Chapter 8 #2
Of course, even if Rowan’s sole aim had been to erase the memory of the spell she’d cast to compel Hayleigh to divulge the details of Goshen’s plans for the Elk Ridge winter festival, it still didn’t excuse what happened.
Echoes of the feeling of violation left behind by having had the magic in her mind, stripping her of her memories, traveled through her body, and for a moment, everything in the room felt too bright and too loud.
“There’s a lot to comb through here,” murmured Zaide, looking at a list of search results on her laptop screen.
“What do you mean?” asked Hayleigh, cheeks growing warm.
The witch spun her laptop, scrolling past result after result, article after article, takedown video after takedown video. Familiar justifications rose to Hayleigh’s lips. “You can’t trust what you read online. We have—”
We. The word slipped out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
She cleared her throat. “Goshen has many competitors who pay bad actors to spread misinformation.”
“While I’m pretty inclined to agree that the internet is mostly slop,” said Zaide, “there’s a lot here to choose from. A good chance at least one thing is legit. Or at least legit in the mind of the person who cast the spell.”
“How are we supposed to tell fact from fiction?”
The witch’s eyes were amused as she said, “I could use a spell.”
“A spell?”
Zaide panned her hand over the screen. “You remember how Rowan forced you to tell the truth?”
A muscle in her cheek twitched as she said, “I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
Something in the way she said it prompted Zaide to pause and look at her—really look.
Sympathy softened the creases of the other woman’s eyes, and finally she said in a considerably more patient voice, “Well, I don’t mess with people’s heads, but I am pretty good at illusions. Both making and revealing.”
“You’re saying you have a spell that can detect…misinformation?”
“It’s the only reason I’m willing to use the internet anymore.”
Hayleigh gnawed at her lip.
She didn’t want to accept an offer of magic, but what was the alternative? Go door to door asking every person with a grudge against her if they dabbled in the dark arts?
It could take weeks…months.
Red didn’t have that kind of time. The pressure of the thought drew the walls in close, and Hayleigh’s head buzzed light and dizzy.
“Fine,” she blurted. “Cast the spell. But I’m going outside.”
Before she could change her mind, she snatched her coffee and stepped out, taking in a gulp of cool, refreshing air.
A pair of children sprinted past, dragging sleighs behind them, and her eyes followed to where a break in the trees in a slope at the edge of town had become a sledding hill.
Child after child coasted down on tubes and discs and runner sleighs, laughing in delight.
A light touch of fingers on her shoulder snapped her attention away. “It’s done,” said Stephan in a low voice.
“The spell? Did it work?”
He nodded, and his expression was carefully neutral. “Got it down to just a few results. Come back in.”
Zaide sat beside her laptop, arms crossed. There was a lingering smell, like someone had lit one of those skinny metal sparklers they give children on the Fourth of July.
“You said a few?” said Hayleigh, approaching uncertainly. “Are any of them in the same town as witches you know?”
“No,” said Stephan, shaking his head, and her heart fell. “But we don’t know everyone.”
“Thankfully most of what’s left doesn’t scream ‘curse a person for this shit,’ ” said Zaide, “except for one…” She tapped the screen to draw Hayleigh’s eye to a particular headline.
Heavy Metals Found in Idaho Town’s Water; Residents Question Resort’s Role.
Apparently, there had been a sharp increase in cancer cases in the town of Eucharist, Idaho, as well as some startling die-outs in local animal populations.
This had led an environmental action group to test the groundwater, where they found significant heavy metals.
It was assumed, because of the timing, that it had something to do with a resort that Goshen Group had developed there almost ten years ago.
“Were you involved in this?” asked Stephan, glancing at her.
“I…” She swallowed, surprised at how reluctant she was to have to say it to his face. “Yes. Eucharist was my first development with Goshen—Shepherd’s Summit Resort. But I don’t have any idea why someone would blame me for water contamination.”
“None at all?” said Zaide with a roll of her eyes.
“No, I’m not usually involved in the details of the construction.
More high-level planning, relationships, negotiation, media…
But I don’t see anyone else at Goshen letting this happen either, not knowingly anyway.
Despite what you guys think of us, we—they—aren’t a company that treats human life as disposable. ”
Zaide scoffed. Though Stephan’s expression was a bit gentler than the other witch’s, he didn’t look convinced.
Her voice grew high as she said, “The article doesn’t say they have any proof it was the resort. Just that it’s what people are assuming.”
“The article says the entire region’s basically a Superfund site,” said Zaide, “full of all kinds of buried pollution from its mining days. Do you really think it’s possible to build something that big and not dig up rank shit?”
Yes, she had known the Silver Valley’s ground quality was…not exceptional; it was why the land had been cheap—but there’d been a plan in place to mitigate the risks. It had been a talking point she’d been prepped for and had to repeat time and time again in community and media briefings.
“There was a thorough ground study to pick a safe site,” she said.
Zaide cocked an eye. “Are you sure?”
“It was a legal requirement,” she snapped.
“Then are you sure your bosses didn’t choose someone who would give them the result they wanted?”
“I…” With every accusation, she grew hotter, her head lighter.
She recalled the intensity with which Jack had talked about what they were there to do, and how everyone, herself included, had lapped it up.
They were there to give the town of Eucharist a new lease on life.
Was it possible their hunger for success had led them to overlook something?
Her stomach lurched, and the lingering taste of macchiato was cloying on her tongue.
“Even if the development caused this,” she said finally, “why curse me? It was my first job. I barely knew what I was doing there.”
Zaide tapped her laptop screen one more time, and Hayleigh found herself staring at her much younger self, bright-eyed and chipper. Goshen Group development manager Hayleigh Gray says, “Bright times ahead for Eucharist, Idaho.”
The tattooed witch leaned in. “Maybe because the people in charge put someone like you at their front, smiling to put people at ease and so that someone other than them takes the blame when things go wrong.”
Hayleigh opened her mouth to say They would never do that, but she couldn’t, because Jack Bree would absolutely do that. He was adept at leading sacrificial lambs into place before the swords came down. She’d seen it happen many times. She’d been it in Elk Ridge.
And for all her qualifications, for all she’d asked to be involved in more of the nitty-gritty of the work, she’d been consistently pushed into the spokesperson position.
To smile at their front, as the witch had so accurately put it, and deliver the company’s messaging.
For an entity like Goshen, where ideology was a commodity, that had been a full-time role.
No wonder they’d been able to replace her with an apple-cheeked influencer. No wonder they had once she’d allowed cracks in the perfectly agreeable, smiling face they’d hired.
What all might her smile have concealed?
Sensing the downturn of her thoughts, Stephan cleared his throat and closed the laptop with a click. “Well, this is all a pretty big revelation, why don’t we just—”
Hayleigh never heard what he was going to say, because she stood up, turned, and walked out of the café.