Visions of Magic

Chapter 8



“That wasn’t so hard,” one of the men said from the back of the van.

Shea lay at his feet, stretched out on a smelly gray carpet. There were no interior lights in what had to be a cargo van. A row of seats ran along each side of the vehicle while she lay like an offering on an altar in front of the men celebrating her capture. There were three of them back here with her, and one driving.

They’d sent four men to capture one witch.

She didn’t know whether to be amused, flattered or even more scared. Clearly, the worldwide fear of magic was growing. They were taking no chances anymore.

The shadows were thick inside the van, but as they whizzed along the freeway, the outside lights flashed across the faces of her captors like a rhythmical, painfully bright strobe.

She wasn’t comforted by what she saw.

These men looked hard and cold. Their features were taut and their eyes were bright with both fear and excitement. That didn’t bode well for her. The older ones were watching her warily, while the one young recruit in the bunch had more than curiosity shining in his eyes. There was a raw hunger there, too. Shea inched a little farther away from him.

The men noticed her slight movement and a booted foot came down on her middle. “You just lay there, witch. Don’t try a damn thing. You hear me?”

She shivered, nodded and avoided meeting their gazes again, not wanting to give them any reason to get rougher with her than they had already. Magic Police. Legal bullies, she thought, trying to keep her features from betraying her thoughts.

The MPs were one of the first agencies that had sprung up after magic had been outed to the world. Headlines around the globe trumpeted the news that all of those sleazy tabloid papers had been right all along. Magic did exist. The public outcry for protection from so-called deviants had resulted in every nation pushing through legislation to somehow identify and then secure supposed witches. It had sounded reasonable even to Shea at the time, despite the fact that her own aunt Mairi had been the first witch to be captured in the United States.

Locating and securing women of power had seemed a logical response. Of course it would be safer for these women to be studied and kept from hurting anyone else. Her aunt hadn’t meant to kill, any more than Shea herself had.

While the general population ranted about public safety, Congress and other bodies like it had kept cool heads, talking only about security.

But even laws written with the best of intentions sometimes became another entity entirely over time. Mairi’s execution had heralded the first change. And during the last ten years, the agencies formed to keep witches secure had instead become jailers and executioners. All under the legal government stamp of approval.

People didn’t care what happened to a witch—as long as she wasn’t living in their neighborhood.

As with anything else, though, there were underground movements within movements. Just as BOW and the MPs had gained in authority and popularity, there were other groups equally dedicated in their own way to finding the witches. Religious zealots saw a witch’s power as an affront to God. The Seekers hunted witches in the hopes of somehow stealing their powers for themselves. The RFW, Rights for Witches, struggled and fought through the court system, claiming that a witch was entitled to basic human rights.

Everyone wanted something from the magic community, which was now so deeply in hiding that most of the women captured by hunters were ordinary humans, with no powers at all. Just as with the Salem witch trials so long ago, all it took was innuendo, rumor or an enemy with a grudge, and any woman could find herself locked away with little hope of eventual release.

Shea still couldn’t understand how any of this was happening—not in general, but to her in particular. Hard enough to accept that magic was alive and well. But to acknowledge that she was a witch was an even harder admission. She’d been denying the possibility for years. Ever since her aunt Mairi’s public execution.

Shea’s mind whisked back to that last day with her aunt, her only family. She’d been granted a “private” visit with Mairi, in an openly bugged room, mainly because the MPs and BOW were hoping to catch Shea saying something incriminating about herself.

But they’d been disappointed. She and Mairi had cried together, had tried to make sense of what had happened and then they’d prayed, futilely as it turned out, for a presidential pardon.

There was no hope to be found. Not when there were dozens of witnesses ready to testify that they had seen fire leap from Mairi’s hands to engulf the abusive exhusband trying to drag her off. Self-defense hadn’t even come into the trial. A witch, people said, had nothing to fear and was instead herself a living, breathing weapon.

Mairi, stunned by what she’d done, unable to understand how it had happened, hadn’t been able to explain a thing. She had been too traumatized to even attempt to save her own life.

The general public hadn’t wanted an explanation anyway. What they wanted was blood. Eye for an eye. They quoted the Bible—Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Reporters followed Shea, as Mairi’s only living relative, waiting for her to display the same kind of power. It was hereditary, pseudoscientists claimed on every nightly talk show. In the blood. If Mairi was a witch, then it stood to reason her niece would be, too.

And Shea had been all too worried that they were right.

When Mairi was tied to the very modern steel pole in the middle of a gas grid, Shea had stood there, keeping her gaze locked with her aunt’s. Every instinct she had was yelling at her to run. To get as far from what was happening as possible. But she couldn’t. She had to stay. For Mairi. So that her aunt could die knowing that not everyone in the room relished her suffering.

As the prison guard had flipped a single switch, gas rushed from pipes beneath Mairi’s feet. Then another switch provided the spark that ignited a conflagration. In seconds, Mairi was in the middle of an inferno.

Her screams still echoed in Shea’s dreams.

After that, Shea had disappeared. She’d left everything she had known. Walked away from her job, her apartment. She’d had no friends to lose, since they had slipped away as soon as Mairi was arrested. Shea cut her dark red hair, dyed it a nearly invisible shade of dark blond and became one of the people she used to give dollar bills to when she passed them on the street. For a while, she stayed in shelters, not trusting any city long enough to remain in one place for more than a night or two.

