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
