Student Bodies (7 page)

 

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.”

I nodded and glanced at my watch. “I need to corner Mike Olsen… I think this is where we part company for now, Mom. If you show up on his doorstep alongside me, his parents will probably think that Mike got me pregnant or something.”

Mom snorted and her lips arched up into a thin smile. “Please, Julie, one crisis at a time! Go there now, talk to this boy and see what you can find out.”

 

Mom dropped me off a block and a half away from Mike Olsen's house. It was beginning to get dark outside, and I knew that as soon as the sun went down the temperature would plummet another ten degrees.

Did I mention that I hate winter?

Thin plumes of white smoke drifted high into the air from the chimneys of each house on the street while multi-colored Christmas lights twinkled in the gathering darkness. After about five minutes of crunching through the snow, I spotted Mike Olsen's house. His family has some money. Parked on their triple car driveway was a BMW SUV, a brand new Ford pickup truck with a pair of shining new snowmobiles strapped onto a platform atop the box and Mike Olsen's snow-covered Audi A-4.

And there was a city police car with the engine running.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “What the hell?” I whispered.

I reached for my phone so I could text Marcus about what I was seeing, but then I remembered that Mom had zapped it. I couldn't stand outside on the street all night and it was clear there would be no chance to question Mike Olsen if the cops were going to be hanging at his house for any length of time. I was just about to head back home when I felt a faint tingle of magic, like a draft sneaking in through a crack in a wall. I dashed behind a snow bank and snapped my charm into my Shadowcull's band. Instantly the tingle of magic became more pronounced, pulsing every few seconds like a faint heartbeat.

Somewhere nearby was another practitioner and I knew that whoever it was couldn't be a white witch; the sharp tang of evil tainted the air. I stretched out my hand to home in on where the energy was the strongest. A minivan drove by, kicking up a spray of ice and snow in its wake as I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth together in concentration. I pivoted my body on the balls of my feet and reached out with my Sight. When I opened my eyes, the police car was dripping with threads of malice that seeped through the cracks in the doors and onto the frozen street.

“Damn it,” I hissed. “The cop is a practitioner? What the hell would they want with a dumbass like Mike Olsen?”

I had a choice to make. I could wait outside Mike Olsen's house until the police officer returned to her vehicle, then I could force a confrontation and all hell would break loose in a residential neighborhood. If I had wheels, I could tail the cop, but that was out of the question. Rather than engage in a magical duel with a practitioner who I hadn't yet measured up – and one that was most definitely armed with a Glock – I decided that questioning Mike would have to wait.

I grabbed a pen out of the inside of my coat and pulled off my glove with my teeth. The number “forty-two” was painted on the left fender of the car and I scribbled it down on my hand. There had to be a way to figure out who the police officer was. Maybe if I called the station the duty officer might let me know who was assigned to that vehicle.

Disappointed that my interrogation was going to have to wait, I slipped my glove back onto my hand and quickly walked back up the street toward home.

I didn't have a clue what the hell Mike Olsen had gotten himself mixed up in, but one student was dead and there was every reason to believe that if Mike Olsen and Travis Butler were targeted, the killer would strike again.

Soon.

 

CHAPTER 10

 

I reported back home and informed Mom about the police car that was dripping with malicious energy. All we had to do to track the practitioner would be to follow the police car one night until they finished their shift and then tail them back to their home. This was after Mom informed me the police probably weren't in the business of giving out the names of their officers over the phone. This would mean possibly staking out Mike's house to see if the officer returned; at least that would be a starting point.

I did manage to get a good night's sleep and when I woke up on Monday morning, I had a quick shower and grabbed three Special K bars for my breakfast. I hadn't talked with Marcus since the death of Travis Butler and I needed to give him an update.

There's something surreal about heading off to school when one of your fellow students has died unexpectedly. There's a hush about the hallways as classmates text one another furiously and the rumors fly faster than free tickets to an NHL game. According to Marcus, the news of Travis's death hit Facebook within one hour of the automotive carnage on McLeod Trail – probably around the time that someone put flowers on the cement divider between north and southbound lanes of the busy roadway. Believe it or not, I don't have a Facebook account. I find it to be a massive waste of time because I hate the gossip mill. That and there's the whole
servo parvulus
thing; in short, I'm not allowed to be on it thanks to an edict from my mother.

According to the object of my affection, a couple of hours of postings appeared on Travis Butler's wall expressing shock and dismay. This was followed quickly by an outpouring of grief that spilled over into all the social networks by suppertime. To everyone at Crescent Ridge High School, Travis Butler had either committed suicide or was hit by oncoming traffic, but I knew the truth. He was murdered. Period. End of story.