Student Bodies (3 page)

Marcus sat down on the edge of the armchair next to me. “I think I've mentioned before that bodysnatching is just plain wrong on a multitude of levels, right?”

Mom cocked an eyebrow and she gave Marcus a quick once-over. She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off before she had a chance.

“Something happened at the C-Train station,” I said. “I had to switch into Shadowcull mode.”

Mom swung her legs off the couch and her eyes narrowed sharply. “What kind of something?”

“Mike Olsen – the guy who pushes Marcus around at school?”

“Pushed me around, Julie,” Marcus interrupted. “He and I had words, remember?”

I nodded. “I was going to get to that. Anyway, Mike was standing on the edge of the platform; over the yellow line. Marcus said he'd been standing there like a zombie for fifteen minutes before I arrived. We tried to talk to him, but it was like… I don't know… Like he was in a deep trance. So, I slipped my amulet into my Shadowcull's band and I saw that he was covered from head to foot with maggots, only they weren't real, you know? They were transparent, like a spirit. We tried to shove him back from the edge because the train was coming and it was like trying to push a boulder. He didn't budge.”

Betty's head cocked sharply to the right. “And then what happened?” she rumbled.

I threw her a shrug. “Well, Mike was going to wind up getting splattered by the train so I hexed the power supply to the entire northbound track. Only it didn't stop the train, it just slowed it down. Mike was still about to end up getting clipped, so I jolted his brain a little bit with some magic. It freed him up enough for Marcus to shove him back to safety.”

“And he can't account for how he got there,” Marcus added. “Mike said he was at home and the next thing he remembers is waking up on the platform.”

Mom nodded slowly and said, “Ghost maggots? Clearly your friend Mike Olsen was under some kind of magical influence.”

“He's not our friend,” I said sharply. “He's a class-A jerk, but even he doesn't deserve to wind up being murdered by someone.”

Betty sneezed again, this time sending a spray of dog snot across the hardwood floor. “I'm sorry about that,” she said. “It must be the cold weather. Do you know anyone who would want to hurt this boy?”

I shook my head. “No, and if anyone from school did want to take down Mike Olsen, they'd have to be a practitioner like me. I mean, I'd probably detect their magical signature.”

“Marla Lavik had you fooled,” said Marcus, with an uneasy look on his face. “Nothing personal, but you and Betty both didn't have a clue.”

“Soul Worms,” Mom said grimly.

I blinked. “Come again?”

She leaned forward and glanced at Betty. “Those ghost maggots might well have been Soul Worms.”

“Spirits protect us all, I hope they're not,” said Betty. “That's seriously black magic, and it's not a spell that just anyone can pull off.”

“OK, I'll bite. What are Soul Worms?”

Betty and Mom glanced at each other again and I thought for a quick second they were communicating telepathically.

“It's a spell, a vile, malicious and twisted spell,” said Mom. “Soul Worms bore into the very fabric of the victim's humanity in much the same way as termites bore into wood. They feed on a person's soul, nibbling away at their feelings, their hopes and dreams and aspirations. If the infection is severe enough, the victim becomes altered as a result, changed forever into an empty shell.”

“An empty shell?” asked Marcus. “What does that mean?”

Betty took a deep breath and said, “In days gone by, those who had the misfortune of winding up on the receiving end of this particular spell became known as ‘hollow people'. It was the only way to describe someone who is unable to discern right from wrong… Unable to feel, to know the joy of falling in love. These poor creatures could no longer experience their lives the way human beings were intended to. They were transformed into empty vessels, and completely susceptible to the whims of whoever infected them. I've seen whole armies of hollow people used as cannon fodder in the great battles of the past. They'd throw themselves en masse straight into the enemy while the real soldiers attacked from the flank. It's just terrible. Terrible business, Soul Worms.”

I felt a sharp tug of panic as the gravity of what Mom and Betty revealed hit home. “Oh my God,” I gasped. “But who would do such a thing to a freaking dumbass football player? I mean, he's Mike Olsen for crying out loud! He thinks farting in class is entertainment.”

