Witch Twins (2 page)

“Claire, you really shouldn’t sneak through other people’s things,” said Luna sternly.

“Loon, what are we going to do? She’s gonna run off with our own dad!”

Luna was silent, thinking. Outside, a low wind had kicked up, and the patter of a cold, dark March rain began to
plink
and then to drum on the roof. It was not until Luna spoke in her grave, almost-one-Star-witch voice that she knew she was making the decision that had been brewing inside her all night.

“Methinks we will have to call on Head Witch Arianna.”

And just saying the words out loud gave Luna a little shudder. It went right from the top of her head all the way down to her toes.

Calling on Head Witch Arianna meant that this was serious business.

H
EAD WITCH ARIANNA WAS
also known as Grandy. She was Claire and Luna’s grandmother, and she lived way out in the country, in Bramblewine, Pennsylvania. To get to Bramblewine, Claire and Luna had to take the Septa local train from Philadelphia’s Thirtieth Street Station, heading west. The train stopped twelve times before Bramblewine. By the thirteenth stop, the twins were always the last two passengers on the train. (In fact, most people did not even know there was a thirteenth stop.)

Claire liked how Bramblewine station was weedy and run-down. Spooky! It would have been kind of cool and kind of scary to be stuck here all alone. Luckily, Grandy was always waiting for them in her long, black Lincoln Continental, a car so old that Claire and Luna’s mother remembered riding around in it when she was a girl.

“And that is another strange thing about your grandmother,” Jill Bundkin mused. “I’ve never known anything of hers to break down. Not that rambling old car, not the toaster; why, there’s never even been a leak in the roof, and that sure is one crumbly house that I grew up in. Things ought to be running to ruin.”

What their mother did not know (and Claire and Luna did) was that Grandy was a five-star witch. So as soon as any of her things started to get old or worn-out, Grandy simply repaired them with spells. Repair spells are the simplest kind, so easy even a baby witch could do them. For example, how hard is it to clap your hands three times and say:

I call upon the Kitchen Fixer.

Recharge yourself, electric mixer!

But their mother did not have any idea about repair spells, because she herself was not a witch. (Most everyone knows that witchcraft, if it runs in a family at all—which is rare—most often skips a generation. It is a very recessive gene.)

For as long as they could remember, on the first weekend of every month, the twins had visited Grandy out in Bramblewine. Grandy herself rarely came into the city, not for any witch-based reason, but because she hated pigeons. “Their awful red eyes and feet! Their garbage-eating ways! Give me the grace and beauty of a hummingbird any day!” Grandy always said.

Justin used to come along, too, but last year he had joined the debate team, and now he was busy with weekend debate competitions. Well, that was his official excuse, the one that the twins were instructed to give to Grandy, but really there wasn’t much for Justin to do out in Bramblewine. No neighbors, no television, not even a basketball hoop for entertainment.

“Bramblewine is bo-ring,” Justin said, “and I can’t play hacky sack for a whole entire weekend.”

But if you’re a witch, Bramblewine is one of the most exciting places in the world. It is like traveling to the Great Barrier Reef if you are a scuba diver, or to Colorado if all you love to do is ski and hike. Not only does it have ideal stargazing skies, but it is also a habitat for more witch-friendly species of mushrooms and flowering plants than anywhere else except, reportedly, a remote island off the coast of New Zealand.

“Off to Bramblewine,” said Claire happily as the twins sat together on the train the weekend after what they both referred to as Bad News Night. “Grandy will know what to do about old Fluff.” She squeezed her sister’s hand reassuringly. Luna could be a worry wart.

“I just hope it’s okay to go during a
middle
weekend,” worried Luna. “As long as I can remember, we’ve gone on the
first
weekend of the month.”

“Grandy said it was fine,” said Claire. “You’re such a worrywart.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not, I was crossing my fingers against what you said.”

“No crossies count, no takebacks,” said Claire quickly.

Luna stuck out her tongue and Claire stuck out hers.

Luna rolled her eyes and so Claire rolled hers back. She knew it annoyed Luna when she copycatted.

