Chapter 8
MAGGIE
It’s the slowest of slow days in the office – glacial, in fact – when what sounds like a fight breaks out in the parking lot below.
In the months since Bittershore, when I scored an arrest on a possible serial killer, but also shot the son of a sitting congresswoman, Remy has had me mopping up the most anodyne of drug cases.
Kid mules, who’re barely out of elementary school and are more likely to crumple and cry when you catch them than pull out firearms. It’s heart-mending work, because they’re still young enough to be turned away from a life of crime, but the heap of paperwork that goes with it is taller than Denali.
So when I hear the squeal of tyres I join the gaggle at the window.
And see the unmistakable figure of Sarah Fenn, trembling but upright like an aspen, between two of my colleagues.
As we all watch, one of them gets on the radio, giving urgent instructions.
No doubt calling up a pursuit vehicle for whatever car just tore out of the lot.
The other pulls Fenn away. For a moment, she resists, before lifting her chin and shaking off the hand on her arm.
Walking of her own free will wherever they’re trying to get her to go.
I was out of the office yesterday. Home visit to a couple of kids over in Capen.
So I hadn’t taken in all the new signage about the witch registration.
It looks so clinical, like the mandatory testing stations that went up in agricultural areas during the last bird-flu scare.
I can’t decide if the effect is reassuring or disturbing.
But I sure as hell don’t like the idea that Sarah Fenn is being brought to a police facility against her will.
And who was in the vehicle that raced away?
Taking the stairs two at a time, I bump into my boss, Remy. He eyes me narrowly.
‘Stay out of it, Mags. I don’t want you going anywhere near Fenn.’
‘Out of what?’ I ask, doing my best innocent face. ‘Mid-afternoon sugar-drop, boss. I’m heading to the canteen. Can I get you anything? Donut? Caramel frappucino?’
Remy pats his six-pack through his smart button-down, as if to reassure himself it’s still there even though he just turned forty.
‘Nothing for me, thanks. And it’ll be Ozempic for you if you don’t cut the sweet stuff, Maggie. Hey, only saying it because I care.’
He raises his hands and backs off, as I flip him the bird and laugh.
Whatever it takes to get him gone. Remy’s too sharp by far.
Breezing through the open-plan traffic department, I lift a radio receiver off an unattended desk.
Slip it in my pocket. Twirl down the stairs to the fire exit with the disabled alarm where the smokers gather for a puff.
From there, it’s easy to wander into the dismal bit of landscaping that attempts to humanise our office, and tune into to the radio frequency used for pursuits.
I sink to the ground beneath a sapling that never thrived, clutching the radio in both hands, when the usual narrative of a chase is broken by a curse.
‘Martineau’s vehicle has gone off the road. Fuck – the reservoir! The reservoir!’
No, I think. No. Not Pierre. And he’d only be speeding away from here on account of one person. Harper Fenn. The girl who survived a whole town trying to kill her. The guy with the gap-toothed smile who helped me rescue her.
‘Confirm, the car has gone in. No one is at the surface. Dive Unit required.’
No! I grip the receiver so hard I might break my own fingers.
I sit there for long minutes, for half an hour, curled around myself, willing my colleagues not to disturb me as I press the receiver to my ear.
I’ve turned the volume right down, as though if I can’t hear its pitiless narration, it won’t be true.
‘One body strapped in the vehicle. Looks like Martineau.’
‘No sign of the Fenn kid,’ says a second voice. ‘We’ve been combing the banks. Dive team may have to quadrant and search the reservoir in case she went through the windshield, ’cause that’s totally gone.’
I’m shaking, breath caught in my throat. As I try and twist off the receiver, it falls from my nerveless hands.
Pierre, who caught Bea Garcia as gently as if she was a newborn when we cut her from the tree in Bittershore woods.
Who’d gotten so angry with me when, during the original Sanctuary investigation, I’d briefly suspected his daughter Izzy.
Who put himself on the line for Sarah and Harper, again and again. He would have given his life for them.
I think he just did.
Tears won’t stop coming. If you ever need a handyman, you have my number, he’d told me as I was packing to leave Sanctuary. I never called that number. I knew his heart belonged to Sarah Fenn.
Sarah Fenn.
She deserves to hear this news from me. It can’t be some just-a-job colleague.
I can’t tell her Harper’s alive, but everything in me is screaming that the girl made it out.
That smashed windshield? It must have been her.
She’s the girl a whole town couldn’t kill.
She doesn’t die at the bottom of a reservoir.
Such a mundane death. Witches get more lives than that, surely.
Hauling myself up by the sapling’s too-slender trunk, I wipe my face. Pull myself together to pass for normal. Professional. Like a cop who has every right to be in the WRA Registration Zone. Not one who’s listened in as a good man drowns and a girl disappears.
With a detour to drop the radio back where I palmed it, I head for the allocated zone.
It’s in the shabby prefab we acquired and nicknamed the Burglary Box the last time a governor decided a Property Crime unit would be a vote winner.
The Box is sited across the parking lot.
Notoriously freezing in winter and sweltering in summer.
But even so, I’m shocked at how bleak it feels.
A half dozen men and women of all ages, shapes, and ethnicities sit on hard plastic seats, their faces weary and resentful.
One woman has small kids, twins, sat either side of her.
Another, a grizzling red-faced baby in a pushchair.
A Black dude catches my eye and nods; the teenage boy and tween girl opposite him are both glued to tablets.
Round all their wrists are fluorescent plastic tags, each with a barcode and long row of numbers, which doesn’t sit right with me.
There are touches of flamboyance here and there. Silver jewellery. A feathered earring. Delicate tattoos of flowers on the most prim-and-proper looking woman. But nothing to betray what they are – witches. People with abilities the rest of us don’t have. It’s an unnerving thought.
Then swing doors are pushed wide and in comes Sarah Fenn, eyes bright and distracted.
She plucks off a band-aid stuck to the crook of her elbow and folds it into her pocket, then presses two fingers where the needle must have gone in for a blood sample.
There’s no sign of any puncture mark when she removes them. She’s harassed and frantic with worry.
How can I tell her?
Only a career spent knocking on doors to break it to folks that their kid won’t be coming home, or their husband, or mom, puts enough steel in my legs to walk up to her and say, as gently as I can, ‘Sarah? We need to talk.’