by V. V. James
I saw the sigil for Command. The ones for Ruin and for Obscurity.
The one for Undoing.
Some witch traditions use tattoos to enhance their powers, although mine does not. But no witches anywhere mark themselves with such abominations. Those sigils are the reason Starcross was banned. Yet they’re etched into my daughter’s body.
I lean back against the wall, pulling up my knees and looping my cuffed wrists and duct-taped hands around them. It brings me no comfort.
“You—witch!” The cop whose weapon has been pointing at me steps closer. He raps his gun against a bar of our cell. The metal on metal makes a hard, sharp sound. “Hands where we can see them.”
“Jeez, calm down,” Harper mutters.
“And you—don’t say anything!”
His voice is panicky.
“Don’t get so close to ’em,” warns his buddy.
Harper scoffs at him. I was worried she’d be afraid, but she’s showing the fearlessness and defiance that has flashed out in the past few weeks. Going to that TV reporter by herself. So confident when I told her Jake’s accusation was of murder by magic, because she has none. Despite my warnings about the way the law works against witch-folk, she believes her innocence protects her.
But no one will believe she’s innocent if they see what’s inked on her. The sigils may be small, and artfully concealed amid the blossoms and branches of the larger design. But to those of us who recognize them, they affront the eye as much as if they’d been cut into her skin with a knife.
It must be the work of the Green Point witch’s son, the tattooist. I don’t know him. I only know his mother slightly. Siobhan Maloney and I have talked about our craft a few times, over a pot of dandelion tea. But we’re not close, and our magics have nothing in common. She and her family are true travelers. They came from Ireland a few generations ago and settle nowhere for longer than seven years.
Theirs is the transient magic of the hedgerow and the bonfire. Their grimoire is written in falling leaves and spiraling smoke. Their spells are the breath of the wind. To witches like Siobhan, nature itself is magic.
The traveling tradition scorns all written lore. The Maloneys are not a Starcross family.
And so I doubt Siobhan would know what she was looking at, if she glimpsed Harper’s secret beneath her wet suit. If her son knew what he was doing, he would never have etched those sigils, blacker than ink, into Harper’s pure skin.
Harper must have asked him to. It’s the only explanation. She must have taken the designs to him. These tattoos are her choice. Is this her way of claiming a little piece of my craft for herself after all? Tattoos often memorialize our losses: a loved one’s name, or a comrade’s death date.
Harper has memorialized something that was never hers to lose.
My eyes fill as I think about it, though with the cop’s gun on me I don’t dare raise my hands to wipe at them. The salt tears burn my bruised flesh.
The only comfort is that those sigils are nothing more than tattoos. There is no power in them. No magic animates them. They’re inert and empty, like Julia’s elegant copies of my charts. Thank goodness they were done by Maloney’s son, and not by the witch herself. Even if she didn’t know what she was inscribing, her ability would have given them life.
I can’t imagine what the consequences of that would be. Of marking with magic a body incapable of containing it. When we bespell objects, if the item isn’t prepared carefully enough, it can shatter beneath the magic laid upon it. Done by a witch, those tattoos might have killed my daughter.
As it is, they still might.
Harper could hang for Dan’s death because those sigils mark her as unnatural.
And it’s even worse than that. My one defense of my daughter, the thing I’ve clung to as our last resort—to confess that I’m the one responsible for Dan’s death at the villa, because I cheated death of him six years ago? That’s useless, because now there’s another dead boy. Jake Bolt.
If I take the blame for Dan, they’ll still pin Jake’s death on Harper. I saw it in Tad’s eyes.
Tad and Abigail have both lost their children. How can they do this? Hand me and my child over to the authorities, knowing what awaits us?
Where is the detective I thought was on our side? Has this sickness convinced even her?
How did Jake Bolt die?
I stare at the ceiling, willing myself to calm down. There’s still a way out—there must be.
