Poltergeeks (6 page)

  The worst was yet to come. In a scene that I'm certain would get the Humane Society involved, both dogs were pulled high into the air by their tails. Their howls poured through the small speakers in my laptop and I heard a low, almost guttural sounding voice that sent a knot of panic straight into the pit of my stomach.

  "A soul for a soul." The voice rumbled as both dogs simultaneously dropped to the floor, landing in a stressed-out furry heap. The screen went photonegative again for a millisecond and then I saw the couch was turned upside down with the feet facing the ceiling, just like at Mrs Gilbert's.

  "That's enough proof for me," I said. "Are you up to doing some more detective work?"

  "Proof of what?" Marcus choked, as he minimized the browser. "You're not
seriously
thinking we should try to contact this guy, are you?"

  "Why not?"

  "Um… because your mom will probably lose her mind. Julie, she warned you. And then there's the whole 'you could get killed' part of it."

  I threw my hands in the air. "We were targeted, Marcus! John Stearne's spirit became a poltergeist after someone yanked it into the mortal realm. Whoever was responsible attacked you with a dark spell, for crying out loud!"

  "Then let someone who isn't barely in control of their abilities manage it," he said, motioning for me to calm down. "Why not tell her and get your coven involved?"

  
"W
itches' covens suck
,"
I said flatly. "There's a whole whack of internal politics junk we have to go through to get an officially sanctioned investigation."

  Marcus blinked a few times and exhaled heavily. "You know, this is going to be unbelievably dangerous for both of us," he said warily. "What makes you think your mom is going to be okay with you doing this? I mean, Julie, that dark spell that was used to attack me back at Mrs Gilbert's house was huge!"

  I nodded. "I know, but it's like you said – there's no such thing as a coincidence. I need to figure out who pulled John Stearne's spirit from the other side, and I'm thinking we should head over to the Beltline after school tomorrow and check it out."

  "Whoa… wait a minute!" Marcus protested. "If you're saying there's some supernatural conspiracy involving that video and Mrs Gilbert's poltergeist, you should totally step aside."

  I closed my laptop and gave Marcus a helpless look. Yes, it was true this was probably over my head, but I'd been living in a protective bubble all my life and I had no idea why. I was devoted to my craft and I worked my butt off learning how to control my magic, but every time something happened in the real world where I could make a difference, Mom would shoot me down. Maybe if I did a bit of reconnaissance, she'd learn to finally start letting go.

  "I don't expect you to completely understand, Marcus. I mean, Mom's just a tad protective of me and it drives me nuts because I can take care of myself."

  He nodded. "There's only one Julie Richardson in the world and your Mom is a widow; it makes sense that she worries about you."

  "Yeah but I'm responsible – hell, I'm a thousand times more responsible than anyone at school. I don't do drugs or party. I stay out of trouble and I get awesome grades for crying out loud… except for calculus which I suck at."

  "I know, but still. She's protective for a reason; you're all she's got."

  "But I'm not a little girl anymore," I said, exhaling in frustration. "This whole thing is a chance for Mom to see that I can take care of myself. She needs to know that I can do this. Look, if there's a warlock running around town I have an obligation to gather as much information as I can so whoever it is can be dealt with. I'm not saying we're going to force a confrontation – I'm not completely nuts. But you know what? That little old lady is a victim in all this, and you are too. We'll just poke around and report our findings to my mother, okay?"

  He gave me a worried look. "She's gonna flip out if she finds out that you've gotten in too deep."

  "And your job is to make sure I don't drown," I said in a sugary, sweet voice. "Anyway, we're not going into combat or anything. Look, if anything even smells of danger, we'll hightail it out of there and report back to her, okay?"

  "Uh-huh," Marcus groaned.

  "You're safe, Marcus," I said, putting my arm around him again. "Butt-kicking witch with supernatural powers at your disposal; I've got your back."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," he said.

