Troy reached over and squeezed Ingrid’s knee. He smiled—or perhaps it was more a flinch. “We’ll find her, I promise,” he said.
When entering Salem Town, it is impossible not to see Gallows Hill. It rises ominously on the horizon as one swerves into the port along the peninsula that eventually forks into two fingers reaching into Salem Sound. As the carriage approached, beneath a strawberry moon, the dusky sky was tinged pink.
At the hill’s summit, a small crowd had gathered, its dark, amorphous silhouette shifting slowly. People were tilting their heads upward to watch as a body dangled from the branches of the sprawling oak: a girl whose skirts billowed in the breeze.
Freya Beauchamp was hanged on Monday, June 13, 1692. In the twenty-first century, her name appeared permanently on the pages of history books.
Ingrid screamed as Troy pulled at the reins and Courage neighed, rearing on his hind legs.
chapter fifty-three
The Death of Spring
Freya was dead. She had been hanged in Salem. When she arrived in the underworld she still had a shimmer to her skin, an apricot flush and pinkness in her lips, a bounce in her curls. She ascended to the top floor of the gray skyscraper dressed in the garb she had been hanged in save for her cap, which she had ripped from her head before the noose was slipped over it. She had refused to wear the cotton mask for the hangman. She wanted everyone watching to see her face as she died; she wanted them to be aware of the monstrosity of their crime.
As the elevator rose, she unfastened the bow of her apron, removed her bodice, and stepped out of the heavy skirt and petticoats, kicking all of it into a corner. Smiling, she stood in her plain shift, which she had embroidered herself with colorful flowers. She waited to reach the top floor.
The receptionist pointed to Helda’s office, hardly lifting her gaze. As Freya approached the door, she heard music. She recognized the abrupt changes in the movement’s dynamics, the silvery notes of the violin and cellos, the thrilling crescendo: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. This was “Spring,” her very own concerto, airy but unequivocally sexy and dramatic. She opened the door when no one answered her knock.
The music, louder inside, washed over her.
“Aunt Helda? Hello?” Freya called.
The Vivaldi concerto ended, and the room went silent. Then Freya heard muttering, and someone stepped out of the broom closet.
Freya started. “Mom?” she said, stunned. “What are you doing here?” Immediately she understood. Her mother was in the underworld.
A soul for a soul. A life for a life. Death for death. That was the rule of Helda’s book.
“No!” insisted Freya. “You can’t! This is my fate!”
Joanna released her sweet girl. She pushed Freya’s curls out of her face, kissed her girl on the cheek, the brow. “It has already been done, darling.” She took Freya by the hand, guiding her to Helda’s desk. She began searching among the stacks of messy papers until she came upon a thick black ledger, whose pithy title read BOOK OF THE DEAD in fading gold leaf. She opened it, ran a finger down the column of latest entries, and pointed to her name engraved on the current line.
“Mothers are not supposed to outlive their daughters,” Joanna said.
Freya shook her head adamantly. “Mom, no!”
“I’ll always be with you, my dear.” Joanna cupped her daughter’s face in her palms. “Always!”
Joanna felt her heart fill with love for her girl. Here she was at last—still so alive, stunning in her little shift, like Vivaldi’s “Spring” itself.
There were sounds outside in the lobby—the receptionist protesting—and when the door opened, Joanna could not believe her eyes. “Norman!” she said. “What are you doing here?” He seemed to be with some sort of prisoner trapped in a fishing net. “Is that Odin?”
“Yes. It’s a long story.” He smiled.
“But how did you get here? This far down in the glom?”
He moved toward her. “Don’t you know?” Tears brimmed in his eyes, the color of a tempestuous sea. He had seen her out on the beach that day and had followed her into the water. “Wherever you go, I go.”
Joanna was speechless, befuddled, seeing that storm within him. “But… you can’t! You don’t belong here… You can’t stay! You love mid-world!”
He smiled. “So do you! But I love you and our children more.”
Joanna fell into his arms, sobbing. “I thought I would never see you again.”
Norman smiled. “We have a lifetime together, here.”
“Freddie!” Freya yelped, spying her twin behind her father. “You’re here, too? What happened?”
“The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Freddie smiled. He had killed the serpent, but it appeared he had killed himself as well. Helheim demanded a death, so his father had given him his. He and his twin were so alike it was ridiculous.
“Come on, sis, let’s go home,” he said, steering her gently away from their parents before everyone got too sad or hysterical. Freddie hated saying good-bye.
chapter fifty-four
The Love of a Lifetime
Ingrid and Troy returned to the North Hampton shores through the passages of time at the same moment Freya and Freddie burst through the portal from the underworld. Ingrid cried as she hugged her sister. “But how?”
“We’ll explain later…” Freya said, smiling wistfully as Freddie hugged the two of them close. She didn’t want to tell Ingrid about what had happened to their parents just yet, didn’t want to tell her the extent of their loss. “But did I take a wrong turn in the glom or is that really who I think it is?”
“Yeah, hey, Freya,” Troy said.
Freya looked at Ingrid and Troy with a curious smile, but Ingrid shook her head.
