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.”