“Huh,” Freya sighed, getting up from the table and beginning to stack dishes.
“You should be careful. You might have gotten away with making a potion this once, but who knows what will happen next time?” Ingrid warned. “You’re going to get in trouble if you keep doing it.”
“Maybe.” Freya nodded. “But I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore. And until they actually come down here to tell me to stop, I’m going to keep on doing it,” she announced. “I’m sick of living with my hands tied behind my back!” She paused, letting the hot water run over the dirty dishes. Somehow the pristine kitchen and the presence of the Alvarezes inspired her to clean, something she had never done before. “But whatever you do, don’t tell Mother.”
“Don’t tell Mother what?” Joanna asked cheerfully, breezing into the kitchen and smiling at her beautiful daughters, Gilly flying by her shoulder.
“Nothing,” the two of them mumbled. For a moment they were kids again and had just finished burying Freya’s wretched zombie gerbil in the backyard. The ground had kept shaking for an endless amount of time, it seemed. Ingrid had found one of Joanna’s old books, the ones they weren’t supposed to touch, which their mother had hidden away when the restriction was passed, and had finally hit upon the right incantation to stop Freya’s wayward spell.
“Hmmm . . .” Joanna said, looking from one to the other with skepticism. “Why do I have a feeling no one ever tells me anything around here?”
chapter six
A Knot in Her Belly
Ingrid was thinking of her sister’s newfound zeal when she arrived at work that morning. She realized that she had never seen Freya so happy, not in a long time. Not just happy, there was something else. Freya looked more vibrant somehow, she was more present. Living without magic had caused them to fade a little; without even noticing, they had become as drab and gray as the mundane world around them. Ingrid latched her bicycle by the front gate and let herself into the dark library. Passing by Tabitha’s empty desk, she felt another prick of frustration. For years Ingrid had kept silent, had let science and medicine do their work, but now she felt a reckless courage stirring in her soul. She couldn’t stand to see her friend in so much pain anymore. So much unnecessary pain.
Ingrid looked around fearfully. What was she thinking? She wasn’t her sister, daring and courageous. Ingrid remembered all too well how she had been left to starve in that cell, the jeers from the mob, how terribly frightened she had been, alone and hated. If she did this, she would be breaking the agreement that allowed her to remain in this world.
But what did Freya say that morning? I’m sick of living with my hands tied behind my back. Well, so was Ingrid. She had had it with being useless and insignificant.
When Tabitha arrived for work Ingrid took her aside. “Tab? Can I have a sec?” She led Tabitha to the back office, where they stored the archival material. “You have to trust me, okay?” she said, as she switched off the lights. The room was bathed in a greenish darkness that came from the window film.
“What’s going on?” Tabitha asked a bit nervously. “What’s gotten into you, Ingrid? You’re like . . . possessed.”
“Just stand there,” Ingrid instructed. She knelt on the floor and began to draw a pentagram around the perimeter of Tabitha’s feet. The white chalk outline glowed in the dark room.
“Is that a—?”
“Shush!” Ingrid ordered, removing a white candle from her pocket and placing it in the center of the five-pointed shape she had made. She lit the candle and mumbled a few words. Turning to Tabitha, she said, “You trust me, don’t you? I’m trying to help you.” They were colleagues but friends as well, and Ingrid hoped Tabitha would trust their friendship enough to allow her to do this. She continued to work in a serene and thoughtful manner, but her heart was leaping in her chest. She was doing it—she was practicing witchcraft again. Magic. Freya was right, it was as if something that had been deeply buried in her soul was coming alive again, as if she just discovered she could breathe underwater all along. Ingrid felt dizzy and giddy. She hadn’t done anything like this in . . . longer than she could remember. She waited for a thunderbolt to strike. But there was nothing.
