Chapter 63
HARPER
My heart is hammering and I feel furious for no reason. I’m down on the ground at the foot of the porch steps, with someone supporting my shoulders. When I twist my neck, though, it’s not two pale, dandelion-haired girls holding me up, but Maggie Knight.
I blink. What girls? What the hell is all this? Why am I having these … flashbacks? I’ve experienced enough, now, to know that the witch whose eyes I’m seeing through is my own ancestor, Susanna Fenn, and that the setting is right here, Haven, founded by another of my Fenn ancestors, Elora.
‘’M’okay, thank you,’ I tell Knight, pushing her gently out of my face. ‘Dizzy spell. I’ve been having them since before I got kidnapped and taken to Montreal. I dunno why.’
But I do know why. I started them, that day on the beach down by Eafa’s Rock, when I built a fire and offered my blood and declared I wanted to find my dad.
Those weren’t the exact words, though, were they?
No, I Commanded my blood to seek my magic’s source.
And it did, leading me not to Lachlan but to my Fenn ancestors.
Why Susanna in particular, out of all of them?
It can only be because, as I know now, she worked with the forbidden sigils, just like me.
I’m not the only Fenn to have made this choice that the rest of the witching world finds repugnant.
Perhaps my magic wanted to reassure me I’m not uniquely depraved.
Standing on wobbly legs, I look about. A few of the Redhaven team recognise me, though mostly their gaze is for Maggie.
She’s always plain-clothed, but something about her screams cop.
She radiates a law-abiding aura – though not so law-abiding since she fell in with us witches.
We’ve corrupted her, and I grin at the thought, until Elora Fenn’s harsh words come back to me, how she accused her granddaughter of corrupting with dark lusts and spreading contagion like a caterpillar.
From what I saw, I would have done exactly what Susanna did.
But is it weird my father’s base is the exact place my family founded a witch refuge?
I mean, I know he chose this site because of the Redhaven legend.
Perhaps he talked with my mom about Fenn family history, and that inspired him?
Though I never got a hint she’d even heard of Redhaven, let alone knew about our family links, until this all blew up.
I grip on to the porch support. Whatever. They’re both here now. And if Mom wants to scold me for not staying in bed like a good girl, I’ll bawl her out for abandoning me right after what I went through.
‘Let’s go find them,’ I tell Maggie, who’s still looking about as if a toad might hop on her shoulder out of nowhere, or kids start swooshing around on broomsticks.
As we make our way through the house where I was so briefly a resident, it’s our turn to be looked at.
Eyes soft with sympathy or narrowed in appraisal follow us through the passageways.
They all saw me on that livestream, I realise.
Carried from the clinic drugged and in a hospital gown, possibly stripped of my magic.
Saw my father unleash destruction, for my sake.
Watched him endanger the entire witching population with his display – for my sake.
Somewhere down the passageway, two people are shouting, and I’ve heard one of them often enough to recognise my mom. Tavi rounds a corner and comes to a halt, seeing me.
‘Harper,’ she says. ‘How on earth? How are you?’
‘You saw the rescue,’ I say. I can see the true question behind her eyes. Concern twining with pity. I feel my parents should be the first to hear from my own mouth that I still have my magic – Mom surely already knows. She’d never have left me otherwise. But I want to reassure Tavi.
‘I’m still me,’ I tell her, and grin to see her relieved smile. I give a nod of permission for a hug and am wrapped in her strong arms.
‘All of us would have gone with him, if he’d told us,’ she says.
‘Yara would have been first in line. Anyway, good luck with the family reunion. They’ve been at it for a good half hour, and it’s clear how pissed off your mom is because she never cast a muffling charm.
We’re all giving them privacy to shout it out. ’
‘Good idea,’ says Maggie. ‘Say, is there anywhere round here I could get a cold soda and sit in the sun? It’s been a long, sweaty drive. Harper, holler if you need me.’
I thank them for their tact, and creep closer to press my ear to the door.
‘I’ll ask you again: did you seek me out?’ Mom’s demanding. ‘Did you hit on me because I’m a Fenn?’
‘If all I wanted was to be with a Fenn, why would I ever have left once I’d found one?’ Lachlan shouts.
‘Because I couldn’t tell you anything useful about my family’s past? Wouldn’t admit we had a Starcross? So you just packed up.’
‘Sarah, no!’
Dad sounds wounded, and I don’t blame him, because that was a low blow.
The mention of Starcross makes my skin itch.
Hunger for it has pulled me across the states to Maine, and if this was any normal parental row I’d already have walked away to reclaim my grimoire.
But I can’t stop listening. Mom’s still going.
I’ve never heard her so angry. There’s a catch in her voice, too.
‘Then when you finally learned about Harper, you came looking for her. Wooing her to your cause. Are you the reason she wanted our Starcross – to bring it here to you? What do you want from me and my daughter, Lachlan?’
‘She’s our daughter, Sarah!’ my dad cries. ‘And if I’d known, and you’d let me, I would have been in both your lives for years.’
I’ve heard enough, and wrench at the door. My parents spring guiltily apart. Dad looks as though he’s run a thousand-mile race only for a rival to surge from behind and beat him. Mom looks like someone who bet her house and life savings on his victory. Both equally disappointed and defeated.
‘Harper! Goddess, what are you doing here?’
Mom rushes for me. Dad too. I become squished jelly in a parent-sandwich.
‘I’ve still got it,’ I say, only it comes out as a smothered sob. ‘My magic’s still there.’
They’re both crying. Dad reaches down to stroke my hair.
Mom’s fingers dig painfully into my shoulders.
I feel their heaving ribs working like twinned, alchemical bellows, their love refining me into gold.
Yeah, okay, I’m crying too. We’ve made it through this shit.
We’re together. And that’s how I want it to be from now on.
Only when I’m seriously worried about oxygen deprivation, do I ease them apart.
‘I came here for Starcross. But what,’ I ask sternly, ‘was that all about?’