by V. V. James
A check was made of the other children (age between 11 and 12) upstairs, who appeared agitated but settled. All children confirmed they were okay.
Officer recommended that minor Daniel WHITMAN be monitored through the night and that a second opinion be sought in the morning if he showed any ill effects.
***NO FURTHER ACTION***
Seventeen
Sarah
I couldn’t read Abigail’s face after I told her she was wrong. Told her there was no way Harper could have hurt Daniel by witchcraft—and no reason, surely, for her to hurt Daniel at all. I don’t know if what she said about a witness going to the police is true, but it’s shaken me to the core. Because even though the allegation is false, there’s one awful problem about proving it.
Which means I can’t let my daughter go another day without speaking to me. So when I’ve pulled myself together, I smear an enchantment around Harper’s bedroom door.
It’s not long after sunrise, and I’m dozing in my grandmother’s rocking chair in the kitchen, taking a break from some insomniac late-night ingredient prep, when my spell activates and every clock, bell, and chime in the house rings at once.
Harper bursts in, furious. When did my girl get so angry?
“What the fuck, Mom? You hexed my door?”
“We need to talk. I never ask where you go, but you’ve missed two days of school, and a lot more besides.”
“Not likely. There’s nothing to miss in this place.”
And I know she means school, and parking-lot gossip, and coffee-shop hangouts—all the usual routines of teen life. But that nothing to miss cuts deeper than my blood-offering blade.
“Harper, I’m serious. Sit down.”
Sullenly, Harper drops onto a kitchen chair, drawing her feet up to the edge of the seat. She rests her chin on her knees and watches me.
“What?”
How do you tell your child that she’s been accused of murder? How do you tell your daughter, bereft of the gift, that she’s been accused of doing it by witchcraft? How to explain that a woman who has known her since she was born believes her capable of it?
I have to try. Without scaring her, I have to tell Harper the truth. Speaking feels more difficult than any spell.
“I had a visit from Abigail. She told me that someone has gone to the police and testified that you were responsible for Daniel’s death.”
Harper goes rigid. That sullen gaze turns shocked and disbelieving.
“At the party?”
“It’s ridiculous, of course. But it’s going to mean that detective will be back with more questions.”
“That’s impossible. I was nowhere near Dan when he fell. I was on the stairs, and he was on the landing.”
And here’s the hardest part. The subject that it felt like betrayal even to discuss with Abigail: my daughter’s lack of the gift. I reproach my friend (if she still is my friend) for forcing me to reopen this wound.
“The witness says you did it by witchcraft.”
“By witchcraft?” Harper repeats. Then I’m amazed to hear her laugh. “Well, in that case, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, darling.”
I can hardly bear to tell her. While the United States legal system is perfectly happy to indict crimes performed by magic, it doesn’t permit evidence obtained by magic. Thank Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist Papers cronies. They got it written in as an amendment: None shall be convicted or acquitted upon evidence derived by means unnatural. The logic was that witches would cover up for each other—that they’d always say that magic wasn’t used—or that they’d try to shift blame by accusing the innocent. In short, that witches were fundamentally untrustworthy.
What that means is that Harper’s failed Rite of Determination can’t be used to prove to a court that she lacks the gift. And guess what? Science has no way of telling, either. There’s no finger-prick test. Our blood doesn’t glow. Our DNA doesn’t have a third spiral, or our gene sequence an extra letter. Medicine draws a big, fat blank when it comes to identifying us.
Essentially, once someone says they’ve seen you use magic, proving that you’re not a witch is as impossible now as it was back when they ducked you in the village pond and the only proof of innocence was drowning.
I sense Harper coiling tightly as I explain all this as gently as I can, and find myself almost afraid of the outburst that’s surely coming.
“Who said it?” she demands. “Who’s the witness?”
“I’ve no idea. Abigail wouldn’t tell me.”
“Jake. I bet it was that loser Jake Bolt.”
My blood runs cold. Because of course if it was Jake Bolt, the chief’s son, then I imagine his word will carry more weight in a court of law than that of your average teen. Not to mention that Tad isn’t likely to have officers working overtime to prove his son a liar.
I’ve always gotten on just fine with Tad Bolt. He’s not one of those lawmen who see witches as low-hanging fruit when the team is a few results short of its targets. The fact that he’s consulted me occasionally about his “stubborn little problem” might be part of it.
But if his son is on the record as Harper’s accuser, my little girl is in a whole world of trouble.
How the hell am I going to fix this?
Eighteen
Abigail
Julia and Bridget arrive at the same time. As I open the door, I wonder if they’ve been conferring on my doorstep about my summons.
We hug, and they examine me anxiously. Have I been sleeping? Have I been eating? They’re relieved to see me washed and dressed. After all, they’ve often heard me repeat that simple truth I learned when studying for the psychiatry career I gave up: that maintaining the appearance of something can help bring about the reality of it.
In this case, that by appearing to cope, I’ll be coping. Except that’s not quite correct. There’s only one thing keeping me going, and it’s not a shower and a full face of makeup. It’s ensuring Daniel’s death is answered for.
