Chapter 77
HARPER
Dad’s the showman of the family. Mom looks sick with nerves at what she’s about to do.
‘Is this the right thing, Harper?’ she asks, her face pale in the shadowy backstage. On the other side of the curtains, beyond the dazzling spotlights, waits a crowd of journalists, reporters and influencers, and rows of cameras. ‘Do you think this’ll do what we need it to?’
We’ve come to New York, to the ballroom of one of the grand park-side hotels, whose owner is a witch-sympathiser and gave the Moot use of this huge space at short notice for free.
In fact, half the city is on our side. As we drove in yesterday I glimpsed fresh graffiti – No More Salems!
A few fluttering Pride flags with a witch’s hat superimposed onto the rainbow; a sign in one window that read ‘NYC IS MAGIC’; bill-stickers advertising a Witches’ Solidarity Rally this weekend. Yeah, New York has our backs.
Naomi says the big Californian cities do, too.
And Portland, Seattle, Chicago. Wokies for witches, she said, with a wry smile, because we all know these places aren’t the whole of America.
We can’t be just some liberal cause, Naomi explained.
Our right to exist freely isn’t about politics.
We’ve got to touch the hearts of every American. That’s why your mom is doing this.
‘You’re going to touch the heart of every American,’ I tell Mom now, hugging her. ‘You’ll show the world how brave witches can be.’
She gives me a wan smile. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Elora couldn’t do it, and neither could Susanna, but you will, Mom. You’re the Fenn who’ll finally show people the truth – that we’re only human, and deserve safety and dignity like everyone else.’
‘Do you think it’ll get us your dad back?’
My chest stutters with doubt. I exhale and let it go.
‘Of course.’
‘You’ve got Starcross?’
I nod. I’ll guard it with my life.
‘It’s all yours, now,’ she says. ‘Yours alone.’
Her voice fails on that last word and tears spill down her cheeks. I put my hands out to wipe them away, but also to cover her face from my sight. I can’t stop remembering Susanna, drained of magic. Unremembering. Diminished. Gently, I drop my hands to Mom’s shoulders and give her a tiny push away.
‘All that’s happened has brought us here,’ I tell her. ‘Go break everyone’s hearts.’
‘Love you so much, wild girl.’
‘Love you more, Mom.’
She sniffs. Nods. Goes to join Charles Okoye who waits in the wings, checking his watch.
At three o’clock, he walks onstage.
He briefly tells his own story. His ousting from the Moot; his discovery of Ortiz’s ties with pharma and dismay at the abuse of Registration to feed its research. How he removed Luka’s magic in the belief he had consented, and his remorse now he’s learned Luka did not.
His words cause a stir. The journalists have been promised revelations, and Okoye’s testimony would probably satisfy them.
Keep witchcraft on the front page for another day.
But it won’t work for our purposes. He’s too compromised, morally all shades of grey.
People will be interested, perhaps shocked by his revelations.
But they won’t be rooting for him and so they won’t, by transference, be rooting for witches.
So Mom came up with this.
She told me first, then sold it to Okoye, then the three of us ambushed Naomi Yamakawa once she emerged from the Moot council chamber as its new president.
Naomi actually screeched in horror on hearing Mom’s plan.
She’s spent the past forty-eight hours both frenziedly hustling to make this press conference happen and telling Mom at every opportunity, It’s not too late to change your mind.
What if something goes wrong? Is anything worth this, Sarah?
‘A safer future for all America’s witches is worth it,’ Mom had replied.
As Mom walks onto the stage, she blinks in the spotlights.
I’ll be depending on you to get me through this, Harper, she’d told me. I’d promised her I wouldn’t look away for even a moment.
‘Sarah Fenn is the woman the Moot chose to replace me,’ Okoye says.
‘Some of you will recognise her as the mother of the girl falsely accused in Sanctuary a year ago. Others may know she saved a young woman’s life at Bittershore and enabled the arrest that ended the awful events there.
What’s less well known outside the magical community is that the Fenns are one of our oldest witching families.
A line of powerful, strong women – and one man – who are part of the very history of magic in America.
Who have always been at the forefront of resisting efforts to yoke magic to the service of darker impulses during our nation’s past. She wants to explain to you why magic isn’t to be feared, and why all of us, magical or not, are bound in common humanity. ’
A few of the journos shift restlessly. They came here for a story, not a pious lecture. A reporter checks her watch. A cameraman reaches for the black Peli case at his feet, ready to pack away his lenses if the show’s already over. I snap my attention back to my mother. I need to stay focussed.
