Student Bodies (4 page)

“That's enough!” Betty roared in a voice so loud that both my mother and I cupped our ears. “I am charged with protecting Julie, but right now I think I need to protect you both from each other. Listen to me… you are together, one and the same, Mother Witch and Adept. You're both acting foolishly when a dark power is lurking in the shadows and very likely plotting his or her next move!”

I stretched out my left hand and touched a wall of magical power. It felt ancient, stretching my mortal understanding of time and space, and as my fingertips brushed against it a voice whispered in my ears:

“Be the better and end this battle between mother and daughter, Shadowcull. Something draws near with intent so black that even I cannot see it, despite my power. Your mother has not been herself since you saved her life. Be mindful that in her own way, she is terrified of the dangers you will face in the days and weeks to come. Her anger is born out of love, but you must understand that deep inside her heart, she believes in you. She has always believed in you, as do I.”

I stared at the shimmering wall of magical energy stretching across the room from floor to ceiling; all of it emanating from a tired but determined Great Dane. The dog lowered its hackles and its magic pulsed with a measure of power that dwarfed mine or my mother's.

“Marcus is
my
choice, Mother,” I said, trying to sound as diplomatic as possible. “I need you to believe that I'm not blinded by my feelings for him. I need you to support me because nothing matters more to me than knowing that you approve.”

She stared hard at my Shadowcull's band and I self-consciously covered it with my left hand. “I need time,” said Mom wearily. “And I'm sorry for hexing your phone. I'll get you a new one. I'm just not myself since…”

The wall of magic separating us disappeared amid a haze of twinkling mist and I said, “Since you got out of the hospital. I know, Mom. But please understand that one of the reasons you are standing before me today is
because
of Marcus. He saved my life, Mom. He saved yours too because of what he did that day.”

Betty dropped down onto her belly again and once more rested her enormous head on her forepaws. “Julie has a potion for protection so it would be wise to begin to unmask whoever attacked that boy before they strike again.”

I nodded and slipped back onto the stool. Mom went back to the bookcase and pulled out more than a dozen dusty old binders and books with dried, cracked spines. I'd come within a whisker of lashing out at my mother and now I was going to spend what was left of the day at her side, but Betty was right: Mom needed time. After what had just transpired in the lab, I decided that I had to be the better person.

But there was no way in hell I was going to break it off with Marcus.

 

CHAPTER 5

 

An icy calm remained between my mother and me for the next few hours as we scoured her books for information about Soul Worms. I knew they were a kind of enthrallment spell, but there was scant information available in the archives my mother had amassed over her life. I decided that it was time to think outside the box.

“I have an idea,” I said, rubbing my eyes. Mom glanced up from behind a stack of binders and arched her eyebrows.

“I'm all ears. What have you got?” she asked.

I closed the book in front of me and massaged the back of my neck. “Residual magic – every kind of spell leaves the tiniest trace in its wake, right?”

She leaned on the table and nodded silently. I had her undivided attention so I had to think carefully about how to present my idea, because there was no way in hell I was going to look like a rank amateur in front of her.

“So… remember when the shed blew in after we exorcised the spirit of John Stearne from that teddy bear? Marcus and I scraped up a bunch of teddy bear stuffing after the door breached the magic circle. The stuffing contained residual magical energy and I used it to do the locating spell that led to the Beltine. It was a hugely powerful magical force that blew in the door, right?”

Mom blinked. “And you think this enthrallment spell might still be lingering where that boy was attacked? I was waiting for you to come up with that. Good thinking, Julie. See, Betty? I do acknowledge my daughter's talent; I just need to see for myself that she's still got a good magical head on her shoulders.”

Pleased by Mom's vote of confidence in me, I pointed to my Shadowcull's band. “I have super-sensitivity to stuff when I'm wearing this. It's worth a try, right?”

