“The stupid warlock raised him from the dead, but it didn’t take. We all thought Fontanier had gone zombie, but it turned out that wasn’t the problem.”
Ingrid sighed. She remembered all too well now. By resurrecting the farmer after his body had been cold for a day, Lambert de Fois had broken the Covenant of the Dead, and Helda had not been pleased. “No. That wasn’t the problem at all.”
“Jean Fontanier wasn’t a zombie. Helda made sure he returned to life as something else. A demon.”
chapter thirty-six
Family Secrets
One of life’s greatest pleasures was returning home after a long trip, Joanna thought, as she put her carpetbag down in the hallway and hung her hat back on the hook. Gilly flew to her usual perch on the ceiling cove as Joanna turned on the lights. She was surprised to find the living room a mess, pillows on the floor, water bottles and wineglasses on the coffee table. The kitchen was worse, with its usual pile of dirty dishes and used pots on the stove. Joanna had gotten used to having the Alvarezes taking care of everything, and Gracella kept a very neat house. She rang the cottage but there was no answer. It was too late to say hello to Tyler anyway, she decided. She heard a car pull up and her daughters’ voices carry up from the driveway. Oh, good, they were home, she had quite a lot to tell them.
“Girls!” she said, throwing open the door.
“Mom!” Freya said, feeling guilty at the sight of her mother, even though nothing that had happened was technically her fault and at least one was certainly Joanna’s doing. Still, she did not relish telling her mother that in her absence, Ingrid had helped a vampire who had visited their town and that the nice guy Joanna had raised from the dead was now a zombie or, more likely, possessed by a demon.
“Where have you been?” Ingrid wanted to know.
Joanna ushered them inside and closed the door. “I’ve been looking for your father,” she said, wringing her hands. “I need his help. Listen, girls, there’s something you need to know about him—”
“I know where he is,” Ingrid interrupted.
“What do you mean, you know where Dad is?” Freya asked, staring at her sister. “And you didn’t say anything? How could you?”
“I’m sorry. He wrote me a few months ago. He wanted to get in touch with all of us, but he thought he’d try me first. He thought Mother would be too mad and that Freya would just burn his letters.”
Freya crossed her arms and flopped down on the nearest couch. “He was right about that. He left us, Ingrid. He abandoned our family! Don’t you get that?”
“I’m sorry, Mother. Freya. I didn’t want to tell you . . . I knew you would be angry, but I miss him so much. And he misses us, too. He just wants us to be a family again.”
“Yes, about your father,” Joanna said, her forehead creasing. “I need to tell you girls something. It’s very hard for me to say and I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.”
“Why? What are you talking about?” Freya asked.
Joanna looked them both straight in the eye, with her head held high, as if steeling herself for the gallows. “Your father did not leave you. I tossed him out. I told him he had to leave us alone and that if he tried to get in touch with either of you I would make sure he regretted it forever.”
For a moment neither of the girls spoke and a heavy silence fell, fraught with centuries of loss and heartache and resentment. Ingrid thought about all they had missed: years of her father’s sage advice, his protection, his love. Freya could not even speak. The betrayal was so cruel she felt a compression in the pit of her stomach, as if she were going to vomit. “Why, Mother?” she finally whispered.
“I’m so very sorry, my darlings. I could not stop myself, I was so angry about what happened during the trials. I wanted him to do something about it—break you both out of jail, use his power to sway the judge—but he would not. Because of the laws of mid-world of course. But I wasn’t thinking rationally.”
Freya blinked back tears. “You lied to us. You told us he left us, that he was ashamed of us. That he didn’t want anything more to do with our family.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Ingrid said, sitting on the couch and putting her arms around her sister. “We can’t get those years back. But there’s something else you need to know. Dad was helping me with something important. And I think something might have happened to him. He hasn’t returned any of my messages for several days.”
“Something has happened to him,” Joanna said. She took another deep breath. Freya wondered if she could stand to hear another revelation.
“He’s gone to see the White Council,” their mother told them. “I went to his apartment and waited for him. A messenger from the Council came by, with a letter granting him permission to speak, but obviously he decided not to wait for it. He’s left to consult with the oracle. He’s probably there already.”
Freya gasped. “But why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Unless word about our actions here have gotten back to him somehow; maybe he was reporting our violations of the restriction.” Joanna crossed her arms.
“Dad wouldn’t do that,” Ingrid said loyally. “If he went to the oracle there has to be a good reason for it.”
“What was he helping you with, anyway?” Freya asked.
“The Fair Haven blueprints. I found something—these odd little design keys. Dad was decoding it for me. He said he’d figured out what they were, but then he disappeared.”
“So maybe he wanted to talk to them about that?” Freya suggested.
Joanna whipped around to address Ingrid. “Fair Haven? You and Dad were doing something with Fair Haven?”
Ingrid described the key tags with the decorative scrolls. “I guess I should have asked you first, Mother, since you might know if there’s something unusual about Fair Haven that we should know about.”
Joanna shook her head. “Only that the Council told us when we settled here in North Hampton that the seam was there, the boundary where the living and the twilight worlds meet. But I think there might be something more to it. Before I left, I went out to Fair Haven, where the gray darkness in the water seems to have concentrated.”
