by V. V. James
Lost in my memory, I almost don’t hear Bridget’s murmured response, punctuated with a kiss.
“All right, darling. No more magic—for now. Though I’ll be there as a friend for Sarah whatever happens. Now get back to bed. I’m not letting you go in with a migraine and auras—we both know how those develop. I’ll call the school.”
Another kiss.
“Thank you. I know it’s hard, but it’s for the best—for now.”
Forever, I think bitterly, if Cheryl has her way. But I won’t let it come to that.
Then I realize just how screwed I am—because how can I work my sunstone rite now?
My thoughts circle like a fox trapped in a shed, searching for a way out. A crack of light. I wonder who else I can rely on. Who has stood by me unquestioningly.
There’s only one name—Pierre. He’s never been part of my coven, and he’s a man. But he’s my lifelong friend, so I should be able to connect with his energies, and Sanctuary born and bred, which makes him a good bet for magic worked upon our community. Julia and Pierre will be enough.
Julia will be furious with Abigail for what she said. She has a good heart. How could she not want to help me with a rite to soothe our troubled town?
I don’t want to get to Julia’s too early, so I can be sure that Bea and Alberto are gone. He drops her off at school before heading to the train station on his city days, and I bet he’s having a city day to escape the gossip swirling around Sanctuary. So I take a leaf out of my daughter’s book: some quiet time in nature, to get my head straight. The trails out toward Anaconna are lonesome and lovely.
I’m leaving the town limits when something catches my eye in the rearview mirror. I pull over and walk back.
It’s not subtle. And I’d bet whoever did it was responsible for that first attack on our house, because I recognize the red paint. They’ve sprayed three words onto the sign that proudly displays the town insignia and the name SANCTUARY. There’s a MAKE above it and WITCH FREE below.
MAKE
SANCTUARY
WITCH FREE
Whoever did this has become bolder. They held back from completing the pentagram that would make their graffiti into a crime. But there’s no restraint here. This is hate, in letters a foot high.
I’ve programmed the detective’s number into my phone, so I call it. When she doesn’t answer, I leave a message. I consider trying the station, but decide they might simply paint over it, no questions asked. Instead, I snap some photographs. I’ll send them to the Moot later. If they won’t help me one way, I’ll make them help me another.
When I get back in the car, my hands are shaking on the wheel. I need to get myself together. There are lots of cafés around the trailheads. One will serve me a hot chocolate, for a little sugar boost.
But when I turn in at the first place I see and go into its fake log-cabin interior, there on the counter for patrons to read while they eat is a stack of Sentinel special editions. The guy behind the counter looks up with an eager-to-help smile. Then the smile fades as he recognizes me. He lifts the countertop and steps out.
I know what’s coming. I turn and hurry away before he asks me to leave—or maybe even throws me out.
In the parking lot, I sit behind the wheel and sob, snottily and without ceasing. All I’ve ever tried to do is use my gifts as my gramma taught me: to help and to heal.
What did I do to deserve this?
Will it cost my daughter her life?
Seventy-Two
Sarah
I’ve pulled myself together by the time I’m standing in front of the Garcia house. I can still make this happen. I can’t afford not to.
But anxiety screws tight within me as I watch through the glass as Julia approaches. She looks a mess. In pajamas and a robe, hair tied messily on top of her head. As she nears, her face is pink and blotchy, eyes puffy. She looks like she hasn’t slept all night, and the hours that should have been spent sleeping were spent crying instead.
She hesitates on the other side of the door before opening it.
“Why are you here, Sarah?”
“Julia, are you okay?”
It’s not the greeting I’d hoped for. We regard each other warily.
“It’s been as bad as you might imagine,” Julia says. “Worse, actually. Alberto left early this morning, and I don’t know where he’s gone. To see a lawyer, maybe. And Bea is in an absolute state. Your daughter attacked her.”
I bite back my retort—that Beatriz set a pack of Spartans on Harper and half-drowned her in the school fountain. Recriminations won’t get me anywhere.
