“There you are.” He smiled as Freya reached to straighten his bow tie. She noticed the sleeves of his shirt were worn, and when he put an arm around her she smelled just the slightest hint of body odor. Poor boy, she knew he had been dreading this party a little. He wasn’t good with crowds.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said. “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m perfect,” she said, smiling at him and feeling the butterflies in her stomach begin to calm.
“Good.” He kissed her forehead and his lips were soft and warm on her skin. “I’m going to miss you.” He fiddled nervously with the monogram ring he wore on his right hand. It was one of his little tics, and Freya gave his hand a squeeze. Bran was traveling to Copenhagen tomorrow on behalf of the Gardiner Foundation, the family’s nonprofit venture dedicated to promoting humanitarian charities around the globe. He would be gone almost the entire summer for the project. Maybe that was why she was feeling so jittery. She didn’t want to be without him now that they had found each other.
The first night they met, he hadn’t even asked her out, which annoyed Freya at first until she realized it was because he was simply too modest to think she would be interested in him. Instead he showed up the next night during her shift at the Inn, and the next night, and every night after that, just staring at her with those big brown eyes of his, with a kind of wistful yearning, until finally, she had to ask him out—she could see that if she left it up to him, they would never get anywhere. And that was that. They were engaged four weeks later, and this was the happiest day of her life.
Or was it?
There he was again. The problem. Not Bran, not the sweet man she had pledged to love forever—he had been stolen away by the crowd and was now in the middle of chatting up her mother. His dark head was bent over Joanna’s white one, the two of them looking like the best of friends.
No. He was not the problem at all.
The problem was the boy staring at her from across the room and from all the way down the length of the great hall. Freya could feel his eyes on her, like a physical caress. Killian Gardiner. Bran’s younger brother, twenty-four years old, and looking at her as if she were on sale to the highest bidder and he was more than willing to pay the price.
Killian was home after a long sojourn abroad. Bran had told Freya he hadn’t seen his brother in many years, as he moved around a lot and traveled the globe. She wasn’t sure where he had just come from—Australia, was it? Or Alaska? The only thing that mattered was that when they were introduced, he had looked at her with those startling blue-green eyes of his, and she had felt her entire body tingle. He was, for lack of a better word, beautiful, with long dark lashes framing those piercing eyes, sharp-featured with an aquiline nose and a square jaw. He looked like he was always ready to be photographed: brooding, sucking on a cigarette, like a matinee idol in a French New Wave film.
He had been perfectly gracious, well-mannered, and had embraced her as a sister, and to her credit, Freya’s face had betrayed none of the turmoil she felt. She had accepted his kiss on her cheek with a modest smile, had even been able to engage him in the usual cocktail conversation. The soggy weather, the proposed wedding date, how he found North Hampton (she couldn’t remember, she might not have been listening: she had been too mesmerized by the sound of his voice—a low rumble like a late-night disk jockey). Then finally someone else had wanted his attention and she was free to be alone—and that was when all the small but awful things at the party began to happen.
Cat scratch fever. That was all it was, wasn’t it? Like an itch you couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t placate, couldn’t satisfy. Freya felt as if she were on fire—that at any moment she would spontaneously combust and there would be nothing left of her but ashes and diamonds. Stop looking at him, she told herself. This is insane, just another of your bad ideas. Even worse than the time you brought the gerbil back to life (she’d gotten an earful from her mother for that one, lest someone on the Council found out, not to mention that zombie pets were never a good idea). Go outside. Get some fresh air. Return to the party. She glided over to the vase of pink cabbage roses, trying to suffocate her whirling emotions by inhaling their scent. It didn’t work. She could still feel him wanting her.
