by V. V. James
But we can’t agree where’s safe for a witch in hiding.
“Your workroom won’t do, Sarah. It’ll be the next obvious target.”
I don’t want to tell her that after today’s discovery of the bloodstained tree and ritual site, I’ll also need to have it searched.
“There are things I need in there, Detective. Personal, family things.”
“Like your copy of Starcross?”
Her head whips around. “Who told you about that?”
And she sees it in my face. It was a guess, and she’s just confirmed for me that she has a copy. You see that trick all the time in cop shows, but you know what? The old ones really are the best ones.
The cat hisses. Its fur smells singed. Helluva pissed-off feline.
“Is there anywhere else you could go?”
“Pierre,” she says eventually. “There’s really only Pierre Martineau.”
Aaaand…it takes me a moment to weigh whether that’s a good idea, or a really, really bad one. I currently have his daughter in the frame for the crime of which Sarah’s daughter stands accused. I want to know if Sarah’s been teaching Izzy witchcraft, or if the girl’s parents have been sneaking out Starcross for their kid to study by herself.
I decide it’s a good idea. I’ll speak to them both, together. I’ll put my questions to Pierre, in Sarah’s presence, and then question her. That way I’ll know they’ve not had a chance to put their heads together and come up with a story. While I’m talking, Chester can watch to make sure no looks or glances are exchanged between them.
I radio him with our destination.
Pierre flashes a smile at seeing me on his doorstep after dark, and I momentarily wish it was just me with a takeout pizza and beer. But I have a scorched witch and her familiar in tow, and Pierre swiftly pushes past me to wrap his friend in a bear hug. He asks her what happened and ushers us all inside.
That open face grows fiercer by the minute as Sarah and I unfold the day’s events. Pierre’s been working on a job out of town, and all of this—the dog walker’s discovery, the rally of townsfolk, the destruction of Sarah’s house—has passed him by.
Then Chester—who was tuned in to Smooth Sound FM in Sarah’s car—gives us the full details on what happened in the square, and I realize that everything is about to spin out of control.
“She said”—and my boy visibly gulps—“she said that Daniel died, six years ago, and that Sarah brought him back to life, but ‘wrong,’ somehow. So he did bad things occasionally, but those were all Sarah’s fault.”
Jesus Christ.
Now you’ll never hear me take Jesus’s name in vain. I was raised better than that. But honest to god this has gotten ridiculous. Rape and murder are run-of-the-mill crimes. The only unusual thing in this case is that witchcraft is involved.
But bringing a boy back from the dead? Abigail Whitman has officially tipped over from credible witness to frothing lunatic.
A resurrection? How could that stand up in court?
Which is when I notice that Pierre Martineau and Sarah Fenn have gone quiet.
And I remember that evening, six years ago, when I was called to the Perelli-Lee house after a woman had been heard screaming, and got told some story about how it was just a false alarm, a kid falling down the stairs. A kid who was Daniel Whitman.
I remember sitting with Pierre on his doorstep discussing Harper’s accusation. How Pierre mentioned a night when Abigail found out who her friends were. A night when Dan fell… What did he say? Something about the conversation struck a false note, but at the time I couldn’t put my finger on why.
A night when Dan fell out of the window.
I was there. They all lied to me. Dan hadn’t slipped on the stairs in the darkness going to the kitchen for cookies, as I recorded in my incident log. He’d fallen out of the window.
Why would they have lied to me about something so trivial?
Unless Abigail Whitman isn’t a lunatic after all.
Unless the boy on the couch who I spoke to that night hadn’t just come around from concussion—but had come back from the dead.
I can’t help it: my hand checks instinctively for my gun. I know Chester has his, too. So why do I feel so vulnerable?
I need the truth, and I need it now.
“Let’s talk,” I say.
The hard lump of my weapon digs reassuringly into my side.
Ninety-Two
Sarah
Once we’re sat in Pierre’s living room, the cop takes off her jacket and removes her gun from its holster, setting it right beside her.
