Student Bodies (6 page)

I escaped from my mother's claw-like grip and wrapped my arms around Marcus. I leaned in and whispered in his ear as I hugged him, “I'm going to find out who did this. I promise.”

He hugged me back and said, “I know.”

And with that, the Guffman family walked out of the tent and into the cold.

“Strange that Marcus is an only child,” Mom said. “Amanda and Wallace had always talked about having a boy and a girl back when your father was still around.”

“I'm an only child. Does that make us strange?”

Mom ignored my snark and headed out of the tent. I quickly zipped up my winter coat and followed her.

“Do you think this is about you?” she growled as we headed to the car. “That whoever killed that boy did it because they detected your magic? Well, let me tell you something, it was you who forgot to take the potion this morning, kiddo. There hasn't been a magic related murder in this city since…”

“Since Dad got killed?” I said, finishing her sentence. “I wonder what Dad would have done had he been the one to see Travis walk into traffic.”

Mom stopped dead in her tracks. A gust of wind sent a spray of snow blowing across her legs and she clenched her jaw. It was clear that I'd crossed the line for the second time in two days; the only difference was that this time, I didn't care.

“You want the truth about your father?” she snapped. “Alright then, here it is. He would have hunted down whoever did this, Julie. He would have disappeared for days at a time following clues and bringing the full weight of coven justice on anyone with information that would lead him to the killer. And when he learned the identity of the murderer, your father would have descended on their hiding place with a storm of vengeance. His place was to deal out retribution and he did so with cold-blooded skill. He would have found who did this and he would have killed them on the spot with a death curse. And that is to be
your
future, goddamn it! That's what you're going to do and that's why you need to spare Marcus from seeing what you're going to eventually become!”

Holy shit.

It was one thing to learn that my late father dispensed coven justice, but it's another thing entirely to put your enemy to death.

“W-what the hell, Mom?” I gasped. “What are you saying?”

Her eyes narrowed sharply and she said, “I'm saying that you're going to hunt down the person responsible for that boy's death, Shadowcull. And I'm going to help you.”

 

CHAPTER 8

 

Ice cold rage – that's what my mother was feeling. She said not a word as we climbed into the car and sped off. We drove for about ten minutes in silence when Mom suddenly hit the signal indicator and we pulled onto the shoulder of the roadway.

It was at this point that Mom started to cry.

She gazed up at me through tear-filled eyes and didn't even make an attempt to regain her composure. Her body racked with every sob and in that moment of wild-eyed disbelief, I could feel my heart beginning to break.

She'd never remarried after Dad died. She didn't date. She didn't do anything more than to run her home-based herbology business and tend to every one of my needs. In truth, Mom didn't have a life at all outside of me. No teenager wants to see a parent break down in front of them, because they're supposed to be the anchor. Mothers and fathers are
supposed
to solve all of
our
problems. And right now, Mom looked like she had all the problems of the world weighing her down and I simply didn't have a clue how I should respond.

So I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a small box of tissues. “Mom,” I said quietly as I reached over to hug her. “I'm sorry I've been an ass to you since you got out of the hospital. Christ, I don't know what the hell is wrong with me.”

She grabbed a handful of tissues and then blew her nose. “You're not an ass, Julie… I am,” she said as she wiped her eyes with a tissue. “I haven't prepared you for what is to come. I'm terrified that you aren't ready yet and that something like what happened to that boy today will happen to you or to Marcus. You think I don't want you to be happy? Jesus Christ, I wish that you could just be the same as every other girl at school. I want you to find love – I should be glad that it's a good boy like Marcus who has caught your eye and not some abusive jerk who treats girls like garbage… But I'm not. The past is coming back to haunt us, I can bloody well feel it.”

I blinked. “The past? Well, Matthew Hopkins was from the past, I don't understand.”

She blew her nose again and tossed the used tissue into a small trash box between both seats. “This is your father's unfinished business. You've read his grimoire. You know what he was after.”

“The Book of Names,” I said, nodding. “He was murdered because he was looking for that book. But I don't even know what a true name is… Does everyone keep a pseudonym to save themselves from this stupid book or something?”

She gazed out onto Blackfoot Trail with a faraway look in her eyes. “We witches are born with family names that are like a coat of arms. To one another we share our true names but only within the safety of our covens. But we live dual lives – one for the magical world and one for the non-magical world. The name we go by – Richardson – that isn't our true name.”

“Come again?”

She took another tissue and blew her nose again. “Only three people know a witch's true name when it is born into this world – a midwife matron, the mother and the father. That is, until such a time as the parents reveal their child's true name when they turn fifteen or sixteen. What follows is the
Celebration of the Call
; it's where all coven members welcome that witch to adulthood and their responsibilities to their coven and their craft.

“You missed out on that, Julie. You missed out on the fellowship that comes with being in a coven because of what happened to your father. I've kept your true name hidden from you all your life… Until now. You wear a Shadowcull's band on your wrist, so the time has come for you to learn your true name… I'm sorry, but there won't be a celebration. There's not much to celebrate after that boy was killed today.”

The significance of what was about to happen wasn't lost on me. All my life I'd been my mother's adept and I trained hard so that I could be one tenth as skilful as she was. And through it all, she was hard on me – it drove me nuts. She'd make me work a spell over and over and over again until it was just right. Most of the time I thought she was punishing me and every day I'd wake up and wonder if Mom would ever believe in me.

And now she was about to reveal my true name for the very first time. Not because she'd been crying and not to make up for the tension between us since she was released from the hospital. No, Mom was about to give me her stamp of approval. This was huge, and intimate and something that made my heart tingle with joy. Mom actually approved of me; she was proud of me.

