventry funeral. Everything she’d brought seemed beyond wrong.

  And she could hardly look to Alex as an example.