Free T*Witches: Kindred Spirits by H.B. Gilmour, Randi Reisfeld

remembered b-ball boy’s dash to the ticket counter when she and Cam were boarding.
    “Back up, why would you think my leaving the funeral had anything to do with Shane?” Now Cam was curious.
    “Hello. Because of the … Look!” Alex’s flashlight beam caught something red glinting through the trees. A dash in the mirage’s direction proved it to be …
    “A stained-glass window.” Cam stopped alongside her sister and stared awestruck at the piece of crimson glass dangling from the high window of a stone tower in the middle of the woods.
    Without another word, they thrashed through bramble and brush until Alex’s flashlight clanged against something metallic. “It’s a gate. Or was,” she said, illuminating a panel of rusty wrought-iron spikes.
    Cam’s shoe found a second section underfoot. It was lying on a slab of cobblestones, timeworn and green with moss. Looking down at it, she saw that there was a rectangle cut out of this piece of gate exactly the shape and size of the board she’d found. She reached for Alex’s hand and was met halfway by it. Together they moved along the remnants of a cobblestone path toward what they now knew stood just beyond the trees.
    The path led them to a crumbling rock wall and through a stone archway buckling under a dense tangle of wild roses.
    As they passed through the archway, the clouds thathad darkened the night shifted. Moonlight illuminated a breathtaking sight. Before them, a magnificent ruin reared. The remains of what had once been an imposing stone cottage, a country home easily twice the size of Ileana’s LunaSoleil.
    Still clutching each other’s hands, Alex and Cam walked slowly toward the house. The cobblestone path disappeared as they picked their way through a bramble of overgrown weeds, flowers, and wild herbs, which had once been a lovingly cared-for garden.
    Aside from the electric tingle that had shot through her the moment the house came into view, Cam was unexpectedly impressed. A clear picture hadn’t formed in her mind, but she’d never imagined something as big and clearly once beautiful as this. It wasn’t as showy as the estates in The Heights, Marble Bay’s most exclusive district, but it definitely rivaled her home.
    “It
is
your home,” Alex cut in, awed. “Cam, we were born here.”
    Cam did feel surprisingly moved, psyched, and proud. Her eyes had begun to tear. She didn’t want Alex to notice, so she turned away and pretended to be casually checking out the moonlit
casa
.
    While it was easy to see how amazing the cottage must have been, up close it was clear that time had taken a fierce toll on the place. There were gaping holes in thewooden shingles of the dormers and roof. White mold dappled the rest. Ivy, out of control, strangled a dilapidated chimney, while a wisteria vine, its purple flowers dangling like bunches of grapes, its branches grown thick as arms, crushed the front of the house, blocking the front door and covering the mullioned windows.
    The windows that were not closed off by nature had been boarded up; a few, high up like the broken stained-glass pane Alex had spotted, hung jagged, dangerous, and out of reach.
    “No way in,” Cam was about to conclude, until she noticed something that felt out of place. At the back of the house was a large mound of leaves, twigs, and rocks — a mountain, too carefully constructed to have been blown there, by wind and rain. It was covering something. Cam telescoped through the pile, then kicked away the leaves. “Alex!” she called out excitedly. “There’s a cellar door — and someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep it hidden.”
    “Score! You go, tracker girl!” Alex was by Cam’s side in a flash. She reached over to pull the double doors open when a familiar feeling of dizziness stopped her. She knew what would follow: The ringing in her ears would mute every sound of the forest, of the night, of her sister’s voice drifting toward her now from far, far away.