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 profoundlywrongabout 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 pleasedon’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 almostrelieved.’
‘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 fuckingchokeme 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 OldSigns, 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 andripsat 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.
