“Haven’t heard what?” Ingrid asked.
“Romance weekend on Martha’s Vineyard is off!”
“Pardon?”
“You left too early yesterday.”
“Obviously.”
Tabitha looked over her shoulder and filled her in. “Matt came by yesterday afternoon as usual. I saw them fighting outside. Then he drove off without her. I asked her what happened and she said it was over. He’d canceled the whole weekend because he had to work on that missing girl case, you know, Molly Lancaster. He said it wasn’t working, anyway. He wasn’t feeling it. He was sorry.”
“Oh, dear!” Ingrid said.
“I know!”
“Poor Caitlin,” Ingrid said, feeling a little sorry for the girl. Just a little. She knew it was difficult when someone you liked stopped liking you.
“Anyway, Caitlin thinks he’s a liar. That there’s someone else. You remember how the night of the concert was supposed to be his lucky night? Well, that’s when he told her he wanted to wait until it was special. That’s when he asked her to go to the Vineyard with him, but now that’s off, too,” Tabitha said.
“So . . . they haven’t . . . ?” Ingrid craned forward.
“No!” Hudson interjected, looking disappointed. “Looks like the only one getting lucky in this office is me, since Tab is afraid of ‘hurting the baby.’ But now my Scott is withholding since I told him I didn’t think he could quite pull off the male Capri pant.”
“If you ask me, they were an odd match, anyway,” Tabitha said, rubbing her belly, which was showing the tiniest little bump.
“Shhh—she’s back!” Hudson warned. Ingrid pretended to be busy with a drawing and the other two went back to their computers.
Suddenly the day seemed so much brighter. The women who came to visit Ingrid at lunch were treated to a host of charms and spells that not only took care of their aches and pains but were sprinkled with a lightness, a joy, a little something extra that had been missing from her magic before. Her money-bag charms smelled like honeysuckle, her spells seemed to emit a golden sparkle, and even her knots were beautiful and perfect, each a work of art.
“Well, if you aren’t little Mary Sunshine,” Hudson teased. “This morning you looked like you were ready to drink hemlock.”
“Shush,” Ingrid said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She tried to maintain a straight face as she returned to her desk. Her computer screen signaled the arrival of an instant message.
>
>
>
>
>
Ingrid hesitated before typing in an answer. After thinking about it for a few minutes, she wrote, yes.
chapter twenty-seven
Heart Sick
North Hampton was still reeling from the news of Molly Lancaster’s disappearance when the mayor’s office announced that he had failed to show up to work that Monday and could not be located. He had left his home in the middle of the night with no word to his wife or his staff. After the disaster of the oceanic earthquake and Molly’s mysterious absence, an ill feeling began to grow around town; some began to whisper that North Hampton was cursed, that it was no longer the bucolic little town it once had been.
At home, watching the whole sad story play out in the news, Freya turned off the television and sat pensively for a few minutes. She had to pick up Tyler from preschool soon. She put on her coat and looked for her keys. First Molly Lancaster, now Mayor Hutchinson. What was going on? Things like this never happened in North Hampton before, unless you counted what happened to the Thatchers. Freya tried to recall the last time she had seen the mayor; he used to stop by the bar every once in a while but hadn’t come by in a few weeks, most likely due to that fidelity knot that tied him to his home—not that Todd was the type to flirt with any of the girls at the North Inn. He was too concerned about his career to do something that stupid.
Freya was tired of moping about the house, and the news of the mayor’s disappearance depressed her. She had forgotten how boring life could be without the bar to attend to, without something to do, people to see, drinks to make. At least Ingrid seemed to have cheered up from whatever was making her grumpy for the past few weeks, which was good since Oscar could be irritable whenever his mistress was feeling out of sorts, and Freya didn’t much like getting nipped by his sharp beak just because Ingrid had forgotten to buy his stash of Cheetos. The griffin liked them so much his beak was bound to turn orange one day.
The house was emptier than usual, as Joanna had yet to return from her trip. Her mother had left in something of a rush right after the holiday weekend. Ingrid had seen her off but explained that Joanna had not told her where she was going, only that they were allowed their wands again; although Freya had not found much use for hers. It was nice to have it back, however; she had forgotten how smooth it felt, how much more powerful she was with it in hand.
She drove to the school, and walked to the small cottage that housed the pre-K class. Tyler was playing with blocks and looked up balefully when he saw her. “Where’s Lala?” he demanded, arms crossed.
“Come on, Ty, you know she’s not back yet.” The little boy felt Joanna’s absence keenly. Yesterday he had thrown his arms around in a massive tantrum when she picked him up.
“Don’t wanna go with you. Want Lala!”
“Oh, sweetie, come on,” she said, trying not to lose her patience with the child. She was bored and frustrated as well, but she did not want to take it out on him. They walked to the gate and she put Tyler in his car seat, clicking the straps tightly around his chest.
“What can you do?” he asked suspiciously.
“What do you mean?”
“Lala can make my airplanes fly. For real,” he said in an accusatory tone.
