The music swelled. Freddie caught Ingrid’s eye and gave her a smile and a little wave. He had a new ring on his finger as well. Matt motioned to her with a nod, and when she looked Hudson was walking down the aisle, dressed in a dashing linen suit, walking hand in hand with his mother. Mrs. Rafferty wore a transparent pale pink kerchief to match her pink Chanel suit over her blond coif.
A sudden gust of wind swept across the beach, so that Mrs. Rafferty had to place a hand to hold on to her scarf, and a few petals from Ingrid’s bouquet flew into the crowd, landing on Freya’s and Freddie’s shoulders.
Mother, Freya mouthed. Ingrid agreed. It had to be. She’d loved peonies.
Hudson took his place across from Scott, Mayor Frond standing between them with a huge grin.
Little Tyler, looking somber and grown-up in his black suit, walked up with the rings on a pillow.
Ingrid smiled.
Tyler had been accepted into the Carlyle School off the waiting list, and Joanna’s will had provided for his education. Her mother would have been pleased. Ingrid kept the envelope from her mother in her purse like a talisman. Joanna’s last words. Joanna’s instructions. Everything orderly and practical. Ingrid had inherited the house. “I think you will need it, my dear, for your children.” How did Mother know? Ingrid could see into the future, but she had never been able to predict her own.
Finally, the last strains of Schubert faded as the trio set down their violins. Hudson and Scott held hands. Mayor Frond cleared his throat and began the marriage rites.
chapter fifty-seven
The Longest Journeys Begin with a Single Step
Kristy turned to Freddie with a rueful smile. It was the day after the Wedding of the Season, which is what everyone in North Hampton was calling Scott and Hudson’s nuptials. The North Inn bartenders were sitting on the top of a sand dune, some distance apart, out on the little beach at the back of her place.
Freddie stared out, playing with the ring on his finger. He twirled it around as he watched the waves. Finally, Kristy spoke. “We had a nice run, didn’t we? I can’t say I’m not sad.”
“Me neither.” Freddie winced.
Kristy’s ex hadn’t brought Max and Hannah back yet. They still had a little time. The sun had begun to set, silver and blue streaks running through pink and orange. It had grown chilly, and she shivered in her oversize sweatshirt. Freddie wanted to tug her to him, hold her, reassure her, tell her it would all be okay, but he knew it wouldn’t be appropriate.
After all, he had just broken up with her.
He was leaving tonight. Leaving North Hampton. He was going away for a while with his old pal Troy.
Freddie wasn’t ready to settle down, no matter what his heart told him now. He wasn’t ready to be a husband or a father. He had been cutting ties all morning. Tragedy had a way of putting it all into perspective. He had given his marriage with Gert an earnest shot but it was over. The contract was null and void. He was a free man again. She had been weepy and apologetic, but he had already been down that road with her before, and he knew where it led. Maybe one day they would find each other again—it happened that way with their kind. He would be glad for it, even; perhaps by then he would be ready.
“I’m really sorry,” he told Kristy. He meant it, but he couldn’t stay.
Kristy nodded. “I knew you wouldn’t stay. It’s all right. Like I said, we had a good run.”
He had spent too much time in Limbo, five thousand years, and he needed to roam free, there were nine worlds in the universe, and he was intent on exploring each one. He had wasted too much valuable time on nothing—video games and living online—it was time to live his lives…
“You’re making this easy,” he said.
She laughed softly. “Yeah! Maybe too easy, Freddie.”
Freddie looked down at the ring on his finger. After they had defeated Odin, his father had given him the ring. “The nine worlds are yours, my son.” Freddie had taken the ring made of ancient dragon bone and used it to travel to the underworld, where he had been able to say good-bye to his mother one last time.
With the trident returned to its rightful owner and the passages of time flowing once more in the right direction, the Bofrir had been restored as if it had never been destroyed. The bridge between Midgard and Asgard stood once more, and Odin would stand trial with the White Council. Even the pixies had returned to Álfheim. Freddie missed them a little.
Perhaps he and Troy would visit them on their journey.
chapter fifty-eight
The Loves of Her Life
Jeans. Freya had acquired a special appreciation for jeans since her return to the twenty-first century, especially the kind that hugged like a second skin, that she could run and jump in. She was wearing her favorite pair along with a tight black tank, motorcycle boots, and a buttery black leather zip-up jacket.
She was back at work. Kristy had taken the day off, and Freddie had already left town. She was alone. When she walked in, the stale smell of liquor and beer filled her with affection. She leaned against the counter. Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” pounded through the speakers.
The place was strangely dead for a summer night. Sal was in the back. Poker night with the boys. There was no one to talk to save the usual set of barflies congregating at one end, already sloppy, teetering on their stools, repeating the same exaggerated tales she had heard last time she’d been here. A young couple was all over each other in a booth, too cheap to pay for a room at the Ucky Star. Their beers were probably warm by now. This was her crowd.
Freya dusted the bottles, wiped the counter and tables till they shone, sliced too much fruit, swept and mopped the floors. There was nothing left to do. It had been about an hour, her standing there, itching for a distraction. Arms crossed over her chest, she glared at the door, focusing her witchy powers onto it, willing it to open. She threw off the jacket and stared at it some more. The old axiom about being careful what one goes wishing for holds true, especially if one is a witch.