“Can’t be too careful,” she says, noticing me looking at it. “Things have gotten pretty hairy out there. Do you want to tell me what just happened at your house?”
I do, and she and Chester listen grimly. Pierre looks like he wants to smash something—probably the faces of the boys that did it.
“Must be the same folks that sprayed the sign on the house,” Chester suggests to his boss. “And sprayed the sign. The town sign, I mean. And on the house, the pentagram sign.”
“I get it, Ches.” The cop holds up a hand to silence him. She looks exhausted. We all are. Exhausted and at our wits’ end. All except Abigail, who is growing stronger every day.
“I need to ask you both about what Abigail Whitman was saying in the square this evening,” Knight continues. “About events six years ago. Pierre knows this, but Sarah, I’m not sure if you do. I was the officer who attended that night.
“I checked my old log a few weeks ago, when I made the connection. Everyone’s story back then was that Dan fell down the stairs. But he didn’t, did he? Pierre, you let that slip when we spoke about it, and Abigail said the same thing tonight. Dan fell out of a window and was badly injured. But did he…? Was he really…?”
The cop’s throat works. She doesn’t even want to say the words, and I don’t blame her. It’s wrong.
So, so wrong. I know that now. But those I love have always been my weakness. Whenever they came to me hurting, I tried to make things right.
But the law doesn’t flinch when it comes to necromancy, no matter how compassionate the motive. I think again of that young mom, the last person convicted of it, even though she failed. Her baby taken away for adoption. Her witch’s sticks broken. The decade she still has to serve in a federal prison. The magic she’ll never use again, under penalty of life in jail—even though to have magic and not use it is a life sentence in itself.
It’d destroy me.
No matter how sympathetic this cop has appeared, her job is to uphold the law. I couldn’t admit to something as grievous as necromancy and expect her to forget I ever said it.
Has the moment come yet when I need to confess? To explain about the magic at the villa and how Dan died—that it was simply death reclaiming him—in order to save Harper?
No, we’re not at that point yet.
So what do I say? I doubt the detective will buy a flat denial.
“I’m not Michael Whitman,” I tell her. “I can’t give you Dan’s medical status at that moment. But he was unconscious. Unresponsive. And Abigail was desperate. I couldn’t let her suffer without trying to set it right.”
Knight nods. She almost looks relieved that I’ve not confessed to it.
“And what about this other thing Mrs. Whitman claimed? That this act you performed somehow made Daniel…go wrong. She’s saying that Harper’s rape, and other violent behavior by her son, are a direct result of what you did. Is that possible?”
I shift unhappily and Aira writhes, too, clawing and ripping at Pierre’s couch. This detective asks questions to which, in witchcraft, there are no easy answers. Nothing that doesn’t sound like equivocation at best or lies at worst.
She’s right, of course. It is possible.
Our entire craft rests on consent. W
here there isn’t true, open, and informed consent, things do…go awry.
Look at what I did for Julia, with Alberto. Or for Abigail, with Michael. If those men had known about and consented to my use of magic to modify their behavior—whetting Michael’s ambition, rekindling Alberto’s faithfulness—their wills would have worked with my art to produce a perfect result.
But without their consent, my magic had to do all the heavy lifting. And the results overshot: Michael’s obsessive careerism and Alberto’s absurd devotion.
Could Abigail be right?
I already feel responsible for what Dan did to Harper, by the mere act of bringing him back. But is it worse than that? Did my magic change him?
I can’t bear the thought of it.
Harper violated. Dan twisted. Another child abused. And all because of me? I would rather have pulled out my tongue that spoke words of power over Daniel’s broken body. Cut off these fingers that traced marks of strength and binding on his pale skin. Emptied these veins that spurted my life-giving blood between his numb lips.
I’d burn my copy of Starcross and spit on its ashes.
