“I guess so.” She smiled.
“What about you, Ingrid?”
Ingrid crossed her arms. Some days she really did feel like the world’s oldest virgin. “A lady never tells.” She shook her head at her colleagues and excused herself to the restroom. Caitlin followed her.
At the washbasins, Caitlin suddenly blurted, “I swear, it’s so weird—the whole time I was sure he was always here to see you.” She ran the tap and washed her hands. “He asked about you constantly.”
Ingrid looked up with a start. “Really?”
“Yeah. What kind of books you liked to read. What kind of work you did with those drawings. I thought he had a crush on you . . .” Caitlin pressed her lips together tightly to blot her lipstick. “But it turns out he kept talking about you because he was so nervous because he was talking to me! Isn’t that funny?”
Hilarious. Ingrid slammed the bathroom door and went back out to the main desk. The detective, the subject of all the gossip in the backroom, looked up from the book he was reading. He placed the book on the table. J. J. Ramsey Baker’s opus, the thousand-page doorstop that Ingrid could not get anyone to borrow and read.
“Did you like it?” she asked sweetly.
Matt Noble thought for a moment. “It was . . . interesting but not really my sort of thing.”
“What kind of books do you like, then?” Ingrid asked a bit defensively.
“I don’t know . . .” He shrugged. She was right, she thought, pleased. He wasn’t much of a reader, just a library lurker. He was probably one of those weirdos who liked to nap in the carrels.
“Well, what’s your favorite book?” she asked, feeling confident that he would not be able to name one, or if he did, it would be something like . . .
“To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“Really?” Ingrid asked, taken off guard. “That’s my favorite book, too.” But was he just saying that? Or was it something Caitlin had told him? But when did she ever discuss Mockingbird with Caitlin? Caitlin didn’t like to read. She spent her free time updating her online profile’s status.
“Really.” Matt smiled, and for a moment he looked a little like Atticus Finch, or maybe Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch, if Gregory Peck had light brown hair and freckles and blue eyes. He held her gaze for a moment, and it looked as if he were going to say something more when Caitlin finally appeared, looking radiant in her white dress. “Matthew!”
He turned away from Ingrid and kissed Caitlin on the cheek while the two of them embraced. It was only then that Ingrid saw he was holding a picnic basket, a bottle of wine and a baguette poking out of the side.
Tabitha and Hudson followed behind. “All clear, boss lady,” Tabitha said, meaning the library was empty. Ingrid turned off the main lights and set the alarm, and the group walked out of the building together. It was warm but breezy, and the night glowed; it would be light until late. A perfect summer evening for listening to music. Ingrid felt a pang.
“Hey, you want a ride to the concert?” Caitlin asked as Ingrid made her way to her bicycle. “Ingrid goes every year with her family,” she explained to her date.
“No, it’s okay—they can’t make it this year. I think I should just go home,” Ingrid said, as Tabitha waved good-bye.
“Oh, well, come with us then!” Caitlin offered.
“I couldn’t . . . I don’t want to crash . . .” Ingrid said, her cheeks beginning to burn again; if this kept up she would get a tan. If there was one thing she did not want to do, it was become a third wheel on a romantic date.
But for some reason Caitlin would not take no for an answer. “Not at all. Matt won’t mind. Right, Matt?” He shook his head and smiled at Ingrid. “Not at all. Join us, please. I packed enough cheese to feed a cow.”
Hudson unlocked his bike and began to wheel it away when Caitlin pounced on him as well. “We could make it a foursome! Hudson, come to the opera with me and Matt and Ingrid—she needs a date!” There seemed to be no dissuading Caitlin, and Ingrid felt helpless to resist.
Hudson looked at Ingrid questioningly. He had offered to take her that morning when she mentioned that her family had bailed, but she had declined, and Ingrid hoped her friend would not mention it. Thankfully, Hudson rose to the occasion. “Wagner’s so dreary. I prefer Puccini. But sure.”
