T*Witches: The Power of Two (7 page)

The file in her dad's study was labeled FAMILY PAPERS.

That's the one, Cam thought. If my birth certificate is anywhere in this house, it'll be in this file.

Ever since she'd gotten back to Marble Bay three days ago she was on a mission. Mission: idiotic, that is. As if she needed proof of what she already knew, proof that would get Beth off her back.

She was Camryn Alicia Barnes, daughter of Emily and David Barnes. Born to them on October 31. Beth was wrong, wrong, wrong to suspect anything but. Like she was adopted. Right. Like she had a twin!

So false was this "investigation," she couldn't even admit to her parents she was doing it. So she'd waited until they were out of the house to do her sleuthing.

Already, she'd rifled through tons of old baby pictures. She hadn't come across any of her mom pregnant, but that proved exactly what? Her mom was camera-shy when expecting? No great revelation.

She had unearthed Dylan's "at birth" shot, taken in the hospital, a wrinkled little red-faced infant swathed in a blue baby blanket. That there wasn't a matching one of her didn't freak her. It was somewhere, no doubt.

Now, Cam eyeballed the contents of the file. As advertised, there were several significant family documents. The deed to the house. Her parents' marriage certificate. Her granddad's will. Stocks, bonds, money stuff. And, score! A birth certificate!

As Cam started to unfold it, her cell phone rang, startling her. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

Alex, she thought. Then she realized, with a start, that she'd been expecting to hear from Montana-girl. Well, half expecting, anyway. Not really. It was just a slim possibility.

The day the vacation ended, Cam had been seized by a wild impulse. With the excuse that she thought she wanted to buy a souvenir for Dylan, she'd talked her parents into swinging by the park on the way to the airport. With the minivan purring outside the gate, she'd run up to the ticket booth and slipped a piece of paper to the girl behind the window. On it Cam had scrawled her full name, birthday, e-mail, landline and cell. Without explanation, she'd shoved the paper at Alex.

Alexandra. The girl with her face. The girl with whom she'd... she'd what? Whispered witchy rhymes, stopped an accident, saved a family?
No way, Cam reminded herself. It never happened. It was just another eerie episode in her increasingly weird life.

Still she'd been waiting for the call. She'd compulsively kept her phone at her side and checked her e-mail hourly. So far, zilch.

Except now. Cam braced herself and hit the TALK button.

"Where on earth
is
Camryn Sandiego?"

So much for premonitions, Cam thought, instantly recognizing Beth's teasing voice.

Cam laughed nervously. "Channeling Bree much?" Their bud Brianna was the one always riffing on Cam's name.

"Speaking of Bree," Beth responded, "and the rest of our friends, you remember them. Names like Kristen, Sukari, Amanda? Everyone wants to know where you've been hiding. You've become a phantom since we got home. Report your location—longitude and latitude, please?"

"I'm home. Where else would I be?"

"And answering the phone is, what, too far to stretch? I've been texting, and just tried your land line."

"Hmmm, I thought the phone might be screwy," Cam lied, feeling as if Beth could see her, had caught her rifling through her parents' private papers. "Anyway, I'm glad it worked this time. So what
is
up?"

"That's the question, Cami. What
is
up? No one's heard from you. You're not returning messages—"

"Come on, Beth, it's just that I've been, you know, busy."

Preoccupied was more like it. Trying to find her birth certificate. Trying to pretend that Alex didn't exist... while hoping she'd call. Trying to remember for the police, who were interviewing everyone who'd spoken with the still-missing Marleigh Cooper, exactly what she'd seen the day of the finals. Without, of course, mentioning the nightmare man.

"Cam," Beth asked gently, "you're not still mad at me, are you?"

"For what?"

On the other end of the phone, Beth sighed. "You know."

Of course she did. For insisting that Alex, a complete stranger, had to be Cam's twin. For planting the seed of doubt in Cam's own mind. For just... doing what a bff—best friend forever—would do: say what was really on her mind. Tell the truth. Try to be supportive.

"Even if I was mad at you," Cam rushed to reassure Beth. "You know, where you're concerned, I'm incapable of holding a grudge—"

"Prove it. Meet me for pizza in fifteen."

"Wait!" Cam laughed. "I hear something. Aha! The sound of my stomach rumbling. Okay, Fish, give me and my humongo appetite twenty minutes, and we'll meet you at PITS."

Her spirits high, Cam hung up and finally looked at the birth certificate in her hand. It read, "Dylan Michael Barnes." Stashing it back in the file, she zipped through all the other papers. Not one was her birth certificate.

Pie in the Sky, aka PITS, had been a hangout for Cam and her friends since the beginning of junior high. Because the gang totaled a half dozen—besides Cam, Beth, and Brianna, there was Kristen, Sukari Woodard, and Amanda Carter—Cam's dad had tagged them the "Six Pack." The label had stuck.

"So is everyone annoyed at me, or what?" Cam, sitting in a booth across from Beth, fiddled with her phone, making sure it was on and powered up. Just in case.

"I covered for you," Beth responded, sipping her soda. "Told them you had to do the mother-daughter bonding thing—you know, since Dylan's away for a while. They totally bought it. Everyone knows how tight you and your mom are."

Cam eyed her knowingly. "And sort of insinuated I'm not ready to face anyone since I blew the game?"

"Posttraumatic soccer stress—they bought it," Beth admitted. "And, no, I never mentioned she-who-shall-be-nameless, your Montana mirror image. I'll leave that to you." She smiled, shrugging. "They wouldn't have believed me, anyway."

