‘I’m sorry, Susanna,’ she whispers, her rheumy eyes following the scrivener’s shadow behind an etched glass screen as he places the grimoire into a deposit box. The smooth mechanism of the lock’s tumblers click, sealing it away for nearly three decades. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t build us all a refuge. Perhaps Maia will succeed where we failed.’
More disorienting darkness and I stagger, myself again, my body suddenly, shockingly solid. Colours and sounds are too bright, too loud, and sensations overwhelming. The soft plaid of my father’s sleeve chafes my cheek worse than sackcloth. The faint scent of my mother’s ingredients – floral, acrid, herbal – hits like a beauty-store clerk sample-sprayed me in the face. I recoil and steady myself with hands still braced upon Starcross. Mom groans and stretches her arms above her head, twists her trunk, cracks her knuckles.
‘I feel a hundred years old,’ she mutters, to fill the silence, for we’re all half-stupefied by what we’ve been through.
Dad is patting himself like he’s checking for a lost wallet. ‘Nice to have a body again,’ he quips, when I raise an eyebrow.
Then quiet falls and there’s nothing, not even my parents, to shelter me from the truth of what just happened – and what it means. I press my hand to my chest, for it feels suddenly as though my heart’s been excavated from beneath my ribs.
My magic came from Susanna Fenn. I called it out of Starcross. Do I even have any ability of my own? After all, the Gift usually skips at least one generation, yet here I am, witch daughter of a witch mom.
And if my magic isn’t my own, am I really, entirelyme? Don’t they say that when people receive donor organs, they take on characteristics of their donor? Or is that an urban legend …
‘Yes, you have your own magic,’ says my mother, fiercely, for I must have been thinking aloud. ‘I sensed it in you when you were very small. I always knew, the way parents know things about their child even from an early age, such as who their heart loves or how their brain works. I would never have encouraged you to spend so much time in my workroom, or look through Starcross, or accompany me foraging, if I’d for a moment thought otherwise. Witches don’t expose their children to the riches of the goddess’s blessing unless they’re sure they have magic. It’d be the cruellest thing imaginable to raise the hopes of a Giftless child.’
‘And palimpsests are containers for magic,’ Lachlan says. ‘Not personalities. You’re all you.’
‘But that must be the reason you were drawn to the Old Signs,’ Mom races on. ‘What you’ve told me of the night your magic came in, when Dan Whitman went out the window and I … did what Abigail begged me to. If you were searchingStarcross for help and guidance on how to hide your magic, and unsealed Susanna’s Gift by accident, then it makes sense that afterwards you were drawn to Obscurity, and the rest of those sigils.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Or perhaps that instinct was all me. I know you’re unhappy about my affinity with the Old Signs and I get it, they’re dark magic. It’d be great for you to be able to blame my interest in them on Susanna’s influence. But isn’t that rather convenient? In fact, what if her magic came to me because it sensed that I’m like her? It somehow knew I’d be willing to use it?’
‘Deep questions,’ says my dad. ‘Either is possible, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know. But having the magic of two people explains a couple of things. Why you’re so powerful – flattering though it is to think that good witching genes played a part. And also how you escaped Montreal with your ability still intact. Whatever magic-killer Delacourt developed in that disgusting laboratory, it was clearly unable to cope with magical resources like yours. Your well of power must been too deep to drain, unlike those other poor souls she got to.’
Wow. I hadn’t thought of that. Thank-you Susanna, from the bottom of my black little heart.
I think of her, living out her days in our house in Sanctuary, never remembering that she was a witch – and one so bold and fearless with her magic. Who used it to kill men full of hate. Dangerous, yes. But utterly unafraid. Who believed witches deserved better andmore. I picture her sitting by the fireside darning stockings; smashing ice off the water trough in the yard for laundry; laboriously kneading bread. All tasks that magic could accomplish for her. I imagine Susanna teaching her granddaughter her ABCs and how to stitch samplers, when she should have been taking young Maia through Starcross and demonstrating how to brew potions.
And slowly, I stop feeling quite so freaked out. It’s a privilege to give Susanna’s magic a second life. I touch my breastbone again. It doesn’t feel hollow, now, but as though another heart beats alongside my own in powerful, perfect sync.
Yet neither Susanna’s defiant strength, not Elora’s flinty determination, was enough to make Haven viable. Instead, it all ended in ruin. In blood-soakedRedhaven, a massacre of magicals and mundanes alike.
‘So what do we do now?’ I ask. ‘Feels to me things haven’t changed all that much since Susanna and Elora’s day. When witches are simply trying to live our lives and do good – like you in Sanctuary, Mom – we’re more feared than trusted. And when we bare our teeth, as you do, Dad, we’re vilified. How do we show the world we’re neither saints nor monsters?’
72
MAGGIE
Harper’s been gone awhile, catching up with her mom and dad, and Tavi and I have moved from soda to beer, sunning ourselves on the porch. Our conversation began kinda serious, swapping war stories about the frontline of protest policing and what we think of the administration’s new hard line on public order, then got even more serious, ranking Jordan Peele movies. Those icebreakers done, Tavi’s questioning me gently about Pierre Martineau, explaining how cut up Harper has been about his death. It’s tougher than I expected to find the words, and Tavi’s nodding sympathetically, saying,He was that good of a guy, huh?when my phone rings.
I’m glad of the interruption – until I answer.
‘Maggie,’ Chester says anxiously. ‘I’m not sure where you are, or … who you’re with, but you should know an arrest warrant has just gone out for Lachlan Frey.’
‘Frey?’ I remember in time to keep my voice down given that I’m at the guy’s secret headquarters, but Tavi’s gaze cuts to mine, questioningly. ‘For what – criminal damage? But the clinic was in Canada. There’s no jurisdiction …’
‘Something else. A new charge, under domestic security offences. Magical Extremism – preaching witch supremacy with the intent of destabilising the state. And a motion’s been tabled to designate Redhaven a terror organisation.’
I curse more colourfully than unicorn poop.
‘If you’ve any idea where Frey or the Fenns are,’ Chester says. ‘You’d better warn them.’
‘I heard,’ Tavi confirms, once I end the call. ‘Jeez. What a time to be alive.’
We head inside to find the family, Tavi leading me through the corridors of a perfectly normal-looking farmhouse, with only a few giveaways that it’s actually the HQ of a soon-to-be banned terrorist outfit. No bombs. No guns. Simply one door ajar onto a room of computer processing units and cooling towers, and the door alongside it securely locked.
The Fenns, when we find them, look like they’re playing a board game, seated in three armchairs around a low table. They break apart when Tavi and I step in, opening up like three black petals of a witchy flower in the moonlight. What’s on the table between them isn’t a game board. It’s their grimoire.
I feel again that squirm of uncertainty that still tugs when I think too hard about what they’re capable of. The algorithm’s started pushing pro-witch content into my social media feeds (yeah, I should have deleted any accounts long ago, but I don’t post myself and am weak for weird cat videos after a long day of the law), and I think of one reel in which an earnest Gen Z girl argues magic is morally neutral, like money. You can have it and still be good people. It’s all about how you use it. Trolling commenters pointed out the flaw in her argument. You can make money if it’s that important to you, and so acquire the power and influence of the rich. But nothing can make us mundanes magical, and it’s that which stirs up jealousy and fear.