The orchestra had set up on a small stage in a grassy field a few miles from the beach. There was already a huge crowd waiting. They found an empty spot between two groups of opera devotees who were toasting the evening with wine in plastic glasses, balloons bobbing in the air as signposts to pinpoint their location for stragglers or lest anyone get lost on the way back from the restrooms. The sun began to set over the horizon, bathing the scene in a warm, orange light, and then the music began to play. It made for a very pretty scene, but Ingrid could not find any beauty in it.
Caitlin snuggled next to Matt the entire evening, and when the two of them weren’t nuzzling they were kissing. Ingrid thought she might burn all her Wagner records by the end of the night; she felt sick to her stomach. Her wonderful library was going to be razed to make room for condominiums, and the guy she liked had ended up with someone else. She promised herself she would get over Matt Noble somehow. Even if she had to take one of Freya’s bitter-tasting antidotes to do so.
chapter twenty
Darkness Visible
The Alvarezes had invited Joanna to celebrate the Fourth of July with them. On Friday night, after attending their festive barbecue, she walked along the shore back to the main house. Regardless of what happened the last time she had taken a long walk, Joanna still kept to the habit. She took a brisk turn around the neighborhood, to refresh the spirit and ruminate on the vagaries of the day, not to mention to try to walk off those extra calories brought on by that second slice of Gracella’s red velvet cake. It had been a nice party, and Joanna had been glad for the company and the chance to catch up with her friends and neighbors. Several of them had heard about the miracle she had performed for Lionel Horning, and had asked if she would look into their ailing relatives. Joanna had promised to do so as soon as she could, though she cautioned that Lionel was a very special case.
The three Beauchamp women were getting quite a reputation in town lately for their abilities to do what others could not. Joanna wondered what the Council would make of that. So far, there had been no word from the powers-that-be; either they were choosing to ignore the Beauchamps’ actions or they were still contemplating a response. In either event, the bravado she had displayed the other week was starting to thin. She was not frightened of the Council exactly, but she was anxious to see what they would do. There was no way to predict how they would react. She wished the oracle would come down and deal with them already and get it over with—punishment, reprimand, whatever. It was too hard to live with the uncertainty.
She was glad to find that after a few blocks Gilly had caught up with her, the raven flapping her wings silently. The two of them, witch and familiar, meandered through a well-worn path, down to the shoreline, past the great houses that overlooked the sea. Joanna was about to turn back toward home when the raven began to fly toward the footbridge that led to Gardiners Island.
“You want to go there? Why?”
Gilly regarded her keenly. You need to see this.
“Tonight?”
Come. You’ve put it off too long already.
“You’re right, you’re right as usual. I guess now is as good a time as any.”
Strange things were happening in town; she couldn’t deny it anymore. Joanna’s thoughts drifted to the dead birds, the silvery toxin that had polluted their ocean, as well as the grassy menace that had tried to strangle her the other evening. Ever since she had raised Lionel Horning from the dead Joanna had been especially worried. What was that silver spiderweb that had surrounded his soul? She had never seen anything like it before. Had she made a mistake in bringing him back from the Dead’s Kingdom? But she had resurrected souls before and it was not such a
n unusual occurrence. Sometimes resurrection happened naturally. Humans called them “near-death experiences” when they came back to report that they had seen themselves floating over their bodies, or caught a glimpse of the white light at the end of the tunnel. Death was just the beginning of a journey that everyone took at some point.
Souls that had been taken by Death were not shrouded in a silver mist, they shone with a rainbow of colors. Joanna had chalked it up to the fact that she had not visited the world of the Dead in a very long time. Perhaps they had redecorated? She was being facetious and Gilly chided her for it, nipping her cheek and cawing. Joanna followed the bird’s lead on the bridge. Fair Haven shone brightly in the darkness, lighting their way. By the end of the summer her daughter would be mistress to the house and the island, just as planned. But even if everything seemed to be going along well, the wedding date looming (Freya had even agreed to wear white), Joanna still felt a twinge of unease, which she couldn’t explain, since everything was happening just as Ingrid had predicted.