The door swung open, and a man swaggered in, staring at her. Faded blue jeans. White T-shirt. A slow smile formed on his lips as he strode up to her at the bar. He took a stool, tossing back his dark hair away from his smoldering eyes. Killian Gardiner. James Brewster. Balder the Beautiful. She knew all his incarnations. She had left him, when she had plunged to her death, hanged by the noose, but he had been saved somehow. A governor’s pardon had arrived just in time. The noose had not taken him, and with the passages open once again, his magic and power had returned, and he had been able to journey back to the present, alive and unharmed.
Freya smiled. “What can I get you?”
“You know what I like,” he said with that easy, slow smile again. She poured the bourbon and set it in front of him.
He raised the glass and she poured herself a shot, downed it, and exhaled, tossing her head. She poured another round.
While they finished it, the door to the bar swung open.
Her heart bounded into her throat.
Killian turned to look and shrugged.
The tall comely fellow ambled toward them, his suit slightly rumpled, tie swung over a shoulder: a businessman home from a long trip, out for a nightcap before setting home to Gardiners Island. This was the Branford Gardiner, the most eligible bachelor in North Hampton. Branford Dashiell Lion Gardiner. Nathaniel Brooks. Saved from the hangman’s noose as well, and free to make his way back to whatever time appealed to him. There was no time but the present. He was still the same soft-spoken, debonair man with the soul of mischief. The god Loki. He leaned against the bar. “Hi there,” said Bran, making those shy green demon eyes at her. What had he said to her once? You are more like me than you think, dear Freya. Maybe it was true. What she had done was just a little bit wicked now, wasn’t it? Certainly the Puritans would never approve.
“Hi yourself,” returned Freya.
Killian handed Bran a shot glass. Freya poured the three of them a round of drinks.
>
Freya remembered her dream once more. The three of them, naked in the woods, alone, together, and she made love to them then, to both of them that night… In her dream she had woken, wedged in the middle between the two of them, with Killian’s hand on her hip and Bran’s mouth on her neck. Would it always be this way? The two of them in love with her and she in love with both of them? It had happened so very, very long ago, was all she could remember.
In the beginning, back when the world was young and so were they, and they were still innocent and in love. She had been given another chance, and she understood that whatever she did, their fates were forever entwined, in darkness or in light. She had chosen light. She had chosen joy. She had chosen love.
It was all such a haze.
But Freya knew something had happened that night.
Something that would bind the three of them together forever—or release them into the wind?
Who knew?
What was a witch to do? Maybe she would leave both of them and find someone new. The future was wide open, unwritten, the games about to begin.
She loved Killian. But she loved Bran, too.
One day, she would have to choose.
But not today.
Today she would pour the drinks.
The Nine Worlds of the Known Universe
Asgard—World of the Aesir
Midgard—Middle World, Land of Men
Álfheim—World of the Elves
Helheim—Kingdom of the Dead
Jotunheim—Land of the Giants
Muspellheim—The First World
Nidavellir—Land of the Dwarves
Svartalfheim—Land of the Dark Elven
Vanaheim—Land of the Vanir
The Gods of Midgard
Jean-Baptiste Mésomier (MUNINN, GOD OF MEMORY)
Arthur Beauchamp (SNOTRA, GOD OF THE FOREST) (Norman‘s brother)
Anne Barklay (VERANDI, NORN OF THE PRESENT)
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Richard Abate, Erwin Stoff, Maggie Friedman, Jane Francis, Morgana Rosenberg, Ellen Archer, Elisabeth Dyssegaard, Kerri Kolen, Marjorie Braman, and everyone at 3Arts, Hyperion, Fox 21, and Lifetime for believing in the witches and the power of magic.
Thank you to Margaret Stohl, Alyson Noel, Deborah Harkness, and Rachel Cohn, the wonderful writing women in my life, who have taken the witches into their hearts. You are all goddesses in my book!
Thank you to Gabrielle Danchick for the research and care into the Salem story. All mistakes are mine alone.
Thank you to my loving family and friends who make it all worthwhile.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa de la Cruz is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling series Blue Bloods, which has three million copies in print. She is a former journalist who has contributed to many publications, including Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, and Marie Claire. She spent many summers in Shelter Island, New York, which served as the inspiration for the fictional town of North Hampton. She lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs with her family.
www.melissa-delacruz.com
also by
melissa de la cruz
witches of east end
serpent’s kiss
the blue bloods series (young adult):
blue bloods
masquerade
revelations
the van alen legacy
lost in time
gates of paradise
keys to the repository (reference book)
bloody valentine (short stories)
wolf pact (ebook only)
the heart of dread series (young adult):
frozen
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 Melissa de la Cruz
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 1500 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the original print edition of this book as follows:
De la Cruz, Melissa.
Winds of Salem : a witches of East End novel / Melissa De la Cruz.—First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4013-2470-4
1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Long Island (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E128W56 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013010165
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0501-7
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph by Marta Bevacqua/Arcangel Images
Author photograph by Denise Bovee
First eBook Edition
Original hardcover edition printed in the United States of America.
Melissa de la Cruz, Winds of Salem
(Series: Witches of East End # 3)
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