"Thanks, Bethie," Cam said gratefully.

Beth shrugged and toyed with her straw. "Anyway, everyone's consumed with trying to figure out what happened to Marleigh Cooper."

"Yeah, there's a motion to rename the town 'Marleigh Bay.'" Their waiter, a tall, dark-haired boy with a cute, almost-shy smile, had arrived and inserted himself into the convo.

For some weird reason, Beth lit up. "You-so-clever, Jason." Then she kicked Cam, a signal that Cam basically didn't get. So she ignored it and began to order. "We'll do the half veggie pie and—"

"Half extra cheese," Jason finished for her. "Comin' right up." He left, still smiling.

"How'd he know that?"
Beth rolled her eyes. "Figure it out."

"Sorry." Cam laughed. "Flight figure-it-out is way overbooked. I'll have to put that one on standby."

"Oh, no, not again," someone at the next table groaned. He was looking at the TV perched over the counter. "Another Marleigh Cooper update. Right in the middle of the game."

"That's the mother," the girl sitting with him said. "Poor woman. Shhhh, I want to hear her."

Cam and Beth turned toward the screen, where a petite, well-dressed woman, her eyes puffy, face contorted in misery, was being besieged by reporters with microphones. Desperately wringing her hands, she was visibly shaking.

"Marleigh's mom looks beyond freaked out," Beth whispered.

"Mrs. Cooper," a reporter shouted, "any news? Can you give us... anything?"

"Leave her alone," someone off-screen whimpered. The camera pulled back to reveal Tonya Gladstone, protectively pressed against Mrs. Cooper.

"Wow, it's Tonya. Talk about bizarre," Cam said. "She's a mess. She must've lost ten pounds in the week we were gone."

Marleigh's mother gratefully grasped Tonya's hand.

"Tonya, over here." A newswoman stuck a microphone into her face. "It's been over a week. Do you still feel hopeful that Marleigh will be found?"

"Of course I do," Tonya responded forcefully. "I just know my friend Marleigh is going to be okay. She has to be," she added pathetically.

"You should hear Brianna on the subject," Beth said, imitating Bree's breathless gush. "Guess who's become the ultimate
superstar
? Tonya! Tweeting! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. She's had a miracle cure and thrown away her crutches. Guess they didn't look telegenic enough."

"You've got Brianna down," Cam marveled.

"Yeah, she thinks it's the mother."

"The mother what?"

"Just that there's something wrong in mom-ville. That Mom Cooper staged the whole thing—"

"Staged it? Why would she do that?" Cam rubbed her arms.

"Bree says Mrs. C is supposed to be this totally controlling stage mother who runs every part of Marleigh's life—and that this whole thing's a publicity stunt engineered by 'Mommy Dearest.'"

Although Cam had been preoccupied, there was no escaping headline news. And Cam really had thought she'd heard it all. The rumors. The gossip. The faux sightings. The psychic predictions. The endless TV news "bulletins," and those cheesy scrawls across the bottom of the screen. The posts. No update on Marleigh's Facebook page. Marleigh music had shot to the top of the charts—even though the "disappeared diva" had only released one album. It seemed everyone was using them as ring tones. If this was, as some insisted, all a publicity stunt, well... it was the "mother" of all publicity stunts.

"Alrighty then." The lanky waiter reappeared with their pizza—and a huge grin. "Please note," he said, setting the pie down between them, "the extra cheese half has not run into the more contained veggie side. We pride ourselves here on the no-spillover rule."

Cam blinked up at him, mystified. But Beth's elbow to her ribs informed her that she was expected to say something. "Thanks, uh, that's great, Jordan."

"English-as-a-second-language," Beth quickly explained to the boy. "She totally meant Jason."

"What's with the quick defense?" Cam hissed, when he walked away.

"Camryn. He's so cute. He's trying to be funny. He's into you. Remembering his name would be a plus—even just to be polite."

"Who's into me?" Cam asked, surprised, checking out the gangly guy. "Do I even know him?"

Beth rolled her eyes again. "His name's Jason Weissman. He's a senior. He practically interrogates me about you every time I see him."

"You're kidding—"

"So not," Beth said, gingerly cutting a slice of the extra cheese for herself. "Anyway, polling the Six-Pack: Kris agrees with Brianna that Marleigh's mom's a suspect. Sukari is thumbs-up on the publicity stunt, to make Marleigh's music more popular. But she doesn't think Mrs. Cooper's in on it. And Amanda's with me, hoping Marleigh's okay."

"Put me on that list, too," Cam mused. "No one's said anything about the stalker fan thing?"

"Did you?" Beth asked. "When you first talked to the police?"
"I completely forgot it," Cam admitted.

"Me, too," Beth consoled her. "They haven't been playing that angle, which, when you think about it, is weird."

Cam mused, "Remember, at the game, Marleigh's comment about it all being so "tragic," or something. At first I thought she was being dramatic about Tonya's sprained ankle. But Marleigh seemed to think something else was wrong with Tonya—"

"She's not doing too well. Understandably," Beth said, glancing up at the television screen. "Hold up, Marleigh's mom's on again."

Cam turned back to the update.

"If anyone knows where my baby is, please just bring her back safely. Marleigh, if you're watching, I love you, honey. I miss you." Mrs. Cooper tried to say more, but couldn't. Unable to keep from crying, she hid her face in her hands.

Feeling a little teary-eyed herself, Cam remembered her own mom's reaction to Marleigh's disappearance. "I can't think of anything worse than losing a child," Emily had said.