Right behind the postcoital couple was Mayor Todd Hutchinson (fervent masturbation last night in front of a computer), with his friend, flashy developer Blake Aland (a tangle of some sort in his car the other week: it was blurry and the vision wouldn’t focus, but Freya sensed some kind of sexual frustration here), then the good reverend and his wife (a flash of leather whips and masks over the holiday weekend). Sometimes Freya felt a bit dizzy from all the information. She should be used to it by now, her talent—she refused to call it a “gift”—but it still came as a surprise.
This was just another manifestation of her nature, the ability to see intense emotion—and it wasn’t just sexual passion or romantic love that she was able to see. Freya could also read intense anger and hatred, the opposite of love as it were: murderous rage, overwhelming anxiety. Over the centuries, her talent had been very useful. Although there was very little of it, North Hampton was not immune from crime. When it did happen, it was usually scandalous and spectacular, like the chilling murder of a socialite who had been poisoned at her own dinner party, or sad and unusual, like what had happened to Bill and Maura Thatcher. Their bodies had been found on the beach just last winter, both of them bleeding from the head. Bill died from his injuries but Maura was still in intensive care, comatose at the hospital.
Freya had been instrumental in bringing the socialite’s murderer to justice. An aggrieved housekeeper who was an occasional patron was behind the heiress’s death. Freya saw exactly how she did it, putting a thimbleful of poison into the champagne, expertly popping back the cork. She had pointed the police in the right direction so that they were able to build their case. The detectives had found a bottle of the toxic substance among the housekeeper’s possessions, which led to the conviction, a thrilling conclusion all around.
She was glad to be helpful, to be able to use her natural talents in a discreet way that was technically still within the restriction placed upon her. She wasn’t practicing any witchcraft, after all. She couldn’t help it if she could see motive, intent, and guilt, and since almost everyone in town walked into the North Inn, Freya kept the pulse of the community in hand. She always knew who had stolen from the cash register, or broken into the guest house, or vandalized the public school. If the policemen had once been skeptical of her they were no longer, except for that one detective who kept badgering her for explanations of her hunches. So it was odd that she still had no idea what had happened to the Thatchers, who had both been well-liked. Perhaps the police were right, it was a random act of a vagrant, a stranger, but it frustrated Freya not to know.
She served Dan and Amanda their drinks. She smiled at the honeymooning couple—the first two weeks of any relationship was a honeymoon as far as Freya was concerned. Couples waited so long to marry these days, or had been living together for years before, that most honeymoons had very little mooning or honey. The sex, if there was any, was usually of the garden variety, missionary style. Most couples were much more excited about their plush hotel rooms than about seeing each other naked. The days of trembling virginal brides slipping in between cold sheets were long past. Which was why Freya looked on new couples with affection. These were her people, worshippers at her temple. She blessed them with her smile and copious free drinks.
The reverend and his wife ordered a decent bottle of wine, and Blake wanted a beer. She set the orders on the bar and turned to her final customer. “What can I get you, sir?” she asked the mayor.
“Whiskey, straight, thanks Freya.”
“Sure thing, Mayor,” she said. Todd Hutchinson was young, slick, and ambitious. He had big plans for North Hampton and had swept into office on the campaign donations of people like Blake Aland. The young mayor was popular around town, although Freya knew her sister, Ingrid, was not a fan ever since she’d gotten wind of his proposal to sell the library. Poor Ingrid, there was nothing she would be able to do if the proposal was approved.
Unlike Ingrid, Freya had nothing against Todd, who was polite and tipped well. He was married to a local news anchor rumored to be in line for a national spot on the network. Maybe that was the reason he’d had to resort to online porn. Two huge careers meant couples rarely had time for each other. It was too bad. Freya handed him his whiskey and turned back to the bar.
“What’s up tonight? So quiet for a Friday,” said her boss, Sal McLaughlin, who’d inherited the North Inn and its bar from his brother, who’d retired. Sal was a cheerful man of seventy, with wiggly eyebrows and a belly laugh. He had hired Freya on the spot and acted as her honorary grandfather. Sal coughed noisily into his handkerchief and wheezed.
