by Les Goodrich
“Datura,” Jordan said, trying to show no hint of how hot Datura actually looked, and failing.
“Jordan Beaumont,” Datura said. “Come to join the dark side?”
“Is Gwen here?”
“You better be glad she isn’t. She’s out of town. What do you want?”
Jordan flinched to see Darkspell standing beside her at the register. She hadn’t heard them come up but she was determined to let nothing in the store fluster her. “Dracaena, Ella, hello,” she said and both girls smiled quick grins and nodded almost imperceptibly. Jordan turned back to Datura. “Don’t send your grimy Lutin spy to my house again, or I’ll turn it into a doormat.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. If I wanted to spy on you, do you think I’d send a Lutin?” Datura extended a single finger to straighten her wand where it rested on the counter, a trivial gesture, and threatening because of it.
“I just saw a Lutin cat on your front porch.”
“Blast it if you can. We’ve been trying to get rid of it for a week.” Jordan looked to Darkspell and they nodded. “And next time think, before you march in here slinging accusations. Light Tribe,” Datura rolled her eyes. “So paranoid.”
Jordan looked down and jumped again when she saw Darkspell was gone. “Goddamn those two. Creepy.”
“We prefer the term, unsettling. Now is that all you came in here for?” Datura sighed and she seemed wholly disappointed and bored upon realizing that might be the case. “I have wicked witch stuff to do.”
“Have a bad day,” Jordan said on her way to the door.
“Thank you,” Datura said and she went back to whatever she was doing.
Jordan stopped short of the door when she saw Darkspell halfway down an aisle of bookshelves staring after her. She looked back but Datura had moved from the register counter. Ella gestured for Jordan to come with one hand, and for some reason that had nothing to do with logic, Jordan went.
“What?” she whispered and Dracaena pulled a book out one inch but left it on the shelf. Jordan took the book down and read the title: Voodoo Controls and Action at a Distance. She flipped through several pages and looked up each row expecting to see Datura but she did not. “Can I take this?” she asked the girls in a hushed voice. Both girls shook their heads and Ella pointed to the empty space on the shelf. Jordan read the title again and consciously committed it to memory. There was no author listed on the cover. No author name inside. She looked to the girls. Ella made the motion for taking a picture with her hands near her face and Jordan puled out her phone.
Dracaena walked to the end of the row, apparently to watch for Datura. It was the farthest apart Jordan had ever seen the two girls. Jordan opened the book and flipped pages. Ella took it from her and skipped to a section near the end. She held it open. Jordan looked and Ella nodded hastily. Jordan snapped a picture and Ella turned the page. Jordan took two more pictures and Dracaena joined Ella’s side. Ella slid the book back. Dracaena and Ella turned and walked together back up the aisle into the store and Jordan slipped out the front door.
***
Casey walked home from the bus stop after school and went up to her room. She packed her backpack with her laptop and witchcraft notebook. She added the book on elements she had been studying and she made sure she had a good pen. She went downstairs and found her mom and dad having wine at the kitchen table.
“How was school doodle-bug?”
“Hi Mom, it was fine.”
“Where ya’ going?” Dad asked.
Casey kissed them both on the cheek. “I’m going to Coastal Coffee. My new friend Mims works there. I’m gonna study and mess around on the computer.”
“How old is Mims?” Mom asked.
“How old is she? I don’t know. Twenties.”
“And your new friend Jordan is older too. How’d you end up hanging around all of these older girls all of a sudden? What are they into?”
“Witchcraft,” Casey said peeling a banana and leaning against the counter. Her parents laughed but Casey just raised her eyebrows and kept eating.
“You’re serious,” Dad said looking up from his computer systems trade journal.
“Yeah. But it’s all positive. I want you two to visit the store where Jordan works sometime. Meet the lady she works for and the other kids there. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“What store is it?” Mom asked.
“Avalon Spellshop. On Artillery Lane.”
“Of course I know the shop. I’ve taken you in there before, not for a while I guess.”
“I know.”
“I always liked it. Good vibes. But witchcraft, Casey?”
“Witchcraft is the old spirituality of nature. It’s about harmony and positive energy. See ya’ later.”
“Be careful please,” Mom said and Casey kissed them both again and left.
“Well, they said raising teenagers was a challenge,” Casey’s dad said.
“I want to go to that store tomorrow,” her mom said. “I haven’t been in there for years. I want to see what’s going on over there.”
“I thought you might,” her dad said and went back to his magazine.
“And you’re coming.”
“I know.”
Casey’s house was far north of Old Town on Oak Street in a quiet wooded neighborhood. She rode her bike through as many residential streets as she could and only along the busier San Marcos Avenue in a few spots. She coasted past the Huguenot Cemetery and around the corner to the bike rack on Orange where she locked her bike and walked to Coastal Coffee.
She was thrilled to find Mims working and the two girls greeted each other with excitement.
“Last night was amazing. I’ve never felt anything like it,” Mims said.