‘Magic is beautiful,’ Mom says. ‘Magic can bring joy and delight, and relief and healing. I’d like to work some joyful magic for you here today. You all know the ethical framework that binds us. With that in mind, does anyone have a request for me?’
That gets their attention.
‘Knicks to win the league!’ someone yells.
‘I said magic,’ – I can picture Mom’s beautiful, rare grin as she says it – ‘not miracles.’
The whole room laughs.
‘Turn all my grey hairs black again,’ calls a famously vain CNN journalist, and good-natured amusement ripples again.
‘How about making these flowers grow?’ says an influencer I recognise, pointing to the two large vases placed either side of the stage.
‘A million dollars in my bank account!’
‘Fix my darn migraine,’ grumbles a Fox reporter.
‘You’ – Mom points to the third speaker – ‘need a Lotto ticket, not a witch. The rest of you, gladly. Right, grey hairs begone!’
Beside me, Naomi’s face is all screwed up. She’s clutching her poppet for dear life. What we’re trying to do here is reckless, maybe. But I believe it can work.
All the cameras in the room have swivelled toward the CNN journo, who wears a tolerantly ironic expression.
There’s a sudden burst of gasps and murmurs as, gradually, colour spreads back across his scalp like a welling ink-stain.
As the guy cottons on to what’s happening, he rakes his hand through his thick hair, as if to check dye hasn’t rained on him from the ceiling.
Scattered applause breaks out, as he snatches the camera monitor from his producer and stares in astonishment.
‘Your boss is gonna be looking for a new silver fox!’ comes a cheerful jeer from a rival.
‘Now, flowers,’ Mom says. ‘This sort of thing was called the Greenmagic. It kept America’s villages fed for centuries before we had Costco and Whole Foods.’
She lifts her hands, palms up. The Greenmagic. I remember how it felt and copy her movements, letting my breathing fall in time with hers, imagining what it’s like to be stood up there as the Gift flows.
This time there are oohs and ahhs of delight, a thud, followed by another as the vases tip over, dragged by the weight of twining rose vines now surging outwards.
My heart surges, too, exhilarated at the feat.
The air sweetens with soft, floral scent.
The influencer is pulling Oh. My. God. faces into her turned-about phone screen as the vines rush up the walls.
I hope all her 1.7 million followers are watching.
‘Okay,’ Mom says, still smiling. ‘I think we signed something for the hotel promising not to trash this room, so …’
Her hands fall back at her side, her tiredness evident. This kind of grandstanding doesn’t come naturally to her, unlike my show-off Dad. But she’s acing it. I’m swollen with pride for her. And with relief that our demonstration is going so well.
‘Still kinda headachey over here,’ says the Fox gal. ‘Definitely outta Advil.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Mom. ‘I should have started with you. One of the first promises we make as licensed magical practitioners is to relieve pain and suffering as soon as it’s brought to us. I’d usually treat this with a potion, but give me a moment and I’ll do the best I can.’
She wipes her hands down her skirt as the Fox lady, aware cameras are now turning to her, licks over her lipstick and works her best angles.
Her expression radiates scepticism and I’m half afraid she won’t admit to any improvement even if this does work.
I steal a glance at Naomi, who’s holding up her doll like she’s praying, eyes screwed tight.
‘No,’ says the reporter, in tones of shocked disbelief.
‘You did not just do that. That’s had me howling in pain and gnarly for days.
Hey,’ she addresses the room at large, probably revelling in her moment in the national spotlight.
‘You all know I’m no sympathiser of witches. But that? My lord, that was magic.’
Mom beams, though I can see the tremble of her hands from here.
‘Yes, magic is a Gift only some of us receive,’ she says.
‘But it’s a Gift we willingly share. When people strip that ability from magicals, they deprive everyone of the help we can give.
That’s what happened to Lachlan Frey, and it could be done to many, many more witches now that a drug has been created that makes it possible.
This “magical nullification” – that’s what the authorities called it – will only ever be performed behind closed doors.
You’ll never get to see it. So I want you to witness it today.
Then I hope you’ll truly understand what we’ll all lose, and why there should be no more Salems.’
The room falls instantly silent. I stare at my mother, my beautiful, caring, ridiculously Gifted mother. The woman who pulled a boy back over death’s threshold out of pure love and compassion for his parents, knowing she’d be damned it if was ever discovered.
My stupidly self-sacrificing mother – who’s here to show the world what it means to lose your magic.