Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 40

"I can't go back in."

"No, you don't want to go back in. But you can." Says Mel.

"I won't."

We're huddled together under a bank of desks, adrift in a sea of abandoned office space. It's bitterly cold, for once. London is nostalgic for the winters of old.

"I'm tired of having to spell this out." Says Mel.

And Mel seems to just crumple inside, fingers to the bridge of her nose and I want to reach out to her but I'm so scared. I feel like all the muscles in my body are clenched tight.

Ty cocks his head to one side, looking like a beaten dog but underneath it, he's reading me that way he does.

"You're just tired. It's OK Sula. Take your time."

Vash, can't hide her impatience.

"We need to jack in now, Sula. If we skip school, they'll only find out five times faster we've completely screwed up and then we all get expelled. All of us."

"She's on the edge Vash." Ty says.

"Whatever, we all are, suck it up." Vash responds. Punctuating her frustration with a loud tut.

And I feel Mel's strong hands on either side of my head, forcing me to look right into her eyes.

"You can do this. For your mother. For your sisters. Go to school. Learn or burn."

I try to nod but the shaking makes it look something like a minor fit. I let her help me up, and walk over to where the office floor has been prepared for us to lay.

We lie down in the tryptic sigil, let our hair fall together, heads together, hands clench, fingers entwined, looking up at the office ceiling, letting the words come, letting the shivers crowd into our network of interlocking rhizomatic pathways, becoming a conjoined biological computer, accessing a network we can only access when we're all together, the coven gate.

The last thing I see in meatSpace, as the lurid colours of the Gap flood in, is Mel watching and weaving her silk around us, building her web of dark protection.

And when I open my eyes in the Hexed Matrix, we're in a cavernous cathedral, vaulted ceilings almost disappear into the gilded darkness above, the air thick with a cacophony of expensive scents. Avatars surround me. I'm in a crowd.

There are waves of heat coming off the high-powered lighting rig over the runway. I feel real sick, but it's OK. All I have to do is get through this lesson. Then we can rest. Been running for days. And I'm so close to glitching out hard. When I'm tired the Glitch is always there.

Then Alice Nutter appears on stage.

"Welcome Spiders, Sighs and Fellow Travellers, to your first lesson in Siren magic. Desire 101."

I nearly black out, but Vash and Ty hold me up, locking arms with me. The shock of seeing Alice combined with my exhaustion. Diosa mia, I hate that girl.

Polite ripple of applause, among the weird and wonderful dignitaries of the cyber witch underworld gathered to watch, I count thirteen covens, jacking in from safe houses from every corner of the world. Weaver covens, Siren covens and non-affiliated houses, independents and sundry.

It's a big show, this lesson. Weaver lessons don't get an audience. nobody wants to watch the unglamourous processes of patience and teamwork that Weavers idolise.

Everybody wants to see the Sirens work their charms.

Alice is so achingly stylish I can't cope with how much I want to be her right now, like I miss something I've never known, like I'll die unhappy if I never look like that for even one minute. Don't even know the words to describe her garments. I hear others try.