Chapter 38
HARPER
Whitman and some sharply dressed thug wrestle me down the corridor. I yell the minute they get their hands on me, only to find my voice all stopped-up in my throat a moment later.
‘You’re a handy guy to have around, Barr,’ Whitman chuckles. ‘You should consider quitting the Moot and joining us on a more formal basis.’
So the thug is fucking magical and he works for the Moot?
What is this traitorous bullshit? The Moot, that never helped Mom when I was accused.
Which fills my father with fury at its spinelessness.
I can’t wait to tell him it’s even worse than that – the Moot is actively collaborating with persecutors like Whitman.
I’m wrangled into a plain room with a window set into the door.
The momentary hope that gives me swiftly evaporates when I see the people inside.
Sandra Ortiz and someone I recognise as the Moot President, seated at a table.
Between them is Luka Ortiz looking absolutely broken. What the hell happened to him in here?
Ice-cold apprehension sluices suddenly through me as I realise exactly what, and I start twisting again in the grip of the man named Barr, as Whitman closes the door.
A toss of curls against a shadowed wall. Bea?
They’re going to take my magic.
No. Anything but that. If they so much as try, I’ll make it gush out of me like magma, incinerating everyone in this room before it cools and dies.
I’d rather be dead than without magic, because I know what that feels like now, after hours locked inside these handcuffs that stifle and suppress it.
It feels like walking around with all your insides scooped out.
A person-shaped skin filled with sawdust. An emptiness that is also a heaviness.
No wonder mundanes envy us and fear us. We’re so much more than they can ever be.
‘Not her! Please not her, too! She’s special. You can’t!’
It’s Luka. Tears are coursing down his face and he’s hunched limply in his chair like a few of his more useful bones got broken. They broke his magic – and from the look of it, his heart.
‘Luka, easy.’ His mother’s voice is very gentle. ‘Of course we’re not going to strip Harper’s magic. Because she doesn’t have any – right, Harper? This’ll be a little test, and then we’ll decide what to do.’
Even amid the bigger horrors, there’s something profoundly wrong about bursting your lungs to scream and shout, but no sound coming out of your frantic mouth.
So I resort to the gesture of those made voiceless in so many ways, and spit.
Ortiz recoils. ‘Control her!’ she barks at Barr, and all by itself, my body violently throws itself into the seat opposite Luka.
‘Come along, darling,’ his mom says tenderly, taking him by the elbow and helping him stand.
He totters like someone taking their first steps after surgery, and loathing floods out of me.
Was it greedy to want both my mom’s love and my magic?
Luka had asked, forlornly. He’d believed then he only had one of those things.
Looks like he still does, but not the same one.
‘Detective Theodorou, I know Luka broke bail but please don’t take him into custody. He needs rest and kindness now. Ms Obermann will negotiate somewhere suitable with you.’
‘Mom, wait—’ Luka pleads, but Theodorou and a lawyerly-looking woman who’ve been huddled over some paperwork are all too eager to leave. The cop pulls out handcuffs but takes another look at Luka and decides he won’t need them.
‘It’ll be alright, Lu-Lu,’ Ortiz coos as her son is led away. ‘You’ve done the right thing. It’ll all be worth it.’
But it’s me Luka locks eyes with as he’s escorted away. Me he cries out to.
‘Harper, don’t say yes!’ he cries. ‘They need your consent. Don’t let them do it.’
‘That’s enough,’ his lawyer says, not unkindly. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
The fight has gone out of him. Luka doesn’t resist as he’s led from the room. Then the door shuts, and I’m alone with people who wish me ill – with no magic to defend myself. Fuck them. If they try to make me mundane, I’ll go down fighting.
The pressure in my throat eases. I can speak. I sure as fuck won’t be using it to say ‘yes’, but—
‘He’s wrong, isn’t he?’ I tell the room at large. ‘You don’t need consent to take it. Because what witch would ever agree to that?’
‘And yet one just did,’ says Okoye, righteously.
‘For the greater good. I presided over your Determination, Harper – do you remember?
It was only a few months after I became Moot President.
I was so looking forward to it. The Fenns, such an ancient witching family.
