by V. V. James
But she can’t, and I need to believe her.
I need to let go.
I draw in a breath that rattles to the bottom of my lungs, like I’m the one being brought back to life. There’ll be a way through this. There has to be.
I wipe my face. Bridget is still warm against me, and I don’t know how much time has passed when a phone goes. It sounds from Sarah’s pocket, but she ignores it until it falls silent.
A moment later, it goes again. Then again. Finally the beep of a text.
Sarah pulls out her phone. Then she stands like someone lit a fire beneath her and runs out of the door.
Forty-Two
Sarah
Harper is pacing up and down the kitchen when I get home, summoned by her text. She’s tall, having shot up over the last few years, but I’m suddenly aware of her strength, too. Those long, lean muscles, trained by her regular runs. She’s a creature of the outdoors, and in this small room she’s like a wild thing, caged.
My wild girl.
A copy of the Sentinel lies on the table between us.
“I got a text from Beatriz,” she says. “Dear Harper, bummer to hear about the death penalty, et cetera. The bitch. But she’s not lying, is she?”
I’ve never felt so afraid in my life. Not since the moment they placed Harper in my arms when she was born. And even then, it wasn’t like this. I looked at my newborn daughter and knew that I would protect her from anything. There’s a reason why fairy tales tell us magic and a mother’s love are the invincible combination.
But we don’t live in the pages of a storybook. We live in Sanctuary. When Harper was little, I considered moving us to one of the witch towns: Summer Port in Oregon, Murdo in North Carolina, or even New Orleans. But I wanted her to know normal life as well, in case she chose not to walk the path. When I discovered she was giftless, it only confirmed I’d made the right choice.
Until now.
I’ll never forgive myself if she comes to harm in this place, where my ancestors and I have helped and healed for so many years.
“I told you to stay away,” I tell her. “To lie low. Why are you here?”
“Don’t you think that under the circumstances my absence might look suspicious? How can I defend myself?”
“You don’t need to defend yourself.”
She snatches up the paper and reads back the very line I read to Abigail just now.
“‘Naming Harper Fenn as a person of interest…’? Of course I need to defend myself, Mom.”
“You don’t. It ends here. I’ve just been at Abigail’s sorting it all out.”
“At Abigail’s ‘sorting’ it out?”
I can see her confusion. Abigail has been part of my daughter’s life since she was born. Practically an auntie, when Harper was little. She knew Abigail didn’t approve of her dating Dan, though she laughed and agreed when I said that in Abi’s eyes, no girl would ever be good enough.
“It’s…” And I despair of being able to say this in a way that makes sense. “Abigail’s out of her mind, Harper. You know Dan was her whole life. She wanted me to use my magic, to…”
“To what?”
“You can imagine what. Don’t make me say it.”
“To bring him back?”
Harper stares, unswerving. I expect her any moment to laugh, to make some comment about how magic can’t do that. But she doesn’t. Instead, what she says make me wonder all over again what she saw that night six years ago.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Mom. You know what they do to a witch even attempting that. Life in jail.”
Harper’s not wrong.
The penalty for necromancy is brutal: a lifetime ban on magical practice, the seizure of all magical artifacts, and a jail term up to and including life imprisonment. The Union lawmen who set the price during the Civil War were imagining all sorts of obscenities: reanimated soldiers sent to die over and over again as a tireless army of the dead, and the horror of enslavement inflicted even beyond the grave.
The last witch convicted of attempted necromancy was a pregnant young wife who lost her husband in a car crash. She failed and still got a cruel twenty years, her baby born behind bars, then forcibly adopted. That was a decade ago, but I remember the case—and how there was zero public support for her. People prefer us to be soothing sore throats and mending marriages. Beyond that, they’d rather not be reminded of exactly what witches can do.
But why does Harper know this? My giftless girl, who never learned from me the harsh realities that I learned from my gramma about how witches must conduct themselves in the world. Who never went to summer camp to hang out with other witch kids of different magical heritages and absorb the rules we all live by.
She must have seen what I did that night. She must have researched what it meant. Is that one more reason for her coldness toward my craft? Not only that she doesn’t have the gift herself, but that it can do something so unnatural?
Did she spend sleepless night worrying that the cops would come for her necromancer mom?
Is there any way in which my magic, and Harper’s lack of it, hasn’t blighted her life?
All this whirls through my head, but Harper’s still standing before me expecting an answer. And right now, it’s not my freedom on the line—it’s her life. She needs reassurance.
“Look, this is coming from two sources: Abigail, and Jake Bolt. Without them, these ridiculous accusations will simply go away.”
I tell her what I’ve just done. Bridget and me, confronting Abigail. I don’t tell her how much it hurt my heart to do it to this woman whose life is so bound up with mine. But I’d do it again, ten times over, if that’s what it takes to keep Harper safe.
I’d do worse.
“So you reckon Abigail’s not going to accuse me of murdering her son? That’s good of her.” Harper’s lip curls. Any residual childhood affection for Auntie Abigail has burned away in the pale fire of her anger. “What about Jake? That creep could never decide if he wants me or hates me. Looks like he’s finally made up his mind.