I take them through to the conservatory. Michael is back from campus but has shut himself in his study to work on a paper. Despite my pleas, he’s barely put an arm around me in comfort. If I’d thought what’s happened would change him at all, I was wrong.
“Not like Sarah to be the last to arrive,” says Bridget.
“She’s not coming.”
I pour the iced tea and tell them everything. Tad and Jake’s visit. Jake’s video of Harper using magic to kill my son. Sarah’s flat denial when I confronted her. Her insistence that her daughter doesn’t have magic.
When I finish, I’m aware of my two friends looking at me with the condescending sympathy of parents comforting a toddler who’s insisting that there really are monsters under the bed.
“You know we’re here for you, Abigail,” Julia says gently.
“And you’re doing so well,” Bridget adds. “Keep taking it one day at a time.”
They don’t believe me.
“You’re not listening,” I say. “There’s evidence that Sarah’s daughter killed my son.”
“We heard you, but you can’t ask us to take sides in this.” Julia darts a glance at Bridget to check she’s okay with that we, and Bridge nods. “Not on the word of a schoolboy.”
“Not any schoolboy. Jake. The chief’s son.”
“Jake,” says Bridget, “worshipped Daniel, fixated on Harper, and is probably half out of his mind with grief right now.”
“But what’s on Jake’s phone proves it,” I hiss.
“Harper waving her hands and looking angry?” says Julia. “I don’t see how that proves anything.”
“Though they’d recently split up, right?” Bridget says, and I wonder if she’s reconsidering. “Some big scene in the school cafeteria.”
“Rig
ht. Bea told me Dan ended it, and very publicly,” Julia agrees. “But that’s hardly a motive. I cried for a week when my first serious boyfriend dumped me, but I certainly didn’t murder him.”
“Abi.” Bridget lays a hand on my arm. “Harper isn’t even a witch. We all know that. She would have had to declare it.”
“We don’t know that. We’ve been told it. You know Sarah’s not as bothered about rules as she pretends. And she’s got the secrets of half the town locked away in that file cabinet. I bet she’s done things for each of us here that no one else knows about.”
I look at the pair of them in turn. Julia shifts uneasily in her seat.
Upstairs, Michael’s chair rolls on the floorboards of his study. I remember the day I went to Sarah, at my wits’ end that this intelligent, promising man I’d married was stalling in his career. He had tenure but hadn’t advanced. I remember asking her—begging her—if she couldn’t somehow make a difference.
How carefully she prepared. How many of Michael’s possessions I had to gather, and bodily tokens I had to harvest. A snip of hair, under the guise of tidying him up. A prick of blood that I told him I wanted to send off for “ancestry analysis,” and which earned me a lecture on how such tests are nonsense. The oils I had to dab on him in his sleep; the potions to slip into his drinks. The ritual Sarah and I performed in the study, drawing lines of power around his desk.
And then the results. The incredible results. How Michael’s latent ambition and charisma broke out and achieved the results of which I had always known he was capable. The prestige research grants. The keynote invitations. The professorship.
I never told Julia or Bridget about it. But that’s okay, because I’d wager they’ve asked Sarah for similar things over the years.
And so what if that meant Michael spending ever more time on campus, in the lab, or away at conferences? So what if, over the years, his confidence turned to arrogance? I had my little coping mechanisms. And I had Daniel. I gave my son the perfect home I’d always dreamed of. It was worth it, all of it, for him.
And now…
Now Julia is looking at me with pity—and isn’t that ridiculous, when her husband was one of my coping mechanisms. Her husband, who swore he loved me and would leave Julia. Except, in the end, it was me Alberto walked away from without a backward glance.
“I’m not taking sides without evidence I can see for myself, Abigail. I’m sorry. I know this is hellishly hard on you. I can’t imagine…” Julia shudders. “But this isn’t how you fix it. You’re distraught. Jake’s distraught. My daughter’s in pieces. Bridget was telling me Izzy’s having nightmares. This needs to be wrapped up, not dragged out, or it’s going to affect all our kids.”
“Well, it’s certainly affected my kid,” I say. “He’s lying in a freezer with half his face burned off.”
“Christ, Abi!” Bridget yelps.
Julia gets up to leave. Have I shocked her? I’m not sorry. I’m not going to sit meekly in a corner looking sad, while everyone tiptoes around mouthing useless sympathy. Daniel’s gone, but he still needs me. I’ll fight for him with or without my friends’ support.
“Come on, Bridget.”
It’s funny Bridget likes cats so much, because she’s such a pack animal, a follower. When the pack splits, which way will Bridget go?
“Sarah can help you through this,” she says to me. “Don’t turn on her. Turn to her. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us—you of all people know that.”
Bridge stands to join Julia. She tries to pull me up for a hug, but I’m suddenly too dizzy to rise. Words and images are blending in my head, and they’re coming together to form something I hardly dare look at.
Sarah’s not bothered about rules.
He’s lying in a freezer.
