Chapter 7
HARPER
I heard enough to put it together. Registration. Both of us.
The guy forcing his way past Mom is huge.
Where do I go? We keep our back door locked so he’d be on me before I could get through it.
I can’t risk using my magic, because powerful as it is and untrained as it is I might end up exploding him.
So I do what I had to many times at school when Bea was on a bullying rampage, and lock myself in the bathroom to buy some time.
There’s only one person Mom and I can truly rely on.
The cops are taking me and Mom, I frantically text Pierre. Please help us! Attaching a Find My Phone link, I hit as the door gives way behind me, and slip the phone into my pocket. Doubling over the toilet basin, I make gagging noises.
‘Are you alright, miss?’ Big Fed asks, nonplussed.
I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. ‘You’re kind of triggering for me. Mom and I had some pretty heavy experiences with law enforcement in Sanctuary. Perhaps you heard about it?’
The cop’s granite features shear in a blunt expression that could be sympathy, as carved by an eighth-grader holding a chisel for the first time in design class.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he says. ‘But we need you to come with us.’
As the feds duck us into the back of their unmarked car, I feel the buzz of a message alert at my hip. Then another. I daren’t pull my phone out, but we’re about twenty minutes up the interstate toward Hartford when I see Pierre’s car slide into the neighbouring lane.
Of course he’s come for us. He’s been in love with Mom their whole lives.
He would have called me his daughter, if she’d let him.
I’d often wanted to tell him, You’re like a father to me.
Doesn’t matter that I don’t know my real one.
You’re enough. But then Lachlan turned up and for months it was like I forgot Pierre even existed.
And I wasn’t the only one. I remember the morning I arrived home and found Lachlan in the house having plainly stayed the night, despite Pierre having finally plucked up the courage to court Mom.
When Sanctuary went to hell, he was the one who spirited us out of there with DI Knight.
And now it looks like he’s going to try and do it again.
Mom and I both owe him more than we’ll ever be able to repay.
As we pull off at the exit for Hartford Police HQ, I wonder what’s going through P’s mind.
How he plans to do this. I couldn’t bear it if he was tasered or shot.
But there’s no way I can let them test me.
Because although no mention was made of it when the new Bill was announced, they’ve obviously developed some non-magical way of identifying us.
They sure as hell aren’t going to be conducting Determination rituals on dozens of witches at police headquarters.
Maybe it’s something I won’t know how to counter with my Obscurity sigil.
‘D’you think that car …?’ Big Fed says to Smiley Fed as Pierre follows us up the off-ramp, and I roll my eyes. Someone earned his Boy Scout badge in Observation Skills.
As the huge office building comes into sight, we are directed off to the right.
‘WRA Registration Zone’, it says in heavy black letters on reflective yellow signage every fifty metres.
Those signs sure weren’t run off on the printer overnight.
How long has the rollout of this Act been planned?
Has every witch in America gotten a summons today?
P pulls up right alongside, plain as you like, his driver’s side closest to us. I catch his eye as he gets out, and he thumbs at the rear passenger door which he’s cracked open. As our escorts open the doors for me and Mom, Pierre is right there in their faces.
And I hate that he has to do this. He’s a powerfully built Black guy well clear of six feet.
He spends his life avoiding cops or making himself as unthreatening as he can around them.
This is totally alien to him, as he gets in their personal space protesting angrily about my and Mom’s constitutional rights.
‘Pierre, darling, don’t make a scene,’ Mom says, playing along, drawing the attention of the cops to the far side of our car. ‘No need to holler.’
P hollers some more, about prejudice and discrimination, then Mom starts yelling at him, to get them focussed on her – and I recognise my cue.
I’ve slipped into the back seat before P throws himself behind the wheel, slamming the vehicle into reverse.
We’re off, almost before the cops have looked away from Mom who is waving her hands around in the way that always makes folks nervous when witches do it, never mind that everyone does it when they’re irate.
‘Hey, Harper. You get that seatbelt on quick.’
Pierre grins as I climb through the seatwell and slide into the front, beside him.
‘Hey, P. You were amazing.’
‘Guess this is one speeding ticket I’m actually going to deserve,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘Where to, ma’am?’
‘Just, away.’
I need some time, that’s all. Time to find out what testing the mundanes have come up with, and to figure out how to beat it.
Time to find my dad, because I’m suddenly absolutely convinced that the reason we’ve not heard from Lachlan is because he’s been busy trying to suss this all out.
Sandra Ortiz’s plans. The testing rollout.
