he’d come over here. We could phone —”
“If their phone’s still working. When Mrs. Fretts goes on a bender, everything gets shut off sooner or later. Telephone, electric … At least they’ve got a wood stove to keep the place warm.”
Cam flopped down on the twin bed nearest the window. “I’m tired … and out of ideas —”
“That was fast,” Alex teased. “World record, I think. Okay, wheels, wheels, wheels. We need someone with four-wheel drive and a license.”
Cam said nothing, but gazed out the window. “Is it cold in here?” she asked after a moment, shuddering. She sounded distant, distracted.
Alex stopped pacing, fell back onto the second bed, and studied her sister. The sudden weariness, the chill… Cam’s black-rimmed gray eyes seemed unfocused, as if she were looking inward, not at the silent snowfall outside.
Finally, Cam asked slowly, dreamily, “Als … do you know anyone about five-ten, with brown, I think, hair kind of curling out of a black knit cap? A boy with black eyes and a dimple in his chin?”
“Crooked smile, with a classic little space between his two front teeth? Andy Yatz,” Alex answered, astounded.
“Who’s that?” Cam blinked, then winced and covered her eyes.
“This guy I went to Crow Creek Regional with. But I never mentioned him to you —”
“He’s going to” — the phone rang — “call,” Cam finished.
“Mojo girl,” Alex exclaimed, leaping up. “You are such the sibyl, seer, and psychic!”
Her twin’s excited shout made Cam flinch again. “Chill,” she ordered as Alex flew out the door and thundered down the stairs to answer the phone. “How unfair is it?” Cam called weakly after her. “I get the headache, you get the phone call from the hottie.”
For a second, a split but stellar second, Cam had thought the smiling boy she’d seen in her premonition was Shane. She sighed. Just weeks ago, the teen warlock who had been sent by their hulking uncle Thantos to snare them had switched sides. He’d gone from being thetwins’ enemy to their ally; from serving Thantos to saving Cam’s gullible best friend, Beth.
Cam wondered what Shane was doing now, back on Coventry Island. She wondered whether she’d ever see him again.…
“It was Andy!” Alex was back three minutes and two aspirin later. “He’s home from college and heard I was in town. He’s coming right over. Said sure he’d drop us at the Fretts place, but he won’t hang around if Ev is there,” she told Cam, who was resting her forehead against the icy windowpane, staring out at a gale of snow blowing off bare, wind-swirled trees.
Shane.
Alex caught Cam’s melancholy vibe.
“Don’t,” her sister warned her, without turning around.
“I was just going to say I hope we see him again,” Alex explained.
“If he’s still alive,” Cam said. “He crossed our vengeful uncle, remember? So … you were saying?”
“Actually, Andy was saying” — Alex crossed to the window and casually stroked her sister’s hair, which, if the situation had been reversed, Alex would totally have hated — “that he heard Evan’s really changed a lot and kind of doesn’t like anyone anymore. If Ev’s not around, though, Andy’ll drive us back.”
Despite her headache, Cam was pleased that — like Alex’s gifts — the hunches and premonitions her Marble Bay buds called “Cam’s mojo” worked this far from home. She’d never heard anything about Andy Yatz before and suddenly she’d seen this hunk-a-rama in a red plaid lumberjack shirt and black knit cap dialing a telephone number and grinning like mad.
It wasn’t Shane but, as boys in visions went, this one was way cooler than the scary glimpse she’d had of Evan and his skanky, tattooed friends.
Andy Yatz drove up in an old Chevy station wagon. Alex saw him from the guest-room window. Rifling through her suitcase for her black turtleneck sweater, she hollered down to Cam to get the door. Which Cam did, a
Weston Ochse, David Whitman