There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for us—you of all people know that.
What if I put Bridget’s words to the test?
And when Sarah refuses—because of course she’ll refuse—I have the perfect way to change her mind.
Nineteen
Sarah
With Harper in danger from Jake’s false allegation, I have to do something.
So I’m driving along Shore Road toward the ruins of Sailaway Villa. I need to confirm for myself that magic wasn’t used that night.
My word on it wouldn’t count in court, both because of the rules on evidence, and because I’m the mother of the accused. But once I’m certain, then I’ll go for help to the Moot, our national association, if these lies about Harper’s involvement are taken any further.
The Moot has been around for more than a century. It has spent decades campaigning against the shitty way the law treats us. There are a whole bunch of charges for even attempting certain acts by witchcraft—from seducing a minor to raising the dead. And for regular crime, sentences get an automatic uplift if magic is used. If robbing a store gets you two years, and robbing one violently with a gun gets you five, robbing one using magic gets you ten.
The Moot picks its battles. But a teenage girl charged with murder by witchcraft, when not a scrap of magic was used, will be something they can’t ignore. The Moot is a respected body. One of its senior members is married to a California state senator. (Of course, we magicals can’t run for public office ourselves, as we supposedly might bewitch people into voting for us.)
If I can persuade the Moot to inspect the villa and confirm that no magic was used there, how could any court refuse to acknowledge that?
More of the villa than I expected is still standing. The giveaway of what happened here is the blown windows. Each one is blackened with soot around the edges, as if evil itself crawled out of every hole it could find.
Hazard tape crisscrosses the doorway, and thirty feet out the cops have driven metal stakes into the ground and set up a flimsy perimeter that flaps in the breeze. I duck beneath.
One of my best friend’s children died here—a boy I’ve known since he was born. And not for the first time, I cry for Daniel Whitman. I remember that his first word was more, and that he had a phase in which he’d eat only orange food. I was there when he cried because his first bicycle was red, not blue. I remember when I caught him sneaking quarters from my purse, age ten, even though Abigail and Michael gave him an allowance.
I remember that night at Bridget’s house.
Dan was a complex boy. As he got older and excelled at football, he became full of himself. I wondered if that was because Abigail adored him, and maybe because Michael was a distant father, and if so, whether either of those things was my fault.
I remember my surprise when Harper told me she was dating him.
My horror as I read Harper’s frantic texts from the party.
What happened at this villa that night?
I’d worried about leaving footprints, but the thick ash on the floor has been churned by dozens of feet—partygoers, forensic technicians, and police. If it held any secrets, they’re long since lost.
Or lost to the naked eye, at least.
I reach into my Whole Foods tote and pull out a long hazel switch. It’s forked, and I take one slender prong in each hand.
I’ve had my sticks since I was twelve years old. My grandmother drove me into the countryside one full-moon night, when I was on a sleepover. (My mom always knew those times were when we did witch stuff, but she never asked for details.) She rubbed my hands with mistletoe juice, tied a red thread around each wrist, and laid her silver sickle in my palm. Then she led me uphill to a coppice and explained what I was looking for.
It took me about an hour to select the sticks I now hold. Gramma coached me through the words and gestures as I set the blade to the wood. Once I’d made the cut, I sliced my thumb and sealed the tiny stump with blood. That’s how magic works. It’s an exchange. Something given for something gotten was how Gramma always put it.
Hitching t
he bag on my shoulder, I hold the switch before me and murmur the relevant incantations. For hazel divining, I generally use early Celtic. This magic was refined in misty islands, ragged with rocks and betrayal.
The wood vibrates gently in my hand, and despite everything, I can’t help but smile, because the overwhelming sensation I’m getting here in the entrance is horniness. Excitement and anticipation. I can imagine the kids piling in, the girls’ confidence boosted by makeup and carefully chosen outfits; the boys’ by energy drinks and sheer bravado. I remember what eighteen felt like, and it was potent as any drug.
An emotional tide from the partygoers washes through me as I go deeper into the house. Beneath the hormones I feel the tug of darker currents: anxiety, insecurity, jealousy, and longing.
I lower my rod as I move into the central hallway, taking it in first with just my eyes. The fire was fiercest in here, and I’ll be no use to Harper if I break a leg falling through floorboards. Opposite are the stairs. The round head of the newel post at the bottom is charred like some fetish doll burned to curse its human likeness. The middle part of the stairs is gone, then the banister resumes. It curves up past a high, wide wall, its once-white expanse streaked with gray and black like some abstract canvas for which Julia would pay a fortune.
At the top is the landing from which Daniel fell. The banister is still intact. Well above waist height for me, it’d be lower on a tall boy like Daniel. It’s not hard to imagine him tripping, or staggering drunkenly, and momentum and his own center of gravity conspiring to pull him over.
My eyes trace the path of his brief descent. There. The middle of the open atrium is where he would have landed. If he’d gone over headfirst, it would have been an almost clinical snap of the neck.
It’s all too familiar.
A dark idea grips me, but I force it down and go back to playing cop.