“Well, I should get back to my room,” Karen said. “I’ve got a lot of homework to do, and I don’t want to get behind like I did last semester.”
Brittany looked relieved that the conversation was ending. “Good seeing you.”
With another exchange of tight smiles, the girls went their separate ways. As Karen approached the end of the building, she saw Bobby standing just beyond the breezeway. She did not pause or look directly at him, but he fell in step beside her as she passed.
“That must have been rough, running into Brittany like that,” he said. “I know you still feel guilty over what happened, but remember, you weren’t in control then. You’re doing much better now.”
Karen tiltled her head and reached up to rub her neck, momentarily making eye contact with Bobby and giving a minute nod. Over the past several months, she’d become quite adept at communicating with him in public without drawing unwanted attention and making everyone around her suspect she was schizophrenic.
“I know you have a lot of schoolwork to do, and I hate to bother you, but my mother sent me. She said she needs to talk to you.”
Karen sighed, pointedly shifting the backpack and raising her eyebrows, conveying the message, Can it wait?
“All I know is that it has something to do with the coven. She says it’s urgent.”
The coven. Karen hadn’t heard anything from them since she’d left the studio apartment last semester, but she guessed it was unlikely that they would just give up. Especially now that the equinox was approaching.
Karen headed toward student parking.
* * *
Bobby sat in the passenger’s seat on the ride over. Of course, Karen mused, he wasn’t really sitting at all. He had no body, no form—the physical presence she saw was a mental construct. But still he was there, in whatever form, and she found his presence comforting. Truth was, he had become her best friend. And the truth beyond that, which she didn’t even want to admit to herself most of the time, was that she was in love with him.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Bobby looked at her and nodded.
“Do you see other ghosts? I mean, is there like a whole community of the undead that the living are unaware of?”
Bobby laughed. “Community of the undead? That’s a good one. But the answer is no, I’ve never seen a ghost in all the years since...well, since I’ve been in this condition.”
“Hmm, but there must be other ghosts out there. Stands to reason.”
“I’d imagine so, but apparently we are not able to see each other. Like I said, typically I can’t even see myself.”
“Must be lonely,” Karen said with a commiserating smile.
“It can be. I keep thinking there must be something beyond this.”
“You mean like heaven?”
“Maybe not angels on clouds and streets of gold, but some other plane of existence, another dimension. Or even oblivion, for that matter. There have definitely been times when I felt that would be preferable to this in-between state.”
“Well, in only a few short months, you won’t be stuck in-between anymore.”
“You sound pretty confident.”
“I’ve really learned a lot from Penelope these past few months, and I feel my power growing every day. There’s still the problem of finding an appropriate body, but this is going to work. I just know it.”
Bobby nodded but said nothing, turning his eyes back out the windshield. They continued the rest of the way in silence.
* * *
They had hot herbal tea in the messy living room. Penelope usually preferred to talk out back, in the circle, but the sleet had started just before Karen had pulled up in front of the house. Karen was eager to get this over with and get back to campus. The weather reports weren’t calling for much accumulation, but she wasn’t comfortable driving on ice.
“So what are our wacky pals in the coven up to now?”
“They’ve apparently done a binding spell,” Penelope said, her expression pinched.
Karen paused with the mug halfway to her lips, then set it on the coffee table. “What? Can they do that?”
“A binding spell can’t completely strip someone of his or her powers, but it can limit powers. And my powers are definitely diminished, have been for the past day and a half, and I know the coven is behind this. I suspect they have attempted to bind yours as well.”
At first Karen was going to protest that she would know if someone was working a spell on her, but then she decided to test it. She focused her attention and mental energy on the mug full of steaming tea, willing it to rise into the air. It did, only a few inches, but it hovered there, shaking slightly and sloshing a few drops onto the top of the table. She held it aloft for two minutes then lowered it with a clunk.
“So they didn’t bind your powers,” Bobby said.
But Penelope looked skeptical as she studied Karen’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said, “but it wasn’t as effortless as it usually is. I had to double my concentration, and there were times where I almost felt my hold slipping.”
Penelope smiled, but it was a cold expression. “I thought this might happen. A witch with your abundance of natural power, their binding spell is too weak. Many in that group are not even natural witches. Their spell was strong enough to hamper my powers but not yours, not to any significant degree.”
“So what does this mean?” Bobby asked.
“It means that Karen is going to do a binding spell of her own.”
Karen’s skin went cold, as if she were standing naked in the sleet. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it every step of the way. Binding their powers will release the spell binding my own.”
“You want me to bind the entire coven?”
“Trust me, for someone with your abilities, that will be a piece of cake. It’s not going to hurt them, and it won’t be forever, just until after the equinox, after we’ve restored Bobby.”
Karen mulled this over. She lifted the mug with her mind again, feeling the resistance. Yes, she could push through it, but there was definitely an invisible force working against her, trying to squash her power. That made her angry.
