Chapter 34
HARPER
I want Luka gone.
I don’t want him anywhere near my dad. I don’t want him anywhere near our Redhaven revolution.
And I certainly don’t want him following me around with dopey devotion because I’m Lachlan’s daughter and he thinks the Fenns are witch royalty.
I’m happy to leave bloodline worship to horse trainers, British people, and Southerners who give their kids numbers rather than their own names.
So I’ve agreed to tutor Luka in elementary witchcraft.
I didn’t want to touch his magic, knowing what he’s done.
And when I did and felt a trace of my dad’s cold-metal, storm-static power from all those months Lachlan spent manipulating him with the ring, I felt even more queasy.
But given my intentions, I had to be sure Luka isn’t hiding any magical reserves that might take me by surprise.
I’m pleased to discover his Gift really is a weak and trickling thing.
Mid-morning – Dad’s been shut away with Tavi and Yara and others of his core team for hours, and it’s making me ratty to be on the wrong side of the door – I suggest we pack up some lunch and head off-site for some practice.
‘Beyond the wards?’ he asks, apprehensively.
I reassure myself that weak as he is, he definitely can’t read my mind.
‘You cut the sandwiches,’ I say. ‘And if today goes well, tomorrow you can have a go at manipulating the knife by magic.’
When he winces, I think it’s because I’ve just suggested the corniest, cartoon version of magic.
The auto-pouring teapot and self-scrubbing dishes.
Mundanes never think about that when they’re flinging around words like malef and existential threat.
Then I remember the knife that cut Bea’s forehead, and severed the drowned woman’s braid, and spilled seagull blood all over the cabin where Luka terrorised his first victim.
The knife that even now must sit in a sealed baggie in an evidence locker awaiting his trial.
‘The mundane way is fine too,’ I say quickly. ‘I’ll get us some apples and soda.’
Eugene has woven me into Redhaven’s wards and explained how our car-pool operates without detection, and as I drive us away from the homestead all I can think is how the wheels eat up in minutes what took me hours on foot with the moose.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I miss that big ol’ boy with his dewy fur and funky moose breath.
‘You seem cheerful,’ Luka observes. ‘Does the prospect of doing magic always have that effect on you? It does with me, too. Don’t get me wrong, I loved lots of things about my old life.
Excelling in class. Landing a great comeback in debate.
Girls. But it all pales besides magic, doesn’t it? That knowledge you’re special.’
I could almost feel sorry for him. So starry-eyed about his pitiful Gift.
I don’t tell him the reason I’m so hyped is that once we’re far enough clear I plan on immobilising him, calling the cops from a payphone to come and collect him, then high-tailing it back to Redhaven.
Lachlan might not be happy about it, but at least he’d have to find me to get mad at me, which would be more than I’ve seen of him in the past few days.
Luka twitches as I bring us down toward Route 2. Asks if we shouldn’t keep off the main roads. I flash a reassuring smile and tell him not to worry – how does he think Mom and I made it through half a year incognito after Sanctuary? We’ve got magic!
‘My mom thinks it’s un-American,’ he says, sadly, and I can see how even now it weighs on him, this decision to denounce his mother’s poisonous politics.
‘But isn’t America a place that fosters talent?
Where athletes are coached to win gold, entrepreneurs attract investment, scientists funded to develop life-changing treatments?
Not everyone can achieve those things, yet that kind of talent isn’t considered dangerous or deviant. Why treat magic differently?’
‘It’s because people kid themselves that if they train hard enough, are smart enough checking market forecasts, or go to med school, all those things are attainable,’ I tell him with the wisdom of my nineteen years, several brushes with death, and ongoing public infamy.
‘Even if they can’t, their kids might, or they can donate to charities that make things happen.
But you can’t train your way into magic.
You can’t send your mundane child to cram school for witchcraft.
It’s forever beyond their reach. And that’s why they hate us, and why people like your mom make political capital out of us. ’
The atmosphere in the car is getting kinda heavy, so I decide we’ve come far enough. We’re in Buttfuck Nowhere, close to the White Mountain National Forest. I pull off the route by a deserted trail head, because who’d hike here when Mount Washington is twenty miles down the road?
We eat our sandwiches in silence, enjoying the sun and, just maybe, being away from the eye of the witch-hate storm his ma has seeded across America.
‘Was I greedy to want both?’ Luka says. ‘Magic and my mom’s love? Was that too much to ask?’
I’m about to offer a soft word when I remember Pierre, dead because of my arrogance but also Luka’s mom’s shitty laws. When I think of how my parents could have been together and we could have been a family, were it not that one cohabiting witch must be bound in subjugation to the other.
‘We’ll head a short way up the trail then try a few simple charms,’ I say. ‘I’ll talk you through why it’s important to consider whether a spell should be applied to an object or subject.’
‘Such as whether a thing is actually made invisible, or a person is made unable to see it?’
He’s a keen one, though I doubt he’s magic enough to turn a tomato invisible.
‘Exactly that.’
Which is when a car comes screaming into our pullout and … Detective Knight leaps out?
Luka’s already started to sprint, but Knight is on him. Handcuffs out.
‘Harper!’ Luka howls, as Detective Maggie bears him to the ground with a knee in his back. ‘Help me!’
‘Harper?’ the detective’s head snaps round as she realises for the first time there’s someone here with Luka.
‘I was literally about to immobilise him and call you folks,’ I tell her. ‘That was my whole plan. You stole it.’
Knight stares at me, looking almost … wounded? Her handcuffs click around Luka’s wrists as I hear two more vehicles pulling in. Her backup. Boots crunch across the gravel toward us.
Which is when my hands are grabbed from behind and locked into cuffs.
‘What the hell!’ I scream. ‘Detective Maggie?’
‘I didn’t,’ the cop says. ‘They’re not with …’
‘Theodorou will take it from here,’ says a familiar voice. A man strides past, bending to Luka’s struggling form with a second pair of cuffs, for some reason. ‘Harper is quite the bonus. Thank you, Maggie.’
‘Detective Margaret Knight to you,’ she spits. ‘And on what possible grounds can you take her?’
‘Aiding bail flight for starters,’ says Michael Whitman. ‘From there, maybe domestic terrorism. And, oh yes, as of fifteen hours ago, resisting Registration. An amendment to the Witchcraft Act.’
Fuck this loser. He should have remembered it’s no good cuffing witches unless you bind their hands completely. And he should know that in my case, even that doesn’t apply, as my sigils are a part of me. No mercy this time. I’ll Ruin this bastard.
I reach for my magic.
And find nothing there.