I hear Aira’s howl before my own. My beloved familiar is convulsing on the carpet, screeching with pain. And it’s my pain that’s doing it to her. But I can’t help it. Horror consumes me from the inside. I’m tied to the stake of my own guilt, and burning.
Through my misery, I hear a rattling. I notice, distantly, that the objects on Pierre’s mantelpiece are shaking. A framed photograph that takes pride of place topples forward and smashes. The glass shards spray across the floor, and a sharp, clean hurt stings my ankle.
Behind me, something crashes. Aira screams. A cold wind gusts in from somewhere.
“The table—oh god, it’s…” Greenstreet is moaning, terrified.
In the corner of my eye, the detective reaches for her gun.
Someone’s shaking me, calling my name. A male voice.
Pierre. My friend. The only friend I have left.
“Sarah,” he says again, urgently. “Sarah, stop this.”
I don’t want to stop this. I want this house to burn, too—and me with it. Because I’ve been wrong all this time. Daniel Whitman isn’t the monster. I am.
I am.
I throw Pierre off, somehow unnaturally strong. He staggers and falls, winded, against the wall. The cop moves her hand over her gun and lifts it.
“No,” shouts Pierre. He lunges—but not for the cop. For me. Holding me tight.
“Stop it, Sarah,” he yells. “You didn’t do anything. Daniel was always bad. He was bad before.”
Ninety-Three
Maggie
At Pierre’s shout, the table—which has been frickin’ floating—slams back to the floor. I yelp like a puppy. It feels as though every hair on my head is standing straight, and I’ll find some witchy white streak running all the way through. I don’t know what the fuck that was, but it was unnatural. And it was absolutely fucking terrifying.
My arm is extended, the gun in my trembling hand all ready to shoot Sarah Fenn clean through the head. Anything rather than endure another moment of whatever was building up just then.
On the carpet, the cat has been frothing and snarling like it caught the world’s fastest case of rabies, but it suddenly goes still, floppy as a shaken baby. Is it dead?
Did Pierre do that? Is he the witch, who passed his ability on to his girl Isobel?
But maybe he just brought calm the old-fashioned way, shocking Sarah Fenn into silence, because she sits there stunned, her chest rising and falling as she breathes hard.
“It wasn’t you,” Pierre croons, drawing his friend’s head against his shoulder with those strong arms. “Daniel was bad long before.”
He’s stroking Sarah’s rust-red hair like a parent comforting a child.
Chester and I look at each other. My boy’s all pale and sweaty, like he’s made of wax and melting. He motions me to lower my gun.
“Pierre?” I scrape every shred of my cop authority into that word. It’s not much. “Care to explain?”
And as he does, everything joins up.
At long last, it all joins up.
“When we spoke, Detective, you asked me whether I believed Harper. And I said I did, but really I was thinking: Didn’t she trust me or her mom enough to tell us? It wouldn’t quit bothering me. I figured she might have confided in Izzy. But my baby didn’t want to talk about it, just insisted that Harper was telling the truth. I could tell there was a reason why she didn’t want to talk, though, so I persisted.”
Pierre’s whole body heaves with the breath he draws in, as if worried he might any minute forget how breathing’s done.
“The room Daniel fell from that night six years ago? It was my daughter’s. Izzy had gone to bed early, and the other three were watching a movie. Except Dan decided to pay her a visit.”
As Pierre talks, I try to fit it all together. Izzy would have been eleven. Daniel, twelve—the age boys start to shoot up and fill out. Testosterone kicking in. Already on his way to that athlete’s physique. But Izzy would still have been a child.
Was Angry Dad’s daughter an attempt to recapture that thrill? Were there others? Shy ones. Young-for-their-age ones. Molesters who seek opportunities to be close to their targets—like sports coaching—rarely confine themselves simply to looking.
“He was touching my girl under her nightdress. Had her pinned against the wall by the window, one hand over her mouth to prevent us hearing her struggle. Because she did struggle. She wriggled out of his grasp, and as he went to grab her, she ducked to one side and he went out of the window.”
