Space Witches 1: The Book of Witches

15. The Party

As soon as I had the pad and pen in my hands, I felt Mia touching my hands and the writing began to flow.

"They are watching you."

"But how? I did not think the Black Lady followed me," I whispered for I thought I heard someone moving behind my door.

"She didn't. But it seems the dark souls are observing anything written on the net. Anyone who is searching the keywords dark soul or cursed soul is on their list. You've done that search many times, so they are routinely observing you now."

"How do you know this? Are you connected to the net somehow?"

"A geek arrived at the Halfway House a few days ago. When he told us about his life, it turned out he had been working in one of the Black Lady's companies. That isn't unusual - their net spreads widely and incorporates lots of business links. It seems he overheard something about their secret organization and as a result a convenient car accident brought his life to an end. The brakes were tampered with and he hit a wall at full speed. He liked speeding, as he'd just bought a new and expensive car, and everyone in the company was aware of this. Looked plausible, right? He told us that one of his jobs was to run spyware on the net and collect data about people using certain keywords. Dark souls and cursed souls were two of those. He said he wondered what religious mumbo jumbo that was, but after having been murdered he understood there was much more to it than he suspected."

"Wow..."

I had never thought about anyone tracing me through the keywords I used to find things on the net. Sure the advertisers followed everyone, but I was using a blocking program that found those spies and alerted me so I could cut them off. There seemed to be much more efficient spies on the net, though, than I had realised, as my computer had never warned me of anyone following me other than advertisers.

"And now when they find out I have been accepted to study Egyptology... if the lady in black learns about me looking for dark souls, and sees my picture... she will recognize me right away. Agh!"

My mugshot would be there, along with the photos of every other student attending the University Plate. This database was also shared with the shuttle station to make sure no outsiders could get to the Plate uninvited. So much for tight security. Judging by her efficiency, it seemed likely that the university database had already been hacked by the Black Lady or one of her associates. 

I felt pressure on my hand and picked up the pen again.

"We're going now, to tell Miro and Sara about this," Mia wrote.

"But how can you do that?" I asked.

"We've been in their limousine, remember? It was not any old rental car, not with all that decor n books n stuff," Mia wrote. "We'll just use the revolving door. Should take us to where they live."

"Aha, ok, I get it."

The pressure in my hand ceased and I knew they were gone.

How could I have been so stupid? Searching for dark souls and cursed souls on the computer? I literally face-palmed myself. I needed to do something, but as I came up with nothing tangible, I drew the curtains of my room, as if somehow that would stop the Black Lady from finding me.

Mother managed to arrange a party for me for the following week. I spent that time looking for anything and everything that had nothing to do with souls or ancient Egypt on the computer. It took a lot of effort to dilute my search results by drowning the dangerous search terms into searches about makeup, clothing, vacation and romance novels. No strangers appeared in the neighborhood and I thought I had managed to keep incognito. One evening I felt someone touch my hand and Mia's handwriting announced that Sara and Miro had been informed of my predicament.