With the witch sight from the pentagram she took a good long look at her friend, until the junior librarian squirmed under the penetrating gaze. The pentagram revealed what Ingrid had always suspected. There was something blocking Tabitha’s energy, a darkness in the core, a silver-colored mass, tight and constricted, knotted, like a fist or a tumor. No wonder she couldn’t get pregnant. Ingrid had seen them before, but nothing quite this deadly. She placed a hand on Tabitha’s belly and yanked it out, almost falling backward in her attempt. But she got it out, all right. The malignancy dissipated as soon as it had been removed from a physical host.
Tabitha just stared at her as if Ingrid had gone insane. She hadn’t felt a thing; it looked as if Ingrid was just waving her hands about and babbling. “Are we done now?”
“Not quite,” Ingrid said. Removing it was only the first step. She flicked the lights back on and blew out the candle. “You also need to do something about your hair,” she said.
“My hair! What do you mean?” Tabitha looked skeptical.
Ingrid realized, in all the time she’d known her, she’d never seen Tabitha wear her hair down. Tabitha’s hair was brushed back from her forehead so tightly it looked painful, and then it was knotted and woven so that it was almost as thick as rope. Ingrid noticed other things, too: Tabitha’s clunky oxfords were tightly laced. Her sweater (it was chilly indoors with the air-conditioning) was tied with ribbons instead of buttons. The woman had more knots on her person than a sailing ship. If she kept it up, there was a possibility that the silver evil could form again. The darkness fed on constriction; it was attracted to it, like moths to flame.
She whispered fiercely, “Try it for once. Wear your hair down. And get rid of those shoes. And that sweater. Wear slip-on shoes. One of those cardigans that open in the front. No zippers. No buttons. Nothing but free-floating fabric. Free. And no knots.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just try it for a couple months. I read somewhere that it might work, it’s like a karma thing.” These days New Age wisdom was an easy enough explanation for a little bit of white magic. Tabitha told her she would consider it, but she left the storage room shaking her head.
Ingrid brushed off signs of the pentagram and went back to work, her mind still racing. Of course, wearing flowy fabrics didn’t cut it on its own. She had to fight fire with fire, or knots with a knot of her own. When Tabitha wasn’t looking, Ingrid took some of Tabitha’s hair that had shed on her office chair. Now all she needed was one of Chad’s. . . . Then she thought, Tabitha kept an afghan in their car. . . . Chad had dark hair, so it would be easy enough to find one of his since Tab was blond. During her break, Ingrid let herself into Tabitha’s Camry and found what she was looking for. Back at her office, she threaded the two strands together, making a tiny, insect-size knot, while she hurriedly chanted the right words for the charm.
Her heart thrummed within her chest, and goose bumps prickled her arms as her fingers worked quickly, twisting and turning. This wasn’t magic, she kept telling herself. It was just a few words. A tiny little knot. No one would ever have to know. This was even more fun than removing that blockage; instead of merely cutting out the garbage, here she was creating something. Ingrid felt the magic bubbling inside, the thrilling rush that came from harnessing and directing a wild and unimaginable power to her bidding, and she felt her cheeks turn red with excitement. She had missed this more than she could admit.
“What are you making?”
The sound of the voice shook her and the spell broke. Ingrid quickly put the knot away in her pocket. “Matthew Noble! You surprised me.” She didn’t answer his question.
“It’s Matt, I keep telling you.” Matthew Noble smiled. He was a senior detective with the police department and
even at thirty still looked like the college athlete he had once been, tall, with light brown hair, a pleasant Irish face, pale skin, sunburned nose, clear blue eyes, wearing his uniform of rumpled sports jacket and tan slacks. She could sense something in the way he looked at her—too frankly and too, well, appreciatively. He was certainly good-looking, but she wasn’t interested—not at all—and it was becoming something of a nuisance, his crush on her. It made her uncomfortable. Especially since he never did anything about it. If only he would ask her out so she could crush his crush. Yet he seemed satisfied with merely looking at her and needling her for books. She doubted he ever read them. He didn’t seem the bookish type.
“Sorry to bother you, but there was no one at the front desk. And I thought you might have a book to recommend.” When he smiled his teeth actually shone.