“And now he’s got his daddy on my case. So what can you do there? I know the chief comes to see you, so I guess you have samples—hair or something? You can do a rite to get him to drop the case.”
“That’s not what I was thinking. Magic doesn’t work quite that specifically.”
Fury flashes in Harper’s eyes and I feel it again, the sadness that never goes away, that I have to explain magic to my daughter who has never felt it. I can only imagine how helpless and afraid she is, and how desperate, to be demanding something so unethical.
What must it be like, to see it printed in black and white—that you’re accused of a crime for which the sentence is death?
“Well, what were you thinking?”
What I’m thinking is blackmail. The chief’s little problem? It’s not something he’d want to get out. It could jeopardize his position. Not just the job, but his family’s peace of mind and his standing at the church. Surely, he’d put all those things before encouraging the fantasies of his grief-confused son?
It’s never how I’d choose to proceed—it breaks witch-client protocol, and worse, it breaks every principle my gramma drummed into me. But both those fade into unimportance beside the necessity of protecting Harper.
“Never you mind,” I tell Harper. “Because what you don’t know, you can’t be accused of being a part of.”
Harper nods.
“Anything, Mom—just not… Don’t bring Daniel back.”
“I told you. I can’t do that.”
She lifts a hand, but it’s the way her eyes hold mine that silences me. Harper’s pale, pale eyes give the impression you can see all the way down inside her. But you’d be wrong.
“What you don’t say, I can’t accuse you of lying to me about. No, you shouldn’t bring Daniel back, be
cause he deserves to be dead.”
Forty-Three
Sarah
What does she mean? Each word is a little drop of aconite—five drops is enough to make my heart stutter and stop.
“‘He deserves to be dead’?”
“Yes. I didn’t tell you, because we’re good at not telling each other things, you and me. I wanted to deal with it in my own way. But Dan hurt me.”
Harper takes a breath, one of those deep ones that goes all the way down to your belly. Then she lifts her chin.
“He raped me, Mom.”
The word hurts more than anything I’ve ever experienced. More than Harper’s giftlessness. More than my grandmother’s death.
I’ve failed. I’ve failed in the one task I had during my time on this earth. Looking after my child.
And then my mind reels backward—to something I can hardly bear to think. Six years ago, I brought back to life a boy who raped my daughter.
My gorge rises, and I grab the table for support. Aira shoots in, mewling loudly, and butts at my ankles. I pick her up and stroke her so hard it must hurt, but she doesn’t complain. My sweet familiar and second soul. She wasn’t at Bridget’s that night. She was innocent of the crime I committed. The crime against my craft and against my grandmother’s teachings. The crime against my morals. Against the law, and the laws of nature.
And now, I know, the crime against my child.
I should have left him there, smashed on the floor. I should have ignored Abigail’s howls and screams, Bridget’s begging, Julia’s shock and disbelief.
“This makes me sick,” Harper says, snatching up the newspaper. “Sanctuary doesn’t know what he was really like.”
I pull out a chair and sit down. How long has my little girl carried this with her?
“I want everyone to know,” she says. “This boy they’re mourning? He was a monster. I was drugged. Someone else was there and filmed it. It’s on the internet. Someone sent me the link today.”
She digs into her pocket for her phone. Unknown number displays as she opens up a text conversation. It’s only two messages long.
Happy memories? says one.
The other is a link to a website whose address doesn’t conceal the sort of site it is.
“They played it that night at the villa party. It was up there on the wall for them all to see. Me, ‘being a slut,’ because everyone knows that’s what witch girls are. It looks like I’m drunk, right? Looks like I’m putting on a good show for whoever’s got the camera—maybe I wouldn’t mind if they joined in? Well, Dan put something in my drink, and it made me all floppy and weak. I couldn’t control my body. My head was fuzzy. I couldn’t do anything. Except…”
My daughter shoves her phone into my hand. She hits the link and rotates the device so I get a full-screen view.
“Listen,” Harper says, turning up the volume.
I’m about to tell her not to, when a catchy song I recognize blasts out.
Harper doesn’t look fazed by the soundtrack.
“You get it?” she says. “They wiped the audio. So you can’t hear me saying no.”
I can’t unsee it. My infinitely precious daughter, used as if she’s of no value at all. Her mouth moving, mumbling, trying to form words that no one is listening to. I shove the phone back in her hand so I don’t hurl it against the wall.
“When?” I croak.
“About four weeks ago. I broke things off with Dan last month. Things hadn’t been great for a while. I did it quietly, and no one knew except his bros. They teased him, but he moved on pretty quickly—you know he wasn’t exactly short of admirers.
“Except that night—it was some football party—he told me he’d only gotten with…someone else…to make me jealous. She didn’t mean anything to him. Would I give him another chance? Now, I couldn’t care less who he slept with. So I said as much, and that we were done. Which was when he apologized for being such a jerk and said we should be friends. He got a couple drinks, so we could toast breaking up like mature adults. They were shots, down in one.