“You all right? That sounded pretty gross,” she teased as Sal blew his nose again with a big honk.
“Allergies.” He shrugged. “Must be the change of weather.” He wiped his nose and sighed, his eyes tearing. “Always hits right about June.” It had been an unusually abrupt change from a rainy spring to a humid summer; the air was thick and heavy, even more so than usual. And the heat was not usually quite this stifling or oppressive so early in the season.
“It’s like a funeral in here. Who died?” Sal joked, as he cranked up the AC.
Freya shrugged. She knew it was her energy that was causing the gloom, but she couldn’t help it. So it was an off day. She couldn’t be expected to keep the party going forever, could she? A hand waved and she walked over to the opposite counter of the U-shaped bar where Becky Bauman was downing dirty martinis like candy. “Another one?” Freya asked.
“Oh, why not.” Becky sighed as she stared at her husband, flirting with his date, across the bar. Becky and Ross had recently separated. They had not been married long, but they were the parents of a six-month-old; and Freya saw that a darkness had clouded the love that had once held them together, as exhaustion and sleep deprivation led to nonstop arguments and quarreling that left both of them even more unhappy and unsatisfied, until Ross had finally had enough and moved out.
Ross was currently deep in conversation with Natasha Mayles, a former model who was one of the town’s too-too-toos: too rich, too pretty, too picky. Too good for any man to come near when it came down to it. The Natasha Mayleses of the world certainly thought too much of themselves to settle down with just anyone. It was a wonder what she was doing with Ross Bauman, who was not even divorced yet.
“What happened to us?” Becky asked, as she watched Freya assemble her cocktail. “I hate him. I really do. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Freya caught a flash of an image: another argument, this one vivid and gut-wrenching, culminating in a violence that had not been there before—arms flailing, the baby crying, a push down the stairs. . . . She turned away and hesitated. Regardless of what her mother or sister believed, truly she did not do very much to the drinks except make them taste better, a by-product of the fact that she made them. Everything Freya made or cooked tasted delicious, a consequence of her magical heritage.
But the ugly scene she had just witnessed—and she did not know who exactly was in peril, Becky, Ross, or their baby; the image did not reveal that much—made her think. Maybe if there hadn’t been a shred of love between them Freya would never have considered doing what she was about to do. But there was. She saw the two of them sneaking glances at each other when they thought the other was not looking. Besides, Natasha Mayles was all wrong for Ross. She swanned into the North Inn with her haughty accent and bored, quasi-European attitude.
Truly, it was a ridiculous rule anyway, why couldn’t they use magic? Why not? Just because of a few silly girls who told a few lies? So a couple of lying bitches were allowed to ruin their lives forever? Freya would never forget the way those awful girls had spun their artful story, their crazed histrionics in the courtroom, the growing list of suspects, the carriages that took the condemned down to Gallows Hill. How stubborn and blind she had been! She had assumed no one would believe their accusers, that no one in their right mind would think that she and Ingrid were capable of such evil. To add insult to
injury, her own kind, their own Council, took away their powers after everything they had been through—hard punishment indeed. Well. She had had enough. She was tired of feeling afraid. Tired of feeling useless. Tired of trying to pretend she was something she wasn’t. Tired of hiding her light in a corner. Under a lampshade, behind a curtain, in a dark room. Tired.
Freya Beauchamp was made of magic. Without magic she was just someone who poured drinks. She had been so good for so long, all of them had, and for what? What was the point of it all, really? It was a waste of their talents; were they really supposed to just live in the shadows and fade away? Act as if they were ordinary for the rest of their immortal lives?