 
 

 
 
 

So we fired off an anonymous email to the Beltline guy's YouTube account just to see what kind of response we'd get. We also needed a believable excuse for Mom and Marcus' parents about why we'd be late from school the next day. It was decided that we'd tell our parents about a fictitious social studies project and that we needed to take pictures of houses and apartment buildings from the Fifties. Yeah, we were being dishonest, but whatever caused the poltergeist at Mrs Gilbert's attacked both Marcus and my mom, so you'll forgive me if I take some things personally. The only way I could get Marcus to agree to participate was by promising up and down that I wouldn't engage in any witchcraft unless something took a swipe at us. Understand, of course, this wasn't because Marcus was focused on self-preservation, far from it, actually. Good ol' Marcus just didn't want me to get into any trouble with my mom.

  Did I mention that he's awesome?

  And of course, there was that…
whatever
it was in the basement of my house.

  I'd chewed on that almost-moment at bedtime and it actually kept me awake because for the life of me, I don't always understand why Marcus sticks around. I'm the poster girl for inexplicable phenomenon. I possess a set of skills that, while not even in the same universe as someone like my mom, can still kick ass when circumstances warrant.

  But what the hell
was
that? I needed some female insight, so I grabbed my cell phone and texted my girlfriend Marla Lavik. She's a Goth; very dark and terrible, but she can read people better than I can read a book. She texted me back less than thirty seconds later and told me to call her immediately, so I hit the speed dial and the phone rang just once before she picked it up.

  "Hey," she said. "This better be good because it's like 11.30 at night."

  "It is," I replied. "Marcus… He… Damn it, I don't know what to make of it."

  "Make of what? I can't decipher boys unless you actually give me some information."

  I exhaled heavily. "Okay, well we were just hanging in the basement. Mom was out and we were studying. Anyway, Marcus told me that I was beautiful. Marla, I am going to
kill
you if you put him up to this."

  The line went silent for a moment. "He said you were beautiful? That's
totally
not him. I thought the only thing about women that interested Marcus was their genetic code."

  "Please tell me you put him up to this because I really think that I hurt his feelings with the way I reacted."

  Marla snorted. "I didn't put Marcus up to anything. Jules, if he thinks you're all that, you need to put a stop to it right now because one thing I know is that he deserves better than to be strung along."

  "I'm
not
stringing him along!" I almost shouted in the phone. "He just blurted it out. God, if he had put the moves on me I don't know what I would have done."

  The line went silent again and then Marla said, "Well, are you into him?"

  There it was; the unanswerable question.

  It's not like I have guys tripping over each other to ask me out. I mean, I know that I'm not drop dead gorgeous, but I
am
pretty. Boys just hadn't been a priority for me and it's entirely possible that I give off a vibe that says as much. For all I know, that alone could be the reason nobody has ever actively pursued me. I'd just always assumed that Marcus was content to remain in the friend zone because as a rule, he scoffs at all the drama associated with dating and first kisses and ugly break-ups. It's not like he's unattractive, either. Marcus has soft green eyes and he doesn't have a dorky voice. He's skinny but he wears it well – or he would wear it well if he updated his wardrobe. But was I into Marcus? To be honest, I'd never once put a moment of thought into the prospect of our becoming an item.

  But Marcus
is
good.

  He doesn't have an agenda that involves playing head games with girls or anyone for that matter. He's honest to a fault and he genuinely wants to do the right thing – his moral compass is always bang-on. He doesn't wear pants that hang down past his ass and he doesn't try to mimic the style and fashion of a rapper or pop star to get a girl's attention because he's comfortable in his own skin. Hell, he's probably the most self-confident person I know and he's done right by me since the day I met him.

  And if he was genuinely expressing a romantic motive when we were down in the basement, I badly misread it and probably humiliated him in the process.

  Oh, Marcus, I really,
really
suck.

  I gripped my cell phone tightly and banged it into my forehead.

  "Jules? Are you still there?" asked Marla.

  "Yes," I said, sounding wholly contrite.