If ever there was a line that might pass the Gift on directly, parent to child, without missing a beat, it was yours.
‘Yet when I arrived, only you and Sarah were present. No family. No friends. Not even your mother’s mundane coven.
Sarah told me you’d insisted on it. You were in your white robe, barefoot.
Mere weeks past your thirteenth birthday, yet so solemn and serious.
You lay staring up at the stars as she dug the trench around you and filled it from her silver pitcher.
As she placed the candles in a circle, cut her own wrist for the final circle of blood, then walked the rings. And you know what happened.’
‘Nothing,’ I say, half under the spell of memory.
How fearful I’d been – terrified – that my magic would reveal itself, and questions might be asked about how Dan had fallen from the window.
‘Your mother was distraught,’ Okoye continues, and I’ve all but forgotten we have an audience.
‘She went to her knees. Begged your forgiveness. Do you remember? You had to comfort her. It’s okay, you were saying.
It’s okay. I teared up just watching. But here’s the thing – you were nowhere near as distressed as she was. You seemed almost relieved.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be relieved, to have got that over with?’ I say. ‘So Mom would have certainty, and we could get on with the next chapter of our lives?’
‘I wonder …’ The Moot President nods.
‘Of course she has magic,’ Beatriz pipes up from her shadowed side of this strip-lit room. There’s a feral quality in her gaze. A sour smell drifts from where she sits. ‘You tried to fucking choke me with it that day at school, Harper. Or have you forgotten?’
That was self-defence. Instinctive. Bea had got her cronies to hold me down in the fountain – she called it a ducking. My body had panicked and so my magic had lashed out.
‘There are reports, rumours …’ Okoye says. He looks deeply uncomfortable. ‘Of tattoos. Sigils, marked on your body. Will you show us?’
My heart catches in my throat because if he sees my Old Signs, it’s game over. To secular law enforcement, I might be able to bluff them away as awkward teenage tats, but I won’t fool this man.
‘You’re asking me to undress? An unchaperoned teenage girl without either legal representation or a guardian present?’
But I’m flailing, struggling before I’ve even finished, because the other one, Barr, lunges at me, presses me against the table and rips at my clothing.
Bea’s on her feet shouting – even clawing at him to stop.
Sandra Ortiz backs away, as if she wants no part of this, but there’s no surprise on her face.
She knew what Okoye was going to ask me.
She knew what Barr would do when I refused.
But then I don’t notice any more, because I’m no longer present.
I’m drifting. I’m gone. This is what Dan did to you, my detached brain tells my struggling body.
He drugged you and tore your clothes off and did what he wanted, while his guys filmed it.
I can’t think about that. I can’t go there.
That’s a place of powerlessness. I don’t ever want to be without power again.
Why can’t I reach my magic!
‘Goddess,’ Okoye snaps at his underling. ‘That’s enough.’
Barr steps away and with a lung-deep gasp I’m back in my body again, heart frantic.
I’ve never got the trick of scrying, but I’ve seen Mom do it enough times to recognise the similarities.
Your body reels your mind back in like a fish on a line while you thrash and thud desperately.
Wrenched from pure sense to gross solidity.
I cough and choke on pure hatred for Barr, for Dan, for Tad Bolt.
For everyone who’s ever laid hands on me without my permission.
‘Keep your fucking hands off her,’ Bea says, pushing at Barr’s chest. The man holds up his palms and retreats, smirking.
Luka. I think. Bea knows what it’s like, too. Why aren’t we on the same side?
A shuddering sigh from Okoye settles onto the surface tension of the room, delicately balanced.
Which is when I realise my shirt has been ripped open by Barr and the entirety of my midriff is showing.
All my tattoos are on display and the Moot President, surely, will see what few others even notice – my very first sigil, Obscurity, carved into my stomach by my shaking, terrified hands using a razorblade I’d prepared with a sevenfold purification.
Even though their presence on my body is a criminal act, I make no effort to draw together my torn shirt. I’m proud of my sigils. My parents saw and accepted them as part of me. Continued to love me. Theirs is the only judgement that counts.
‘So that’s how,’ he says, almost sorrowful.
