Poltergeeks (26 page)

Authors: Sean Cummings

BOOK: Poltergeeks

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I clenched my jaw and pushed Marla's attempt on my life out of my mind. I defeated both Marla and Hopkins at the Calgary Rugby Field, so if Marla had a brain in her head, she'd steer clear of me in the future.

"My mother," I said firmly. "How can I trust you after what you did? How will I know she's alive?"

Holly let out an impatient sigh and rolled her eyes. "Your cellular telephone still works, yes?"

I nodded and said nothing.

"In seven minutes, it will ring and you're going to hear your mother's voice. I recommend you exit Bankers Hall since we get frightfully bad reception in here for some reason or another."

I snatched my backpack from Holly's desk and reached inside. My cell phone still had half a charge, so I slipped it in my cargo pants and headed for the door of Holly's office.

"We're done, Holly," I growled. "Don't ever meddle in my life again."

Holly had a look of genuine disappointment on her face and she sighed heavily. "If that is your wish, Julie. Go now and be with your mother."

I was just about to step out the door when I spun around to face her.

"I thought you were leaving," she said.

"I will, but I have a question for you."

Her eyes narrowed again. "Be careful now, you don't wish to be indebted to me – you said so yourself."

I let out a dry chuckle. "This is a question that doesn't require payment, Holly. I just want to know why you chose me for this task."

She leaned over her desk and gave me a cold hard stare. "I chose you, mortal, because this was the first test. A test your father failed."

My cell phone rang, just as Holly said it would, and I sobbed in relief at the sound of Mom's voice. Unfortunately, the first words out of her mouth weren't exactly what I expected.

"You're grounded, kiddo," she said in a tired but angry voice.

"What for?" I squeaked, as if that was going to do any good.

"Because you didn't wait for me at school like I told you to. Because I'm in a bloody hospital bed due to your half-assed listening skills!"

"But Mom! You don't know what I've been through."

"Enough," she grumbled into the phone. "We'll discuss this when I get home."

Great. I save my Mom's life and I wind up getting grounded.

I started to chuckle and then the chuckle morphed into a fit of giggles. I laughed so hard that tears were pouring out of my eyes.

"I don't know what you think is so funny about all this, Julie," she said. "God, I sometimes wonder why I ever had children."

I choked back my giggles and sniffed a few times. "Mom, I love you, OK? Just remember that I love you so very much."

I heard her make a snorting sound, and then she said. "I love you too, sweetheart, but you're
still
grounded."

I missed my Friday night date with Marcus but it didn't really matter since he was grounded too. I boisterously lamented the loss of my newfound romantic life but it fell on deaf ears. Mom was still stewing about what happened and I wasn't going to make the mistake of increasing the punishment. We decided to take a rain check for about a month once our mutual punishments expired.

I still got to see him at school, though. The day after Mom got back from the hospital, Marcus had a run in with Mike Olsen who was bent on stuffing him in a trash can again.

"You are a total dweeb, Guffman," he taunted as he took a threatening step forward. "You ready for your daily dose of dweeb treatment?"

Marcus dropped his backpack at his side and let out a sigh. "I'm going to pose a question to you that will no doubt challenge your capacity for rational thought, Mike."

The giant defensive back folded his arms and his lips made a sly smile.

"Go for it,
loser,"
he said in a deliberately slow drawl.

Marcus shrugged and took a confident step forward until he was inches from Mike's muscular chest. "Have you ever once in your life stared death in the face? I mean real honest-to-goodness death?"

"What?" the meathead replied with a smirk.

"Well, it changes you, Mike," Marcus' eyes narrowed menacingly. "It shows you the sheer insignificance of things like being popular at school or picking on people half your size and weight."

"Uh-huh," Mike replied sounding completely unimpressed.

"Want to know what else it does, Mike?" asked Marcus, his voice was cold and hard.

The lumbering football player blinked a few times as he looked Marcus in the eye. And a funny thing happened in that short moment of silence. I don't know whether it was Marcus finally standing up to the goon or whether he'd seen something in Marcus' eyes that actually frightened him, but Mike Olsen's cocky swagger simply vanished. He seemed to shrink a little as Marcus dug his finger into his chest.

"W-what?" he said nervously.

"It allows you to give other people a glimpse into hell itself, Mike," he said chillingly. "Mess with me again and I will
end
you. Got it?"

The colour drained from Mike Olsen's face completely and he bobbed his head up and down. "Got it," he whispered.

"Good," said Marcus as he dug his finger into Olsen's chest a little bit harder. "You have a nice day now, Mike."

I grabbed Marcus by the shoulder and then planted a tiny peck on his cheek as he turned on his heels. "That," I said in the best sultry voice I could muster, "was really stupid, really brave or really sexy."

Marcus threw his arm over my shoulder and pulled me in close. "How about all three?" he asked with a grin. "The new me is an amalgam of dashing, dumb and devoted. I've also had it up to here with the Mike Olsen's of the world."

I had to hand it to him. Two near-death experiences in as many days apparently gave my suitor a sharp new outlook on life and what I saw, I liked – even if his bony elbows were digging into my ribs as he gave me a full body hug. Well, that and the fact that we were going steady didn't hurt either.

"Your mom understands what happened, right?" he asked.

"Yep, but it didn't get me out of being grounded," I said flatly. "She's pretty freaked out about my having taken up the mantle of Shadowcull, too, but Dad smoothed things over. Of course, I think she's probably also ticked off about the new member of the family. She'd always wanted me to have a familiar, but I think her heart was set on a cat."