“I knew as soon as I drank it that something was wrong. He pushed me up against a wall and was all over me. I could hear people coming by, asking, ‘Oh, that stuff about you two breaking up was wrong?’ And him telling them, ‘Yeah, so wrong.’ And I couldn’t get the words out to say that no, this was wrong.
“He led me through the party. His bros were slapping him on the back, and he told them I’d apologized for being a stupid bitch and was going to make it up to him. I tried to pull away, kept stumbling and falling on the stairs, but he said I was drunk. He basically carried me up and threw me on the bed. Then he just pulled my jeans down and did it. It went on for a while.”
As I listen to Harper, my stomach clenches and spasms uselessly. I was fasting before attempting the divination, so there’s nothing to bring up. Acid burns my throat. I want to beg her to stop. To say that I can’t listen to any more.
And I want her to continue so that I know it all, know the worst—because my magic saved the boy that did this to her and I need to know how deeply I’ve wronged her.
I need to fuel my fearlessness, to rip away any last scruples about what I might need to do to save her.
“When he was finished, he left me there and went back downstairs. I heard his teammates congratulating him. Saying that he’d brought me to heel. Showed me who was the boss. Had me gagging for it.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I skipped school on the Monday and Tuesday, then the principal’s office called and warned me about nonattendance. On the Wednesday I went in, and he found me in the cafeteria at lunchtime. He made an announcement in front of everyone. Said that I’d been begging him to let other boys join in, and that if that was what I wanted, he couldn’t date me. He knew it was my witch heritage, and I couldn’t help it, and that he hoped one day I’d be able to find the guy—‘or guys’—who would be cool with it. Half the school was there, and I guarantee the other half knew all about it by the end of the day.
“I should have said it right there in the cafeteria—that he was lying and that he’d raped me. But I was blindsided. I remember asking how he fucking dared say that, then walking out. I was shaking. I spent all week avoiding him and brooding about what to do. The next weekend was the party at Sailaway Villa, I knew he’d be there, so I decided to confront him. But then someone had the video of what he did to me and projected it on the wall, Mom.”
Harper’s voice is wavering. Anger has boosted her this far into her story, but it’s finally all burned up and she’s coasting only on pain.
“So this…crap…here about ‘evidence’?” She pulls the Sentinel special edition toward her and crumples it ferociously. “That’s Jake Bolt pointing his phone at me when I quite understandably lost my shit about the fact that my boyfriend raped me and someone filmed it and then it got shown at a party.”
And for the first time, her composure breaks. Her head hangs low. She’s staring down at her hands, which are moving mechanically, ripping and tearing the newsprint. Can she ever forgive me that I let this happen? That I never even guessed it had?
That I worked a miracle for the boy who did it?
The boy she’s now accused of killing.
And as the consequences join up in my head, I’m hushing her. Gathering her to me and pressing her face to my shoulder to comfort her, but also to keep her quiet. My eyes dart around the kitchen, checking for open windows. For any way that Harper’s words might have been overheard by someone who could go running back to the newspaper for yet another special edition.
Because I can see the headline now: Accused killer witch has rape-claim motive.
Forty-Four
Maggie
I called Remy. I had to.
I expected him to rage at me as I read the article over the phone, but it was worse than that. He was silent. Then
he got in his car and drove to Sanctuary to rage in person. Now it’s evening, and we’re at my rental apartment rather than the police station, for obvious reasons.
“We agreed you were going to Shut. This. Down.” Remy yells. “Do you know where I was when you called? Adam and I were at our daughter’s ballet recital. Normally, I’d rather do anything than watch a troupe of six-year-olds dressed like Disney princesses who fell in a cotton-candy machine. Anything. Crash my car. Get revenge-stabbed by a perp. But I learned something new today. Because I would rather be right back there watching the twerking Sugar Plum Fairy than here in the middle of this.”
“We have a magical investigator on a plane right now,” I say in the calm voice I save specially for when Remy’s ranting. “And we’re gathering everything else—forensics and the like—so that once the MI has confirmed there’s no magic, we can focus confidently on identifying the real cause. It just has to be watertight, sir. The Whitmans deserve an honest answer, and it has to be convincing. Abigail Whitman has fixated on witchcraft. She’ll never let it rest unless everything’s set out so plain it can’t be argued with.”
“Maggie, you came here with the understanding this was an in-out job. It theoretically might be homicide and arson, so state police has to show its face, but of course it’s just the usual story of a kid in an accident at a party. Box ticked. Back to head office. Instead, you’re into your second week, and this has snowballed from a routine inquiry to fucking front-page news. Just wait till the TV networks show up.”
Remy moans theatrically and throws himself into a chair, running his fingers through his slick hair. I’ve never seen him this bad, and that’s freaking me out.
But hey, this is my case. And I’ll be keeping the promise I made as I stood by Jenny Downes’s grave on a bright, cold day last spring. I’ll never let another girl come to harm because of my policing failures.
“I’m dealing with it, sir,” I tell him. “The right way—by pursuing the investigation until we find the truth. That’s what we agreed.”