Goddamnit, did he have to be so good-looking? She thought she was immune to that kind of thing. Such a cliché: tall, dark, and handsome. She hated cocky, arrogant boys who thought women lived to service their voracious sexual appetites. He was the worst offender of the type—screeching up in his Harley, and that ridiculous hair of his—that messy, shaggy, bangs-in-your-eyes kind of thing, with that sexy, come-hither smolder: but there was something else. An intelligence. A knowingness in his eyes. It was as if, when he looked at her, he knew exactly what she was and what she was like. A witch. A goddess. Someone not of this earth but not apart from it either. A woman to be loved and feared and adored.
She looked up from the vase and found him still staring directly at her. It was as if he were waiting the whole time, for just this moment. He nodded his head, motioning to a nearby door. Truly? Right here? Right now? In the powder room? Was that not just another cliché that went with the motorcycle and the bad-boy attitude? Was she really going to go into the bathroom with another man—her fiancé’s brother, for god’s sake—at her engagement party?
She was. Freya walked, as if in a daze, toward the aforementioned rendezvous. She closed the door behind her and waited. The face that stared at her from the mirror was flushed and radiant. She was so happy she was delirious, so excited she didn’t know what to do with herself. Where was he? Making her wait. Killian Gardiner knew what to do with wanton women, it seemed.
The doorknob turned, and he walked in, smooth as a knife, locking the door behind him. His lips curled into a smile, a panther with his prey. He had won.
“Come here,” she whispered. She had made her choice. She didn’t want to wait a moment longer.
Outside the door, in the middle of the party, the cabbage roses burst into flame.
Chapter 2
Old Maid. Tight-ass. Spinster. Ingrid Beauchamp knew what people thought of her; she had seen the way they huddled and whispered behind cupped hands as she made her way across the library, putting away returned books to their proper shelves. In the decade that she had worked there, Ingrid had made few friends with her patrons, who found her strict and high-handed. Not only did she never forgive a fine, she had a tendency to lecture on the proper care and maintenance of the books under her jurisdiction. A book returned with a broken spine, a drenched cover or dog-eared pages was sure to garner a cool reprimand. It was bad enough that their operating budget barely covered their expenses; Ingrid did not need the patrons doing unnecessary damage to the books in her care.
Of course Hudson was supposed to do the grunt work, but even if Ingrid was the ranking archivist she enjoyed the physical aspects of the job and didn’t like to sit behind a desk all day, steaming blueprints. She liked the feel and weight of the books—to stroke the pages softened with wear, or put a mismatched jacket to rights. Also, it gave her an opportunity to police the library, wake up any of the bums sneaking a nap in the carrels, and make sure there weren’t any teenagers necking in the stacks.
Necking was such an odd word. Not that anyone “necked” anymore. Most of the teens had moved far beyond and below the neck. Ingrid liked the kids—the teenagers who visited the library and clamored for the latest dystopian post-apocalyptic releases made her smile. She did not care what they did in the comfort or discomfort of their own homes or untidy cars. Against popular belief, she knew what it was like to be young and in love and unafraid—she lived with Freya, after all. But a library was not a bedroom, or a motel room; it was a place to read, to study, to be quiet. While the kids did try to comply with the last rule, heavy breathing was sometimes the loudest noise of all.
In any event, necking wasn’t limited to the kids alone. The other day Ingrid had had to cough quite a few times to
make sure a middle-aged couple was successfully untangled by the time she walked through the aisles with her cart.
Located in a grassy quadrangle across from city hall and next to a community park and playground, the North Hampton Public Library was neat, organized, and as well-kept as its meager funding would allow. The city budget had shrunk along with the rest of the economy, but Ingrid did her best to keep it stocked with new books. She loved everything about the library, and if sometimes she wished she could wave her wand (not that she had one anymore, but if she did) and set everything to rights—spruce up those shabby couches in the reading corners, replace the antiquated computers that still flashed with black and green monitors, create a proper storytelling stage with a puppet theater for the little kids—she could still console herself with the inky smell of new books, the dusty musk of old ones, and the way the late-afternoon sunlight flowed through the glass windows. The library was on prime beachfront property; the reference room had a spectacular view of the ocean, and once in a while Ingrid would make a point of stopping by the small, cozy nook just to look at the waves crashing on the beachhead.
