ronancetober - day twelve: spell [practical magic au, nancy wheeler as sally owens, robin buckley as state investigator gary hallett]
“Did you or your sister kill Jason Carver?” The state investigator asks Nancy, both hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket.
It’s stupid, but Nancy can’t help her instinctual deadpan reply. “Oh, yeah,” she says, leaning back against her kitchen counter. Distantly, she can hear Max and Mike taunting each other, the jingle of her aunt’s wind chimes as the pair race in and out of the porch door. “A couple of times.”
The investigator— Robin, she’d said her name was, insistent when Nancy defaulted to Detective Buckley instead— smirks. Nancy traces the line of her lips with her eyes.
“Nancy,” she begins, the word as hard-fought from the respectful detective as Robin’s own name had been from Nancy, “please. Tell me what you saw.”
“Jason Carver was a no-good shithead of a man, a bully and a bastard, and the worst kind of man, which is to say, one who put his hands on my sister. To be honest, Detective,” Nancy replies, pressing in on the word as she says it, watching Robin roll her eyes with barely constrained pleasure, “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass where he is now.”
It’s true, is the thing. When Nancy had first hit him— and she had been the first, the crunch of her car against his bones somehow a relief even as her mind had started racing through the implications of killing a man— a not exactly small part of her had thought about just leaving him where he was. A hit-and-run, maybe chalked up to his mob connections or violent behavior, letting Jason Carver rot in the woods. Better than he deserved, anyway. But Chrissy had insisted, fearful, that they needed to at least move the body, and once the two of them had hustled him in the car, it had seemed a little stupid to just… what? Bury the body in Joyce’s backyard? Hope no one dug the gardenias up too deeply next year? So they’d done something probably far stupider, if she was honest, and paged carefully through books Nancy had sworn off years ago to find a spell neither of them should’ve even considered casting.
And the second time, to be fair, he’d been a breath away from killing Chrissy. So Nancy had done it, in the end, had killed the man twice, the second time by shattering a pot over his head, and if she was honest, she’d kind of enjoyed it. Nancy didn’t intend to become a murderer, but she did revel some in getting to hand-deliver the comeuppance Carver had deserved, after what he’d put her sister through.
And then, yes, sure, they’d buried him in the garden. Fuck off, okay? Where else were they supposed to do it? Maybe one of their cousins had something resembling a better hiding spot for bodies by their mother’s house, but Nancy wasn’t about to start making calls to ask.
Robin mulls over Nancy’s words for a moment, and Nancy takes the time to observe the woman in front of her. Robin was tall but thin, most of her frame hidden away behind the bulk of her thick jacket and flannel, but where the sleeves were rolled up, Nancy caught a peek of muscled forearms. The detective was no desk jockey, certainly. She’d passed on the coffee Nancy had offered her on coming in, citing that it made her inexplicably sleepy, and had smiled fondly at Max and Mike when they’d scampered by, quietly letting on that they reminded her a bit of herself and her older brother. Nancy isn’t really sure why she’s so determined to hold onto every piece of information about Robin, but the woman is just so intriguing to her. There’s something about her presence at Nancy’s kitchen table, steady even as she thrums with energy, that Nancy can’t stop staring at.
It’s the moment when Robin opens her mouth, actually, that it clicks into place for Nancy. She’s saying something about how she’s certainly not about to deny Nancy’s assessment of the situation, not after chasing Carver across the country following a string of murders, but Nancy is only half-listening. Instead, she’s focused in what might be a semi-intimidating way for Robin on the blue of the woman’s eyes, how they flit between shades as the light changes.
—“And they’re going to have… bright blue eyes! Not like me, but like… like the ocean on a summer day.” Nancy remembers saying, Chrissy listening attentively at her side. “And one of those faces like an old Hollywood movie star, and an older brother who was born into parents who adopted them.”
“Is all of this important?” Chrissy had asked, and Nancy had shrewdly raised an eyebrow, breaking her concentration for only a second.
“Chris, it’s about making somebody impossible. I want to make sure I never fall in love,” Nancy had said, resolute and avoiding the sad curve of Chrissy’s lips in response. “Now shut up! I have to finish. And she’s going to hate coffee because it makes her sleepy instead of waking her up, which makes no sense to her or anyone else—“
“She?” Chrissy had piped in again, and Nancy had felt herself blush to the roots of her hair.
“Maybe,” she’d said, defensive and immediate, and her sister had just laughed and wrapped her in a hug, reminding her that they’d always have each other’s backs, no matter what. It was a promise they’d made with blood before Chrissy had run off, but it had been deep in both girls’ souls since long before that.
Nancy comes back to the moment with Robin with a certainty that grips her all the way to her soul. It’s her, she thinks, eyes locked on the cabinet beside her to avoid staring a hole into Robin’s head. Nancy’s magic impossible woman. And she’s doomed her to die.
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