“We can set it all right. I’ve prepared something: a simple ritual that will help everyone in Sanctuary come to their senses.”
“A ritual?” My friend’s laugh is bitter. She wipes her streaming nose. “More magic? Are you crazy, Sarah? Magic is what caused all this in the first place. I was vulnerable when I found out about Berto. You should have given me a shoulder to cry on and the number of a good couple’s therapist, not brewed an illegal potion.”
“Julia, you begged me. You told me that you’d tried to talk to Alberto when he’d strayed before. That you’d suggested counseling, and he wanted nothing to do with it. You said I was your ‘last hope’—those were your words. I did it because you were desperate, and because you mean so much to me and I couldn’t bear to see you in pain. It all looks perfectly proper in my records. No one can accuse you of anything.”
“It’s not about looking innocent, Sarah. I love him. I would have put up forever with him cheating, as long as he didn’t leave me. But you know what he’s like. His pride. I think this is it, this time.”
She tugs her sleeve over the heel of her hand and hides her whole face, sobbing. I reach to comfort her, but she lashes out. Her blow connects with my cut arm and I stifle a cry. Not entirely, though. Julia studies me through misery-swollen eyes, and I see what she sees. The bandages I wrapped around my arm are stained through with blood. I cut deep to make this spell take hold.
“What the hell have you been doing, Sarah?”
“It’s the rite. A sunstone incantation. It sheds light—makes things clear. Helps you find your path. I just need you and…one other, to create a boundary around Sanctuary and—”
“Around Sanctuary?”
“Yes. Everything’s got so stirred up. So confused. That’s all it is: confusion, not malice. And we can fix it.”
Julia takes a step back and the look on her face I recognize, too late, as fear.
“You want to bewitch the entire town?”
“Not bewitch it. Just…help it calm down. Help all of us.”
“I don’t think anyone needs that kind of help, Sarah. Please leave.”
And slowly, deliberately, she closes the door in my face.
She stays there a moment, looking at me through the glass. Then my friend turns away.
Seventy-Three
Maggie
I’ve sent Chester off to talk to Angry Dad. I figure speaking man-to-man with a local boy might get more out of him in an initial conversation. Meanwhile I’m making a quick detour to someone else with links to Sports on the Shore.
I was surprised to see Pierre Martineau at the vigil when he’s such a friend of Sarah’s. Turns out he’s the club’s boxing coach. That night, I apologized for not being straight about when we’d first met, which went partway to thawing him toward me. Then when I called him this morning and asked if I could stop by for a chat, he readily agreed. Seems Sarah has told him about what happened at the school, and he’s decided I’m giving her and Harper a fair hearing.
Pierre’s loading up his van for a job, but he brews me some coffee and we sit side by side on his back step and talk.
He’s a reassuring presence, with his calloused hands and paint-splashed coveralls. I envy him his work. He builds things fro
m brick, wood, and mortar. Solid structures that will last for decades. All I build are flimsy theories that hardly last from one day to the next.
“Do you remember when Dan Whitman stopped coaching the girls’ soccer team? And why that was?”
Pierre blows on his steaming drink as he casts his mind back.
“Maybe a year and a half ago. I remember Mitch getting stressed ’cause it happened partway through the season. Kinda abrupt. But I think Dan was upset about it, too.”
“Why so?”
“Because his dad was the one who put an end to it. Had a couple of meetings with Mitch, and Dan wasn’t there. It was about the time it became obvious that Dan had a shot at pro one day. You know what Michael Whitman is like. Ambitious ain’t the half of it. We all reckoned he’d made his kid give up anything extra to focus on his own training.”
“And that was it?”
“Most that I ever heard, it was. Why, you heard differently?”
I exhale, setting my coffee down on the stoop.
“Just trying to make sense of a bunch of things, Mr. Martineau. Things that don’t make much sense as is. Can I ask one more question: Do you believe Harper Fenn, what she told that reporter?”
