Free Student Bodies by Sean Cummings

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.
    â€œDamn 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
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    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.
    And I sure as hell was going to find out who killed him.
    I stood in the foyer alongside Marcus and stared at the notice that had been posted by the school administration on the giant bulletin board; right next to the large sign announcing the upcoming school Holiday Season Dance, set for the coming Tuesday night. (We don’t call it a Christmas dance due to the multicultural makeup of the school.) There was a