‘Obscurity. How could your mother do that to you, Harper? Turn you into a walking witchcrime? What was she so afraid of in your magic that she hid it, then put on such a show of grief at your Determination? If you tell us why, we can plead for lenience for you.’
How can he be so stupid? No witch parent would do this to their child, let alone one like my happy-clappy herbalist, healing mom.
‘Is it because Lachlan Frey is your father?’ Sandra Ortiz breaks in. ‘Is there something tainted about his magic – his blood? You can tell us, Harper. He twisted and used my poor boy. Was your mother trying to stop him doing the same to you?’
‘Lachlan Frey?’ I ask, as if I’ve never heard the name.
‘Don’t be stupid, Harper. Neither you nor your mother have ever admitted it, but it’s plain Frey is your father. Even Luka knows it.’
‘I did it to myself. Obscurity.’
The gentleness in Okoye’s voice evaporates like steam, all at once, with a scalding hiss.
‘At age, what, twelve?’
‘Eleven. I was just a stupid kid and afraid of my magic. You know the way lots of girls dread puberty and periods and growing breasts, because of all that comes with it? I didn’t think I could ever live up to my mother or great-grandmother, so I decided to pretend I didn’t have the Gift.’
It’s quick. Clever. I’m patting myself on the back. But then the Moot president frowns.
‘So where did you see the Old Signs, Harper? I’m sure your mother, like a good witch, explained they are absolutely forbidden. It’s illegal to use those sigils or even write them down. So how were they familiar enough that you could cut one into your own skin?’
‘Did your father show you?’ Ortiz presses, breathlessly.
‘Or did you read them,’ Okoye continues. ‘Perhaps in a book that predates legalisation, or even the first Confiscation Act? Maybe a grimoire. A family like yours surely had a few – possibly a Starcross?’
‘It was a vision,’ I say, brazenly.
It’s not entirely untrue. I was always drawn to the Old Signs, even as a child. The way they danced and writhed on the page. I knew they were bad and wrong, but understood also that they were powerful, and that was what men found most fearful about them.
‘You’re saying you have an affinity with the most brutal and forbidden forms of our art?’ Okoye says. ‘Harper, think carefully. If you’re trying to protect one or both of your parents …’
‘I think we have everything we need,’ says Ortiz, rising.
Her heels rap the concrete floor with neat, lethal clicks like bullets being loaded into a chamber.
‘Harper has confessed to witchcrime of the highest degree, by both reproducing and using the Old Signs. She has admitted to deceiving the Moot and falsifying its test for magical ability. She is either lying about having access to banned spellbooks or has a disturbing intuitive connection to the darkest magic. Given she’s a witch, her assault upon Beatriz last year was therefore also magically aggravated.
I know she’s not the test subject we agreed upon, but given that despite our best efforts we’ve been unable to locate Frey, surely you’d agree she’s an ideal candidate? ’
‘Perfect it on her,’ Barr adds, ‘so we’ll know it works when we get hold of her father.’
I don’t know what they mean, though it sounds beyond not good.
But the important thing is that it doesn’t seem Barr and Okoye are going to strip my magic away right here, right now.
That gives me a breathing space to find a way out, or Detective Maggie and my parents time to get to me. I still won’t go easily, though.
‘Yes,’ says Okoye, eventually. ‘Let’s proceed.’
I can see the conflict in his eyes. He’s not entirely happy with whatever Ortiz and his own lieutenant are trying to set in motion here – perhaps I can use that, too?
‘This is really unfortunate, Harper,’ he tells me. ‘You could have been a witch of such promise. But lawless, powerful magicals like you and your father are the reason we’re feared. You endanger every one of us. Witches won’t truly be safe until people feel they can stop seeing us as a threat.’
‘Such bullshit,’ I say. ‘We’re not a threat. It’s their bigotry that makes them think we are.’
‘In that case, congratulations, Harper,’ Ortiz says. ‘You’re going to help end that bigotry, by ensuring no mundane need fear a witch ever again.’
Even though Barr’s large, I don’t notice he’s back at my side until I feel the mosquito bite of a needle in my arm. The room goes dark and swimmy as I swoon.