Unfortunately it was this same breathtaking view that threatened the library’s very existence. Recently North Hampton’s mayor had made not-so-unsubtle noises that selling off the prime beachfront property would be the easiest way to pay off the city’s mounting debts. Ingrid was not opposed to the project per se, but she had heard that the mayor thought it might be a fine idea to do away with the library altogether, now that so much information was available online. The bureaucratic destruction of her precious library was too distressing to think about, and Ingrid tried not to feel too helpless that morning.
Thank goodness nothing terrible had happened at Freya’s engagement party last Sunday. For a moment there Ingrid had been worried when one of the floral arrangements inexplicably caught on fire, but a quick-thinking waiter doused the flames with a pitcher of iced tea and no more harm was done. The fire was Freya’s doing of course, her nerves causing havoc with her untamed magic. Understandable that Freya would be skittish about making a commitment of this magnitude, but she usually displayed better control, especially after centuries of living under the restriction. For now, Ingrid was just glad to be back at work and the routine of her daily life, finding comfort in the familiar. It had not been so long ago when her life had been quite different, when her work had been exciting and unusual. But that was the past, and it was best not to dwell on it too much.
The library was not merely the usual suburban outpost, at least. Upon its establishment, thanks to a generous bequest from a grande dame of the neighborhood, it also housed one of the foremost collections of architectural drawings in the country, as many famous designers had built homes in the area. As an archivist, Ingrid was responsible for preserving the work for posterity, which meant setting up a steam tent where the drawings were unrolled; and once they were moisturized, flattened, and dried, she tucked them away in drawers under linen. She had one under the plastic tent now, the paper soaking up all that moisture. Archiving was tedious and repetitive-injury making, so Ingrid liked to take a break by walking around, shelving books.
Tabitha Robinson, the middle-aged librarian for young adult books, a bright, cheerful woman with a passion for children’s literature, stopped for a friendly chat when they chanced upon each other in the aisles. Ingrid was very fond of Tabitha, who was efficient and professional and took her job seriously. When Tabitha wasn’t reading the latest coming-of-age novel, she had a weakness for what Ingrid dubbed “man-chesters,” romance novels featuring shirtless hunks on the cover. Bodice rippers (heaving cleavage bursting out of corsets) were passé. These days it was all about the beefcake. To each her own, Ingrid thought. Her guilty pleasures involved historical sagas: anything concerning those quarreling Tudors got her vote. They exchanged the usual cozy pleasantries and town gossip shared by old friends and colleagues when Tabitha’s cell phone vibrated. “Oh! It’s the doctor’s office,” she beamed. “Sorry, I have to take this,” she said as she walked away hurriedly, her long braid swinging down her back.
Ingrid picked up the next book to put away—tsk tsk, another doorstop-heavy tome from that local author who was something of a pest. He had thrown a hissy fit to find his books heaped in the cardboard boxes left in front of the library for patrons to take for free. But what could she do? They only kept books that were in regular circulation on the shelves. No one had read his last one, and it was clear this one would soon be consigned to the remainder bin as well.
Ingrid tried to give each author a fair shake by placing less-popular books by the front desk, suggesting little-known titles to those who asked, and borrowing each book at least once. But one could only do so much. The author, one J. J. Ramsey Baker (good lord, what was that, four names?—certainly two initials too much), author of Moribund Symphony, The Darkness at the Center of the Essence, and his latest, an obvious desperate grab for a book club pick, The Cobbler’s Daughter’s Elephants, would have just another month to tell his story of a blind cobbler in Lebanon in the nineteenth century and his daughter’s pet elephants until out it went. Ingrid thought that not even a little magic could help move that product.