Rage twists Pierre’s handsome face. Rage at Daniel but also, it’s plain, at himself, for never having suspected what his child suffered. For not having been there to prevent it.
“So that’s how Dan fell. It wasn’t just him leaning out eavesdropping, like the kids all told us that night. Swear to god if I’d known, Sarah, I would have told you just to let him die. That little shit. Both our daughters.”
Pierre almost chokes as his wrath dies in grief. And now he and Sarah are comforting each other. Two lifelong friends who’ve raised their children together, have been through the best and worst of times together, and now have one more unbearable thing in common.
I tune them out. They deserve privacy. And I have something else to focus on.
Means, motive, and opportunity. For the longest time I never imagined that Isobel Perelli had any of those. Yet now I know she had them all.
She wanted revenge for Dan’s assault on her only friend—and on her, all those years before. The crowded party and her illness were the perfect opportunity and alibi. She sketched the runes in her journal as she planned it out: that dark one to kill him. Another for concealment to hide her traces. And there on the balcony, while Dan was distracted by the rape tape playing on the wall, Izzy used magic to send him falling to his death.
She surely thought of a fall because she’d seen that once before.
I lean back against the couch and close my eyes. I’m feeling suddenly dizzy, because while my brain is racing along one track, my heart is on another. Focus, Mags.
It’s plain Pierre doesn’t know about his daughter’s ability, or he would never have told me the story he just has, knowing that Jake’s allegations rest on Dan being killed by witchcraft. I’d thought it was him or Bridget illicitly borrowing Starcross for her. But now I realize there’s an even more obvious candidate—Harper.
Maybe Harper encouraged Isobel to share the fact that she has ability, but when her friend didn’t want to, Harper took her to Fenn’s workroom or sneaked out the grimoire for her to study. With no one to guide her, Izzy’s soaked up all of it. From the innocuous stuff to the terrifying sigils that even trained witches can scarcely look at.
So what do I do now?
I inhale deeply and open my eyes. Chester is looking at me. It’s plain from his face that he hasn’t yet made all the connections I have. But he’s likely working toward them.
“Greenstreet, a word outside, please?”
Because my heart has just caught up to my head.
If Isobel Perelli used magic to kill the boy who molested her when she was a little girl, she’ll die for it.
If Sarah Fenn brought a friend’s only child back to life, she’ll go behind bars and lose her magic for life.
Because that’s what the law demands.
Ninety-Four
Maggie
Smoke and ash drifts on the night breeze as Chester and I stand in Pierre’s yard speaking so quietly we can hardly hear each other. There’s a distant blue light from the fire truck that must even now be hosing down Fenn’s house.
I lead my sergeant through the connections I’ve just made that point to Izzy Perelli.
“Surely Harper has the same motive and opportunity?” objects Chester. “Molested by Dan. Present at the party.”
“Yes, but I saw those sigils Izzy drew. They were clear, no hesitation. Jotted down in such a casual way. She’s the one who was at the party secretly, when Harper was there for everyone to see. She was right near Dan on the landing, when Harper was far away. Okay, we’ve no proof that Izzy does have magical ability, but we know that Harper doesn’t. And you didn’t see Isobel’s reaction when I asked where she was that evening. It was guilt, I know it.”
“You know it?”
“Gut instinct. You get a feel for it after a while. A colleague of mine trusted his, and it helped him save a girl’s life when I failed her.”
“But you won’t be saving a girl’s life here, ma’am.” Chester’s so quiet I have to strain to hear him. “Quite the opposite.”
And that’s my problem. Now that I’ve finally solved this case, I desperately wish I hadn’t.
But there could be another way. Will Chester agree? I’m taking a terrible risk even discussing this with him. But I’ve come to trust him. I’ve seen him make good call after good call. Be discreet and loyal. There’s how he is with Rowan. And if I really am going to do this, then it’s not like I have a choice anyway. I do it with him, or not at all.