Visions of Magic

Chapter 14



Shea wandered the open area, grateful to be out of her cell even though there were walls topped with barbed wire surrounding her. She felt the heavy presence of white gold and knew there was plenty of that material placed around the edges of the prison as well. It seemed the chains around their necks were not nearly enough to assuage any fears the guards might have about their prisoners.

But at least, Shea thought, she could see the sky. She tipped her head back, watched seagulls wheeling and dipping in the wind above her and wished with all her heart she could join them.

The “exercise” yard was small, enclosed on all sides by yet more walls, with armed guards standing in turrets at each of the four corners. There were two guards at each post—one watching the prisoners and one scanning the open harbor. She shivered a little at the implication. They were all too prepared for any rescue attempts—not that people were lining up to help a bunch of accused witches.

She shifted her gaze away quickly, not wanting to be caught studying the guards. In the short time she’d been there, she had already learned to keep her head down. To stay under the radar. The nights were long and terrifying in this place. The guards wandered the darkened aisles, crashing their nightsticks against the bars just to watch the women in the cages jump.

Only that morning Officer Jacobs had shoved Shea’s face into a wall for daring to look directly at her. Then she’d used her nightstick to deliver a couple of quick blows to Shea’s side. The bruises had been horrific, but were already fading, thanks presumably to her newfound magic. The pain was spectacular, but more than anything it was the despair that continued to choke Shea. She couldn’t see a way out. Couldn’t think of a thing to help herself. And she had heard the stories of torture somewhere in the bowels of this place.

Sooner or later, she knew it would be her turn.

But it wasn’t only the guards she had to worry about. There were feds everywhere. Since her arrival, Shea had learned more than she wanted to know about Terminal Island.

The island itself was crowded with federal agencies. There used to be cottages here, before World War II, to house Japanese fishermen and their families, who lived on the island. But then war with Japan had broken out and the Japanese had been forced to give up their land and property and move to detention centers inland. The village was razed. Ironic that now there was a new generation of so-called un-Americans who had been sent to Terminal Island. The prison itself took up a small portion of this island once used for off-loading cargo.

New cottages and apartment buildings had been hastily built for the use of the jailers and their superiors. The entire place was a fortified, secured center. To keep the women in and others out.

She watched her fellow prisoners. Women rambled around the enclosure in pairs and alone. Some sat and talked quietly while others walked aimlessly, around and around in circles. One or two simply sat on benches and cried. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run, but being able to move outside the tiny cell they spent most of their time in felt like a vacation.

In the two days she’d been there, Shea had already noticed that the two distinct groups of prisoners—the ordinary human women swept up in a tide of fear, and the women of power, women with witchcraft humming through their veins—acted as one outside the cells. Though they were all different, they were also all in the same boat. Amazing, really, that women who would have, in the outside world, been the first to spit on a witch . . . in here, were compatriots with them. Linked together against a common enemy.

Their captors.

For years, Shea had been running and hiding. Odd to finally find a fatalistic peace in the very prison she’d been trying to avoid.

“Ms. Jameson?”

Shea jolted at the sound of her name and whirled around, expecting a guard, and then laughed silently at her own stupidity. No guard here would be calling her “Ms.”

A short blond woman with anxious blue eyes hurried up to her.

“It is you.” The woman grabbed Shea’s hand and held on, as if clinging to a life rope in a roiling sea. She took a shuddering breath, blew it out again and said, “I thought I recognized you, but I never expected to see you here. Although I never thought to find myself here, either.”

Shea’s mind scrambled to find the woman’s identity. In the last day or so she’d been through so much, seen so much, she could hardly string two coherent thoughts together beyond the one all-consuming one: Get Me. Out. Of. Here! But as the woman continued to talk, it finally dawned on Shea where she knew her from.

School. This was the mother of Amanda Hall. The very girl Shea had been talking to when all of this madness had started.

“It’s Terri, isn’t it? Terri Hall?” Shea said when the woman wound down.

“Yes,” She whipped her hair out of her eyes and looked around quickly, making sure no one was close by. “I met you at parent-teacher conference night last month. God, that seems like years ago now. Amazing how fast things can change. How long have you been here, Ms. Jameson?”

“Call me Shea. Just a day or two.”

“Then you must have seen my Amanda since my arrest. Is she all right?”

All right but terrified, Shea thought but couldn’t bring herself to say it. No more than she’d tell this poor woman that talking to her daughter had started the slippery slope and landed Shea in prison. Terri Hall was locked away from her daughter and Shea couldn’t even imagine the terror the woman must be feeling. Especially since, unlike Shea, Terri hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve this. Instinctively, she reached out to soothe and comfort.

“Amanda’s fine,” she said, squeezing Terri’s hand. “I saw her at school and told her to stay with her grandmother and not to go back to school.”