“Maaaaay-rose!” called the conductor, stepping into the car as the train heaved to a stop in front of the flagstone station that marked Mayrose. Claire stared out the window and counted as a dozen people got out. Five minutes later, the conductor shouted, “Silvertoad!” and six more people stepped off the train.

Now there were two stops left before Bramblewine; Langham and Dillweed. Claire counted as three more people detrained in Langham. That left the usual last person, an elderly man wearing a felt hat and a pea coat on the train bound for Bramblewine. He was sound asleep as always.

And just as the train creaked around a narrow bend, the man woke up with a start. Just as he always did.

“Diiiiill-weed!” hollered the conductor as the train rolled to a stop. Claire watched as the man touched his hat, collected his newspaper, and departed.

Poor man. He always looked sad to get off the train, Claire thought. Sad, and a little confused.

And now (as always) she and Luna were left all alone.

After Dillweed, the countryside changed. The trees became taller and twistier, the grass grew wild and curled like seaweed. Birds seemed to know things; their eyes watched roundly down from high, bare branches. Even the train itself seemed to feel the extra effort to get to Bramblewine. Its wheels ground heavily on its tracks; it squeaked and hissed a final weighty sigh as it pulled into Bramblewine station, which was just an unmarked tin shed and a wooden bench.

As was his habit, the conductor did not even step into their car for this last stop. His voice floated vaguely from somewhere up front.

“Braaamble-wiiine …”

“I see Grandy!” Luna picked up her overnight bag and jumped down the aisle and out the door. Claire knew that her sister was a scaredy-cat as well as a worry-wart and was always nervous to be alone on the train. Claire, who wasn’t frightened at all, followed casually behind.

Grandy was waiting in her Lincoln Continental. Her Maine coon cat, Wilbur, was curled up in the back seat. Grandy herself was dressed up in a tasteful dark suit and silver star earrings. She looked businesslike and slightly preoccupied as she gave each twin a birdlike peck on the cheek.

“Be extra sweet to Wilbur. Yesterday, he ate a quarter pound of dryer lint, thinking that it was a mouse, and he hasn’t been himself since,” she told them.

Wilbur opened one glossy green eye, yawned, and then settled back into sleep. He was sixty-eight human years old and could eat anything, and he was almost never awake. Secretly, Claire hoped that when the time came to get her one-star-witch kitten, it would be a whole lot cuter than fat, bored Wilbur.

“Grayer than gray makes a beautiful day” sang Claire as they sped along one of the hundred long, snaking country roads that led to Grandy’s house. In Bramblewine, none of the roads was marked, but all of them could lead you to where you needed to go if you concentrated hard enough.

“Claire, please put on your seat belt,” ordered Grandy.

“You’re not angry?” asked Luna. “That we came in the middle of the month?”

“Of course not,” snapped Grandy. “It’s always scrumptious to have my twinnies with me.”

Claire crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Luna as if to say
I told you so,
although she was not convinced. She could tell by Grandy’s distracted face and slightly grumpy mood that this weekend just might be the wrong time to ask Grandy for a favor. Especially a witch favor.

With witches, timing is everything.

The car pulled up the rutted drive that wound all the way to Grandy’s house. The driveway was filled with several other musty, dusty, dark old Lincoln Continentals.

“What’s going on?” asked Luna.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m hosting a retreat,” said Grandy. “Just a gathering of some of my nearest and dearest of the coven. Tonight’s topic is about saving the Goodacre Nature Preserve, where we hold our annual Inspirational Tales Evensong. And to think those greedy developers are trying to replace it with a car dealership! Well, they don’t know what they’re up against.” She got out of the car and slammed the door so hard it creaked and fell off with a thunk.

Quickly Grandy snapped her fingers and cast:

Oh, what a bore
—

Repair yourself, door!

And the door jumped back to place and rebolted itself to its hinges, good as new.

Grandy was a whiz when it came to spells.

She’ll fix the Fluffy problem, easy, thought Claire.

In the kitchen, Claire’s nose (which was good enough to smell an avocado) picked out crescent cookies, sugared popovers, and chicken soup made with garlic, rosemary, barley, and allspice. She could also sniff out that all of the food had been made with spells. It had that special, no-mistakes whiff to it. Regular cooking was filled with spill smells and burn smells and oops-I-added-an-extra-teaspoon-of-lemon-zest smells.

