I’m about to exhale with relief that Sandra’s just confirmed my faith in her, when she continues.
‘Sarah Fenn, though. The fact she’d do that for Frey. There must be something to it. We’ve never yoked them together before, but we’ve been missing a trick. Luka’s lawyers have been preparing a defence case that Redhaven, or Frey, targeted Luka and manipulated him into the Bittershore crimes. It always seemed a strange chance that Sarah Fenn found him that night in the woods. What if the pair of them were working together all along? And that cop Knight was in on it? Fenn brought her along to shoot Luka, to make him appear aggressive and dangerous.’
‘No,’ I say, before I can stop myself. ‘Appearaggressive and dangerous?’
My heart’s racing, beating right out of my chest, and with those few spoken words my mouth has gone suddenly dry. I’m back there, trussed on the forest floor, bruised and gagged and terrified, staring at the knife Luka twirls in the dirt, expecting at any minute it’ll plunge into my guts. I see again the supernova of star-white fear when he lifts the blade to my face. Shudder at the precision with which he nicks open my forehead and my blood begins to spill. Feel the jerking, jolting pain right through me, my skull bumping across the root-knotted earth, as he hauls on the rope and hoists me into the sky.
Yours will be the sacrifice and mine will be the harvest, he’d crooned.
‘Sarah had nothing to do with what happened at Bittershore,’ I say, convinced of it with every bone in my body. ‘Absolutely not. She saved my life that night.’
Sandra’s gaze cuts to me, sharp.
‘You’ve been unusually quiet this afternoon, Beatriz,’ is all she says. ‘And nowthisis what you bring to the discussion?’
‘I’ve been thinking.’ And once I loose those three words, the rest come tumbling out. ‘I was convinced we were right. I believed Harper Fenn tried to drown me with magic. I probably still do. Sarah Fenn messed up my dad, and I certainly know what Luka did to me. You suffered so much at the hands of your magical ex-husband, Sandra, and believe Lachlan Frey twisted Luka. And Michael, I know you’re still convinced Harper caused Dan’s death by magic. Maybeallthese things are true.
‘But what if we were wrong to think controlling and destroyingmagicis the answer. Perhaps witches shouldn’t be singled out, but simply held accountable when they dowrong, the same as anyone else. Maybe magic isn’t a crime. It’s only a weapon.’
Sandra’s brow pinches in surprise. Michael leans forward, his face all twisted up with fury, and I recoil from what I see there. A man consumed by revenge. A man capable of anything.
‘Showing your true colours, eh, Bea?’ he snarls. ‘Seems to me Sarah Fenn’s timing at Bittershore was convenient for you most of all. Are you part of this, too? I mean, you moved on from grieving for my son and targeted Luka quickly enough at Cawden. I assumed you were simply doing what girls like you have always done, using sexual wiles to get a leg up on your ambitions. But were you playing us all along? Did you lead Luka into the woods that night? Did you tell him he could do anything to you?’
‘Are you kidding?’ I’m too astonished for anything else. My whole body is shaking with shock at Michael Whitman’s attack, and disgust at his words, and fear. That white-hot fear again.
Sandra’s eyes are glassy. But glass ishard, and I see only suspicion as she looks at me.
‘Didyourelease the files?’ she says. ‘We know they were downloaded from my computer.’
‘No, that was me,’ says another voice from the doorway. We’ve been so caught up, no one even saw him come in.
‘You?’Emotion is there now as Sandra’s voice trembles, wavers. But doesn’t break. ‘Luka,why?’
‘Why couldn’t you love me as I was?’
His mom stares, appalled. The way you might stare at your child if you were powerless to stop an oncoming car heading right for them.
Then she howls, like she’s only just realised she’s driving that car.
81
SELECTION OF NATIONAL HEADLINES
A SPELL OF REFLECTION?
Registration of magicals, emergency powers, suspended
WITCH FIX NIXED
Research and manufacture of ‘witch cures’ to be banned
FREY TO GO?
Calls grow for ‘magical supremacist’ to be released
‘ONE MILLION MARCH FOR MAGIC’
Largest witch-tolerance protest yet set to take over DC