  "So… are you
into
Marcus Guffman?"

  I let out a huge sigh and finally said, "I don't know…
maybe
?"

 

I didn't get much sleep and like most people, when I'm tired, I get cranky and pissed off at the smallest of things. And some things not so small, like jerks at Crescent Ridge High School who daily spot the invisible target on my nerdy best friend's forehead and make his life a living hell. That's how my Monday started, actually. I'd just closed my locker door when I heard a loud metallic
clang
along with a pathetic sounding groan coming from down the crowded hall. I pushed through the throng of students until I spotted a Crescent Ridge Eagles football jacket on a very large and very involved looking jock whose IQ is in the single digits. Oh, and Marcus was in there somewhere because I spotted his skinny legs sticking out of a trash can like a pair of denim-covered chopsticks. His backpack had been ripped open and his homework was spread out all over the floor along with his textbooks.

  The culprit? Why, it was none other than Mike Olsen, Crescent Ridge's star defensive back. At six foot two, with perfectly manicured black hair framing a chiselled face with sharp cheekbones and piercing blue eyes that can glamour most females better than any vampire, Mike is a physical specimen best suited for steroid advertisements. He's also a class-A jerk who started picking on Marcus in grade five and hasn't let up ever since.

  Okay, I
might
have actually had something to do with Mike's hate-on for Marcus when I slipped the goon a potion that basically gave him a mild form of dysentery, this after he humiliated Marcus at the school convocation last year. Marcus was called up onto the stage to accept an award for academic achievement and Mike Olsen felt that it was important to cough out the world 'loser' loud enough for everyone to hear. This led to most of the students joining in and Marcus was laughed off the stage.

  That and I kind of stood outside Mike Olsen's bedroom two nights later to watch him screaming hysterically after I guided a harmless chaos spirit through his window. Mike has his suspicions about me but he'd never dare admit them in a thousand years because to do so would be insane for someone so popular. So yeah, the guy bugs the hell out of me and I hate that Marcus can't stand up for himself because he'd get his skinny ass handed to him if he were ever to try.

  "You don't look like you've had a healthy breakfast today, Guffman," Mike taunted, as he opened a small carton of milk. "Maybe a shot of two percent will help those brittle bones of yours along."

  "Jerk," I muttered as I made sure nobody was looking. I gathered my magic and whispered a tiny spell. "
Hexus
."

  The small carton of two percent burst open in Mike Olsen's hand sending a bone white spray of milk up into his eyes and all over the front of his coveted Crescent Ridge Eagles jacket.

  "Son of a…" Mike snarled, baring his teeth. "What the hell?"

  A crowd of twenty or so students stepped back as Mike spun around and glared at me.

  "You!" he hissed.

  I pointed my index finger into my chest and mouthed the words, "Who me?"

  Mike's eyes narrowed as the milk dribbled down his cheeks and onto his t-shirt. "There's something not right about you and Guffman,
freak
! It's the worstkept secret at school."

  I clenched my jaw as I glanced at Marcus who was struggling to climb out of the trash can and then flashed a menacing look at Mike.

  "You know, Mike," I said taking a threatening step forward. "Freaks can be
very
dangerous people when provoked."

  The air crackled with static electricity and the hallway lights flickered for a moment. Magical energy surged through my body and I could feel my pulse throbbing in my temples as Mike stepped back against a wall of Pepto Bismol-coloured lockers. It was everything I could do to stop myself from lashing out at the goon and a large part of me wanted to say the hell with it and just nail him with a hex that would blow him out of his sneakers.

  The corner of his mouth twitched and he took a nervous look around at the growing crowd of spectators. Marcus calmly collected all of the loose leaf paper that was scattered around the trash can and stuffed it in his backpack.

  The giant football player's lips curled up into a thin smile as he squared his shoulders and flashed me a contemptuous glare.

  "Oh…
now
I get it," he said in a mocking tone. "You're
totally
into Guffman. Now everything makes perfect sense."