“I sure do,” Ingrid replied, thinking quickly. “Here,” she said, pressing J. J. Ramsey Baker’s latest into his hands. Ha. See what he thought of that! Serves Matthew Noble (did they live in Our Town? Could his name be even more corny?) right. At least she had found a way to put his attraction to her to good use. “If you like the book I’d love it if you could recommend it to a lot more people.” Maybe that way she could keep it on the shelves and the sensitive author wouldn’t have a temper tantrum when he found it kicked to the curb, she thought, as she stamped his library card and logged the transaction in the computer.
“Sure will.” Matt nodded, putting the book away without even glancing at its cover. He looked as if he were going to say something more, then decided against it. Ingrid watched him leave, noting his broad shoulders and easy glide, then went back to her weaving. Before the end of the day, she slipped the little knot of hair in Tabitha’s purse.
No magic here. Just a lucky knot to help a friend, that was all it was, Ingrid kept telling herself. No one would ever know or find out.
chapter seven
A New Boy
Motherhood had robbed Joanna of her figure, of that she was sure. No matter how much she dieted (and she had tried them all: the Atkins and the Zone, the low-cal and the low-carb, the cabbage and the cookie, the Jenny and the Watchers, the South Beach and the Sugar Busters, the tea and juice cleanses, the endless hours spent exercising—first the running and then the spinning—the step classes and the yoga and the Pilates), she never could get rid of those dreaded last ten pounds, that tire around her belly. Her daughters chided her on her obsession, telling her she looked good for her age. And what age would that be exactly? Six thousand years?
It was understood that women of a certain age no longer cared about their looks, but it was a lie. Vanity did not die of old age, especially in beautiful women, and oh, she had been beautiful once—so beautiful that she had wed the most fearsome god of all. But it was too late to think of what had been. Her husband had abandoned her, along with her good looks, a long time ago. Oh, in the right light she was attractive, she supposed, she was still “handsome,” but who wanted to be called handsome when one was once beautiful?
The problem, as she saw it, was that right when she would finally get her figure back, bam, she would find herself pregnant again, and the whole cycle of gaining and losing would start up once more. The children had to be reborn whenever they got themselves into trouble and had to leave the world, or else had been pushed out of it by accident (a car crash, maybe; Freya had once perished in a hotel fire) or malice (like the crisis that had claimed their lives in the seventeenth century), and Joanna would begin to feel the symptoms. It usually happened after she hadn’t heard from her girls in a century or two. First, her gray hair would turn blond again. She would marvel at her changed appearance, the loss of wrinkles, the fat in her cheeks, strong hands that did not ache from arthritis. Then it would happen: the vomiting, the nausea, the exhaustion. And she would realize: goddamnit, she was pregnant!
Nine months later she would have a fat, crying baby to care for and love. This time the girls were reborn just a few years apart, so that in the current lifetime they had grown up like proper sisters again, squabbling over toys, annoying each other on long car rides. Life had been a happy tedium of preschool and swimming and gymnastics and endless birthday parties along with the occasional accidental magical outburst: Ingrid’s griffin causing havoc with the flower beds; and having to keep Freya from hexing mean girls she did not like.
It was easy enough to fool the neighbors; the restriction did not prohibit Joanna from using her considerable power to keep their immortality hidden. It wouldn’t do to have people wonder why the “widow” Beauchamp suddenly looked half her age and was pregnant to boot. Magic was useful in that matter at least.
No matter what, though, no matter how long it had been, with every hopeful pregnancy she never got her boy back. Never. Of course she understood it was useless to hope that she would. That had been made clear to her during the sentencing after the bridge between the worlds had collapsed. Joanna knew he was still alive, but no witchcraft could help him now. He was out of her reach.
One would think after so many lifetimes the pain would dull a little, but it never did. If anything, every passing year just made it ache that much more. She missed him more than ever and thought about him every day. That was the problem with motherhood: not only did it make you fat and put anxiety lines in your forehead, but the love you felt—that intense, all-consuming love for one’s child—was like owning the sharpest and most exquisite knife. It stabbed her right in the heart. Her boy was alive somewhere but he might as well be dead to her, since she would never get him back. They had taken that away from her. It was the worst kind of sentence a mother could endure, which was why it had been given.