"Well Betty
is
a talking dog, Julie. Actually, she's a really big talking dog who can probably shoot laser beams out of her eyes if you asked her. Want to go get a Slurpee?"

I squeezed his hand as we trotted through the main doors of Crescent Ridge High School and straight into the warm glow of the early autumn sun. Flecks of amber light glinted off my Shadowcull's band and I took a deep breath of the early autumn air. A dry gust of wind kicked up a small storm of fallen poplar leaves at our feet. I stopped for a moment and draped my arms around Marcus. He gave me a warm smile and I kissed him softly.

"I thought you'd never ask."

Julie's Grimoire

September 30
^th

Somebody killed my father.

This is the first entry in my new grimoire – I've decided to abandon Microsoft Word – yay me. I wanted to give it a cool name like "A Shadowcull's Diary" but Marcus pointed out that it's kind of a cheesy title. He's good, that way.

Mom is back to her old self though she's having a lot of trouble accepting the fact that I've taken my father's place as a Shadowcull. She confessed to me that she knew this day would come, she just wasn't expecting that I'd have to deal with all the dangers my father faced at this stage of my life. She'll be there to guide me, along with Betty, though the two of them rarely see eye-to-eye.

Everything points to Holly Penske, but I can't be certain as to what her motives are. She told me the attacks from the poltergeist at Mrs Gilbert's to the battle at the Calgary Rugby Stadium were a test. What I don't understand is how I could have passed a test that my father failed. Surely he could have easily captured the spirit of Matthew Hopkins; Dad possessed a lifetime of skill that I don't.

Servo parvulus
– protect the child.

That explains why Mom has gone out of her way to keep me from danger, but from whom? Why? There's a ton of unanswered questions but my instincts tell me that if someone wanted me dead, it would have happened by now.

Was my father in Holly's debt?

From reading his grimoire, I've learned that he was on the trail of something far more dangerous than the spirit of the Witchfinder General. He was looking for a book that contained true names of players in the supernatural world because whoever found the book could bind anyone listed in its pages to their will. I wonder if Holly's true name is in that book. I wonder if that's why she put me to the test; to see if I had the power to replace my father as a Shadowcull. She might be an immortal sorceress, but everyone has something they fear more than anything. Is that what Holly fears? Falling under someone else's control?

All I know is that I've been swept into a world full of supernatural conspiracies that extend far beyond anything I could have imagined. Forces exist whose sole purpose is to prey on innocent people and I'm going to fight them. I'm going to protect those who can't protect themselves and if this is to become my life's work, then I can't think of anything I'd rather do more.

Somebody killed my father. I don't know who did it or why, but I'm going to find them.

I'm a girl.

I'm a witch.

I'm a Shadowcull.

Someone is going to pay.

Acknowledgments

When I wrote the first draft for
Poltergeeks
more than two years ago, I had no idea that it would become "The Little Manuscript That Could". It started out as a cool idea which morphed into a really cool story with a great deal of potential, and I distinctly remember thinking "is this the book that will finally help me land an agent?" I knew I was onto something when I started querying and immediately received a lot of requests for partials. I got really REALLY excited when the same day I queried Jenny Savill at Andrew Nurnberg Associates, I received an email back saying:


I'm the agent responsible for nurturing our
children's list here at ANA Ltd and I love your
first three chapters! May I please see the whole
ms?

Is it out with any other agents?

The last line told me that she was pretty damned interested, and so began a wonderful working relationship. Both Jenny and her intrepid assistant Ella Kahn (who I would be
lost
without; utterly, hopelessly and tragically lost) saw the potential too. They put me through an intensive revisions process before I signed with ANA and even more intensive revisions after that. As a team, we scrubbed the living hell out of this story to the point of my printing it off and highlighting all of the romantic elements with a pink highlighter – that's where the story needed a ton of work.
  And so I did as instructed – I revised and revised. I eventually finished those revisions in time for the Bologna Book Fair in 2011. Jenny and Ella were there cheering me on the entire time. In short, the reason you are reading this today is because of Jenny and Ella's great faith in me as a writer and in the potential for this book. I am both unbelievably lucky and incredibly grateful to have them in my corner.
  Thank you to my editor Amanda Rutter who convinced me that:
  a) Teenagers swear.
  b) Marcus needs to stop taking crap from basically everyone.
  c) Julie's Dad needed work.
  d) Teenage daughters fight with their mothers. Like a lot.
  Amanda has been a delight to work with and her enthusiasm for
Poltergeeks
knows no bounds. She's a genuine treasure and I look forward to working with her on the sequel.
  I'd be a jerk if I didn't mention the Saskatchewan Romance Writers – particularly Hayley Lavik (whose surname I borrowed for Marla after Hayley gave me the okie-dokie) and Joanne Brothwell. Both gave me sound advice into the art of writing romance and any agents out there reading this should sign them both up. They're fantastic writers.
  I'd like to thank authors Sara Grant, Nancy Holzner, Erin Kellison, Gary McMahon and Linda Poitevin for their lovely blurbs. To Paul Young for his incredibly breathtaking cover art, thank you, thank you, thank you! It's a hell of a thing to see your protagonist come to live in technicolor.
  Thanks to Amilee Hagon and David Burkinshaw in Calgary for filming the promotional videos for the
Poltergeeks
book trailer – you guys rock.
  And finally, thanks to Cheryl who is my ultimate sounding board for the entire writing process because she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of science fiction and fantasy – if it doesn't fly with Cheryl it will never get off the ground.

SC