“Well, maybe Holly Penske is up to her old tricks again,” said Marcus.

I shook my head. “I doubt it. She's a player in the supernatural realm, but she's not a killer. She uses people to achieve her own aims, just like she used me to capture the spirit of Matthew Hopkins.”

Marcus nodded as he knelt down in front of Betty. He stroked her chin a few times and then scratched behind her left ear as the dog's tail thumped agreeably on the carpet.

“It could be that Mike Olsen is just a pawn or something,” said Marcus as Betty sniffed at his hand. “Maybe this was designed to draw you out… Like at Mrs Gilbert's house. You are a Shadowcull. Maybe word travels fast among people like you… Among witches.”

Marcus was right, but the key in this was Mike Olsen. We had to figure out why he was the original target and that meant coming up with a magical countermeasure in case things went south.

Mom glanced at her watch. “It looks like we're going to have to put our heads together on this, because if those ghost maggots were indeed Soul Worms, then something pretty big is brewing. Julie, we should probably hit the lab and do some research.”

I sighed heavily and nodded. “Marcus, maybe we need to do a rain check on our date. Witch business and all.”

He stood up and headed to the front hall. “No problem,” he said as he threw on his winter jacket and stuffed his feet into his boots. “Just text me. I've got nothing going on for tomorrow so maybe I can help you out in some way.”

I followed him to the door and gave him a soft kiss on his lips. “Sorry about all this. Duty calls, I guess.”

He placed his hands on my waist and gave me a hug. “It's cool. I'll talk to you later.”

 

CHAPTER 4

 

Mom and I headed down to the lab in the basement. It's a large room with wooden shelves stacked with plastic and foil containers full of spell ingredients, not to mention notebooks and binders containing everything from spell recipes to general information about the arcane. There's a pair of six-foot tables covered with beakers and mixing bowls and a couple of stools for Mom and me to park our butts on, because when you're crafting a potion or blending a pair of spell recipes it's really a matter of trial and error; minutes turn into hours and hours can turn into days in some cases.

I might be a Shadowcull whose purpose is to dispense coven justice at supernatural bad guys, but I'm still an adept, the official designation for an apprentice within our order. We're not part of a coven for reasons that have to do with internal politics and my being seconded to another witch for training. Mom has been teaching me witchcraft since I was in training pants and while she can sometimes be a control freak, there's no other person in the world I'd rather learn from.

You know, when she isn't guilting me about dating Marcus.

Betty hobbled down the stairs after us. I sat on a stool and watched Mom run her left index finger along the spines of more than a dozen binders.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

Betty slowly dropped down onto her belly and rested her head on her front paws. “Give your mother a moment, Julie,” the Great Dane said. “You can't rush research.”

Mom pulled a thick red binder off the shelf and dropped it onto the table. She grabbed a pair of glass beakers and then pointed to the shelf at the far end of the room. “Grab the bottles with the following names,” she said, as she flipped through the binder until she found the page she was looking for. “Coltsfoot extract, eyebright, prickly ash and red clover. Be quick about it.”

I jotted down the names of the spell ingredients onto a Post-it note and trotted over to a wooden shelf filled with plastic two-liter bottles containing liquids of every color and description. Each bottle was labeled with the name of its ingredient written on a small piece of masking tape and, thankfully, the bottles were alphabetized. In seconds I was back beside my mother and I deposited each bottle beside a large glass bowl.

“I'm thinking you're planning a potion to either detect or protect,” I said as Mom poured a cupful of thick green liquid from the bottle of coltsfoot extract. “Please tell me that we don't have to drink that stuff.”

Mom sniffed. “Yes, you have to drink this stuff, it might save your life.”

I blinked as she poured equal amounts of the other three ingredients into a large glass beaker. The mixture turned into a flat gray liquid with the consistency of tar, so I knew it was super-concentrated and we'd have to thin it out.

“Here, Mom,” I said and handed her a large bottle of distilled water.

