T*Witches: The Power of Two by Randi Reisfeld, H.B. Gilmour Read Free Book Online Page B

outlined against the tangerine afternoon sky.
     
    At the top of the ride, holding tight to the safety bar in front of them, were two people, a man and a woman. Between them, glowing like a separate sun, a gleaming, dazzling, radiant jewel, was a child. A girl. A little girl. Very little, very young.
     
    "I'll be out in a minute, okay?" Beth repeated, disappearing through the door labeled COWGIRLS.
     
    Cam nodded, or thought she did. Then, just as it had at the soccer game, a cold sweat soaked her, an icy breeze set her shivering, the thudding of her pulse was suddenly louder than the laughter and chatter of the crowd around her.
     
    She didn't know what was wrong. She only knew that something very, very bad was about to happen.
     

Chapter 9 — Goodnight Moon
     

    Racing through Big Sky, Cam retraced her path past snack stands and ticket booths, the Wild West saloon, the sheriff's office. Startling tourists and scattering those in her way, she ran until, finally, she arrived, perplexed and panting, back at the Ol' Wagon Wheel.
     
    Instinctively, her head jerked up. The late afternoon sun was fading over the horizon. A full moon shone directly overhead. How extraordinary, she thought, the sun and moon visible in the same sky.
     
    The Ferris wheel had stopped. Empty carts and those filled with people rocked gently, silhouetted in space. New passengers were being ushered onto the ride. But it was the metal basket on top, swaying at the very crest of the wheel, that captured Cam's attention.
     
    In that cart, fifty, sixty feet above the park, exactly as she had pictured them, a family waited for the ride to re-start. A young father, his smiling wife, and their baby daughter. The man had one arm wrapped tightly around his child's tiny waist. With the other, he was pointing at the early moon and whispering in his daughter's ear.
     
    Cam saw it in impossible detail. The little girl's worried smile, her dainty hands clutching at her father's shirt.
     
    And then she saw the bar above them, the steel rod from which the cart swung. The once sturdy pole that fixed the steel basket to the ride's frame seemed slightly lopsided. And loose. Two huge bolts usually held it to the Ferris wheel. Only one of them was left—and it looked as though it were tearing away from the shaft.
     
    Cam squinted at the bar, zoned in as if her eyes were a telescope capable of focusing on the distant, dangerously loose bolt.
     
    A jolt, one strong gust of wind, and it would come undone. The cart would be wrenched from the rod above it, tear off the ride's frame, and plummet to the ground.
     
    Cam wanted to scream but, just as on the soccer field, no sound came. She pointed, but no one was watching...
     
    Except...
     
    Alex's high-speed scramble had also ended at the Ol' Wagon Wheel. She stood on the other side of the ride, directly opposite Cam. She was staring up at the very same cart, listening to the soft clanging of the loose bar and the jiggling bolt that held it.
     
    Alex closed her eyes and the sounds became more distinct. Now she could hear a gentle voice telling a story—and she realized that, impossibly, the voice belonged to the man in the cart.
     
    But how could she have heard him?
     
    He was all the way at the top of the Ferris wheel, holding his baby daughter, reciting a line from a book, a book Sara had read over and over to Alex when she was just a child.
     
    "Goodnight room, goodnight moon..."
     
    Another voice, new but familiar, broke Alex's concentration. "Look," it was begging. "Oh, please. Someone. Look!"
     
    Opening her eyes, turning toward the sound, Alex caught a glimpse of herself in what, for a moment, seemed like a fun-house mirror. Someone who looked like her, if she were cheesy enough to wear a baseball cap, khaki capris, and a pink sweater set, was standing on the other side of the ride, staring, horrified, up at the same cart.
     
    Boston's own Camryn Barnes.
     
    Had tourist-girl heard the dad reciting,