Freya thought of everything they had given up: flying, for one; she still remembered how it felt, zooming through the skies, the wind in her hair. She missed the midnight capers in the woods as well, the powerful rituals that were taboo now that pagan was a bad word. The world had moved on, of course, that was to be expected; maybe it would have happened even without the restriction, but now they would never know. Like the rest of her family, she was stuck on this side of the bridge, with no way to return home.
She made up her mind. She touched Ross’s beer glass and added just a smidge of gingerroot and lemon zest. Then she stirred it with the red straw from Becky’s cocktail. The pint of beer turned a bright shade of pink for a split second. Now, this was definitely against the rules, this little concoction she had made, this little love potion. Sure, she had practiced a little magic before, here and there—that boy back in New York, that vampire’s familiar she had healed, for instance. But that was in the East Village, where she had been fairly certain what little, insignificant, inconsequential magic she had performed had been artfully concealed and absorbed by the city’s own kinetic energy.
This was something quite different, different even from the little nudges she gave the police to help solve crimes. This was the first real love potion she had created in . . . well, when the number of years was so big, who was counting? Besides, it was a shame to let such a good couple go to waste, and she shuddered at the thought of what might be if she did not: that terrible argument, a child growing up without parents, one dead, the other in jail. Freya increased the potency of the drinks she was about to serve. It didn’t have to happen. All they needed was a little help to get over the bump. They just needed a little reminder of why they had been together in the first place. She set the martini in front of Becky and the beer in front of Ross. “Cheers!” she told them, holding up her own glass.
“To our health,” Becky mumbled. She was probably embarrassed to have revealed so much to Freya earlier.
“Bottoms up,” Ross called to Becky from across the bar. He took a huge pull from his glass; and for a moment his face turned gray and it looked as if he were going to be sick, or throw up. Freya felt a fluttering of nerves—what if she had forgotten to mix it just right? What if she had poisoned him somehow—what if she had forgotten the correct amount to put in the elixir? She rushed to his side, hoping there was still time to serve him an antidote, when the color returned to his cheeks and he took a deep breath. “What’s in that?” he asked Freya.
“Why? Is there something wrong with it?” she asked, trying not to feel too alarmed.
“There’s nothing wrong with it! It’s awesome!” he declared, and downed the whole thing in one huge gulp. When he was done, his eyes seemed to light up, and he looked across the bar at his wife with a face full of wonder, falling in love with her all over again. Becky returned the smile tentatively, and in a few minutes the two of them were giggling, then howling with laughter, while Natasha looked confused and surly. Then Ross excused himself from his date, walked over to his wife, and gave her a back-dipping “Times Square–World War Two has ended” victory kiss. Natasha stomped off in a huff.
Freya sighed in relief. A few minutes later, she was smiling like a Cheshire cat. Her potion had worked. She still knew exactly how to make them. In an instant, the music on the jukebox suddenly pumped to life: Axl Rose screeching a love song: “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” She’s got a smile that it seems to me, Reminds me of childhood memories . . . The music began to fill up the night, lecherous and passionate, making girls grab their boys’ hands to lead them to the ad hoc dance floor in front of the jukebox. Dan and Amanda began to dirty-dance, and even the reverend and his wife took a spin. In the corner, the Baumans were making out so heavily—was that Ross’s hand up Becky’s shirt?—they should really think of leaving; it was getting a tad too heated. Even the mayor sat at the counter with a dreamy look on his face.
Freya drummed her fingers on the counter, swaying to the music. Sal had been right. It had felt like winter in there for a moment. But the frost had melted now. Of course, she still felt terrible about what happened with Killian. But a little magic went a long way.
chapter five
Sister Talk
You didn’t!” Ingrid said, looking up from her bowl of cereal and quickly putting the letter she had been reading back into her pocket.
“I did!” Freya said gleefully, too gleefully, Ingrid thought, feeling a twinge of jealousy at her sister’s exuberance as she picked off a few grapes from the bowl to feed her pet griffin, a part-eagle, part-lion hybrid, the one magical concession from their past that the Council had allowed, only because there was no way to separate a witch from her familiar without destroying either one. Truly Oscar was getting too big for the nonentity spell she’d placed on him centuries ago; he was almost the size of a Labrador, but he had the soul of a pussycat.