“Good, that’s good,” Terri muttered. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening. I’m not a witch, for heaven’s sake. One of my neighbors told the MPs that she saw me lighting candles and saying a spell.” She laughed shortly and wrapped her arms around her middle as she lifted her gaze to the soaring sky above them. “I was saying a prayer for my husband. He died last year.”

“I’m so sorry.” It was all crazy and getting worse every day. Ten years after the existence of magic had been revealed, and people were still reacting out of fear.

Terri nodded and sighed. “Thanks. I’m just so worried about Amanda. And my mom. What if they’re arrested next?”

Shea had no easy reassurances for her. She knew as well as Terri did that her family was now in even more danger. BOW and the MPs would be watching every move they made for who knew how long.

As for Terri . . . women caught up in the mob mentality of the witch hunt were pretty much out of luck. Unless the RFW took up Terri’s case, she had no chance of getting out of this camp.

And unless Torin found her, Shea was in the same boat.

“Why are you here?” Terri finally asked, then stopped and winced. “I’m sorry—shouldn’t have said that. I mean, I know about your aunt and—”

“It’s okay,” Shea said, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about it. Especially not here. In places like this the walls really did have ears. There was no telling how many people were listening in on conversations. They weren’t even safe outside. A parabolic microphone or two could cover most of the yard.

As if Terri had remembered the same thing, she lowered her voice. “Are you . . . like your aunt?”

A few days ago Shea would have said no. Now, she was living a new reality. Now, she was dealing with the knowledge that she’d killed a man and was, very possibly, in jail for the rest of her life—at least until her execution. But she looked into the other woman’s eyes and saw compassion. Amazing just how good it felt to be offered understanding. Slowly, Shea nodded.

Terri smiled. “A month ago, that might have terrified me,” she admitted quietly. “Now, though . . .” She looked around the yard again. At the dozens of women, in a range of ages anywhere from eighty to teens, and she sighed. “There are other things more scary. There’s being snatched from your home in the middle of the night and locked away without a chance of even speaking to your own child. There’s fearing that you’ll never get out.”

“We really shouldn’t be talking about this,” Shea whispered, glancing up at the closest guard tower. The man wasn’t looking in their direction, but that didn’t mean a thing.

“They’ve already locked me up,” Terri said firmly. “They’re not going to shut me up, too. You know, before this happened, I was like anyone else, reading about magic and the witches and how BOW and the MPs were doing their duty to protect the people . . .”

Shea took Terri’s elbow and started walking. She wasn’t sure why, but somehow she had the feeling that it would be more difficult for their jailers to overhear them if they kept moving in and out of crowds. And she tried to subtly warn her student’s mother that being outspoken in prison wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Terri . . .”

She walked and shook her head before giving Shea a half smile. “I know. I know they listen. I know they watch.” Her gaze slid to the side, where two female guards stood together, watching over the prisoners. “But I’m still a citizen. I still have rights.”

“Not really,” Shea told her.

“There’s a sad statement.”

“You have to be careful,” Shea said. “No one here is concerned about your ‘rights.’ To them, we’re less than human. They’d like nothing better than a chance to take us all down. So if you want to see Amanda again—do what you can to stay unnoticed. Don’t stand out in this crowd, Terri. Blend in. Don’t make waves. You might drown in them.”

She huffed out a breath. “Seeing Amanda. What’re the chances of that, I wonder.”

“Probably not good,” Shea admitted, then added, “but you’ll make it worse for yourself in here by not being careful.”

“I know that, but underneath all of the fear, I am furious ,” she said softly and her voice toughened up as if to prove it. “I’ve met a few . . . interesting women here and the thing is, they’re no different from me. Not at the bottom of it, you know? I mean, we’re all just people. Some good, some bad.”

Oh, Shea wished she had met Terri under other circumstances. They could have been friends. Instead, they were prison mates with definite dates of expiration. “Yeah, the problem is, that doesn’t seem to matter.”

“All I’m trying to say is if people would just talk to witches, they wouldn’t be so afraid.”

“You’re right. But at the moment,” Shea told her, keeping her voice low, “fear’s in charge and logic didn’t even get a seat at the table.”

They walked through the yard, the breeze off the harbor carrying the smell of the sea and the illusion of freedom. Off in one corner, a lone woman sat with her knees drawn up, back against the wall, quietly crying to herself. Just seeing the emotionally beaten woman stiffened Shea’s spine.

She wasn’t going to be afraid. Not anymore. She was through being the helpless victim, racing through the dark, trying to avoid her enemies by disappearing into an uncaring crowd. Talking to Terri had helped, too. Terri had allowed her own sense of injustice to trump her fears and Shea could do no less.

Dropping one arm around the other woman’s shoulder, Shea said, “We’ll find a way out.”

And she realized she believed it. She wasn’t going to be locked away here forever. She’d find a way out even if Torin didn’t come for her. Damned if she’d let these bastards win. She and Terri would get out. Somehow. She wouldn’t be a statistic and simply disappear.

She wouldn’t lie down and die without a whimper.