Betty padded back into the lab. “Good that I managed to get through to you, Mother Witch. This kind of spell is a vile piece of work for any practitioner to invoke. You both need more information and I'd advise strongly against poking around too closely at the scene of the crime, Julie. When you wear that band on your arm it doesn't just amplify your magical talents, it also amplifies you.”

Mom stood up holding a tiny phial in her hand. “And this potion will mask her magical signature, Betty, Shadowcull or not. Now put your thinking cap on because we're going to grill you about your knowledge of Soul Worms.”

We dug into the spell books and I was amazed by the sheer volume of mind-control magic that has existed throughout the ages. There were spells that generated hallucinations, terror hexes, curses that removed all of a person's inhibitions… There seemed to be a mind-control spell for every occasion. Every book in Mom's collection was handwritten with the words scrawled onto brittle, yellowing pages. Outside the wind buffeted the basement windows. We were getting hammered with another good dumping of snow and I quietly cursed because I knew I'd be spending my Sunday morning shoveling out the driveway.

Betty left the lab for a few minutes and then returned dragging a large pillow along the floor. She dropped it beside the table and then slowly lowered her bulk until she was resting comfortably.

“There are times when I wish my memories weren't so vivid,” she began after a few moments. “Only a handful of practitioners have used this kind of enthrallment in days gone by, and some of those people were immortals. The power of this spell is such that it requires knowledge that is forbidden. That's why you won't find anything in your spell books.”

I climbed off my stool and sat down on the floor beside Betty. I scratched behind her ear and the giant dog's tail thumped. “That sounds cryptic as hell, Betty. Are you trying to scare us?”

She exhaled through her thick lips and said, “You should be scared because Carrion Phage hasn't manifested in modern times.”

“Dear Lord,” Mom whispered. “Is that what they're known as?”

Betty nodded. “Maggots feed on the dead. Soul Worms feed on the living until they are dead, or until they kill themselves. This boy you found at the train station, he was meant to die and the internal battle for his mind… I can't even begin to wonder what he experienced. But you disrupted the spell, Julie. There might be something left for you to work with. The hour is late. In the morning you must go and find this boy. If he's been altered, you will know it immediately because he won't be the same as before.”

“Then I'm going to crash,” I said with a yawn. “Tomorrow I'll pay Mike Olsen a visit and then swing by the C-Train station to see what I can sense.”

And so I headed off to bed. I'd like to say that I slept well, but I didn't because it was the kind of sleep where you open your eyes to find that it's eight in the morning and you feel like you'd just gone to bed five minutes ago.

This is exactly how I woke up on Sunday morning.

That and there was the sound of metal scraping against ice and concrete. The sun was beaming through my bedroom window, so I glanced at my clock radio, it was quarter to eight. I stretched and climbed out of bed and then stretched again for good measure. The shoveling was loud enough to make me think for half a second that Mom had already gone outside to get a start on things, so I shuffled to my window and gazed down at our driveway to see that it had been scraped clean right down to the cement.

God love him, it was Marcus.

And Mom wanted me to dump a guy who volunteers to shovel your driveway after a serious blast of snow? Maybe she'd reconsider at the prospect of free household labour.

He waved a gloved hand at me and I raised my hand to wave back when I realized that Marcus had just seen me at my absolute, one hundred-percent worst. I snatched the drapes closed, then checked in my mirror and recoiled in horror at what I'd just exposed poor Marcus to. God, his eyes were probably bleeding thanks to me. I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and then raced downstairs, all the while buttoning up my jeans. When I got to the front door I skidded to a halt as Mom handed me my winter coat.

“Don't you dare take Marcus near that boy who was attacked,” she warned. “Say your good mornings and be done with it. You have work to do.”

I slipped my feet into my boots and threw on my coat. “Ugh, you didn't even stick your head out the door to thank him? What the hell is wrong with you, Mom?”

She made a big show of rolling her eyes. “Marcus volunteered and shoveling the driveway is your job.”

I slipped into my gloves and snorted, “Fine. I'll talk to Mike on my own. But first Marcus and I will head over to McD's so I can at least fill him in.”