“And nothing happened?” Ingrid asked doubtfully. “Oh, Siegfried, I hear you, too. But you don’t like grapes,” she reminded the black cat.
“Not a thing!” Freya crowed, rooting around the cupboard for flour. She had just returned from her graveyard shift at the bar. It had been a long, busy night, one of their best in recent memory. “I feel like pancakes, do you want some?”
“I guess. So what are you going to do?”
“What do you think? I’m going to do it again! It felt good, Ingrid. I felt . . . like I was me again . . . you know?” She began cracking eggs in the bowl, looking around and admiring the newly clean kitchen. Things were so much nicer in the house now that the Alvarezes were taking care of it. Joanna had really taken to the little boy, too. It was cute. They all found him adorable. Tyler was an interesting kid, wise beyond his years. He could beat any of them at chess and could already add and subtract large numbers in his head. One day he had told them with a solemn face that it took fifty-seven steps to get to the beach from their house. Most of his diet consisted of dessert, which made him perfect for Joanna, who had yet to discover a cake she did not like. Ingrid brought him chess books from the library and Freya chased him around the garden. The house was happier with the Alvarez family inside it.
She noticed Ingrid surreptitiously reading her letter again. Her sister had begun receiving letters over the summer. They always arrived in a plain white envelope with no return address. Whoever sent them, Ingrid did not say, and Freya did not ask. Since moving back home, the sisters kept an easy peace. Freya did not ask Ingrid why she had spent her last several years as a humble library clerk, and Ingrid did not ask why Freya had dropped out of NYU and sold her bar in New York. If they felt like telling each other, they would. They shared confidences like clothes, but respected each other’s privacy.
It was funny how at home they fell back on their old habits, taking their usual places at the familial tree. Ingrid worked days, Freya took the late shifts, and they usually met for breakfast, at the beginning of Ingrid’s day and the end of Freya’s.
After a few seconds she flipped the pancakes. She didn’t need magic to know they would taste fantastic: light and buttery with a nutty sweetness. She stacked two plates and brought them to the table. She drizzled her pancakes with maple syrup, while Ingrid ate hers with fruit.
“Did Mother tell you about the dead birds on our beach the other day?” Ingrid asked.
> Freya nodded, forking her pancake. “Yeah. What’s the big deal?”
“She’s not sure. She thinks it’s an omen.”
“Uh-huh. Remember when she thought my old English teacher was a warlock who was out to get us after he accused me of plagiarism in eighth grade?”
Ingrid snickered. “Poor Mr. Sweeney, it’s a good thing she’s not allowed to or Mom would’ve hexed him!” she said, enjoying the sisterly solidarity. One of the greatest pleasures of their lives was talking about their formidable mother. That subject could never be exhausted.
“What Mom needs is a date,” Freya said, feeding Siegfried from her plate. “She’s got to get over Dad at some point.” They hadn’t seen their father since the restriction had been handed down, which was one of those subjects they never talked about. Bringing up their father only made their mother angry all over again. It was a shame what had happened between their parents, but there was nothing they could do about it. Dad was gone, Mom didn’t want to talk about it, end of story. Freya tried not to hold it against her mother, or her father, since he dropped out of their lives and never even tried to contact them afterward.
It was easier that way, just like it was easier to pretend there had only always been two children in the family. It was too difficult and sad to think about her missing twin brother, and aside from lighting a candle every year on his Feast Day in February, they never mentioned him. As for Dad, there was no candle and no remembrance, only a void, an empty seat at the table. “So what do you think? Mom and Sal? I could make it happen.” Freya smiled naughtily. “He’s got a crush.”
“No. Don’t do that to Sal. Mom would eat him for breakfast. You’ve got to stop thinking everyone’s problems can be solved by falling in love,” Ingrid said, looking uncomfortable and pushing away her plate.