It was really too bad none of them were allowed to practice magic anymore. That was the deal they had made after the judgment had been handed down. No more flying. No more spells. No more charms and powders, potions or jinxes. They were to live like ordinary people without the use of their ferocious powers, their magnificent, otherworldly abilities. Over the years they had each learned to live with the restraint in their own way. Freya burned through her energy through her manic partying, while Ingrid had adopted a severe personality in order to better suppress the magic that threatened to well up from inside.
Since there was nothing she could do to change it, Ingrid found she could not quite resent their present reduced circumstances. Resenting and regretting only made things worse. Why hope for what could not be? For hundreds of years she had learned to live like a quiet mouse, tiny and insignificant, and had almost convinced herself that it was better that way.
Ingrid patted the bun at the back of her head and put the cart back against the wall. On the way to the back office, she saw Blake Aland perusing the new releases. Blake was a successful developer who had given the mayor the idea of selling the library in the first place, offering a handsome bid if the city ever decided to take it on the market. A month ago he had dropped off his firm’s documents and Ingrid had had the delicate task of telling him their work was not aesthetically important enough to keep in their archive. Blake had taken it well, but he had not taken her rejection of his invitation to dinner quite as graciously. He had continued to persist until she had finally agreed to dine with him last week, on an evening that had gone disastrously, with hands fending off hands in the front seat of the car and hurt feelings all around. It was him she had to thank for giving her the odious nickname “Frigid Ingrid.” How unfortunate that in addition to being despicable he was also clever.
She hurried away before he spotted her. She had no desire to wrestle with Octopus hands any time soon. Freya was so lucky to have found Bran, but then again, Ingrid had known for a long time that one day Freya would meet him. She’d seen it in her sister’s lifeline centuries ago.
Ingrid had never felt that way about anyone. Besides, love wasn’t a solution to everything, she thought, patting a cache of letters that she kept folded in her pocket.
In the back office, she checked on her blueprint: almost all the creases were out. Good. She would put it in its flat box and then put the next drawing under the steam. She made a note on an index card, writing down the architect’s name and the project, an experimental museum that had never been built.
When she returned to her cubicle there was a sniffing noise from the next desk, and when Ingrid looked up, she noticed Tabitha was wiping her eyes and setting down her mobile phone. “What happened?” Ingrid asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. The
re was only one thing Tabitha wanted even more than getting Judy Blume to visit their library.
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh, Tab,” Ingrid said. She walked over and embraced her friend. “I’m so sorry.” For the past several weeks Tabitha had been resolutely optimistic following yet another in-vitro procedure, expressing a manic certainty that it had worked mostly because it was their final attempt at parenthood. “Surely there’s something else you can do?”
“No. This was our last shot. We can’t afford it anymore. We’re already in debt up to our ears for the last one. This was it. It’s not going to happen.”
“What happened to the adoption process?”
Tabitha wiped her eyes. “Because of Chad’s disability, we got passed over again. Might as well be a dead end. And I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish, but is it so wrong to want one of our own? Just one?”
Ingrid had been there since the beginning of Chad and Tabitha’s journey: she knew all about the turkey basters (the IUI treatment), the hormone pills, the infertility cocktail (Clomid, Lupron); she had helped push syringes as big as horse needles into Tabitha’s left hip at the designated hours. She knew how much they wanted a baby. Tabitha kept a photo on her desk of her and Chad at a luau during their honeymoon in Kona, goofy in Hawaiian shirts and leis. It was fifteen years old.
“Maybe I’m just not meant to be a mother,” Tabitha cried.
“Don’t say that! It’s not true!”
“Why not? It’s not as if there’s anything anyone can do to help.” Tabitha sighed. “I have to stop hoping.”
Ingrid gave her friend another tight hug and walked out of the office, her cheeks burning and her heart thumping in her chest because she of all people knew that what Tabitha said wasn’t true. There was someone who could help, someone who could change her life, someone much closer to Tab than she thought. But my hands are tied, Ingrid said to herself. There’s nothing I can do for her. Not without breaking the bonds of the restriction. Not without putting myself in danger as well.