I didn't give Mom any time to respond and I stepped outside into the cold. “Come on, Marcus,” I said firmly as I tucked my rat's nest of hair underneath my toque. “You shoveled so now I'll buy you breakfast.”

“Yeah, but I gotta do the sidewalk to the back of the house,” he said, leaning on the shovel.

“I'll do it later,” I said. “I need to get moving. Lots to do today.”

He placed the shovel against the garage door and followed me up the driveway. I'd been out of bed for less than ten minutes, my boyfriend had seen me with bed head, bed face and in my pyjamas no less.

He caught up to me and slipped his gloved hand in mine. “The look on your face tells me that what happened to Mike Olsen is pretty big.”

I nodded as I ploughed through a snowdrift. “Huge… Look, we need to talk about stuff. Serious stuff. Let's head to McD's – my treat.”

 

CHAPTER 6

 

We went into McDonald's near the Southland C-Train station and I handed Marcus a twenty dollar bill. I asked him to order me the biggest coffee they had on the menu along with an Egg McMuffin, and I didn't care that it was probably dripping in grease. He returned a few minutes later carrying a tray, his face a mask of worry.

“Here we go. Nothing beats fast food on a Sunday morning,” he said trying to lighten things up a bit.

“Our encounter with Mike Olsen is part of something very big and very bad,” I finally said as I flipped open the lid on my coffee. I took a tentative sip.

He nodded. “And what about the serious talk we're supposed to have? Am I in trouble? Because you should know that it's totally bad karma to rip into a person who just voluntarily shoveled your driveway after a big-ass dump of snow.”

I shook my head. “No, but this is a dangerous new world I've entered into – from the moment I slapped on this copper band.”

He arched an eyebrow. “I see. And you're worried about me now that we're together. My timing apparently sucks.”

I reached across the table and took his hands in mine. “Mom has been on edge. She hasn't been right since she got out of the hospital.” I said softly. “She's always been a worrier and it drives me nuts, but she is generally bang-on and half the time it makes me crazy because I should be figuring things out for myself.”

“Well your mom has reasons for that, right?” Marcus replied. “Nearly getting killed is probably at the top of the list.”

“And she's worried about me – about us.”

He took a bite of his hash brown and wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin. “I have a feeling I know where this is going. After the attack at the school and her winding up comatose in the hospital she's worried about what will happen now that we're seeing each other… If something happens to me…”

I raised a finger. “And how that might impact me.”

He snorted. “Um… I got stomped by a poltergeist in Mrs Gilbert's house, remember? This was after I got a beat down from the old lady's Siamese cat. I wound up on the receiving end of Marla Lavik's death curse and I'm still alive and kicking, the last time I looked.”

We said nothing to each other for the next few minutes as we nibbled away at our breakfast. I wanted to tell him that we should just head back to my house and inform my mother that we were taking her recommendations under advisement, but that wouldn't have done any good. As much as it got under my skin, Mom was right. The only problem was that I didn't know what to do about it.

Marcus exhaled heavily and then took a sip of his coffee. I gazed around the restaurant and noticed a couple of people from school working behind the counter. In the far corner seated next to a window was Willard Schubert. He sat alone chewing on a breakfast burrito. No, scratch that. He was inserting the entire sausage shaped concoction into his mouth… whole. He gazed out through the window onto McLeod Trail, his eyes set behind a thin pair of wire-framed glasses that were too small for his pudgy face. His ruddy cheeks glowed across the span of the entire restaurant as he squeezed a packet of hot sauce on another burrito

“Your mom has a point, Julie,” said Marcus, snapping me out of my gaze. “But she isn't one hundred percent right on this, either.”

I blinked. “Go on.”

He shrugged. “Well, she lost your dad and he was like a magic badass, right? I mean he was a Shadowcull –
he
was the target, not your mother. If someone was really twisted, there were worse things than killing your dad. They could have gone after your mother – or you.”