Her beautiful boy, her happiest child: his smile was the sun, his light lit up the whole entire world. It was true what they said about mothers and sons: it was a special bond, a mutual admiration society. It was also true what they said: one loved one’s children the same amount, but sometimes you liked one child more than another. She had been mourning his loss for so long, and the girls were a great comfort. Still, it had never been the same. But now she had this wonderful new boy: this Tyler Alvarez, of the quirky flapping hands and the mischievous smile, who would not embrace her yet would head-butt her if he wanted a kiss on the top of his head. He did not heal the hole in her heart, but he did fill a gap that had been empty for a very long time. Joanna took to the boy immediately. He called her Abuela, or “Lala” for short, and she called him Checkers. She wasn’t sure where that came from, something with his cheeks maybe. She was constantly pinching them. She loved her daughters, but they did not need her anymore. They were grown-ups with their own problems. Tyler was another story.
Right now they were making a pie. Motherhood might have robbed her of her figure, but to be honest Joanna had been something of an accomplice in that matter. Aside from constantly renovating the house, her other weakness was baking. The kitchen always smelled like melted butter, enveloping the air with its rich, creamy, caramel fragrance. Joanna was teaching Tyler how to make a nectarine and blackberry pie. The fruit had been picked from the family orchard, the nectarines bursting with sweetness and the blackberries tart and tangy.
Tyler held the measuring spoon. “How much sugar?” he asked, his fingers hovering above the bag of sugar on the counter. She had given him the task of sweetening the syrup.
“More, darling, more,” Joanna urged as she pounded and rolled the dough that would form the crust.
After Tyler had added what looked like two cups of sugar into the mix, she cut into a long black vanilla bean and scraped the contents, adding it to the filling. Once the pie was assembled, Tyler helped her place it into the oven, an old Aga stove that she had purchased during a previous renovation.
“Now what?” he asked, his face smeared with fruit stains and his hair white with flour.
“Now we wait,” Joanna smiled.
Yesterday they had made brownies, the day before cupcakes, the day before that a moist and chewy nut roll. It was an or
gy of baking, more so than usual, and Ingrid and Freya had begged the sugary tidal wave to stop. They might be immortal but their bodies were not immune to the havoc wreaked by a steady diet of baked goods.
Joanna had told them they would just have to deal with it the way everyone else did, with discipline and restraint. Just because she made these delicious treats did not mean they had to eat them. She wasn’t shoving brownies and cake into their mouths, now, was she? Besides, Tyler loved baking, and she was enjoying herself too much to stop. She was finding it was great fun acting like someone’s mother without the burden of responsibility. All she had to do was nurture and feed while someone else would do the disciplining and the time-outs.
“We’ll need ice cream to eat with the pie,” Joanna said, removing a carton from the freezer. “Extra scoops?”
Tyler nodded vigorously and she ruffled his hair. There was something about little boys. Boys in general adored their mothers. Girls were tricky. She knew the girls loved her, but she also understood that deep down, they blamed her for their father’s absence. They didn’t understand her, and sometimes she didn’t understand how to talk to them. Everything she said was taken as criticism, as judgment. Over the years she had learned she should never comment on anything.
So did she say anything when Ingrid moved back home and, instead of taking that position at the university, chose to work as a clerk at the local library? No! Did she ever mention her disappointment that her brilliant daughter with the doctorate had steamed paper for the last several years? Not a word! Did she say anything when Freya opened that bar in New York without a proper liquor license? Nope! Did she ever suggest that Freya might want to dress a little less provocatively? Never! Or that perhaps she was rushing into marriage? Of course, Freya and Bran were meant to be together; just one look at their happy faces told her everything a mother needed to know. But even if she did not approve, Joanna knew better than to get into it with her daughters. Because just one “Perhaps we have had enough cookies?” (After all, the girls had eaten three each already!) and there was that face. The one that said Mother knows least.