Student Bodies

by Sean Cummings

  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 al
l 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.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Retrace your steps from the moment you and Marcus arrived here this morning,” said Mom as she stepped out of the car and headed towards the McDonalds. Six hours had passed since the blinding snowstorm of doom and the accompanying traffic chaos on McLeod Trail.

  I climbed out after her and gazed down at the busy roadway. It was as if the tragedy that took place only a few hours earlier hadn’t happened. The tent I’d been sitting in along with Marcus as the police took our statements was gone. The road itself was scraped clean of snow, right down to the pavement, and the car that had nearly ploughed into my boyfriend had been towed away. The only reminders of what happened here was the visible damage to the poplar tree the car had smashed into, along with a small collection of flowers lying on the snow atop the median strip that marked the spot where Travis had died.

  And just as at the Southland C-Train station, I could see a swirling mass of energy high above the restaurant.

  I stood next to my mother, my hands outstretched in hope of latching onto the will that had shaped the magical energy, but there was none to be found. Only the occasional spectral flickering of gray-green light that danced about within the cloud.

  “Same thing as before,” I said firmly. “Just like at the train station.”

  Mom nodded. “Alright. Let’s head into the restaurant. I want to see everything.”

  I gave a small shrug and trudged across the snow-packed parking lot with my mother in tow. We stepped inside the McDonald’s and together we pushed our way through the large crowd at the counter. Surprisingly, the table where Marcus and I had been eating earlier was vacant, so I took my mother by the hand and led her over. We took our seats and Mom breathed out hard. She was clearly frustrated and I couldn’t blame her one bit. At least she wasn’t pissed off with me, though, that had to count for something.

  “What time were you both sitting here?” she asked as her eyes panned over the nearly-packed-to-capacity dining area.

  “Like, around nine or so,” I replied. “And seriously, Mom, I didn’t detect even the tiniest ripple of magic when we got here. That’s what has me worried.”

  She turned her attention to me and said, “Damned right you should be worried because this is going to happen again. I don’t detect any residual energy, so you need to close your eyes and tell me what you saw in the moments before Travis walked out from behind the counter.”

  We witches can share a psychic link and when two witches join hands and channel their collective spiritual energy, well, it’s a lot like having a front row seat to someone’s memories. It’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to describe what you saw hours or days or weeks ago, and all it takes to share your memories is a moment of intense concentration.

  Oh, and a whole lot of trust, because tapping into someone’s memories is a deeply intimate act.

  I took Mom’s other hand in mine and closed my eyes. Her magic flowed through me as I pushed aside a day’s worth of intense emotion, focusing only on what my eyes could see when Marcus and I were eating breakfast.

  “Can you hear my thoughts, Mom?” I asked through a haze of cloudy vignettes of people sitting down and eating their breakfasts. I drew deeper into my memories until I could feel myself dematerialize as nothing more than a shadow in time. Seconds later Mon appeared next to me, still holding my hand.

  “I’m here now, Julie. Look around the restaurant; there has to be a clue somewhere.”

  We were limited by my memories of what happened in the moments before Travis Butler walked out of the McDonald’s and right into morning traffic. Using my Sight, the image of Marcus’s worried face appeared. He was carrying a small tray with our breakfast and he took a seat in front of me. Mom’s grip on my hand tightened as she shared my memories. Then my memories showed us the solitary figure of Willard Schubert as he stared out the window and into the parking lot.

  “Who is this boy?” Mom asked. “Why did you notice him even though Marcus was sitting right in front of you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, my voice echoed like we were talking inside a cavern. “Maybe because I feel sorry for him, I guess. His name is Willard Schubert.”

  “Why do you feel sorry for him?”

  A tiny fluttering of pity coursed through me as my memory slowed to a standstill. I froze the moment in time from earlier in the day as I looked on Willard. He wasn’t a nice looking boy; in fact, his oily, acne-covered face and neck made me cringe.

  And I didn’t like that aspect of myself.

  I blinked a few times as I watched his movements in ultra-slow motion. He nibbled on a hash brown patty, and that’s when I noticed his eyes. They seemed to flash with anger as he gazed through his thick glasses at the falling snow. The restaurant had been busy with its usual morning rush, but I saw that the closest patrons to Willard were three tables to his right, and that’s when something clicked – I remembered that in our two classes together, he always sat alone and the closest student would be about two or three desks away, as if the empty desks were a barrier of some kind.

  “He’s so freaking lonely, Mom,” I said with a note of sadness in my voice. “Look at him, he’s all by himself. He doesn’t have any friends at school and he gets picked on a lot.”

  “More than Marcus?” she asked.

  “More than anyone I know,” I replied. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for Willard; he’s never been given a chance by anyone.”

  I felt Mom’s hand squeezing mine. “You have it in your power to help this boy, Julie. You could become his friend if you chose to. You need to remember that loneliness is crippling. It can lead to envy and then to hatred, a perfect breeding ground for malice under the right circumstances.”

  “He isn’t a practitioner,” I answered back. “But you’re right, I could become his friend.”

  “So, why don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Willard Schubert was as far from being a magical threat to the world as I am at becoming a math professor. He was the bottom rung of the social ladder for a thousand reasons and there was nothing I could do to change that. It’s not like Marcus or I could elevate the kid’s social status. Not when Marcus himself winds up on the receiving end of bullshit from higher beings like Mike Olsen. Not when the popular girls at school whisper behind my back every time I pass by their chattering little cliques that gather in the main foyer at lunchtime.

  I was making excuses, though, because Mom was right. And it pained me to admit that while I could befriend Willard, I chose not to because I didn’t want what little social status I possessed to disappear. I didn’t want to find myself getting
picked on. I didn’t want people sitting three desks away from me.

  Wow… Am I that shallow?

  “Because I don’t want to become him,” I said quietly. “I guess that makes me a terrible person.”

  A pulse of my mother’s magic caressed my senses and, in the world of my shared memories, I turned to face her. Her shadow image gazed at me with a look of understanding in her eyes. “It makes you human, Julie. That boy could be the loneliest soul at your school, but even back in my day, high school was hard work. I’d have likely felt the same way that you do. But it wouldn’t kill you to at least throw him a friendly ‘hello’ every once in a while, just to let him know that he isn’t entirely alone in the world. Now, what else did you see?”

  The memory-sound of the restaurant manager shouting at Travis Butler filled my ears. I directed my gaze at the front counter. I caught the tail-end of Travis heading out the door and I froze the image in my mind.

  “There goes Travis,” I said in a near whisper. “Out the door and straight into traffic… And I couldn’t save him.”

  Mom’s hand squeezed mind again and she said, “Look, he’s covered with larvae.”

  Suddenly my mental pairing with Mom ended. She released her grip and I slowly opened my eyes to see her staring hard at the parking lot outside the restaurant.

  “This confirms our suspicions,” I said with a hint of dread in my voice.

  She nodded. “That boy was most certainly infected with Soul Worms. We don’t have any physical evidence other than the residual magic here, at the spot where Travis Butler died and at the C-Train Station.”