“I'm glad that you haven't forgotten how to make a potion,” she said as she uncapped the bottle. “With your new responsibilities as a Shadowcull, it's altogether too easy for you to forget the basic functions of your craft. Anyone can sling magical energy around, but it takes a genuine measure of wisdom to concoct a bulletproof potion.”

Betty snorted. “Oh, do give the girl some credit, Mother Witch; I've seen her face off against the darkest of magic. Perhaps if you spent some time with her outside of your training regime, you might find that your daughter has remarkably keen instincts.”

Mom snorted. “It's not her instincts that I'm worried about, Betty. Julie's father was a powerful Shadowcull, but he always relied on me for the grunt work.”

“Um… yeah. So, I'm, like, in the room,” I said sourly. “Mom, we need to charge that potion.” I reached for my magic.

“I know. Give it a jolt. You'll need to take a dose of this at least once a day.”

I nodded as I drew on my spirit. I placed both hands on the beaker. Thin tendrils of energy encased them, and then a bright flash of light filled the room. The gray liquid turned fluorescent green for a moment and then, amazingly, the contents of the beaker turned as crystal clear as water from a spring.

“Soul Worms are obviously a form of enthrallment, but why this specific spell when there are a ton of other ones to use?” I asked, as I pulled my hands away from the beaker. Mom opened a drawer in the work table and took out a metal box filled with tiny glass phials. She uncapped each phial and then she reached for a sterile glass syringe.

“I don't know why and that's got me worried, because whoever is behind this caught a whiff of your magic,” she said. She began squirting the clear liquid into the phials with the syringe. “The first order of business is to protect you and this potion will mask your magical signature. Remember, Julie, ninety percent of what your father did, what any Shadowcull does, is by means of stealth.”

Betty slowly stood up and stretched with a loud groan. She shook her entire body, her ears flapping against the side of her enormous head with a series of loud slaps.

“Good thinking, Mother Witch,” she rumbled. “But what's missing is proof positive that what Julie saw were in fact Soul Worms. Dark magic of that nature will always leave something in its wake.”

There were other dark spells like the
malphobius
; a spell where the victim literally manifests his or her worst possible fears. Mind control magic is forbidden in the covens, so it was possible we were dealing with either a rogue witch or someone much more powerful. Why they chose to target Mike was a mystery and since I didn't have a clue as to a motive, I needed to talk with Mike and learn more about what he remembered. I grabbed my phone out of my purse and fired off a text to Marcus.

 

Jules: Hey. What R U Doing?

HawkingFan: Calculus homework. I'm in heaven.

Jules: Sigh. U R a hopeless case.

HawkingFan: What's going on?

Jules: We're in the lab. There's stuff we have to do.

HawkingFan: Yeah – I kind of figured as much.

Jules: We need to talk with Mike Olsen – there's a reason he was targeted.

HawkingFan: I kind of figured that out, too. What's the plan?

Jules: Head over to his place and find out what the hell is going on.

 

It was at this point in my text conversation with Marcus that Mom decided I need her undivided attention. I felt the tug of her magic as she whispered a word of power. In less time than it took for me to draw a breath into my lungs, my phone sizzled and popped amid a puff of smoke.

Afraid that I might burn my hands, I dropped it onto the floor and I spun around and positively glared at my mother.

“What the hell, Mom? I was talking with Marcus!” I barked as I stared at my smoldering cell phone. “Jesus, that thing cost me three hundred dollars! Do you have any idea how much freaking babysitting it takes to save up enough money to buy a phone?”

“
This
is your priority, Julie,” she snapped. “Not your goddamned boyfriend! Pay attention to what we're doing, because if your love life is distracting you now in the safety of this house then you sure as hell won't be paying attention when your enemy attacks!”

That did it. I tried like crazy to keep my anger in check, but my magic flared up and the atmosphere inside the lab became charged with my power.

And that was a really stupid move on my part. Betty leaped between the two of us. The lights inside the lab flickered and the air smelled of ozone and burning plastic. The temperature shot up as the Great Dane's eyes blazed furiously. Betty raised her hackles and the giant dog emitted a deafening growl that I could feel in my fillings.