Chapter 36
BEA
‘You’ll want to be there,’ Sandra told me, after she put her head round the door of her campaign office and called me outside. ‘I owe you this. Or he does.’
I know who ‘he’ must be. Luka.
As she drives, I try to figure out what we’re heading toward.
Luka must either have been recaptured, or turned himself in.
Is he finally going to give a real confession – no more hiding behind the excuse that someone made him do it?
Will he say his interest in me was fake from the start, or will he tell me he really loved me, and beg me to believe and forgive him?
My stomach’s churning at either scenario – and others, more nebulous.
Our destination is plainly a police facility, but there’s little bustle here. Just blank doors and blank faces, the walls topped with razor wire that dazzles in the sun. I pull my sweater cuffs down over my hands, a nervous habit I thought I’d broken.
We’re met at the gate by the cop, Theodorou, who leads us through plasticky corridors where all the doors have smeared Perspex windows reinforced with checkerboard wire.
Interview rooms? He opens the door to one and sitting at the table in the centre is Charles Okoye.
The Moot President gives Sandra a tight smile.
At his side is a man I’ve not met before, dressed in a suit but whose upper arms strain the sleeves of his tailored jacket.
His salt-and-pepper hair is drawn back to reveal a silvery undercut, and his pale hazel eyes look like they rarely close, even for sleep. They’re fixed avidly on Sandra.
Opposite is a woman with the kind of startlingly white-blonde hair more usually seen on screen in the vicinity of dragons. And she knows all about monsters, because this is Anna-Marie Obermann, the hotshot defence attorney who has advised Sandra from the start.
‘Should she be here?’ Obermann says immediately, eyeing me.
I understand why she’s frosty. The first and only time we met, she tried to persuade me either not to testify at all, or to lean into the narrative of magical control and say Luka appeared ‘possessed’, ‘robotic’ or ‘vacant’.
She hinted heavily that either of those options would stand me in good stead when building my own political career, and radiated chill disappointment when I declined.
‘A witness,’ Sandra says.
To what? I think. I’m beginning to wonder if this has anything to do with the meeting Sandra took me to a few weeks ago. The research that was discussed there …
Theodorou stands by the door and I take up a position opposite while the other four talk. I catch the suited man’s identity soon enough. He’s the Moot’s Head of Security, Simeon Barr, and he’s been speaking with Luka.
‘He’s agreed,’ Barr confirms, in his clipped South African accent. ‘Says he wants it gone. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone with it ever again, even accidentally.’
‘It sends a powerful message,’ says Obermann.
‘It’ll show how abhorrent he finds the idea of magical harm and magic in general.
I’d like to see the prosecution sustain their portrait of a power-mad young witch in that light.
And in the unlikely event he’s found guilty, the fact he has already voluntarily undergone a significant part of any penalty could mean he’s considered to have paid his dues.
He might avoid any custodial sentence at all. ’
‘Excellent,’ says Sandra. ‘This is what I’ve hoped for – that Luka would come to his senses both about his conduct in this trial, and the dangers of magic.
Magic recklessly used, that is.’ She directs a conciliatory nod toward Okoye and Barr.
‘Beatriz, I hope this will serve also as an apology from Luka to you, and perhaps help you view him with some sympathy. I’ve always believed him to be a victim, like you. ’
So not quite an apology, then. An apology with expectations – that I view Luka with sympathy.
No one has exactly said it, but it’s clear I’m here to witness Luka lose his magic, and there’s a satisfaction in that.
Our final crazed conversation after he tied me up showed me how much his magic means to him.
If he’s sincerely giving it up as an act of penitence, the least I can do is respect his decision – right?
Barr and Theodorou go to fetch Luka. I take a chair from the table and sit in the furthest part of the room.
My stomach is churning at the thought Luka is about to have his magic …
removed? Destroyed? It’s the ultimate penalty for those who’ve committed the worst witchcrime, but I’ve no idea what it will look like.
My brain scrambles for comparisons, from surgery to something like the administration of a lethal injection.
Neither of those are something I want to watch.
Will he be sedated? A part of Luka will die because of what he did to me.
I’m not sure I want that on my conscience.
But then I remember that no, a woman is really, truly dead because of Luka Ortiz.