“It’s not just here; it’s in the South Pacific, and near Alaska as well,” Ingrid said. “And I saw on TV the other day they think they might have found one near Reykjavík.”
Joanna inhaled sharply at the news. “Whatever is in the oceans is not of this earth, I’m quite sure of that. I went to look for your father because I was hoping he could help me figure out what it was and where it came from so we could stop it. That spell I put on it won’t last. I’m going to need both of you to help hold it up.”
“We’ll start immediately.” Freya nodded.
“Good. With the three of us I think we can hold it back a while longer until we figure out how to get rid of it entirely.” Joanna looked at her girls. “One more thing. What happened to the house? Has Gracella not been by to clean it? And how’s my Tyler doing?”
“Tyler’s in the hospital,” Freya said. “Don’t worry, I checked on him. He has a fever and an infection but the doctors say they have it under control.”
Joanna tried to keep calm. If Tyler was sick, the hospital was the safest place for him to be. “First things first: Gardiners Island and then the hospital.”
They were preparing to leave when there was a sharp knock on the door, and the three women jumped and looked at each other fearfully.
“The Council!” Ingrid yelped.
“The oracle doesn’t knock,” Freya scoffed. She peeked out the window and saw several police cars parked in the driveway, their lights flashing. “What on earth?”
“Open the door,” Joanna instructed.
Ingrid moved toward the front door and flung it wide. “Matt!” she cried, her hands flying to her glasses. In all the ways she had imagined Matthew Noble visiting her home, this certainly was not one of them. The detective looked apologetic as he stepped inside the doo
rway with two policemen behind him.
“Hey, Ingrid, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m hoping your family has some time this afternoon to come down to the station and answer a few questions,” he said, looking tired and anxious.
“Why?”
“Can we talk about it when we get there?”
“Do we have to?” Freya demanded. “Don’t you need a warrant—or something?”
“No, we just want to ask some questions,” he said sternly. “It’s standard procedure.”
“Matt—what’s going on?” Ingrid asked fearfully.
“Why do you need to talk to the girls?” Joanna asked, her manner and tone imperious, as if the police detective were an underling daring to address the queen.
Freya snorted. “We’re being arrested, aren’t we?”
“Not at all, not at all. Look, we just want to ask you a few questions,” Matt repeated for the third time, shaking his head slightly at Ingrid, as if to say he couldn’t speak freely at the moment.
“Fine,” Freya said. “Ingrid, let’s go. See what they want to talk about.” They motioned toward the door, but the detective stopped and looked apologetically back at their mother.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’d like to talk to you as well,” he said.
“Me? Why?” Joanna’s forehead crinkled in worry.
“We’ll get into it down at the station. Ladies?” Matt asked, leading them to the patrol cars parked in their driveway. One by one, the Beauchamp women were placed in the backseat, and the police car sped away, sirens on and lights flashing. They might not have been arrested, Freya thought, but it sure felt like they were in trouble.
chapter thirty-seven
The Salem Trials
Freya made a face at her sister, who sat stoically next to her in the backseat of the squad car. Her mother was on the other side, and none of them had said a word since they were taken into custody. When they arrived at the station, the three of them were separated, and Freya was left to ponder her fate and that of her family alone in a small room. The patrolmen who were her friends did not look her in the eye when she was led in, a bad sign. She wondered what was going to happen when the door opened, but it was only Ingrid who walked in, her face ashen.
“What’s going on? Did you talk to Matt? What’s happening?”
Ingrid shook her head. “No. They wanted to talk to Mother first. They had to use the room to interrogate someone else, so they moved me here. I have no idea what’s happening.”
“Some friend you got there,” Freya muttered. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the small room with the one-way mirror. She wondered who was watching them. “Well, this brings back memories.”
Her sister closed her eyes and bit the top of her thumb. “I know.”
Freya sighed. In 1690 they had settled in the pretty little town of Salem in Massachusetts. Their lives had brought them to the New World as healers. Their mother had been one of the most sought-after midwives, had delivered healthy babies in a time when so many women died in childbirth and so many newborns died of fevers and pox. Ingrid worked in the community the same way she did now, doling out household charms and spells. Their father was a fisherman, due to his ability to maneuver the waters and bring in plentiful harvests.
Then something terrible happened. Bridget Bishop, who helped Joanna with the washing, came to her for help during her pregnancy and died in childbirth. Bridget was very dear to the family, and Joanna had not been able to help her. Then the rumors started: Freya was said to be conducting an affair with a boy who had pledged to marry Ann Putnam, who would become the ringleader of accusers. Ann and her friend Mercy Lewis testified that they had seen Freya and Ingrid “flying in the air through the winter mist.” The trials were a farce, but effective. The community turned on them, branding Freya a slut, Ingrid a bitch, and Joanna a monster. Norman and Joanna had been spared but they were given a more terrible punishment. They had to watch as their daughters were hanged at Gallows Hill in 1692.
Freya shuddered. She could still remember the feeling of the noose around her neck, the scratchy rope that made her skin itch. The way the crowd had spat and thrown rotten food at their cart, the hatred and the fear and the hysteria.