“Okay. You want to do this tonight?”
“No, I have some supplies I’ll need to get. We can wait until after the weekend. However, I do need you to go somewhere with me tonight.”
Glancing uneasily toward the window, she said, “Where?”
“The hospital.”
“The hospital? Why?”
“You’ve been asking how I was going to find a body for Bobby, and I think it’s time that I showed you.”
Chapter 14
The boy in the hospital bed could have been no older than seventeen. He was thin and pale, his hair blond and wispy. He might have once been handsome, but now his pallor and the dark circles around his sunken eyes made him appear like a living corpse.
If not for the beeping machinery attached to him, Karen might not have been sure that he was indeed living.
“Who is this?” Karen said in a whisper, though the young man seemed far beyond being disturbed.
“His name is Pete Huston.”
That name sounded familiar, but Karen couldn’t quite place it. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Coma. The doctors say it’s unlikely he’ll ever regain consciousness.”
“How do you know him?”
Penelope was quiet for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “I guess you could say he’s my son.”
Karen wasn’t expecting this, and it left her momentarily speechless. She glanced over at Bobby, but he was avoiding her gaze, a tactic he often employed when feeling guilty or ashamed. “But you said after Bobby, you couldn’t have any more children.”
“That’s true. Pete is not my biological child.”
“You adopted him?”
“Not adopted, but I am hi
s legal guardian. Have been for the past couple of years. I met him in New Orleans. He was living on the streets. His parents had kicked him out for being gay, and he had no one. I took him in.”
New Orleans...that was the spark Karen needed. “He’s a witch...or a warlock?”
“He has power,” Penelope said. “Not as much as you, but power aplenty.”
“And you asked him to help you?”
“I told him what I hoped to accomplish and he offered help, in a way I could not have foreseen.”
Karen frowned at the librarian. “What do you mean?”
Penelope closed the door, then took a seat in one of two vinyl chairs next to the bed, motioning for Karen to take the other. Pete had a private room, so they were alone. Two witches, a dead boy, and a boy that seemed near death.
“Pete had a lot of problems,” Penelope started. “After his parents kicked him out, he sold his body for cash. Developed a drinking problem. I helped him get off the booze, gave him a home, a family, and yet none of it seemed to make him truly happy. In fact, the only time I ever saw him truly happy was when he came to me with his idea.”
“And what idea was that?”
“He wanted to give me his body.”
“You two were lovers?”
Penelope broke into soft laughter. “Oh no. As I’ve said, I considered Pete my son. What he was offering was to allow me to use his body to restore Bobby.”
Karen looked from Penelope to Bobby to the poor boy in the hospital bed. “But I thought you couldn’t use a living body without forcing out the spirit that already inhabited it.”
“That’s true.”
“Then you’re talking murder.”
“In this case, suicide. Pete told me he had nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to. Even at his young age, he was already tired and said he just wanted it to be over. He said his life had no meaning but he felt that if he could do this, if he could facilitate bringing my son back to me, then that would at least give his death meaning.”
“And you of course tried to talk him out of it.”
After a pause, Penelope nodded. “Of course, but he was determined. He told me that regardless of whether or not I let him do this, he was going to end his life. I could either let him do it on his terms, or his body could be found in some French Quarter alley with his wrists slit down to the elbow.”
“If you’re his legal guardian, you could have had him hospitalized, gotten him psychiatric help.”
“I know, and that was what I was planning to do but I didn’t move fast enough. Pete ended up taking matters into his own hands.”
“Meaning?”
“He attempted the spell on his own.”
Karen glanced back at the skeletal figure under the sheet, the chest rising and falling so minutely. “I’m guessing from the look of things that it didn’t go well for him.”
Penelope started to speak but her voice broke, and she wiped at a few tears before continuing. “We had discussed the spell, what would be required, some specifics, but there was still much he didn’t know, didn’t understand, items he needed that were not in his possession. I had warned him the spell could be dangerous for someone who didn’t know what they were doing, but he tried it on his own anyway. With disastrous results.”
“What exactly is wrong with him?”
“The doctors are baffled. They say there’s nothing physically wrong with him that they can find. He just won’t wake up.”
“Okay, so that’s what the doctors say. What do you say? What’s wrong with him?”
Penelope reached out and idly stroked the boy’s hand. “I think the spell half-worked. His body was emptied out, made ready for Bobby’s soul. Only the second part of the spell did not work.”
“So he ended up killing himself after all.”
“In a sense. His body, with the help of modern medicine, still functions...it’s just empty. Waiting to be filled.”
“Is Pete here?”
Penelope glanced over at the unconscious form in the bed then turned her eyes back to Karen, a frown creating a crease between her eyebrows.
“I mean his spirit,” Karen said. “Like Bobby. If you were to make talismans with Pete’s hair, would you be able to see him and communicate with him? Perhaps restore him into his own body?”