“Let’s be quiet now, won’t we, Gilly? Make sure no one sees us?” she asked as they picked their way stealthily down the bridge toward the deserted beach. There were odd-looking piles of driftwood all around, but when Joanna came closer she saw they were not ocean detritus. The beach was littered with the bodies of dead ospreys. Hundreds of them, a thick, viscous sludge over their feathers, their beaks burned. They looked exactly like the birds she had seen dead on her beach earlier that summer. So. She was right, then. The birds had been a premonition, an omen, a warning. She wanted to tell her daughters I told you so, even though being right was shallow consolation. Her heart broke to see so much death all around. She could bring their souls back, but it was futile since their bodies were beyond repair.
Why had no one said anything? She looked over at Fair Haven, at the house that held the foundation of the seam that protected the town from the twilight world of the glom. Joanna had been there when it was first built; it was always meant to be empty. She was surprised when the Gardiners arrived. Perhaps there was more to their appearance than she’d imagined?
Joanna noticed the immense sand dunes that surrounded the house. She could not recall seeing such large ridges on Gardiners Island before. As she passed by them, she had the distinct feeling of being watched. The dunes were like little mountains of men, hillocks with eyes and strange noses; when she brushed against one it felt more like granite than sand. She squinted into the far horizon. Then she saw it. The silvery spot in the ocean had moved. It lapped about the shores of Gardiners Island, surrounding it in a dark perimeter.
She reached into her pocket and put on her gloves, a pair of nice, thick leather gloves that kept her hands warm in the winter, and knelt by the lapping waves. She had to see what was in the water.
The raven croaked a warning and Joanna soothed her pet. “Don’t worry, these gloves are made from serpent-skin—nothing will penetrate.” The gray-haired witch knelt down on the slippery rocks and dipped her finger in the black water.
Joanna rubbed her fingers and brought them to the light. The scientists still had no explanation for the explosion, nor had they managed to identify the toxic material that had seeped into the ocean waters. The townspeople had been advised to continue to refrain from fishing, swimming, and eating any local seafood. Worse, no one could tell the residents how they planned to clean the ocean or what could be done about it. No one was sure what it was.
She wiped her fingers together, assessing the liquid between them. It looked and felt slippery, but when she pressed a little further, she discovered there was something more to it. It was grainy and brittle, a hard, transparent crystal. Joanna felt a deep queasiness inside her soul. This was very bad. Whatever it was, she understood now why she had avoided dealing with it for as long as she could—had tried not to dwell on the broken seam boundaries, the gray darkness, the feeling of despair and anxiety that had settled into town. She remembered what Ingrid had told her: that the women of North Hampton were finding themselves barren, and a number of animals had died suddenly with no apparent cause.
Joanna lifted her wand. The containment spell would not hold for long. It would stop the poison from spreading but only for a short period of time. She could not meet this unknown danger alone; this was beyond her powers or understanding, and she knew immediately she would have to get help. Reinforcements. She and her daughters could not meet this threat alone. She removed her gloves and threw them in the water. Already there was a small hole right on the fingertip where she had held the dark crystal.
chapter twenty-one
The Only Way to Avoid
Temptation . . .
The Friday night of the Fourth of July weekend, with the waters still off-limits, tourists had practically disappeared from the town, but the locals were still going to celebrate. At the North Inn Bar, Bon Jovi was blasting, and even if it was nowhere near midnight there were already a bunch of girls dancing on tables, camisole straps falling from their shoulders, their jeans loose and low on their waists.
As usual, Bran was out of town, and this would be their longest separation yet, as he was traveling through Southeast Asia this time with a large group of donors. She thought she would be used to it by now, and chided herself for being so weak.
To make herself feel better, Freya turned up the volume even louder, just as Killian Gardiner walked into the bar. She tried not to tense up, but felt her skin blush just at the sight of him and the flash of his sexual history, seeing a vision of herself in his arms as he kissed her down the entire length of her naked body. Yet it was firmly in the past, and as long as she kept her distance that was how it would remain. No matter how many dreams she had about him. He could fantasize about her all he wanted, he could replay that bathroom scene over and over again until the world ended, but nothing would ever happen between them again, she would see to that.