But after a year or so she took a job as a waitress, working for cash, no questions asked. She rented a room from her boss and even briefly made a friend. For six months, she had lived like a regular person. Then a news program ran a “Whatever Happened To . . .” segment, starring her. They’d showed clips of Mairi’s execution and shots of Shea tearfully defending her aunt to news media that couldn’t have cared less.

She ran again that night.

And hid in one big city after another. She’d managed to stay under the radar, avoiding BOW and the MPs, always staying one step ahead of them even as she kept up a facade of normalcy. Finally, a year and a half ago, she’d retaken her own name and accepted a job doing what she loved. She’d thought at the time that the principal who hired her was broad-minded enough to overlook the fact that Shea’s aunt had been executed as a witch. She had to wonder now if perhaps Ms. Talbot hadn’t hired her as a favor to BOW so that they could keep an eye on her.

Whether it was true or not, all of that was over.

Now she knew she was what they had long suspected her to be. The accusations were true. They knew what she was capable of. And so did she.

“We’re not there yet,” a deep voice said. “Don’t let down your guard until we’ve handed her over. No telling what a trapped witch will be able to do.”

Trapped.

She really was. She was on her own.

Under different circumstances, she would have found the situation laughable, since that was the reason she’d left Torin’s house—to be on her own, trusting no one but herself.

See how well that had gone.

“White gold stops their powers for real?”

Oh, God, that was what they’d put around her neck the moment they’d grabbed her. White gold. No wonder she felt as though there was a lead weight pressing on her soul.

Shea turned her head toward the speaker, the youngest, most excited one of the group. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs, and watched her as if he expected her head to start spinning around. As if he were looking forward to watching it. He licked his lips in anticipation and she shivered again before turning her head away.

“Yeah,” someone else said and Shea closed her eyes. “White gold shuts their power down flat. Don’t really know why. Something about it being a conglomeration of an element of the earth or some damn thing.” He snorted and Shea sighed. “Doc Fender figured it out about eight or nine years back and we’ve been using it ever since to trap these bitches and keep ’em compliant.”

“Any of ’em ever get away?” the young one asked. “I mean, you know, do magic even with the white gold chain around their neck?”

Shea listened carefully, longing for a ray of hope. She was disappointed.

“Not a one. The white gold shuts ’em down, makes’em as helpless as kittens.” He drew a breath and released it. “Supposed to act like a sort of a blanket, covering up what they can do.”

“Then why do we have her tied up and gagged?”

“Just cuz she can’t use magic don’t mean she can’t scratch your eyes out or kick your nuts up into your throat. You want to risk it?”

Disgusted with herself for not doing exactly that back when they’d first captured her, Shea tried to ignore the conversation rolling around her. She didn’t care what they had to say anymore. They were just the henchmen. The guys who did the dirty work for the Bureau of Witchcraft. It was BOW she was worried about.

The MPs were probably taking her to an internment center. If she was lucky. If not, she would just vanish until her body was discovered in a culvert somewhere. But no, she thought, if they were going to kill her, they could have done that already.

She stared out the back window of the van and groaned as the wheels hit something in the road. Her body jostled and every square inch of her felt the ache. But pain wasn’t important. What she wanted to know was where she was headed and what she could expect.

Was it only yesterday afternoon when she’d warned her student Amanda Hall to run because her mother wouldn’t be leaving whatever camp she’d been taken to? Now . . . less than twenty-four hours later, Shea herself was in the same situation. Ironic? Or just punishment?

She had killed, after all. There was no denying it.

Outside the van, freeway lights flashed by and the roar of traffic sounded like a caged beast trying to get inside the van.

“Did she really kill a man today?” the young voice again. “She looks so . . . helpless.”

“Helpless? Not likely,” someone growled with a snort. “Bitch flipped that poor son of a bitch the bird and he went up like a tiki torch at a barbecue.”

A couple of the men laughed and Shea closed her eyes on a wave of sorrow. She’d have to live with what she’d done—if she was allowed to live at all.

“Shut up, Dave.” The strongest voice spoke up again. Then he leaned out over Shea so she could look up into his face.

He had dark eyes, short dark hair and a jaw that looked as though it could have been carved of granite. The name stitched into his uniform read L. HARPER. In another life she might have found him attractive, until she looked into his eyes long enough. His dark eyes were filled with hatred. There was nothing soft or merciful about him and as his gaze met hers she tried to cringe back from his hard stare.

“Don’t you get fooled by how a witch looks, kid,” he said, speaking to the other man as he stared into Shea’s eyes. “They’re all evil. Right down to the core. Kill you as soon as look at you and do whatever they have to, to escape.”

Shea shook her head wildly, trying to silently argue with him, but he wasn’t buying it.

“Don’t try the big sad eyes on me, witch,” he murmured, leaning in so that he could speak in a whisper. “I’ve seen what your kind can do. And I’m not going to rest until you’re all locked up or burned at the stake. With any luck, you’re going to end up just like your aunt did.”

Tears fell from the corners of her eyes and streaked into her hair, but Shea couldn’t stop them. Fear clawed at her chest, scraped at her throat. She looked up into those eyes and saw her own death written there.

And though it was far too late, she silently screamed for the one person she believed could have saved her.

Torin!