Body at the Crossroads

by Cate Martin

  "I brought your clothes," I said, setting the bundle down on one of the chairs.

  "Ah," Brianna said, and to my surprise actually stopped her motion to look up from her book. Not at me, but at the clothes. "Thanks."

  "You should eat with us," Sophie said. "Food for the brain. This will still be here when you're done."

  "Unless you're at some crucial juncture?" I added.

  Brianna bit down hard on her bottom lip, her brows drawing together in a scowl. Then that all dropped away and she glanced up at us brightly.

  "No, I can take a break," she said. "I'll just change and then follow you down."

  I wasn't entirely convinced she wouldn't get sidetracked during that process, but Sophie and I left her and continued on to find Mr. Trevor filling bowls in the dining room. The light from the setting sun filtered in through the branches of the tree that loomed over that side of the house, making dappled patterns of gold all over the table and the back wall.

  I glanced at the top of the hutch, but the box was not there. I wondered where Mr. Trevor had stored it, but decided that really it wasn't any of my business.

  "This smells fantastic," I said instead, sliding into a chair and digging a spoon into my steaming bowl. I could smell the chicken, but also rosemary and thyme and the doughy smell of the steamed dumplings. "These aren't dry at all," I said around my first mouthful.

  "You're kind to say so," Mr. Trevor said.

  Sophie was looking down at her bowl with a strange look on her face, something like nostalgia but with a touch of a new realization.

  "What is it?" I asked, again around a mouthful of food. I was really hungry.

  "Nothing," Sophie said, filling her spoon with soup and putting it delicately in her mouth.

  "You were thinking something," I said. "Like a memory, I think. Does this remind you of your mother's cooking or something?"

  "Oh, no," Sophie said. "Quite the opposite. You know, I've been studying and training and devoting my life to dance and specifically ballet since I was, oh I guess five years old."

  "Wow," I said. I don't remember having any ambitions in particular when I was five. Getting home from kindergarten in time to watch Blue's Clues, maybe.

  "That takes a lot of discipline," Mr. Trevor said. "And you were studying magic as well?"

  "Less so," Sophie admitted. "But part of wanting to be a ballerina was strict control of my diet. That stew on the first day and the chili last night were marvelous, Mr. Trevor. And this is amazing as well. You're a tremendous cook."

  "That wasn't always true," he admitted, but I could see him blushing at the compliment. "Miss Zenobia used to have a cook on staff when she still ran the school. I didn't learn how to cook until she needed me to take over. She was very forgiving of my first attempts. I think I've gotten the knack now, though."

  "Yes," Sophie agreed. "It's total comfort food."

  "Not what you're used to, I'm guessing," Mr. Trevor said. "You miss Louisiana food? New Orleans is one of the best places for cuisine in the world, but some of the less elaborate dishes should be things I could tackle if you like."

  "No, this is perfect," Sophie said. "It's just, I've gone so long sort of mentally counting the cost of everything I eat, and just now I realized I don't have to do that anymore. Because I'm not going to be a dancer. I'm going to be a witch and a time portal guardian. So I guess I can eat what I like."

  "Oh," I said. I'd pretty much always eaten what I liked. But I could appreciate that she was feeling a change. "That's why your face looked like that, then. You're kind of happy about it, but also kind of sad."

  "Indeed," Sophie said. She used the side of her spoon to slice one of the plump dumplings in half then spooned up half of it with a good measure of soup and put the whole thing in her mouth. The very opposite of dainty; she was eating like me now.

  We smiled at each other across the table as we chewed.

  "I think I've figured out a thing," Brianna said as she came in the doorway, little book still open in her hand. Mr. Trevor seemed to just know she wasn't going to look up and sprung out of his chair to guide her to the table and into a seat, moving the steaming bowl close enough to get even her attention.

  "What have you figured out?" I asked.

  "A thing about time," Brianna said. "That's sort of what my research was based on. I mean, not really. Really I was studying the patterns and connections between magic as we use it and string theory, but part of that relates to time."

