‘Perhaps,’ says Sandra, and in that one word we all hear her shutting him down. ‘But Michael, Sanctuary was where this wave of lawless witch madness began. Our focus now needs to be on how we end it.’
With that, and an estimated arrival time back in Sanctuary, she ends the call.
I leave the team in the meeting room to thrash out the details of the statement, and slip into Sandra’s personal office to get on with some of the routine admin that won’t stop because Harper’s witch dad has broken the internet outing himself as a psycho supremacist. I’m in the flow when there’s a soft click of the door opening behind me, and hairs rise on the back of my neck.
Slowly, I swivel the office chair.
It’s Luka. The boy who tried to kill me – tosacrificeme in some crazed ritual. How much of that was Luka, and how much the influence of Lachlan Frey? I’ve no idea. I can’t take any chances. Bridget called me to explain he’d been brought to her house yesterday, and I should stay in a hotel or guesthouse for a couple nights and she’d pay for it, and she was really, really sorry and he’d be gone as soon as possible. Sandra obviously wasn’t thinking of me when she arranged that.
‘Your mom keeps a gun in this desk,’ I tell Luka. ‘I’m not afraid to use it.’
But even as I look at him, I can tell he’s no threat. If it weren’t for that horrific night at Bittershore, I could almost pity him. He looks … hollowed out. Dead behind the eyes. A body with its soul cut away. I laugh, self-conscious at such drama-queen phrasing, and yet …
Has his mom even seen him since it happened? Seen the shadow in his eyes, where that arrogant brightness used to be? Does she know what she’s done to her own son, murderer though he is?
‘Your face,’ he says. ‘Do I really look that different? Because Ifeeldifferent. I feel like a stranger slipped into my skin, and yetI’mhim. Even when I hated my magic, it never felt like this.Dios!’ He grinds the heels of his fists into his eyes. ‘How could I ever have hated it? I was so stupid.’
‘Luka?’ I say, uncertain what to do. I can’t give him sympathy, but privileging my pain doesn’t make his less awful to witness.
‘I didn’t consent,’ he says. ‘I’m telling you. I’ll tell everyone. I never consented and they did it anyway.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But you deserved it. All of you do.’
Except as I look into his lifeless eyes, I no longer know if that’s true.All of you.It was Sarah Fenn’s magic that saved me from Luka. Does Sarah also deserve to have her magic stripped away?
‘I can’t be here with you,’ I tell him. And because he’s showing no sign of leaving, I get up to leave. My spine thrills with fear as we move past each other, remembering all the ways his body touched mine – to kiss, to pleasure, to choke, to bind, to cut. But he’s not even looking at me. Perhaps the sight of himself through my eyes is too much to bear.
Pausing in the doorway, I see him go over to his mother’s desk. Sit down at her computer. Should I demand to know what he’s doing? Say something?
Say what?
I don’t know how to feel about the Ortizes anymore. I close the door and walk away.
61
MAGGIE
Sarah and I have alternated watches on Harper through the night, each snatching sleep when we can on the couch in the suite. Just before seven in the morning, Sarah shook me awake.
‘Her breathing’s normal now,’ she says. ‘And the sleep-talking has stopped. It looks like natural rest. Can you stay with her? There’s something important I need to do, and it’ll take a while. I hope Harper will understand.’
With instructions about her daughter’s breakfast preferences, and to fetch Naomi if Harper senses anything off about her magic, one harassed-looking Moot President is out the door. It’s about an hour later, when I’m pouring inadvisable quantities of half’n’half into my coffee and wondering whether IHOP can deliver to magical premises, that Harper stirs. She blinks groggily, before coming bolt upright with a gasp. She hardly spares me a glance, instead patting all over her body.
She’s still in the hospital gown, beneath the coverlets which pool at her hips, but her mom sent some Moot flunkey to buy basic clothing in her size. I set the folded pile on the end of the bed with a softhey, but she’s still patting, frowning. Is she checking for physical injury? Broken bones? A little bubble of panic inflates and rises within me. Was there something we missed?
It’s only when she closes her eyes, lifts her hands, twists them at the wrists and an ugly vase on the windowsill explodes that I realise what she was really checking for – her magic.
‘It’s still there,’ she says to herself as much as to me, her face lit by an expression as close to uncomplicated joy as I’ve ever seen on this girl. ‘They didn’t break it. Just as well, because killing people the mundane way is a lot messier and more painful. Unless my dad killed them for me?’
‘He did not. Neither did your mom. And as an officer of the law I need to caution you that killing people is viewed very dimly.’
She huffs a laugh, then sobers faster than a drunk who’s just thrown up.
‘Wherearemy parents?’
‘Your father, no idea. He got away from Montreal’ –So that’s where it was,she hisses – ‘in one piece. Your mom and I and Naomi Yamakawa brought you back here. We’re at Moot HQ in Salem.’
‘The Moot?’ She gags like a cat whose latest furball is a biggie.