Pierre scratches his neck. He’s thinking carefully.
“Harper, she… You know her dad was never on the scene. I never even met him, though Sarah and I go way back. So I’ve been like an uncle to her. And she’s always watched out for my Isobel. So yeah, I believe her.”
Those dark eyes of his are troubled, though, and I wonder what he’s not saying. Is he hurt that she never confided in him? Or is it more than that? Is he confused about why she didn’t speak up earlier? Wondering, despite his loyal words, if he really can believe her?
I’ve heard enough for now.
“Thanks so much, Mr. Martineau. And I’m sorry again for not being straight with you about the first time our paths crossed.”
“The night Dan fell out the window? Yeah, well…Abigail Whitman found out who her friends were that night, and Sarah was chief among them. It’s a shame she’s forgotten.”
So Sarah has got at least one staunch ally. But when I pick up her voicemail, it’s plain that she might need rather more than one. I drive over to check out the town sign, and it’s a disgrace. I ring the station and give them an earful about getting it photographed, then cleaned off. As I’m scratching for a sample to compare with the paint that sprayed the Fenn house—I don’t trust Bolt’s goons to do that properly—a car pulls up, and a guy with a camera and a press badge from the Sentinel starts snapping away.
“Tell your boss Varley she’d better run this with the right sort of headline,” I warn him. “Something like ‘Witch-hate shame,’ rather than ‘Best idea ever.’ I’ll be watching.”
I take a few photos myself and am walking back to my car when my radio crackles. It’s Chester. I can hardly make out what he’s saying. It’s not my radio on the fritz, though. He’s babbling with excitement.
“Deep breath, Chester, and say that again at half speed.”
“I’m in Green Point. I’d just finished up with Angry Dad when I got a call from Rowan, who’s still feeling rough. So we’ve driven to the nearest witch booth outside Sanctuary, which is here. It’s a sleepy sort of place. You know: gets fat on tourists every summer, then minds its own business the rest of the year. Couple gift shops, surf school and tattoo shop, beach café—and the witch’s booth.”
“Sounds charming. I’ll go on my next day off. Oh, wait—what’s a day off? And?”
“And she’s here. Harper Fenn.”
“What?”
Gee, won’t that girl stay put at her mother’s even one night? I know she’s a wild, free spirit and all that jazz, but she’s also accused of murder and an accuser of rape.
Then I think of Beatriz Garcia and the Spartans ducking her in the fountain. The classmate who filmed as she was raped, and those who shared pictures of it online. The trashing of her home, and the local newspaper splashing accusations. Abigail Whitman telling the world that Harper murdered her son. Even this loathsome graffiti on the town sign that makes it plain she and her mother are no longer welcome in the place she was born.
And I think of the death penalty that hangs over her.
I should be grateful Harper hasn’t absconded across state lines or fled the country altogether.
Then another set of possibilities lights up in my brain.
Green Point is Harper’s hideout. Which explains why she was jogging from that direction the day I saw her. I have friends out this way, she said.
And Green Point has a witch. Could this be the person whose magic Rowan sensed at the party villa?
The person whose magic surely murdered Daniel. Because why would you conceal your identity when working witchcraft, unless you were doing wrong?
Perhaps the witch is Harper’s friend. Or maybe they have a son who is a secret boyfriend (Bea’s allegation of another guy out of town), and who begged his mother for revenge on her behalf. Or a loyal girl? One who, unlike Harper, inherited the gift and was prepared to act on her wronged friend’s behalf.
“Make sure your patrol car is out of sight,” I radio Chester. “We don’t want her to spook. I’ll be right over.”
This feels like a break. At last.
Seventy-Four
Maggie
In a roadside picnic spot outside Green Point, Rowan and Chester join me. The witch sits up front—they’re not suffering too awfully but have been experiencing what they call psychic depletion—while Chester explains.