But right now, I can’t see it. Shackled and with my fingers taped, without my sticks, without my charts and tools, there’s nothing I can do.
Perhaps when they move us, when they take us upstairs to interview, I’ll have my opportunity.
I try flexing my fingers inside the duct-tape. All five have been bound together like a Maine lobster’s claws tied before they’re tossed into the pot. The tape is wrapped as far as my wrist. The cops have done their job well, and there’s no wriggle room.
They said they’d shoot us if we spoke. But I’ve lived here my whole life. Everyone knows me. I’m gambling on the fact that a young local cop will find it difficult to shoot point-blank someone he knows. Besides, Tad will want to keep us alive so he can bring us to court. Grief demands closure.
“I want a lawyer,” I say loudly, my heart pounding in my chest.
“I said, shut up! Or I’ll do it—I swear I will!”
The riled young cop darts back to the cell door. His hands are shaking as they grip the gun. If only my hands were free, I could try the force charm that I used to push my way into Abigail’s house. Then we’d see who holds the more powerful weapon.
But after days spent anticipating this moment, preparing spells and pondering escape strategies, disaster fell on us too swiftly for me to react. There was only Tad’s punch on the beach, and when I came to, I was already restrained and bound. The bruises across my daughter’s face tell me those animals did the same to her.
“You can’t keep us here without a lawyer and without a charge,” I say, emboldened that my last outburst didn’t put a bullet in me. If I can just get them used to the idea of me speaking, then the moment I work my fingers loose…
“You won’t be needing a lawyer, Sarah.” Abigail stands at the bottom of the stairs that lead from the station above. “Bring them up. It’s time.”
“Wait! Abi!”
Those dainty shoes Abigail wears even field side at football games rap the concrete floor as she halts just beyond reach of our cell. Somehow, amid all this, her makeup is immaculate. Did I ever see her without it, even once in all our years of friendship? Did I ever know the woman underneath?
“There’s no point begging,” she tells me. “Either of you. Sanctuary made its choice centuries ago. There’s no place here for your kind and the evil you do.”
“The good. I only ever did good. You know that. And Harper’s innocent—you know that, too. You can stop this madness, Abigail.”
Inside the tape, my fingers are working desperately. My mind runs through half a dozen spells. But thoughts aren’t enough. A musician can know every note in a piece, but she needs her instrument to play it, and I have neither free hands nor sticks.
And Abigail has noticed.
“Stop that!” she barks. “Guards, take them out.”
Harper steps to the bars. I want to yell at her to stay back. I imagine Abigail striking my girl, spitting at her—maybe even grabbing one of the guns and shooting her.
My daughter’s gaze is gentle.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Abigail,” she says. “I’m so sorry you never got to see him one last time, to say goodbye.”
Abigail sways a moment. This is the first time these two have met since the night Daniel died. The first time Abigail has seen the girl she’s accused, and looked into her eyes.
I hold my breath. Could this be all it takes?
A simple voicing of sorrow to remind Abigail that we all share in her grief. Are Harper’s words working their own kind of magic?
“Bitch,” says Abigail. “The rope’s too good for you. If I’d had my way, it would have been the fire.”
She turns and hurries up the stairs. Disappointment burns through me, and the last of my hope curls up like ash and drifts away.
One Hundred Three
Maggie
It’s stifling and sweaty in the trunk of Chester’s car as we speed toward Sanctuary. I suck in a grateful breath when we finally halt and the lid springs open. My deputy and Pierre Martineau look down at me.
“Am I glad to see you,” Pierre says, and one of those strong arms hauls me out like a sack of cement.
The three of us agree that Chester will head back to the station and play at being a loyal cop—he’ll call me with anything he discovers. Pierre and I will do recon to find out just what the heck is going on, where the Fenns might be, and how much danger they’re in.
