T*Witches: Building a Mystery by Randi Reisfeld, H.B. Gilmour Page B

yet?"
     
    "Approached?" Alex asked.
     
    "By the messenger," Dave explained. "The one sent to lure you to Thantos."
     
    "Dad... Dave... you know about him?" Cam was shocked. "Are you... like us?"
     
    "Like enough to have served and protected you these fourteen years," Karsh confided. "But no, David is not exactly like you. He is more like... like Sara was."
     
    "My mother?" Alex stiffened.
     
    "Your devoted protector," Karsh gently corrected her.
     
    "I tried to tell you before," Cam whispered. "Sara wasn't our mother. She couldn't have children—"
     
    Alex whirled on Cam. "How do you know? You don't know anything."
     
    "I... I've been doing some research. On my computer. I was going to tell you, Als. I tried to tell you just now. But you were too busy trashing my... my mom. Or Emily, or whatever I'm supposed to call her." She turned to her father. "Does Mom know, too—about us, about the messenger?"
     
    "No, honey," Dave said, then he looked to Karsh for help.
     
    "I thought it best—a protective measure," Karsh explained to Cam. "For you, for her..." The old man coughed. His voice, when he spoke again, was strained; it was still coarse and grating, but barely above a whisper. "There is much you must learn, my dear ones. And little I can tell you now. But I'll..." He grinned his thin-lipped grin. "I'll give it a shot. Stay, David. You might as well. You've proven your loyalty to Camryn—and to Alexandra."
     
    "And it's been my pleasure," Dave said. "But old friend, Lord Karsh, why didn't you tell me there were two of them? Twins."
     
    "You might be more comfortable sitting," Karsh suggested. And they did. Dave moved piles of paper off his old brown leather sofa and they arranged themselves on it: Dave in the center, with Cam snuggling against him, Alex on his other side, leaning on the armrest, chin in hand.
     
    "The questions," Karsh began. "The universal questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?" He rubbed his hands together. "Let's start at the beginning. Your beginning, actually. Not the beginning. I'm far too tired to go all the way back."
     
    They were born, he told them, two minutes apart on a most auspicious day—October thirty-first, Halloween. One of them was born listening to owls call and bats shriek, just as the full moon was setting; the other, a moment after daylight, squinting into the rising sun. And they were named for Apollo, the sun god, and his twin sister, Artemis, the hunter.
     
    Their mother's name was Miranda.
     

Chapter 12 – The Beginning
     

    Miranda glanced out at the fading moon. Pale and full, it lingered in the morning sky. Already, the new day shone through the window. Its golden rays lit the tiny, perfect infants she held in her arms.
     
    The first born, Artemis, stirred restlessly against her, while her sister, Apolla, but a few minutes old, slept deeply and contentedly.
     
    Sitting beside them was their father, Aron. In his strong hands he held the magnificent necklaces he had fashioned for them, hammering delicate gold into sun and moon. For it had been foretold that their birth would bridge the day and night.
     
    Miranda was already wearing the wondrous necklace her husband had made for her. Its pendant was a perfect circle composed of sun and moon. It cleverly matched the two amulets, the sacred charms he'd created for their children, which fit together into a perfect sphere.
     
    Weary, Miranda closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, aware of the fragile, warm weight of the newborns in her arms and of her husband's joy and wonder.
     
    "Aron." There was a knock at the cottage door. "I need a word with you."
     
    "Thantos?" Aron rose, smiling. "Come in, brother. Come see your nieces... Uncle Thantos," he added, chuckling.
     
    "I am not alone," came the gruff reply. "And who is with me, you would not have in your home. Come out, then, come to us."
     
    Aron went to the window. It had been clear a moment ago, its heavy shutters thrown