“The booth doesn’t open till ten so I went into the café to get us a drink—that one on the beach. It’s pretty busy, ’cause the paddleboarders all go in the water early. And there she was, looking toward the sea as if she was waiting for someone. So I radioed you right away.”
“You’re sure it’s her?”
“Definitely. Though she looks a bit different from usual. You’ll see…”
“Well, let’s get right back,” I say, starting the car. “Here’s the plan. Chester, you’re too conspicuous in your uniform. Stay put and be ready to tail Harper if she heads out. I’ll go into the café and observe.
“Rowan, I’d like you to go to the booth for your treatment but try to engage the practitioner in conversation about Sanctuary. Find out if they know Harper. Maybe present yourself as a witch vacationing in the area and anxious about the news, wondering if it’s wise to stick around these parts. Is that something you feel comfortable doing?”
Rowan’s smile shows their sharp, white teeth.
“Sure. It beats checking whether a client’s noisy dog has been hexed by the pissed-off witch next door, or if a gifted former girlfriend has cursed her ex’s dick. Both true cases,” Rowan adds, laying a hand on my assistant’s arm. “Remind me to tell you about them sometime.”
Chester has turned that beetroot red again. Thank god all I’ve asked him to do is stay in the car.
The café is loud with the noise of the barista machine, and there are at least six different milks for my coffee, only one of which involved a cow. The menu is fifty percent “superfood” and eighty percent vegetarian. Standing there trying to make head or tail of it gives me ample opportunity to scan the interior for Harper.
And there she is. Unmistakable, just as Chester said, and most definitely “different from usual.” She’s wearing a skinny-strapped vest top, and she’s absolutely covered in tattoos. I stare, fascinated, despite myself.
The inking is like a garment, stretching down to her wrists and up to her collarbone, but almost nowhere that would be visible when she’s fully clothed. Everything I’ve heard or thought about Harper’s “modesty” now makes sense. Why she wears long sleeves for sport and took the school counselor’s sweater when her white shirt was soaked transparent. Even why she pulled the hospital curtains tight that first
day.
Not the self-harm that Cheryl Lee worried about, or abusive bruising. The opposite. Harper has made her skin into art. There’s something outrageous about so much ink on a girl so young, but at the same time, the designs are absolutely beautiful. It’s hard to take my eyes off her. But I have to, because she’s with someone.
He’s your cliché beach dude. Dirty-blond curls that are slick with seawater. Perhaps mid-twenties—young enough that his complexion looks sexily tan, rather than merely weathered. And he’s covered in tattoos, too. Celtic knots curl around his bulging biceps. A mermaid adorns his right pec and a winking sailor his left.
Harper is leaning across the table toward him, smiling as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. Like she was never accused of murder. Never raped. Never bullied. Not living in fear of judicial execution.
It’s an extraordinary transformation, and now I understand why this girl comes here so often. To be someone different. Not the witch’s daughter or the jock’s girlfriend. Not the giftless one.
“I said, what can I getcha?”
I say the first words that catch my eyes on the drinks list, which unfortunately are turmeric chai latte. I carry my beverage to a discreet table, try not to gag as I sip, and continue to watch the pair by the window. I’m concerned that this guy is some kind of sleaze or druggie, but there’s nothing predatory in his body language or strained in hers. Maybe he just doesn’t know how young she is?
Other wet dudes and gals come into the café. Several stop by the table. One guy peels back a waterproof dressing to show Harper what looks like a recent tat on his arm. She checks it over with professional scrutiny, then nods approval and covers it up again. The arm’s owner pats Harper on the back—he’s so hefty she’s winded by the blow—and they bump fists.
What is this? One thing is plain. Harper is a part of this community like she’s never been back in Sanctuary. I think of everything I’ve heard about her growing detachment from schoolwork, the distance that grew up between her and Beatriz, even without the Dan Whitman issue. Julia Garcia’s remark about different aspirations. And no wonder, if she’s found her place here. Green Point’s locals couldn’t be more different from a designer label–loving overachiever like Bea Garcia.