And I feel again the raging fury, the icy terror, that possessed me in Bittershore woods as I lay trussed on the cold earth while Luka twirled a knife and talked madly of sacrifices and harvests.
Whatever’s going to happen here, I’m seated for it.
When Luka’s brought in, and his mom thanks him for being a brave boy and doing the right thing, his face twists and he darts back toward the door. It’s locked, and his fingers scrabble on the handle.
‘Luka, you don’t have to do this,’ says Okoye gently.
He doesn’t see what I see – Sandra shooting Barr a glance which sends him to his feet.
‘Luka, bru,’ Barr says, slinging an arm around his back from which Luka flinches away. ‘Didn’t we talk about it? Didn’t you say this was what you wanted?’
Luka’s shoulders briefly jump, like he got a static shock, and his agitation subsides. Barr squeezes his shoulders, and after a moment Luka nods.
‘Well done, bru. That’s the right call.’
‘Luka, you’re doing this of your own free will?’ Okoye asks, as Barr steers him back to the table and lightly presses him down opposite the Moot President. ‘This is a grave decision. No one’s suggested it to you or is forcing you?’
Okoye glances at Obermann, the attorney, who looks affronted.
He doesn’t see Barr’s gaze again seeking out Sandra’s.
The silence of seven people in one room, all not speaking, is stifling.
Do I say anything? Challenge Barr – challenge Sandra – as to what that glance between them meant? Luka looks almost desperate.
Then the moment passes.
‘Very well,’ Okoye says. ‘Luka, I need you to confirm that you consent to this, and understand that it is irreversible, then we’ll begin.’
Luka’s voice, which I’ve heard so clear and confident in seminars and debates, in his mom’s campaign room, or briefing the press with casual arrogance, is barely a whisper as he gives consent.
Okoye takes one of his hands. Barr the other. Luka is shaking in their grip as Okoye begins a low, rhythmic, ominous chant that sounds like storm clouds feel.
I will not feel pity. This boy tried to kill me. He did it because he wanted more magic. If this poisonous power gives him such urges, he’s better off without it. These men are going to draw it from his veins. Nothing like a lethal injection – exactly the reverse. A purging. A cleansing.
Yet it’s hard to watch as Luka’s body vibrates and the cords stand out in his neck, his skin and face flushed with blood.
Theodorou has remained standing, and he stares over everyone’s heads as if he has nothing to do with what’s taking place.
After a few moments, Obermann pulls a notepad from her purse and begins to jot what I suspect is nonsense.
A distraction. Sandra has a hand over her mouth and stares at her son as though she doesn’t see him.
He must be in pain. Great, invisible pressures appear to be at war in Luka’s body.
Accused witches who wouldn’t confess used to be pressed to death.
Crushed beneath boards heaped with bricks.
Luka’s eyes bulge as theirs surely did. Yet he is taut and straining, too.
A body launched from an airlock without a spacesuit, about to be torn apart by impersonal cosmic forces. It’s hard to look at.
Luka’s form blurs, and I can’t tell if it’s some bizarre effect of the magic, or my eyes welling. The chair beneath him vibrates. Surely it’s been five minutes? The condemned die faster than this. An execution is judged cruel and unusual if it takes so long.
Sandra looks away to stare fixedly at a point upon the wall.
A gasp that’s half inhale, half sobbing exhale, breaks from Luka and his body sags like that of a hanged man finally cut down and caught. His breathing is shallow as his head hangs low.
Barr lifts a hand that’s curled in a grip around nothing. Okoye begins to move his around it. As if he’s winding. Like they’re spooling wool on a distaff. Easing out a tapeworm by wrapping it round a stick. Winching out the guts from a disembowelled felon at a Tudor execution.
Bile surges into my throat and I turn sideways in my chair and vomit. Nobody even notices. I wanted this, I tell myself. And, He deserved it. But it’s like watching someone be lobotomised in real time. Seeing a star athlete hit by a car. It’s disgusting.
Even Abigail Whitman was going to hang Harper and Sarah with their magic intact.
I wipe my mouth. Shift my chair a foot from where it was. Look at Luka, who is staring dully into space.
Okoye and Barr finish their winding. Barr makes a snapping motion as Okoye passes his hands below, as if to sweep away invisible dust or ashes.
A single tear slides down Luka’s cheek.