She wiped her eyes as she turned to face me, then she placed both hands on my cheeks. I could feel her magic pulsing with living energy. Mom's power coursed through my body and I placed my hands on her cheeks. She smiled at me with a glint of tenderness I'd not seen in years and my eyes clouded up with tears as she placed her forehead against mine.

“Your name,” she said with a strong tinge of pride in her voice, “is Zefira.”

“Thank you, Mom,” I said quietly. “And thanks to you and Dad for not giving me a name like Hazel.”

She beamed at me. “It means ‘breeze'. We named you Zefira because you were the gift that lifted your father out of the darkness of life as a Shadowcull. And now that you know your true name you'd better not go off and create a new Facebook account because you don't speak of it with anyone outside of your father and me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, duh, Mom. I might be fifteen, but I'm not a moron.”

And as quickly as it came, our moment of tender intimacy ended.

Mom's smile faded as her hand moved down to my shoulder. She gave me a small squeeze and said, “We need to find out what happened to both of those boys, so we might as well begin by looking for clues at the C-Train station. Sound good?”

I arched my eyebrows because I'd never gone sleuthing with my mother before; I'd always had Marcus helping me along. Still, with her heightened magical sensitivity along with my newfound abilities, it was probably a good idea. Two magical heads had to be better than one.

“It's been more than twenty-four hours since the attack on Mike Olsen, but maybe there's something I missed,” I said.

Mom picked up her purse from between her legs and placed it in her lap. “Your father would sometimes return to the scene of an occurrence two or three times,” she said, as she rifled through her purse. “I hope you don't mind having your mother helping you on this… I might be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, but my heart is in the right place. Now drink the potion you forgot to drink this morning and we'll get started.”

She handed me a small phial and I pulled off the plastic cap and sniffed. “Your potion smells gross,” I said grumpily. “But I've learned my lesson.”

She nodded as she opened a phial for herself. “It's super-concentrated, but it will work. Now drink.”

I downed the phial of potion and grimaced. “OK, Mom. Let's go do this.”

 

We headed into the Southland C-Train station and bought a pair of tickets. It was shortly past four in the afternoon and outside of a busker who was strumming “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
on a guitar, the terminal itself was nearly empty. We said little to each other as we rode the escalator down to the C-Train platform and I buttoned up the collar on my winter coat as we strode through the doors onto the platform and out into the biting cold.

“Where did you find him?” Mom asked as she rubbed her gloved hands together.

I pointed to the south end of the platform. “Over there,” I said flatly. “And if you look up the tracks about a hundred meters or so, you'll see the power box I whacked.”

The hard-packed snow crunched loudly beneath our feet as we walked across the full length of the platform. Another squall of wind whipped up a pair of tiny spirals of snow that ran up both sets of train tracks. I stopped at the location where Mike Olsen had been standing.

“He was right here,” I said as I slipped my amulet into the recess on my Shadowcull's band. “Mike stood on this very spot and just stared off into space.”

“And remind me what happened then?” Mom asked as she glanced at the copper band.

“Mike wouldn't budge and the C-Train was coming. I hexed the power box and jolted him so that we could push him away from the edge.”

I watched as her eyes panned over the entire platform. Mom stretched out her right hand and spread her fingers wide and I felt the tug of her magic. I shrugged hard and decided to do the same thing; maybe the amplification effect of my Shadowcull's band would help me home in on any residual magic faster than my mother.

What happened next surprised even me. I shut my eyes tight and reached out with my Sight. I took a deep breath and then opened my eyes again only to see a series of gray-green threads of energy wafting high above the platform. They seemed to dance and flutter in the chill breeze, twisting and churning into smoke-like shapes with long tendrils of energy hanging down like cobwebs onto the platform itself.

“Holy… Can you see that, Mom?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, but I can feel it. What are you seeing?”

I pushed my senses further hoping to latch onto a trace of the malice I'd felt twenty-four hours earlier, only this time there was nothing. The energy simply drifted through the air, although there was enough power contained within each of the threads of magic to fuel a small spell. But it was as if the energy had been unplugged from its source and was waiting for instructions.

I gave my head a quick shake and cut myself off from my Sight. I glanced over to my mother and from the look of intense concentration on her face I could tell that she was really struggling to latch onto what I'd detected. She pursed her lips tightly and then snapped out of it, shaking out her right wrist as if it had a cramp in it.

“Damn,” she grumbled. “I could feel it, but I couldn't see it.”

“Do you have your focus?”

She pulled off the glove from her right hand and held her hand out to show me. Inside was the familiar copper chain and tiny oval amulet she'd used all her life.

“I might be over forty, but I'm not losing it. I'm never without my focus. I'm just surprised that even with my charm I couldn't see the trace of energy around this place.”

I shook my head. “It's not trace energy, Mom. It's big and it's like it's alive somehow. It's just shifting and twisting about; like it's waiting for something.”

She gazed up through the glass roof that spanned the entire platform and pursed her lips tightly together as a southbound train pulled up. The doors opened with a loud swoosh, and then a dozen or so people exited the train and headed into the station.

“We're done here,” Mom said, turning on her heels.

“But what about the mass of energy – it's not doing anything. Shouldn't it have dissipated by now?”

“Yes, it should have, and that's what has me worried.”

I blinked. “How come?”

Her eyes narrowed sharply and she said, “Because whoever is behind this wanted you to come back here. They wanted you to see it. They're showing off.”

I gazed up at the cloud of energy as it shifted in mid-air. “Maybe… but whoever is behind this is discounting one simple fact.”

“What's that?” Mom asked.

I grunted. “They've not taken into account there's now two generations of white witches coming after them.”