“No—it’s okay. We’re just friends,” she said firmly. She put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“I’m here because of you.” Freya smiled.
“And Killian?”
“I don’t know,” Freya said, her smile fading a little. “He was with me in Salem… with Bran, too… but I think it’s okay.” She thought of that dream she’d had of the very first time she had encountered both of them. They had made magic that night, the three of them. “I think I’ll see them soon enough.”
They said their good-byes to Troy.
“Coming, Ingrid?” Freddie asked as he and Freya turned to head home.
“Not just yet,” she said.
Ingrid said good-bye to her family and made her way to a familiar, architecturally modern house in the hills. Matt was in bed when she slipped inside his room.
“How’d you get in?” he asked sleepily.
“Magic,” she whispered. Her powers had returned in full force, and she could feel the strength returning to her body, how electrified all her senses were, how alert, but it was not just magic that was making her feel this way, she knew.
“So, is everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah—I think so. As much as it can be,” she said. Freya didn’t have to tell her. She knew as soon as she saw their faces that something terrible had happened, and she could guess that it involved Norman and Joanna. In her grief, Ingrid found she could only find comfort in the arms of the man she loved.
“When you left with him, part of me thought you might never come back to me.”
“Matt,” she said. “I’m here now.”
He reached up and pushed her hair out of her face and didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. He knew she knew what he wanted, what they both wanted, when it came down to it. Now it was just the two of them, alone, together, in bed…
She stared back at him, wondering when he was going to kiss her. What was he waiting for? Her heart pounded through her chest, or felt as if it did.
She was tired of being shy, so she lowered her face to his and kissed him, throwing her arms around him as she hiked up her skirt and straddled him, their kisses growing deeper and more breathless, and h
is hand inching ever upward. She bit his lips and began to kiss his neck, tracing his jaw, as he writhed beneath her, groaning softly. Matt struggled with the zipper on her skirt until he gave up and it bunched against her waist, while Ingrid couldn’t unbutton his pajamas fast enough.
He pulled her blouse over her head and pulled down her bra, and he was kissing her, kissing her all over, and it was her turn to moan. This was as far as they usually went, as much as she would dare, but this time she closed her eyes and reached down, slipping her hand under his boxers. She trembled from desire, from wanting him so much. She wanted him inside her… now.
He groaned louder, breathing heavily into her ear, holding her above him, and he whispered, “Are you sure?”
In answer, she lowered herself upon him, taking him inside her, gasping at the pain as he broke through her slowly, so slowly, and then all at once, and she cried in pain and pleasure of being filled, and her hands were on his shoulders and his were on her back, holding her as she rocked on top of him, until she could take his full length. He bit her shoulder and flipped her on her back, a surprise attack, and he withdrew, only to slam back inside her, and this time she gasped.
“Oh!”
“Am I hurting you?”
She shook her head and wrapped her legs tighter around his torso, thinking, This, this, this, this is what I have wanted—have needed for so long—this… And he was rocking against her, tenderly, then so fast, and hard, and she wanted it harder and faster, and then he was pulling her up to him again, so that she rocked on top of him, and then she was nothing but sensation and stars and she was lost, and cresting, and then a wave, crashing on the beach, and it was all white bright and pleasure, and Matt was groaning and roaring, and calling her name, crying out his love as he came inside her.
And they were shaking, still shaking…
Why had she waited this long?
Because she had been waiting for him…
They fell back on the bed, panting, slick and tingling, twitching like fish on deck. Ingrid rested her head on his chest. Matt sighed. “Mmm. I’m glad you’re back. Never leave me again, Ingrid,” he whispered in her ear as they drifted off to sleep.
The next day Ingrid woke up to the feel of his kisses, and soon they were right back where they started. It was even sweeter the second time. Afterward they wandered to the kitchen in a daze, looking for breakfast. There was a package of frozen blini and a tin of caviar in the fridge. Matt didn’t remember buying either. A miracle—or magic? It didn’t matter. They ate their meal, naked, standing at the counter, with crème fraîche and champagne. They couldn’t stop touching each other. He ran his hands along her slim, strong arms.
She put her head on his shoulder, content.
The joy was worth the pain.
north hampton
the present
easter
chapter fifty-five
Left Behind
Inside her Mini, Freya sang along to Dan Auerbach’s wistful “Goin’ Home” as she drove up a winding hill. Like the narrator in the song, she had spent too much time away. It was good to be back in North Hampton this last month.
She had come home.
She found comfort in the warm embrace of the familiar. But her homecoming was bittersweet and incomplete. She belted the words, glancing out the window, trying to convince herself she’d done the right thing.
This area, on the outskirts of North Hampton—hilly, woodsy, open in spots—offered a view of the ocean and Gardiners Island. It was perfect, she thought. Spring had arrived, bright and beautiful as her mother’s garden.
Freya parked the car on the side of the road, grabbed the flowers and a bottle of water from the passenger seat. She squared her shoulders as she stood before the opened wrought-iron gates, took her time strolling up the shady tree-lined path. A warm, moist breeze caressed her cheeks and bare limbs. Winter had finally gone. The grass was lush, a vivid green, the cypresses creaked, and the oaks whispered. There was a peaceful hush.
