Black Magic Sanction. Ким Харрисон

pressed, Brooke flipped me over. I immediately turned back, but she had taken my phone from my back pocket, and I stiffened when I heard Ivy, telling me she was going to kill me if I didn’t answer her. Brooke smirked at my glare and closed the top, breaking the connection before tucking it in her pocket. The sound of chanting drifted to me, and finally Amanda stopped retching.

      Brooke leaned close under the pretense of pulling me to a seated position. “Why didn’t you call your demon? You know how. I can see the smut on you.”

      I lifted my chin. “I’m not a black witch,” I said, but a sharp tug on my arm cut my argument short. “Ow! Watch it, will you?” I was sitting upright as the others came back and ringed me in a justice that went all the way back to our beginnings. No one would know. And in time, no one would care.

      “Rachel Morgan,” Brooke intoned, and I knew this was it. “You hereby have the choice of becoming magically neutered and rendered incapable of bearing children—or permanent imprisonment in Alcatraz.”

      I stared at them, appalled. “You are bullies. All of you,” I said, then yelped when Wyatt shoved me over. My breath whooshed out, and I flipped the hair from my eyes, glaring at them.

      “Alcatraz it is,” Brooke said, pleased.

       Six

      The heat was on against the damp chill in the low-ceilinged room where we ate, but I still felt cold. It was noon according to the clock past the gates that separated us from the kitchen, but it was three by my internal clock, and I was hungry. The scrambled eggs in front of me were not going to pass my tongue, however. They looked good enough, but the sulfur in them would give me a migraine. It smelled funny in here, sort of a mix of dead fish and decayed redwood. Depressed

      I picked at a piece of toast, thinking the butter tasted off. Not enough salt? I wondered, dropping it. I almost wiped my hands on my spiffy-keen, orange jumpsuit, but stopped at the last moment. Not knowing when I’d get a new one, I licked my fingers instead. Across from me was my upstairs neighbor, a sallow-looking witch who had ignored me so far as he dipped his toast into his coffee before eating it. To my left was Mary. I’d met her earlier by way of conversation around the wall between us, and my first sight of her had been a shock; the woman was so thin she looked ill. To my right was a middle-aged guy who never spoke. Most everyone was talking. Alcatraz wasn’t a big place, and it was kind of … homey. Maybe it was because we were on an island with no ley lines, surrounded by salt water. There simply was no escape.

      Unhappy, I pushed my tray away and sat with my plastic coffee mug. I’d been here since the midnight boat brought me over with a load of canned goods, handcuffed to a pole in the middle of the boat. Since then, I’d showered in salt water in a big empty room—as if being on an island surrounded by salt water wouldn’t take care of earth charms on its own—reshowered in freshwater, been poked, prodded, gossiped over, and given a new band of charmed silver with my name on it. It had been a relief to finally get to my cell, where I fell into an exhausted sleep hours before everyone else. I felt like a dog at the pound. And like a dog, I worried that my owner wouldn’t come pick me up. I hoped it was Ceri who summoned me out of here, not Al. I couldn’t call Al for help while I wore charmed silver, but he could summon me. I had to believe that I’d be summoned by someone, eventually.

      At least I’d gotten the cremation ashes off me, I thought as Mary jostled my elbow, and I blinked when her smile showed she was missing a tooth.

      “You heard about the food then?” she said, glancing at my tray, pushed to the middle.

      “What do you mean?” I took a sip of coffee.

      “They drug it,” she said, and the guy across from us shrugged, continuing to tuck in.

      I didn’t swallow, my mouth full of coffee as my gaze went between them, wondering if it was truth or prison razzing. The big guy across from me seemed to be enjoying his breakfast, but Mary looked like she hadn’t eaten in years.

      “It is! “she said, eyes wide in her thin face. “They put in an amino acid that binds to the receptors in your brain to chemically strip you of your ability to do magic if you eat enough.”

      I spit the coffee out, and the guy across the table guffawed as he chewed. Feeling ill, I set the coffee aside, and Mary nodded, adding enthusiastically, “Your sentence is based on how much of your ability they want to take away. I’ve got thirty years left.”

      The witch across from me finished his eggs and eyed mine. “You’d get early parole and be out of here by spring if you’d eat,” he said.

      Mary cackled at that, and I glanced at the guards, busy not caring. “So how long are you in for, Rachel?” she asked, eyes on the demon scar on my wrist. She obviously knew what it was.

      “Life,” I whispered, and Mary cringed.

      “Sorry. I guess you should eat, then. I got sixty years for killing my neighbor,” she said proudly. “His damned dog kept peeing on my monks-hood.”

      “Monkshood Mary …,” I said, recollection raising my eyebrows. “You’re Monkshood Mary? Hey! I read about you in school!”

      She beamed, extending her hand. “Hey, Charles, see? I’m still famous. Glad to make your acquaintance,” she said as if having rehearsed it a thousand times, and I took her bird-light hand, feeling like it might break in my grip.

      “I’m Charles,” the man across from me said, and his hand engulfed mine. “That there is Ralph,” he added, nodding to the silent man on my right. “He doesn’t talk much. Been kinda down since the cell next to him went empty last year.”

      “Oh. Sorry.” I glanced at him. “Someone got out, huh?”

      Mary picked at her crust, skirting where the butter was. “Tried. If they catch you alive, they neuter your magic the old-fashioned way. Ralph, show Sunshine your scar.”

      Sunshine? I thought, not happy about the nickname, but Ralph put down his fork and pulled the hair up from his forehead. “Oh my God,” I whispered, and he let his hair fall, turning back to his meal and carefully manipulating the fork … concentrating on it. Slowly, very slowly. They had lobotomized him.

      “Tha-that’s inhuman,” I stammered.

      Charles stoically met my horrified gaze. “We’re not human.”

      Silence fell, and I felt cold. I had to get out of here. Like now! Why hadn’t anyone summoned me home yet? Ivy said she was okay, but what if Jenks really was hurt and she’d been lying so I wouldn’t worry?

      I was so lost in my thoughts that I jumped when I realized someone was standing behind me. I turned, coming eye to middle with one of the biggest women I’d ever seen. She wasn’t fat, she was big. Big boned, big chested, big ankles, and big hands. Her pudgy face made her eyes look small, but they glinted with intelligence.

      “Hey, Mary,” she said with a southern accent. It wasn’t the elegant sound of a southern belle, but the ugly twang of trailer trash on the edge of the woods with a trampoline out front and stacks of TV Guides by the door. Her fat-lost eyes stared at me as she casually took Mary’s tray, holding it over the smaller woman’s head while she shoveled her breakfast into her mouth.

      “Lenore, this is Rachel,” Mary said, her tone shifting to a respectful fearfulness. It pegged my bully meter, and my face warmed. “Rachel has Mark’s old cell,” Mary finished.

      Lenore’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t need dis, honey,” she said, setting Mary’s tray down and taking up mine. “Yer figure’s jest fine. Let Auntie Lenore take care of yo-o-o-ou.”

      Just how many syllables are in “you”? I thought dryly. I wasn’t going to eat it, but I wasn’t going to let Auntie Lenore think she could walk over me either. Trouble was, it was kind of tight at the table,