I need a change of wardrobe, but my options aren’t great. Pierre offers me one of his own hoodies and a pair of his daughter’s sweatpants. I take them uneasily. My conflict of interests is off the scale. I might as well toss my police badge in the trash compactor right now. I tell myself that involving Pierre is only fair. If his daughter is responsible for the crime Harper is accused of, the least he can do is help me try to rescue her. And he’d want to anyway—Sarah is his oldest friend.
Please let there be some kind of rational explanation for all of this. Please let me not have to arrest Izzy Perelli for killing one boy at a party and somehow striking down another.
I strap my handgun to my side, making sure I can reach it easily beneath the baggy hoodie, and stow my phone. Pierre fastens his workman’s belt around his waist. Stuck into it are a claw hammer, a chisel, a long screwdriver, and a pair of bolt cutters.
“In case we need to cut ’em free or anything,” he says, shrugging on a canvas jacket that covers the lot. I try not to think about what that or anything might include.
We go on foot toward the stadium. As we cross into the historic district, the first thing I notice is that half the premises are shut up. Pierre stops to help the elderly proprietor of a gift store struggling to put storm shutters on her windows.
“It’s only for the tourists,” she says anxiously. “I don’t mean anything by it. I’ll be getting rid of it all first thing tomorrow.”
I wonder why she’s so worried, until I glimpse the window display. To one side are witch-themed souvenirs like you see in half a dozen towns across New England. Mugs and key chains showing witches on broomsticks. Candles in the shape of black cats and skulls. Relaxation Potion–branded bubble bath. As Pierre locks the final shutter in place, the woman barely squeaks out a thank-you before scurrying off.
A few blocks further along, a god-awful noise blares from one of the residential side streets. It’s a van with a PA system.
“Important information about the quarantine,” intones a woman’s voice. “Please gather at the football stadium. Important information about the quarantine…”
The van rolls slowly on. Further away, I hear another one repeating the same script. People are being drawn out of their homes, and the streets are filling up. Don’t they realize that the last thing you should do during a sickness is gather together?
Which tells me that they don’t think this is any normal sickness. They believe it’s witchcraft.
The noise intensifies, and in scraps of conversation audible above the hubbub, people sound afraid, uncertain, angry. Carried along by the pressing crowd, we approach the stadium. The gates are wide open, and I glimpse what’s inside.
And it’s bad. It is extremely fucking bad.
I pull out my phone and dial the TV reporter, Anna Dao.
“Do you guys have a helicopter,” I ask, when she picks up. “Because there’s something going down in Sanctuary that the world needs to see.”
One Hundred Four
Maggie
I’ve barely hung up, promising to send pictures, when Pierre and I are jostled forward into the stadium. In the center is a platform that I see from a weather-beaten logo is property of Sports on the Shore. It’s painted white, neatly trimmed in a bright red that I finally recognize. The same paint that sprayed Sarah’s house and defaced the town sign.
Facing the stage is a small podium. It’s where medals are awarded at athletics meets, but I can imagine its purpose today—to display the accused. Guardsmen are dragging metal barriers in place to fence it.
Most rows of bleachers are near full already. An elderly couple sit with blankets over their knees and a brown paper bag of sandwiches, as if ready to watch their grandkid’s soccer match. Half the tier along one side has Reserved signs laid neatly on each seat. The people occupying one front row have wrapped a long banner the length of the stand. It’s inscribed with Bible verses.
Another tier is draped with the Sanctuary Spartans colors, and teenage boys and girls fill it, chatting, flirting, and drinking cans of soda. Mostly, though, the faces all around are grim and frightened. And that frightens me, because if there’s one thing that works on people even better than anger, it’s fear.
At a distance around the stage, speakers are being set up.
You’d think it was the setting for a cute small-town celebration—Founder’s Day, or Thanksgiving or something—were it not for what’s down one end.
Because dangling from the crossbeam of a goalpost are two lengths of rope, fashioned into nooses.