She wasn’t sure what had happened to Nate Brooks or James Brewster, but their names were no longer among the names of those who had been hanged during the Salem witch trials. Somehow they had escaped the noose, and for that she was glad. She had a feeling she would see them again soon.
But she was not thinking about the boys today. She saw there were a few other visitors, walking along the twining paths or standing at the grave of a loved one. Some of the tombstones dated to the late 1800s. There were angels, cherubs (for children), elaborate crosses, stoic mausoleums, and simple pink, gray, and white marble stones. The cemetery hung on the hill overlooking the sea, and at a far end one could glimpse down and see Joanna’s house in the distance along the shore. It was near this spot, in the shade of three leaning evergreens, that the bodies of Joanna and Norman Beauchamp had been buried side by side. They had been found in the sea, the two of them drowned, their arms around each other, and had been buried in the same coffin.
Freya removed the dead flowers from the urn by the headstone and refilled it with water. She replaced the old with new yellow roses, which meant she missed them. She knelt on the grass in front of their grave.
The Beauchamp children had ordered the simplest of markers for their parents, and knowing Joanna’s distaste for epithets had forgone them. “How can one even begin to encapsulate oneself in a single, pithy sentence?” their mother had once said. But the siblings had added a little touch: beneath JOANNA BEAUCHAMP was engraved GODDESS OF THE EARTH; beneath NORMAN BEAUCHAMP, GOD OF THE SEA.
Freya pressed her hands in the grass on her parents’ grave. She knew they were content now that they were together in the underworld. They had promised to visit in her dreams, but so far, she had not seen her parents. She wondered when she ever would again. Her memories of the underworld had already begun fading.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned she saw her twin, her grief mirrored in his eyes. Ingrid was with him. “Sorry we’re late,” her sister said as she added their flowers to Freya’s. The siblings huddled in, holding on to one another. They only had each other now. They were orphans, but they were still a family.
More than a need for words was the need to just hang on.
chapter fifty-six
One Wedding among the Funerals
It was May. The bridesmaids’ dresses rippled against their legs in the wind, and their hair flew against their cheeks. They held bouquets of violets, asters, and irises, while the ocean waves crashed majestically behind them. Ingrid and Hudson had decided on no awful pastels, no embarrassing peach or citron. Instead, the dresses were a rich, dark ocean blue.
Ingrid beamed, not realizing that Freya had managed to change her neckline so that it curved a little lower than the designer had intended. Tabitha stood next to Freya, looking especially svelte, just a few weeks after giving birth.
The ceremony was being held on the beach below the terrace of the French restaurant La Plage, where the reception would take place afterward. Despite the wind, it was a beautiful summer day, dramatic white clouds billowing across a blue, blue sky. The North Hampton Golden String Trio, sisters wearing little white blossoms in their hair, began to play Schubert’s “Serenade.”
Ingrid felt a bit overcome by the stately beauty of it all, the joy and gravity that they were about to witness. Freya winked at her, and Ingrid instinctively searched for her parents’ faces among the seated guests before she realized her mistake. She kept doing that—wishful forgetfulness. With each instance came the dreadful realization all over again, no less painful.
The guests quieted, shushing each other. The handsome young mayor of North Hampton, Justin Frond, stepped forth and everyone turned expectantly toward the shore. Ingrid felt her eyes brim with tears as Scott walked down the aisle with his parents. His father had the same broad shoulders, and he had his mother’s sweet smile.
She turned back to the audience, where Freya and Freddie were sitting with Matt. She gave him a fluttering wave, and the sunl
ight caught her engagement ring, sending a dazzling light into the crowd. She flushed with pleasure at the small but lovely ring on her finger.
They would be married in the fall. Their time together would be short, brutally short, in contrast to the long life she had ahead of her, but Ingrid had learned that there was no joy without sorrow, and that she would be able to bear the pain of losing him if she could have the joy of being his wife for however long they had together. She would not worry about the future, but live in the present. A baby, she wanted a baby so badly. Someone new to love, someone to fill the ache in her heart from the loss of her parents. The passages of time marched forward. It was time for new life, new loves.
Ingrid studied the crowd. It seemed the entire little town sat on the beach. Even the most awful and repellent Blake Aland had somehow landed on the guest list. How had that happened? She would have to ask Hudson once he was married. She spotted Freya’s boss, Sal. Freddie’s girlfriend, Kristy, with her kids, Max and Hannah. Gracella, Hector, and Tyler were there, too, since Gracella worked for Scott part-time. Maggie sat with her father and mother. Ingrid had asked Hudson if she could invite both of them. “Bring it on!” he had said. Mariza had visited the library the other week, to bring a coffee cake and condolences. She had told Ingrid how she had lost her parents to a car accident when she was a teenager. “No one understands what it’s like to be an orphan, even when you’re grown. It’s very hard.” Ever since then, the two had become friends. Mariza even introduced her to her boyfriend, a banker from the city.