The Witching Hour

Chapter Five

"How much longer is she going to take?" Austin asked. "We told Mum we'd be home by three o'clock."

"I'm going to go check on her," Sage said. 

"Right," Austin said. "Be quick."

Sage nodded and shoved open the heavy door. They hurried up the stairs to where they'd left Poppy. There she was, staring in horror at a marking on the wall.

"Hey," Sage said. "You okay?"

Poppy's eyes darted around the room and into the hallway.

"Austin's waiting outside," Sage said. "Probably shouldn't make him wait much longer."

Poppy nodded, still looking at the wall. "Yeah," she said. "Let's go."

"A witch boy died," Claire said, not looking up from the paper. Vivienne closed her book.

"Oh," she said. "Who?"

"Percival Howard," Claire squinted. She'd always been a little near-sighted, and the newspaper print was microscopic. "Aged fourteen, Howard was a student of one of the littlest-known witch schools; Hallow's School of Witchcraft."

"Where's that?" Vivienne asked.

"England," Claire said, peering closer. "It has less than ten students."

"That's tiny," Vivienne mused. "Imagine being a student there."

"Yeah," Claire agreed absent-mindedly. Vivienne gave her a sideways glance. What was she reading? Vivienne scooted closer to her friend to read over her shoulder.

There was a paragraph about who he was, where he was from. Vivienne skimmed ahead to where Claire's eyes were–the last section.

Nearby sheriffs have been sent to recover the body, but we also have some witches looking into his tragic death. Students of the school have been interrogated. The sooner we can find out who is responsible for Howard's death, the sooner he may rest in peace.

"They think one of the kids did it?" Claire smirked. "That's ridiculous."

"I mean, not exactly," Vivienne said. "It's a really small school, they have a bad reputation. This kind of thing happens often."

"Yeah, but...dark magic is one thing. Actually killing somebody? I'd put it past them."

Claire folded the paper. "Anyway," she said. "It doesn't really matter. They're all the way in England."

James and Percy had been at Hallow's the longest. It was a year, just the two of them, before Julia joined. James remembered being young and new to everything and thinking he would have the time of his life at Hallow's. He'd had so many expectations.

James had thought Hallow's would be a fun school, where you learned magic and fought evil. When he arrived, he'd first thought; This is the wrong place.

But Percy was there, and Percy was funny and nice and made it more bearable. With Percy, James learned things. Not magic things, just funny things, like how his cousin loved to eat paint and his uncle was always tripping over his chickens.

James was back at home now–not home in England with his mother, where he'd stayed since he joined Hallow's, but home in Ireland with his father.

Life in Ireland was different from England. In England, it was busy and bustling. He'd woken up early every morning and done his morning chores in the chipper air. Here with his father, there was less to be done. He could get up later, read a book, and walk down to breakfast still in his pajamas. His father was never home, so he'd feed the dog and let her out before studying for hours, determined not to fall behind in school. With Hallow's closed, his father planned to send him to an ordinary Catholic school. Learning magic, he insisted, had not worked and would not work in their favor.

Of course, life in Ireland was more stressful. James' father was newly remarried, but his wife had not moved in yet. Sometimes she and the baby came over, and then there was a kerfuffle of noise in the cottage. Often James had to look after the baby, which of course he didn't mind, but it intruded on his study work.

The spring semester started in one week. James would be joining halfway through the year as a special favor from the headmaster, who played chess on weekends with James' father.

The day before school began, James tidied the house and did all the laundry. No one ever asked him to clean up, and ordinarily he didn't, but sometimes when he was nervous it calmed him to tidy a shelf or dust the mantelpiece.

When James' father returned to the house, he ate a cold bowl of porridge before heading straight to bed. James, however, lay awake for hours. It was quiet in the house, quieter than it had ever been in England.

Sometimes back in England, when he listened for long enough and held his breath, the silence left behind by the cars was deafening. But it was always gone in a moment, snatched by another passing car, and the room would be lit with the glow of the headlights. Nothing was really quiet in England.

James shifted to his side, pulling the quilted covers up to his chin. He let out the breath he'd been holding. The rustling of the bedsheets was deafening in the silence. He didn't like the quiet. He preferred when the room was filled with noise and light–then there was less room for his mind to wander.

Now he thought again of Percy. It still felt like life was moving on without James, and he was running to catch up. He hadn't caught up to this moment yet. Maybe in his head he was still at the dining table at Hallow's, or the classroom, or his crowded single bedroom. Crowded with ideas and plans that he'd left behind with his mother, left behind when he took the boat back to Ireland.

James stared now at the ceiling. Maybe this was what tossing and turning was. He'd never had trouble going to sleep before. Was it going to stay like this? Would it affect his school performance? Would he even like his school?

He sighed into his hands, brushing them back over his hair and letting them flop onto the pillow. Of course he wouldn't like his school. At least not for a while.

Back on his side again, staring now out the window and over the fields. There wasn't even a breeze. This was the stillest it had ever been.

"I hate you," James said to nobody, because he needed to fill the silence somehow.

He imagined somebody saying it back. It didn't feel fair anymore, so he apologized to the ceiling. Was this going to be something he did now? Tell the ceiling he was sorry? Tell it all the things he felt, all the things he could never tell anyone?

Would this be how it stayed forever?