“Hey,” he said, sliding over and taking a seat right in front. How did that happen? She was sure every seat had been taken, but at his appearance the crowd had parted like the rivers of the Nile.
“Killian,” she said curtly. “I told you to leave me alone.”
“I wanted to see you. Besides, Bran’s away now. The coast is clear.” Killian smiled. He picked up the laminated menu with the list of magical cocktails. “Love the hearts—very cute.”
It had been Sal’s corny idea to add the hearts. Freya wished she hadn’t allowed him to talk her into it, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt her boss’s feelings.
She watched Killian read the menu, a sardonic smile on his face, wishing he was anywhere else but here tonight. She just did not need the aggravation. The North Inn crowd wasn’t Bran’s group of horsey socialites, but it was still a small town and tongues would wag if they appeared too friendly or intimate.
“Excuse me? Miss?”
“Hold on,” Freya told him. She turned to her customer, a little brown wren of a girl who was studying the list of cocktails as if she were memorizing it for a final. “What can I get you?” she asked.
“Umm . . . I don’t know . . .” Molly Lancaster was a jumpy little thing, a summer intern at city hall, a recent college graduate. Freya caught hints of a failed love affair, the usual teenage sexting of digital courtship. “I’d like Irresistible, please,” Molly finally whispered.
“Make me one, too,” Killian teased, flicking the menu back on the table.
Freya ignored him and began to mix Molly’s drink. She kept the flowering cattails bunched in a glass jar, on a lower shelf; she removed them and began to crush the spikes with a pestle.
“Here, let me help you with that,” Killian said, walking behind the counter so he could stand next to her and leaning forward so that she could feel his hot breath on her neck.
“Killian, please. Get back to the other side. Go on, now.”
“But you’re shorthanded,” Killian said, nodding to a guy waving a twenty-dollar bill. He quickly served up the asked-for pint, made change, and slammed the
cash register with a bang. “C’mon, let me.”
It did seem like a good idea; the bar was five deep and everyone was waiting. Sal wouldn’t mind, and Kristy had called in sick. Freya sighed. She could use the extra hand.
“So what else are you putting in there?” Killian asked, watching her measure the cattail powder into the cocktail shaker.
“Nothing. Just a jigger of lime juice, cherries, and a whole lot of vodka.”
“Seems rather harmless; hard to believe something like that could turn that little mouse back there into Marilyn Monroe.”
“I don’t put all my ingredients on the menu,” she said, reaching for another one of the secret black jars she kept in the under-the-counter refrigerator, and began to add a few drops of each into the cocktail: aster, maidenhair, vetiver root. She liked having Killian’s eyes on her, his intent attention as he watched her work, and began to show off a little. She pulled out a small amber bottle containing grains of paradise, minuscule seeds full of potent magic, and shook a sprinkling of them into the mixture. The potion turned a deep vermillion with a flash. The air fizzed with smoke, carrying the heady scent of vanilla and honey.
“That smells almost as delicious as you do,” Killian murmured, nuzzling her neck, his hand sneaking around her waist.
“Hey!” she protested, twisting away from him, but not quite making such a huge effort. “Hands to yourself! And you have customers—you’re here to help me, remember?” she said, as she poured out the cocktail into a martini glass. Had she already put in the vetiver root? She couldn’t remember and added just a little more just to make sure.
She handed the martini glass full of frothy purple liquid to Molly. “Here you go. One Irresistible,” she said curtly.
Killian proved adept at bartending, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. They worked side by side, slinging drinks, crushing ice, keeping the party going, the energy high. “Come on, now, you know you’ve missed me,” he said in between serving up a tray of shots for a rowdy group of ladies. “Oh, the silent treatment, is it?” he sighed, when she did not respond. “You can’t still be mad at me for what happened the night of your engagement, are you? You are? How boring of you. It’s not like you ever came to see me on the boat.”