“I know, me either.”
A few customers had come in, and in the past Mims would have never mentioned witchcraft in front of them, but now she didn’t care. “I always thought witchcraft had a deeper connection to nature, but it was always only the idea of it. Like a story in a book or whatever. But feeling it like that. It blew my mind.”
“Mine too. Can I get iced coffee with a shot of espresso, cream, and sugar.”
“Is this for Jordan?” Mims asked and turned to make the drink.
“No, for me. I came here to work on your WiFi.”
“Oh. You know that’s exactly what Jordan drinks, don’t you?”
“No way.”
“I swear.”
“No I didn’t know that,” Casey said and as small of a thing as it was, it made her smile and feel happy inside. “Weird,” she said to herself, then moved to the little bar and took out her things. Mims brought her drink. The coffee shop was busy with a steady stream of customers. Casey and Mims could hardly talk, although they did some here and there.
They talked a bit more about the circle and seeing the Lutin, but it was an impossible experience to describe, and not made better by talking about it. They changed the subject to the Klepto Kids stories and added bits and pieces to their broken, between-customer chat. Casey spoke when the store was slow.
“I was looking at the locations of the robberies online the other day and I had an idea. You know in the security videos, whenever they open a safe, you always see them hardwire a laptop up to the network?”
“Yeah,” Mims said over her shoulder washing plates.
“Well, I thought I might be able to see if there was a way to know exactly what they were doing. I wanted to know if they’re tying into the bank’s time-lock or something. I couldn’t find anything. But as I was searching through the public records I noticed each bank lists their utility vendors.”
“And?” Mims asked drying her hands and squinting in slight confusion.
“Those lists include their ISPs.”
“ISPs?”
“Internet service providers. Now ISPs can’t divulge individual usage, but they’re required by law to report their overall data transfers. The amounts of infor
mation they send or deliver for all of their customers. They have to report that to the FCC and they do it once a week. Each report has data volume listed for each twenty-four hour day, and totals for each week. I think they send it in every Monday for the week before.”
“I see,” Mims said and a customer came in and she was more than glad to go help him. Casey continued to work on her computer, sorting data and creating a document file to store what she found. She continued to find surprises and several times she said, “Wow,” and “Oh my God,” out loud but to herself. A final customer took their coffee and left through the far courtyard door.
“Talking to yourself is a sign of genius,” Prisma said from her seat by the biscotti basket. “I do it all the time.”
Casey’s mouth hung opened and she looked with astonishment at the faerie on the counter before her. She may normally have jumped, but after witnessing the circle and magick and the Lutin the night before, astonishing events were having less and less impact on her.
“That’s Prisma,” Mims said. “And this is Casey, Jordan’s apprentice.”
“Hi Casey. Nice to meet you.” Prisma stood wearing striped leggings, a ripped and billowing ruffled long sleeve shirt, a red sash of silk tied around her waist, a leather strap from a boat shoe lace around her shoulder, a black headband, and she held a green plastic cocktail toothpick sword. She wore tiny black plastic clogs.
“Nice to meet you. Cool sword.”
“Sword? What now,” Mims asked and she came up to see.
“I’m a pirate!” Prisma said and she lunged with the sword out toward Mims.
“Terrifying,” Mims said and she studied the faerie’s outfit. “She doesn’t always dress like that. Good job though. The red sash and the sword make it. Where’d you get the sword?”
“From an empty pina colada on the patio at Columbia.”
“Impressive,” Mims said and being a cosplayer herself, she could appreciate a good outfit when she saw one. “ I like it, but Halloween’s over.”
“Oh this isn’t for Halloween. It’s for the Fae Wild Hunt.”
“Hey I’ve heard of that,” Casey said. “You guys dress up for it?”
“I do. Everyone used to, but some of the new kids are getting lazy. The cool faeiries all dress up for it.”
The door opened and Jordan stepped in.
“Jordan!” Casey beamed.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“Hi Jordan. Thank you so much for last night,” Mims said.
“Yeah thank you,” Casey added. “That was amazing. We’ve been talking about it all afternoon.”
“Ahoy Jordan. Shiver me timbers. The place is full of witches.”
“Hi Prisma, don’t you look cool. A pirate,” Jordan said.
“Yep. I think I’ll go to the pirate museum and see if I can find Doogan who works there. He’s my date for the Wild Hunt.”
“So that’s why the sudden pirate fetish,” Mims said. “And I don’t think he really works there. He just lives in there.”
“No he does work there,” Prisma insisted. “Bill the owner pays him and everything. I’m going to see him.” She hovered for a second, flew directly into the window glass, bounced off, and landed on the sill. She shook her head, stood, flew up through the ceiling vent, and was gone.
“What are you up to today?” Jordan asked Casey as Mims made her drink.
“Come look what I found,” Casey said and she showed Jordan a few of her graphs and spreadsheets of data. She explained the data usage reporting that internet companies had to publish for the FCC and she showed Jordan some of the things she had found. Jordan looked to Mims who shrugged her shoulders.