“Don’t,” Ingrid said, as she knew exactly what Freya was thinking. “It doesn’t help.”
The Salem trials were the beginning of the end of practicing magic in mid-world. When the girls were reborn, they found a new world and new rules awaiting them. The family had resettled in North Hampton, and Joanna explained that the White Council had paid them a visit right after the burial. The Council told them that in order for any of them to continue to live in mid-world, every one of the Waelcyrgean would now have to adhere to a new condition: The Restriction of Magical Powers. In effect, it meant that they could no longer practice the art of magic and witchcraft without punishment and recrimination from the Council. They were to live as humans, with lives that were as ordinary as possible. There could be no more undue attention that would jeopardize knowledge of their existence. To continue to survive in mid-world they had to agree to live in the shadows. Those who did not comply would be in breach of Council laws and would be severely punished.
Their mother also told them that Norman had left the family for good, and they never saw their father again.
Back in Salem, as in North Hampton today, Freya understood that they would not be allowed to use their magic to save themselves. That had been made clear from the very beginning, when they found themselves stuck on the other side of the bridge, right in the dawn of the world. Sometimes Freya wondered how it was that she was so old and yet so young at the same time that she found herself in the same place as she had centuries before. Would she never learn? Maybe the Council was right, maybe magic had no place in mid-world. Every time they practiced it in the open, this happened: an anxious mob, a swift rush to judgment; and the result was always the same—witches hanging from the gallows, or burned at the stake, their ashes scattered to the four winds.
They sat in the room for what felt like an eternity but in reality was only a few hours. The policemen were kind and polite, especially those who had worked with Freya before, bringing deli sandwiches and drinks from the vending machine. But they were not allowed to leave. Matt Noble checked in on them from time to time, but Freya had been able to understand from his tight-lipped anxiety and Ingrid’s mournful gazes that while he was not happy about what was happening, he had no power to stop it, either.
Finally, the door opened and their mother was allowed inside the room.
“What’s going on?” Freya asked, helping Joanna to the nearest chair.
“It’s the most absurd thing,” Joanna said. She looked at her daughters, completely mystified by the situation in which they had found themselves. Here there were, afraid of the Council’s recriminations, worrying about thunderbolts from the sky, and they had forgotten that the human realm was historically the area that had brought them the most pain.
“Okay, what is it? What did they want to talk to you about?”
Joanna looked at her girls with an expression of disbelief. “Maura Thatcher woke up from her coma.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Ingrid asked.
“Well, yes. Except she told the detectives I was the one who attacked them the night that Bill died, that she saw me hit him on the back of the head with a rock. Then I did the same to her. Can you imagine? According to her, I killed him. “
chapter thirty-eight
A Good Offense
Is a Good Defense
Before the girls could react, the door opened again. Matt Noble entered the room and addressed the three women grouped around the table. “I’m so sorry. It’s quite late and we’re going to have to continue this another day.” He looked plaintively at Ingrid but she refused to acknowledge him.
“So we’re free to go now?” Freya asked.
“Even me?” Joanna asked tentatively.
“Yes, even you, Mrs.
Beauchamp.” Matt nodded. “Again, I apologize for the inconvenience. We’re hoping you can come back tomorrow and answer our questions then.”
Freya nodded curtly. “Come on, Ingrid, Mother,” she said, leading her sister and mother out of the room. Ingrid looked as if she had gone catatonic, and Joanna appeared exhausted beyond reason.
“We’re not coming back tomorrow,” Ingrid said, finding her voice and looking straight at the detective. “Not without our lawyer.”
One good thing about lawyers, Ingrid thought, was that they were always punctual. Attorneys and their bills always arrived right on time. Antonio Forseti was a defense lawyer with a sterling reputation. He was also a warlock and an old friend of the family. Like the Beauchamps, he had been unable to practice magic since the restriction had been imposed on all of their kind. Instead he had used his natural talents at negotiating, striking balances, and using mediation to build one of the largest and most successful legal firms in New York City. He arrived the next afternoon armed with news.
“So I talked to the DA down here,” he said, taking a seat at the head of the formal dining room. Forseti was a large man with a powerful barrel chest and a full head of dark hair, and his handshake had left Ingrid feeling a bit bruised.
“What did he say?” Joanna asked, her voice rising a few octaves. “Am I to be arrested?”
The girls had spent the evening calming down their mother, who had been on the verge of hysterics all night. Joanna had argued for leaving town as soon as possible, and only when Ingrid reminded her that leaving forever meant never seeing Tyler did she stop pressing them to run away.
“Not yet. Right now, it’s just Maura Thatcher’s word against yours, and she just got out of a coma. They don’t have anything to prove it’s true, nothing that’ll hold up in court at least. Not yet.”
“What about us? What do they want to ask us about?” Freya wanted to know.
Forseti gazed at them intently. “They want to ask about your potions and Ingrid about her knots.” He took a long sip from his coffee cup. “They found Molly Lancaster’s body buried a few miles away from the beach. She was beaten to death. The Adams boy’s confessed, said it was him, that he killed her that evening.”