  "Bree," Sophie said. "I think you're in danger of losing us very quickly."

  Brianna glanced up as if startled to find us there. "Oh. Well, the thing is…" she trailed off again.

  "String theory," I said, prompting her. "That's a physics thing." Which was the sum total I knew about string theory.

  "You know how there are three dimensions of space and a fourth dimension of time?" Brianna asked.

  Sophie and I nodded. We were with her so far.

  "Well, in string theory there are actually a bunch more dimensions than that," Brianna said.

  And just like that, she lost us.

  "Why don't you get super specific to the magic part of it," I suggested.

  "Okay," Brianna said, tapping the spine of the book against her lips as she pondered. "Well, what got me thinking was gravity. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, and some theorize this is because it is spread across all of those little bundled up dimensions and not just the three plus one we see."

  "Bundled up dimensions?" Sophie said.

  "I should have said, those extra dimensions in string theory are really small. If you describe them mathematically, they look like this." She held her book open to us, showing a drawing that I was pretty sure could drive people insane, all twisting around itself over and over.

  "Bree, can you make this simpler?" Sophie asked.

  "Well, okay," Brianna said, flummoxed again. "Well, gravity spreads over extra dimensions, so anyway I think the same thing might be true for magic."

  "Okay," I said. If there was anything I knew less about than theoretical physics, it was magic.

  "There are these things called branes," Brianna said. "They interact with each other. I won't try to explain. But they move in relation to each other. Theoretically." She glanced at my face then at Sophie's and bit her lip. "Some times magic is stronger than other times?" she ended feebly.

  "That I can agree with," Sophie said. "I've been sort of meditating every day, just feeling the flow of magic. Some of that flow has patterns like the season or the time of day or the lunar cycle, but other parts ebb and flow in a way that just feels more random."

  "Ooh, very good," Brianna said. "We should do some experiments together. You're way more sensitive than I am on this stuff."

  "And you've learned all this from Miss Zenobia's library?" Mr. Trevor asked, sounding amazed.

  "Well, not specifically. She didn't grasp it, but she was an excellent observer. If I had been here to explain it to her, I think she would have caught on at once."

  "What does this mean for us?" I asked.

  "Oh yes," Brianna said, consulting her book again. "I thought that Miss Zenobia appearing at the full moon was just a lunar cycle thing. Very common with witches since the dawn of witches, really. But she had a subtler sense of things. She missed a full moon between when she passed and when we were summoned, didn't she?"

  "She did," Mr. Trevor agreed.

  "Yes, she knew this would be a better time with a stronger total flow of magic. Otherwise, her spell would have had a much smaller effect."

  "That's interesting, but how is it significant now?" I asked.

  "The murder happened very close to the same point," Brianna said. "The obvious sign of the lunar cycle isn't the stronger part of the magic flow. It's the invisible part involving the extra dimensions. But that's ebbing now too."

  "Is it going to be harder to get into the past now?" Sophie asked.

  "Not for us," Brianna said. "But for whoever has the amul
et. Think about it: whoever killed Cynthia carried her body to 2018 and left her here then went back to 1927. But that amulet wasn't designed for a person lugging another person. It only happened because of the timing of it all. And I'd guarantee whoever has the amulet now doesn't know that."

  "So what do we do?" I asked. "We don't know who has it or how much they know."

  "We'll find them, if we keep investigating," Sophie said with a confidence I didn't feel.

  "In the meantime," Brianna said and discovered the bowl of food in front of her for the first time. She put a spoonful in her mouth and seemed to melt in her seat with a warm yummy noise, rolling her eyes back in sheer bliss.

  "In the meantime?" I prompted.

  "In the meantime, I can put a spell on the portal itself. I'll know when the amulet passes through, like an intruder alarm."

  "Oh, brilliant," Sophie said, and Brianna beamed.

  "I'm afraid that won't work," Mr. Trevor said regretfully.