Penelope was already shaking her head before Karen had finished her questions. “I tried that, but Pete is just...gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. I’m not privy to the secrets of what lies beyond this life. Though I consider Pete to be my son, he isn’t really. Not biologically. Therefore we don’t have the blood bond I share with Bobby.”
Karen started to speak but paused when the door opened and a nurse in blue scrubs walked in. She smiled at Penelope but did not speak as she checked Pete’s vitals and replaced an IV. Karen was happy for the distraction, as it gave her time to mull over everything Penelope had just told her.
Once the nurse left the room, Karen said, “So you’re proposing that we put Bobby’s spirit in Pete’s body.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve kept this from me all this time...why? I told you I didn’t want any more deception.”
“Technically I did not deceive you.”
“Whenever anyone has to start out a statement with the word ‘technically,’ that means the bullshit level is particularly high.”
“Look, I told you that I was trying to figure out what we were going to do about a body, and that was true.”
“So you weren’t planning on using Pete the whole time?”
“I had it in mind as a possibility, a last resort kind of possibility. If I could think of any other way…. But as you’ve said before, finding a corpse fresh enough to be viable isn’t very likely. What happened to Pete was tragic—I wish like hell I could have prevented it—but the harsh truth is that what is done is done, and Pete is gone, but his body is here....”
“So why waste it, huh?” Karen said.
Penelope didn’t answer, but a look of pain crossed her eyes like a cloud. Karen felt a momentary pang of guilt for stinging the woman, but reminded herself that after everything, Penelope was still keeping things from her. Maybe not outright deception, but that was just semantics.
“How can you be sure Pete is really gone?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe the reason his spirit is AWOL is because it’s still in his body. Has it occurred to you that he could actually be in a coma?”
“No, his body is an empty vessel.”
“Again I ask, how can you be sure.”
“Just touch him.”
“What?”
Penelope leaned forward with her arms across her knees. “Seriously. You’re one of the most spiritually attuned witches I’ve ever met. Just lay your hands on him, and you’ll feel it.”
Karen hesitated, but she had to admit her curiosity was piqued. Over the past few months, Penelope had taught her a great deal, including how to more accurately read people’s emotions. She’d never tried to read anyone in a coma before, though.
She stepped to the bed. She knew that physical contact often increased perception, so she placed her hand over his. It was so frail that she could feel the bones just beneath the skin, like a thin layer of rubber over a bundle of sticks. And he was cold, cold like she imagined the Arctic would be cold. Closing her eyes, she tried to quiet her mind, to still her thoughts, and reach inside of Pete, to touch whatever was inside that made him.
There was a hollow whoosing sound like a wind tunnel, a sense of vertigo, and Karen broke contact and backpedaled from the bed with a gasp. Her hand had gone numb, then a pinprink tingling spread from her fingers down toward her wrist as feeling returned.
“There’s nothing there,” she said in a rasp. “Just a…a vacuum.”
Penelope nodded. “I know. Pete meant well, and I can only hope that whatever happened to his spirit, he ended up in a better place. Reincarnation, he
aven, oblivion…whatever it might be, I hope he found some peace.”
“And you are serious about using his body,” Karen said, not a question.
“Whatever I wanted, it was what Pete wanted. If we do this, then at least his sacrifice would not be in vain. It would mean something.”
Karen thought about this for a moment, looking down at the empty shell lying in the bed. Then she turned her eyes to Bobby, still hunched over in the corner, staring at the floor. Just looking at him, she felt her heartbeat accelerate, her breath quickened. She thought of what it would feel like to finally have his arms around her, his lips pressed against hers. It was a silly, girlish thing to be thinking about at a time like this, but she could not deny it was on her mind.
Finally she sighed and said, “Okay, I’m in.”
Chapter 15
The first week of February, Karen and Bobby went on a date. The Furman theater department was putting on The Laramie Project, and Karen bought two tickets. Of course, no one else could see Bobby sitting next to her—she got a few looks that suggested folks thought she’d been stood up—but she didn’t mind.
The play was well-done and moving in places, and a few sideways glances showed that Bobby seemed enraptured. It had probably been some time since he’d attended a play. Karen wanted to start getting him out into the world again, acclimate him so that when he was flesh and blood once more it wouldn’t be such a shock. Also, she loved spending time with him.
After the play, they piled out of the auditorium with everyone else, Karen wishing she could take his hand the way she saw some couples doing. Instead she headed toward the dorms, eager to get away from the crowds so she could talk freely with Bobby again.
At first she didn’t realize someone behind her was calling her name, because they were calling “Still Waters.” Bobby was the first to notice it. He glanced back and paled. Karen followed his gaze and saw a young girl approaching. At first she didn’t recognize her, but as the girl got closer Karen remembered the sneer.
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