Maybe even what technique they’ve developed to do it.
‘Shit!’ P curses as he checks the mirror.
Far distant behind us, but unmistakable, I catch the flash of a dispatch car light.
‘Let’s get straight off,’ he says. ‘Maybe they won’t even notice we’ve gone.’
He moves skilfully across lanes to the next exit. Looping ramps give us the option of northbound or southbound.
‘Fifty-fifty chance of losing ’em,’ he says, taking the northbound exit for the Cahusack Hills Recreation Park. ‘And again,’ as the road divides a second time and P picks the more forested route – a dirt-surfaced road.
But in the time it took us to exit the freeway, the dispatch car narrowed the gap.
They were close enough to see each turn we made, and not even the mods Pierre has made to his car – there’s nothing the guy can’t tinker with and improve – will give it speed to beat a police chase vehicle.
There’s only one way out of this, and I’m it.
How to safely stop a car travelling close to 100 mph? Destruction, to blow out one of its tyres? Ruin, to rip up the road behind us? Obscurity, to hide us? Could I do that – simply make our car disappear? It seems the stuff of shitty superhero movies.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Pierre says, stealing a frantic glance at my face. ‘Your Mom’s told me so often about how powerful you are, but you’re still untrained. Magic could easily go wrong. I can’t let you do something you’ll regret forever.’
Twisting, I look back at the pursuing car.
Obscurity first. If that doesn’t work, maybe Destruction.
No one could blame Pierre if a tyre blew, and whoever’s driving will be highly trained.
They’ll be able to bring their vehicle safely to a halt.
I raise my hands not to shape a sigil – no need – but to feel out the dimensions of our vehicle, testing what exactly I’ll need to Obscure.
And we’ll have to get off this dirt road so our tracks don’t betray us.
‘I won’t regret this,’ I say.
Which is when Pierre grabs my arm—
and some kind of fucking animal, startled by the noise and the lights of the pursuit car, jumps out in front of us—
and Pierre loses control of the wheel and we plough off the side of the road—
and my first thought, screaming, is the trees! but instead we plunge between two, plough through bracken, then we’re rolling, tumbling, sliding—
into water.
Sinking.
A lake? Fuck knows. My wild magic blasts out the windshield, but that only sends water gushing into the car. Clamping my mouth, I unfasten my seatbelt. Crawl-float desperately towards Pierre.
P isn’t conscious. He’s suspended over the wheel, chin bobbing up and loose, chest held against the belt, airbag billowing against his face like some giant jellyfish.
I have to get him out, but in the tangle of our bodies, the wheel, the still downward motion of the vehicle through the water – not a lake, I realise; a much deeper reservoir – it’s impossible to reach around him to the belt buckle.
I should have unfastened him before the windshield blew, but instinctive magic doesn’t work like that.
My hands fumble frantically. I can hardly see a thing in the glinting greenbrown half-light of the water.
My lungs are burning. I’m running out of air.
A memory comes to me, dizzily. Pierre, Mom, and me driving to the beach one day.
I’m about seven or eight, and excited because Pierre’s told me he packed marshmallows and is going to teach me to make s’mores.
A song from an animated movie I love comes on the radio, and I start throwing myself around in the backseat singing along.
Mom’s head snaps around. Seatbelt, Harper.
I shake my head. Continue bouncing and trilling the lyrics: If I were Queeeen, My royal decreeee, Would beeeee, That every day is a GOOD DAY! Mom starts getting angry. Harper! Do it. She’s reaching back to try and lock in my belt and I flail at her.
It’s about to turn nasty, Mom scolding, me having a tantrum, when I see P’s big brown eyes on me in the rearview mirror. I freeze, suddenly ashamed that he’s seeing me act up like this. It’s because we love you, Harper, he says, with a goofy smile so I don’t wail about how corny he is.
And I do it. Snap that seatbelt right in.
It’s because we love you, Harper.
I can’t let him go. I can’t!
Black spots are dancing before my eyes. My kicks are weakening as I writhe and grapple with the belt. I’m trying to dig into my jean pocket for the little silver knife, but the water has pasted the fabric to my skin. This can’t be happening. I’ve enough magic to kill a man. Surely I can save one?
But when my desperate lungs suck in a mouthful of water, and I choke, my body understands what my heart can’t accept. It flips out of the space where the windshield was, as the last air inside me buoys me toward the surface.
As I crawl up the bank into some bracken and lie there gasping, I sob without a sound.
Love you more, P.