  "What do you mean? Why wouldn't it? The theory is sound, and I'm a pretty good witch," Brianna said.

  "Yes, but Miss Zenobia was a very powerful witch with centuries more of experience than you," Mr. Trevor said. “Like normal people, most witches are good. But a few aren’t, and Miss Zenobia was always a tempting target for their machinations. She was worried about other witches sensing Cynthia moving back and forth through time on an almost daily basis. That amulet was crafted just for her, not just to carry her across time but to hide her from other witches. Any spell you can think of, Miss Zenobia surely thought of it first and put a countering spell on the amulet."

  Brianna slumped in her chair, spoon dripping over her placemat.

  "We'll find it," I said to her. "We'll find that amulet the old-fashioned way. And then it will be yours to study. Just think of all you're going to learn from it."

  Brianna didn't quite return to the manic state she had been in when she'd come into the dining room, but she was at least recovered well enough to finish eating.

  I just wished I really believed we could find that amulet. It was tricky enough when we didn't know it was capable of actively evading our detection.

  Or at least Brianna's and Sophie's detection. All I had to go one was my own two eyes, and they were feeling woefully inadequate these days.

  Chapter 20

  For a good chunk of my junior high school years, my mother and I lived next door to a couple prone to very loud, very frequent disputes. They would start about the time I was getting ready for bed and would stretch on until the wee hours of the morning.

  Honestly, I don't know what the point of it was. Either you get along, or you don't, and if you don't, then you shouldn’t be sharing a tiny box of an apartment.

  That might be a bit simplistic. But I was thirteen. Lots of things were more black and white then.

  At any rate, the only defense I had against this nightly invasion of chaos was my Walkman. It didn't even play CDs; it played cassettes, which were really hard to come by. I listened to the same three The Cure albums over and over until that loud couple finally moved out.

  I'm not even sure they broke up. I think they moved out still together.

  But whatever, the point is falling asleep to music was something that had once been normal for me. So I only had that one sleepless night due to the jazz music. By the third night it was almost a comfort. I went to bed with my head spinning from the lack of clearcut suspects in our investigation and a lot of confusing dinner talk about string theory and branes. Then the sounds of a trumpet carried through my closed window, each note clear and sweet, and I was soon fast asleep.

  In the morning I put on the last of my clean clothes. I had only packed enough for a weekend, and here it was Monday morning. I was going to have to figure out where the washing machine was. Probably in that cellar that didn't connect to the house.

  Ugh, that was going to suck in January.

  At some point, I was going to have to go back to Iowa to get the rest of my things and to tell the Schneidermans that I wouldn't be coming back. I pushed that thought aside. That was going to be so hard to do; I just couldn't think about it now.

  I went down the back stairs, pausing on the second floor to listen until I made out the voices of both Brianna and Sophie, up before me and already working together in the library.

  In high school, my best friend Christine had a boyfriend, but I didn't. Hanging out with the two of them had never felt as third wheel-y as I felt in that moment on the stairs.

  I went the rest of the way down to the kitchen and saw to my surprise there was no coffee waiting for me in the machine. Had Mr. Trevor slept in, or forgotten about us before his morning walk?

  Well, it's not like I didn't have years of experience making large quantities of coffee.

  I started opening cabinet doors in search of the coffee and coffee filters, and the thought of going back to Iowa floated back up to the fore of my mind.

  I didn't necessarily have to tell the Schneidermans I wasn't coming back. I didn't necessarily have to bring all of my stuff to Minnesota. If the last couple of days had proven anything, it was that Sophie and Brianna didn't need me for anything they couldn't do themselves. It might take three witches to guard the portal, but if that was the case, it should be three actual witches, not two witches plus a girl who could make the coffee.

  A girl who could make the coffee when Mr. Trevor forgot, I amended and felt very low indeed.

  I heard a scamper of footsteps coming down the hall and was just musing that it had to be Brianna because no dancer would tromp down a hall like that when a bright bolt like electric fire shot past my head, exploding a plant hanging near the window behind me.