Witch creations, on the other hand, were perfect right down to the last minute and milligram.

Voices flowed from the parlor. Loud, bossy voices. Grandy’s nearest and dearest had been around for a long time, and they all had a lot of opinions.

“Don’t be shy, you know the gang.” Grandy shooed them. I’m just going to doctor up this dinner. Well be eating in a few minutes.”

“Grandy, will we have some time alone with you, later?” asked Luna. “Because we have a terrible prob—”

“Anything you have to say can wait until later,” said Grandy. She sniffed first with one nostril, then the other. “Go, twins, go.”

Which was actually a little spell, as Grandy had sniffed them right into the parlor. The other witches were upon them instantly.

“Well, if it isn’t our favorite twin set!”

“My, how they’ve grown!”

“Come closer, let’s see your palms!”

And so Claire and Luna were passed and poked and prodded as Grandy’s friends Diana, Aerianrhod, Isis, Demeter, and Mikki all grabbed at their palms and looked into their eyes, trying to tell their fate and fortune.

“You’ll have to let me cast your runes,” exclaimed Isis. She was a magnificent old witch who, it was rumored, had stopped the last two hurricanes that had swept the Carolinas. “I’ve got some sublime new stones.”

“And I’ll read your cards,” said Diana, who was Grandy’s oldest friend from college and the most elegant of all. Diana had long, gray hair that she kept in a twist, and she was always wearing something snakeskin. Today she had on a pair of snakeskin spike heels.

Usually it was fun to be around other witches. Since one of the most important rules of the Witch Decree was No Telling, Claire and Luna had to be extremely secretive about even their smallest witch habits (like keeping one eye open when they sneezed or yawned). Grandy was always warning them that if their powers ever became known, the Decree Keepers up in Maine would snatch them away, pronto. So it was only in the company of other witches that the girls could feel truly comfortable.

But this weekend, the Fluffy problem was too distracting for Claire to feel too at ease.

After an early dinner served at the long cherrywood table in Grandy’s dining room, the witches got down to business. They decided that, in order to save the Nature Preserve from developers, they would invoke a five-star spell. To Claire and Luna, the spell sounded complicated—all about hexing the topsoil so that it would be too rocky to break ground. There was lots of talk about soil components that was very boring for the twins.

With so much excited conversation, the girls were forgotten. Claire nibbled a crescent cookie that tasted too perfect. Secretly, she preferred her father’s cooking, burns, spills, and all. Last weekend, he had made buckwheat pancakes with huckleberry syrup. And every time he flipped the pan, he said “
Voilà!
”

Soon he would be making pancakes in Texas. Saying “
Voilà!
” for Fluffy and Houston, his new family. Claire’s eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away quickly, because the other witches could be nosy about why you were crying, and they always hoped it was about boys so they could get you to try out their latest love potions.

After dinner, she and Luna cleared the table and, because they were at Grandy’s, they were allowed to perform a joint kitchen cleanup spell. Cleaning spells were almost as easy as repair spells. For this one, they held their hands crossed over the sink and chanted,

Everything dirty

And all that went stray
—

Be washed, be dried,

And put away.

Dishes floated through the air and stacked themselves in the dishwasher. Counters were wiped; leftovers wrapped up and slid into the refrigerator as if by invisible hands. But that still left the jobs of sweeping the floor, which is actually a very hard spell, and sorting out the recycling, a modern spell still being test run up in Maine.

From the dining room came shouts and laughter.

“I don’t think now is the time to bother Grandy with our Fluffy problem,” said Claire as she put away the broom and dustpan.

“It’s only seven o’clock. Maybe in an hour,” agreed Luna.

So they went upstairs to Grandy’s library and looked through her Big Book of Shadows. To get into the right mood, they dressed up in Grampy’s velvet smoking jackets and hats, which were kept on hooks on the back of the library door. The girls had never known their Grampy, who had been a nightclub singer and had disappeared mysteriously ten years ago. But Grandy and their mother missed him horribly.

“I think we would have liked him,” said Luna. “At least, his clothes are very stylish.”