Freya knew Joanna was showing off her magic to the little boy, but it was still shocking to hear it mentioned so casually. Her mother didn’t seem to follow any boundaries when it came to indulging him. Freya remembered her childhood well, and it did not include a plethora of baked goods and innumerable talking stuffed animals. Mostly she remembered her mother grousing about how difficult it was to raise children.
She looked around to make sure no one was looking their way. “Well, I can do this,” she said, turning into a black cat. Then, in a blink, she was Freya again.
Tyler giggled, then he coughed. There was a dime-size dollop of phlegm in his hand, and Freya noticed the green tinge. When they arrived home, she asked Gracella if she noticed Tyler was coughing again. The housekeeper nodded. “The doctors are giving him another round of antibiotics. They said it should clear up in a week or two.”
“He does seem all right, there’s just that odd cough . . . , ” Freya said, feeling the first whisper of fear. Joanna wasn’t the only one in the household who loved the boy. “He’ll be all right,” she told Gracella, and she wondered whom she was trying to convince more, the boy’s mother or herself.
Bran called later that evening. He apologized for being hard to get ahold of; he was traveling all over the place and time zone changes made communication difficult. “How’s my girl?”
“Missing you,” she said, feeling a tightness constrict in her chest. “When are you coming home?” When will you return to me?
“Soon, I promise.” Where was he now? What town? What country? She couldn’t keep track anymore. He was simply just “away.” There was a long silence at the end of the line and Freya began to worry. “Bran, are you there?”
“Yes, sorry, I had to return a text. Madame wants to know if you have any thoughts about the wedding plans she sent over the other week,” Bran said.
Freya had barely given the event a second thought, and it surprised her to realize it was happening; she had almost forgotten. Of course they would have the proper ceremony, a white dress, five hundred guests
, an orchestra, the works. “Tell her she can do whatever she wants. The flowers, the food, the guests. As long as they invite my family and Sal and Kristy, of course. Whatever she wants.”
“You don’t care?” he asked. “That’s a new one. For a bride, I mean.”
She was going to be a bride. The word struck like a knife in her chest and twisted brutally. For a moment she could not speak.
“Hey, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”
“No . . .” She shook her head even though he could not see. “No. It’s nothing.”
“Tell me . . . you can tell me anything, you know.”
She shook her head and didn’t speak. Tears began quietly streaming down her face now.
“You know I love you, no matter what,” Bran said, his voice tight and nervous. “Whatever happens, I’ll always love you, Freya. Always.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
She hung up the phone, her heart beating in her chest. Would Bran still love her, truly, if he knew what she was doing? What she had done? Would he love her the way she was? Could she ever be true to him? Monogamy was not in her nature, and she wondered why she had even agreed to this wedding, to this marriage.
The phone rang again and she picked it up, thinking it was Bran again to reassure her of his love.
“Freya.” Killian’s voice was husky and low. They had not spoken since their wild weekend together. “Did I do something wrong? You never return my calls. I miss you.” Hearing his voice was like a balm to her broken heart. Maybe she was meant to be with Killian, but she would never know unless she did something about it. The thing was, she missed him, too.
Freya wiped her tears. “All right. I’ll be right over.”
She was tired of feeling guilty. Bran was far away. She knew he had work to do but she couldn’t help holding it against him. Maybe things happened for a reason. Maybe they were already broken, even before Killian came onto the scene.
Because like everything that took place this summer with Bran and Killian, she felt as if she were part of a larger story, and the curious, reckless part of Freya—the one who drank too much and played with matches and broke a million hearts before breakfast—wanted to see how it would all play out in the end.
chapter twenty-eight
The Hidden Door
Ingrid looked around the empty ballroom at Fair Haven and shook out her legs. Flying always gave her cramps, especially when she took Oscar’s form. Like Freya with Siegfried, and Joanna with Gilly, Oscar was part of her, and she could turn into his shape at will. She did not do it often, only on occasions that demanded it. During Freya’s engagement party she had noticed that the top windows to the ballroom were always left open. Now Ingrid had flown in through one of them before dawn, when everyone in the household was sure to be asleep. She could have taken a broom, but since Joanna had been spotted the other day Ingrid thought it would be more prudent if she assumed an animal-like shape. There were many ways for witches to travel, and like her brethren Ingrid preferred the more natural one: lifting into the air and rising to the heavens as her magic lessened gravity’s hold on her core. They used the brooms to ground and center themselves, an anchor to the earth that no longer held them when they were flying.
She texted to her source.
>
>
>
>
He was right. There was something a little off about the center tag in the ballroom floor plan; the little diamond that pointed toward the walls in the room she was standing in was surrounded by that strange calligraphy of symbols. And one of the points on the diamond was just a little askew. It may have been the careless hand of the draftsman, but the whole tag seemed to cant slightly toward the right-hand corner of the room. The tip of the diamond on that corner was just a bit longer than the others’, as if it were reaching toward that far corner, pulling the eye toward that part of the room. She scanned the room and found that corner. It was an exhilarating feeling, understanding an abstract drawing of a space and its relationship to the real world.