  Coffee grounds flew up into the air as I ducked behind the counter and started crawling towards the back door. I was nearly there when I saw a pair of ankle boots slide in front of my crawling hands, blocking my way.

  I scrambled back and away just before another bolt of light crackled and exploded, leaving a black, smoking hole in the tile. I crawled as quickly as I could towards the butler's pantry, but the image of Brianna standing over me, wand raised as her other hand pointed to me with three fingers and her mouth whispered words of power was seared on my brain.

  What was going on? Was she possessed?

  One thing was certain: she was definitely trying to kill me.

  I got to my feet once I was in the pantry and started grabbing everything my hands could find on the counters, flinging silver teapots and serving trays and napkin rings back into the kitchen.

  Something hit her; I heard her say, "oof" as something clanged. But it wasn't enough to stop the next blast of energy exploding the cabinet full of china behind me.

  And now I was bleeding everywhere, from a million tiny cuts, and the floor was covered in slivers of the finest bone china.

  "Sophie!" I yelled, pulling myself into the hallway to run towards the front door. "Help!" I pulled all of the dining room chairs over as I ran past them. It wouldn't slow Brianna down much, but it was better than nothing.

  The extent of my plan was to reach the front door and get outside. I was pretty sure that Brianna wouldn't do magic where everyone could see. At least I hoped she wouldn't.

  But just as I was reaching the foyer, Sophie stepped down from the bottom of the stairs.

  "Thank goodness!" I said, skidding to a halt. "Brianna has gone crazy. What were you two digging into upstairs? Mr. Trevor said a lot of that stuff was really dangerous-"

  But there was something cold in Sophie's eyes, something that made me realize she wasn't on my side either.

  Then she lifted up in a dancer's pose, swinging her arms around then extending her fingers towards me.

  And, just as if she had summoned a hurricane wind, I was blown off my feet, sliding on my back down the hardwood floor of the hallway.

  I only stopped when the top of my head hit Brianna's feet. She bent at the waist to look down at me, her hair falling around both of our faces as if to create
a tunnel between us.

  Then she raised that wand again, and I threw myself back into motion.

  I didn't know any magic, and I had never studied any dancing. But I had spent a lot of time in weight rooms when I played hockey, and I had learned lots of little things from the other gym rats. One of them was a little move called a kip up. You've seen it in movies. It's how the likes of Bruce Lee get up off the ground.

  I hadn't done one in years. But adrenaline is an amazing drug.

  I threw my weight back onto my hands, and Brianna shrieked and stumbled back away from me. I wasn't really trying to kick her, but it probably looked that way from where she was standing.

  Then I kicked my legs out and flipped myself up onto my feet, hands up and ready for whatever Sophie was going to throw at me next.

  But there was no reason to wait for her to do her thing. She cast spells like the benders in that M. Night Shyamalan movie. Way too slowly.

  She swept her arms back, and I could feel the beginnings of that wind pulling at the curls of my hair.

  But the moment her arms were back I charged her, wrapping my arms around her and throwing her back into Brianna.

  She hadn't eaten enough of Mr. Trevor's cooking to weigh more than a feather yet. But when I threw her back into Brianna, they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Nets don't weigh much either, but they sure can slow you down.

  I started for the door again, but even still tangled up with Sophie Brianna was capable of throwing another bolt that exploded over the doorknob, crackling like fire over the brass.

  I turned and ran for the stairs. It felt really hopeless. There was nowhere I could hide, nothing I could do to fight them. But I would buy every minute I could. Because every minute that passed was another chance for something to change.

  Not that I was planning to wait for rescue. Who would possibly turn up to rescue me from two rogue, possibly possessed witches?

  No, I was on my own. And I needed a weapon. A weapon that would fight witches.

  Hysterical laughter started to bubble up inside of me, but I swallowed it back down as I charged up the stairs to the second floor.