I snap pictures. But just as I’m about to send them to Dao—and also to Remy, because he needs to have people in here now, quarantine or no quarantine—my phone is snatched from my hand. It’s a young guardsman, his face open and friendly.
“I’ll need that, ma’am.” He points to the LED scoreboard, which is flashing a No phones symbol. “Apologies. Give me your name, and it’ll be available to collect tomorrow. Yours too, sir.”
He holds out his hand. I think for a moment that Pierre will refuse, but then a second guardsman trots over, his hand visibly on the holster of his gun. And Pierre does what every black parent, heartbreakingly, teaches their kids to do the minute they see lawmen reach for their guns. He complies instantly.
I give false names—only to have our cover almost blown by a voice behind us.
“Oh, P!”
As the guardsmen amble off to confiscate phones from more people streaming into the stadium, we turn. It’s Bridget Perelli-Lee. Alongside her, muffled up like it’s December, is Isobel.
“Bridge, babes,” Pierre says. “What are you doing here? You’d better not be part of this shit show?”
“No—no, of course not. I’ve come to try to speak to Abigail. She’s driving all this, with Tad Bolt. I tried to get Julia to come, too, but she’s so scared. She says that if Abigail can turn on Sarah, she can turn on us next. But I thought—oh, Detec…”
We both shush her.
Izzy’s round, trusting face looks back and forth between us—and sudden apprehension rises in me. I’ve been spinning theories. I’ve even convinced others of them. But now that I’m back in Izzy’s presence, it’s hard to imagine she’s been responsible for anything worse than dropping plates when she empties the dishwasher. She pats her mother’s arm.
“Mommy, I need to tell her.”
“No.” Bridget hisses. “No, you say nothing.”
“But I…”
“No, Isobel.”
“Hey, hey, easy now…” Pierre crouches down in front of his daughter. “What’s up, sweetie?”
“Pierre, don’t…”
“Izzy?” Pierre coaxes.
“I did it,” Isobel says in the smallest of voices.
“What?”
“It’s bullshit, Pierre.” Bridget looks frantic. “Some fantasy she’s just dreamed up
to save them. Don’t listen to her, Detective.”
“I killed Dan,” Izzy says, jutting her lip. “I went to the party, and I pushed him. For Harper. And for me.”
“Don’t joke, Iz. Don’t go making stuff up.” Pierre shakes his daughter gently by the shoulders.
“You know why, Daddy,” Isobel says, a little louder now. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted him to go down the stairs and break a leg or something, so he couldn’t use his football scholarship. But then he saw that tape Bea put up, and stepped forward just as I did it, and he fell all wrong. It was an accident. Then the fire started.”
Wait.
What?
Izzy pushed him? It doesn’t take witchcraft to push a boy.
The girl is sniffling into her giant muffler, her words caught in its soft folds. No one else has heard them but us.
They’re words that change everything.
I stare at the kid’s distraught face. No wonder she looked terrified and guilty when I was at her house. She must have bottled this up, hoping my investigation would find it was all an accident. Trusting that Harper was safe in Green Point, and knowing that she was innocent of witchcraft. But now it has spiraled to this, so fast, and Izzy is desperate to save her friend.
What she’s just admitted isn’t murder, but it’s definitely a crime. She’s only seventeen, though, and there are mitigating circumstances. The courts would be lenient. If I arrested her right now, would her sentence be a reasonable price to pay to stop the madness building up in this stadium?
Someone has started singing a hymn—I recognize it from my childhood as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”—and more voices take it up. As I look around, I see that the seats are all filled, and I have a dizzy intuition that this has tipped too far for any arrest, any official action of mine, to make a difference.
“She’s just upset,” Bridget says. “None of it’s true. She was sick. At home. She was never at that party. I don’t know why anyone told you she was.”
“Why the fuck did you bring her here, Bridge?” Pierre has balled up his hands. “Do you want our little girl up there next to Sarah and Harper? Do you see what they’re going to do?”