> she texted.
>
As directed, she knocked on the wall, making a dull heavy thud.
> Ingrid knew that a standard wall would have a hollow sound, sharp and round.
>
>
Ingrid left the room and returned a few minutes later with a crowbar that she had found in the garage. She took the sharp end and dug it into the corner of the wall. The blade slid forward, splitting the paint as it bit into the wall. Ingrid decided she would just have to try one of Joanna’s restoration spells to fix it after she found out what was behind it. No time to think of the damage she was doing now. She was on to something here.
She pushed the blade deeper into the wall, but it stopped after half an inch. She wedged the end of the crowbar sideways and a chunk of the wall the size of a baseball fell off and landed on the floor. She picked up the piece of plaster and examined it. A renovated house like Fair Haven should have walls made from cement plaster spread in layers on a wire mesh. The cement would be coarse and sandlike, but Ingrid was holding a chunk of Sheetrock that was much older. She tossed it back to the floor and knelt below the hole she had made. Along the break she saw the paint chipped by the blade of the crowbar. The outer paint layer was a thick, glossy emulsion. It had the dark, rich sheen of lead-based paints. But underneath the paint, where the crowbar had cracked the finish, there was something else. She kept chipping at it until all the new paint was gone and she could see what was behind it.
It was a door. It did not have hinges or knobs but Ingrid recognized the shape right away. The cracked wood gave off a faint scent of pine. As she inhaled its bright, clean smell, she was transported into her deep past.
She thought of a place long forgotten, which had become more myth and legend than any truth, a dream. She remembered what she had told that young vampire. You’re a myth yourself. They all were, they who lived and breathed and walked in mid-world like and unlike the humans surrounding them.
She touched the pine gently and turned back to the drawing of the wall she had broken. It showed a wood door stretching from floor to ceiling, an elaborate design sketched on the surface. They were instructions for the artisan, who no doubt would have to spend years carving the elaborate panels. The designs, she saw now, were the same as the small decorative scrolls around each of the key tags.
She took several pictures with her cell phone and zapped them over to her source.
>
>
>
>
Ingrid waved her wand and muttered an incantation that restored the wall to its former state. It was a shoddy spell; she wasn’t as good as her mother at restoration, but having the wand helped. She was almost done when she heard footsteps in the great hall, coming closer. Ingrid quickly took Oscar’s form and flew out the window, just as Killian Gardiner walked into the empty ballroom.
“Is anyone here?” he called. “I heard someone in the house. Show yourself!”
Ingrid flew away, her heart thudding in her chest. That was a close one. What was that door and where did it lead? She left the island, thinking of the sentence her family had endured for millennia. The broken bridge, her lost younger brother. What was behind that door? Her source knew. She would find out soon enough.
chapter twenty-nine
Husbands and Wives
The last time Joanna had been at the sprawling university in western Connecticut, only a few hours away from North Hampton, was at Ingrid’s college graduation. The school had looked particularly fine that day, with its b
lue banners flying and the apple-cheeked graduates milling among the alumni in shiny black top hats and greatcoats, swinging mahogany canes bedecked with ribbons in the school colors. Oh, she had been so proud that day! Joanna had been nervous, of course, that she would run into her husband, but thankfully he had kept his distance even then. If Ingrid ever discovered that her father had taught at the same university she had attended she was certain to hate her mother for keeping it a secret. Joanna had forced the good professor to take a leave of absence for four years while his daughter was enrolled.
Joanna walked about the tree-lined paths, past the Gothic buildings. It looked the same as it always had, the limestone and the ivy. “Excuse me,” she asked the nearest young person. “Could you help me find Professor Beauchamp?”
Just because she had not spoken to her husband for the better part of the century did not mean she had no idea what had happened to him. Far from it. She had kept tabs on him since their separation. It wasn’t too difficult. She knew he had spent most of his time along the coast; but when the work dried up along the shore, he had left the fishing business and settled into the quiet life of a university professor. He had been teaching for many years now; it was a miracle no one noticed how old he was, but then he was probably just using the same spell she used to be able to live in North Hampton for as long as she had.
She visited his office, but his teaching assistant said he hadn’t been keeping office hours all week. Joanna was able to procure his home address, which turned out to be not too far from campus. In a few minutes she found the small, well-kept building. The superintendent let her inside the front door when she told him she was the professor’s wife. His apartment was on the ground floor.
“Hello? Anyone home? It’s Jo.” She rapped on the door before entering and found it was ajar. She slipped inside. It was a small studio apartment, and Joanna was not prepared for what she found. A tiny room, spare and monastic. There was one small futon, with folded blankets, a refrigerator the size of a small cabinet, one writing desk with nothing on its surface except for a few photographs. There was a picture of Ingrid taken during graduation at the university—he had probably snuck that one while no one was looking—and one of Freya from when she had been on the cover of a magazine, when she used to live in New York. She felt a pang of sorrow and regret.