“So you think this has something to do with the kids?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah, look,” Casey said and she highlighted a few rows of spreadsheet numbers. “These are the scales of data used on the days of each robbery. At first I was looking to see of I could find any terminal connections to the bank safes. I couldn’t. But when I was searching around I noticed these spikes.”
“Spikes?” Jordan said sipping her drink.
“Yeah, see? Each time there was a robbery, there were huge spikes in data transfer.”
“What does that mean?” Jordan asked.
“I’m not sure but I think it’s connected. There was even a giant increase on the last one. The Mobile, Alabama bank. Look.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t know. It could be tons of things causing that I bet. Just because the internet companies sent and received a little more data on the days of the robberies?”
“Yeah but it’s a lot more. I mean crazy amounts more. Thousands of times more than a normal day. And here’s the craziest part. The data on the day of the first robbery is back to normal.”
“What do you mean back to normal?” Jordan asked leaning to look at the screen.
“Just that. That was the first one I found. The other day before I made the connection. I saw it when I was trying to find linked data records. I found a huge spike the other day, but now it’s gone. Someone changed the information.”
“Maybe they made a mistake and fixed it.”
“Then made the same mistake on the same days as each robbery since then? I don’t buy it.”
“Either way,” Jordan said. “It doesn’t prove this has anything to do with the kids being hexed. Dark witches use curses and hexes, not computers.”
“And they use Lutin spies like that thing we saw last night?” Casey asked.
“Sometimes,” Jordan said.
“Did you find out who sent it?” Mims asked.
“I found out who didn’t. I visited The Poison Apple this morning and Datura didn’t send the Lutin and I’m pretty sure no one from there did. Even Gwen is out of town somewhere.”
“You went right in there and asked them? You’re nuts. How do you know they didn’t do it?” Mims asked. “They’d lie in a second.”
“They would, but I know Datura. I can’t explain it, I could just tell.”
“What time do you guys close?” Casey asked Mims.
“Eight. Two more hours. Stay here and work while I shut it down. It gets slow from now on.”
“Don’t work too hard. I’m going home. Have a good weekend,” Jordan said and she left.
Casey stayed and continued to do research into her theory while Mims helped a few customers and cleaned. She was searching through the bank data reporting logs when she had an idea. She decided to do a wide search to see if any other organizations had reported large data variances on the same days as the robberies. In doing so she struck what she thought to be gold. There was one website consuming a majority of the data on the first robbery day, even though the mass of extra data had been deleted from the original report. She thought that this might prove her theory of someone tampering with the information, if she could find other instances of that same website using masses of data on days that had yet to be altered.
When she ran a search for the new website on those days, her suspicions were confirmed. She was thrilled and wanted to mention it to Mims, but she didn’t feel like explaining it all so she kept it to herself.
She went back to find the complex URL of the site she had found. It was a string of twenty letters and numbers that didn’t seem to spell or mean anything obvious. She knew that some private companies used similar website names to house internal information when the name of the web address was irrelevant. She copied the address and pasted it into her browser.
The site came up as a black screen and it ran a video of static and intermittent glimpses of faces and scenes of city streets. The images came in rapid succession and the strange slideshow lasted for about a minute. When it stopped the screen remained black but there was a simple text menu across the top. Home. Chat. Portal-1. Portal-2. Portal-3.
An underground gaming site, she thought to herself. She had seen sites like this over Dad’s shoulder when she was very young and she knew this one must have been left over from the first da
ys of the internet. It was probably abandoned. One way to find out she said to herself and she clicked Chat from the menu. A narrow white window opened along the bottom of her screen: a first generation form tab (the mother of the pop-up). The form consisted of a blank text field and a green button that read Go. Casey thought for a second, typed in the name CoffeeGhost, and clicked Go.
The screen flickered and an old text chat form spilled open with a nickname bar on the right filled with names.
“Whoa,” Casey said.
“What?” Mims asked.
“Oh. Nothing,” she said and she shook her head and began to watch swift conversations fill the screen from top to bottom, line by line. She read some of the names. Pandagirl. Mob-Barely. Rhyme. Android18. Over9000. She scrolled through the name list and there seemed to be hundreds. She tried to follow the conversations. They were mostly about games. She saw references to Portals 1, 2, and 3. She figured the chatters were playing various games in the portals, and chatting about them in the room. She tried to enter two of the portals but each required a password so she returned to watch the chat room.
A bell chimed and she saw a private tab open at the chat bottom. The name on the window tab was Figment. She scrolled through the list of chatters and found that name. She right-clicked on it, then clicked Whois from the menu that dropped down. A short burst of text filled the chat frame and she studied it. It listed the user’s internet host, nickname, age, sex, IP address, and sign-on time and date. She took a screenshot of the information, then opened the private window.
Figment: Hi CoffeeGhost
