Gert swung the door open. “Oh, my God! Judith! What happened?” She removed the gag and saw that Judith had been strapped to the chair with several of Freddie’s belts.
“Those friends of yours!” Judith muttered. “The little ones!”
“You put them up to this!” Gert accused as she swung around on him. “Freddie, how could you!” she said, looking utterly betrayed as she unsnapped the belts and released her friend. “It’s freezing out here! She could have died!”
But did she want to live? Freddie wanted to ask but refrained. “It wasn’t me, I swear!” He called for Nyph and Kelda but they were gone.
Freddie knew the pixies were just trying to help, but at this rate they were going to help get him a divorce.
chapter thirteen
Detective Noble
Matt had called Ingrid to invite her over for a Saturday-night movie. He was all by himself, he told her, missed her something crazy, and thought he could tempt her away from her books by watching Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.
“I’ll come right over,” she said, and could hear him grinning on the other end of the line.
She was down in Joanna’s study, wading through more books for the answers, but she needed to unwind. She missed Matt something crazy, too. Mother and Father were out there looking for Uncle Art—surely she could take a break. Save for meeting with Matt and Maggie last weekend, she had been going nonstop, and they hadn’t spent any time alone in what seemed eons. What kind of relationship was that? Not a relationship at all—which he had been frequently reminding her lately.
Now Matt sat on his side of the king-size bed, while Ingrid sat on the other, her shoes kicked off, arms looped around her knees, a bowl of popcorn between them. It was like having to start from scratch all over again to break through the barrier of mutual shyness.
Matt pointed the remote at the flat screen across from the bed. A swell of music rose, and “VistaVision Motion Picture High-Fidelity” came on the screen superimposed over a snowy peak. Technicolor. Exterior day: the shop window of a travel agency festooned with posters of France, behind the glass a cruise ship model, then a mock Eiffel Tower farther inside. Cars rolling past reflected in the window. The camera zoomed in on a poster: IF YOU LOVE LIFE, YOU’LL LOVE FRANCE. Cut: a woman screams at the discovery of her missing jewels.
Matt turned to Ingrid and put a hand on her thigh. “You had quite a captive audience the other night,” he told her. “Maggie can’t stop talking about those Puritan girls and what they did.”
Ingrid smiled. “I’ve been obsessing about them, too.”
“So how’s the work going? Find anything useful?”
“A little. I think I’ve figured out how the girls got the idea.” Ingrid unfolded her knees, reached for the remote, and turned off the television. Matt grabbed the bowl of popcorn between them and moved it to his bedside table, then he rolled over, closer to her, lying on his side, head propped up on his pillows, his hand still on her body.
Ingrid was very conscious of the feel of his hand on her thigh, its weight and the tingling sensation that sent a flush to her cheeks. The slightest touch from him and her entire body grew weak. It felt like it had been ages since they had last made out. She carefully placed a hand on his as she told him about that document she had found in the archives. Continence Hooker’s essay.
“Reverend Hooker?” Matt chuckled. He scooted up to her to rest the back of his head on her lap.
Ingrid laughed nervously. For a moment, she wasn’t sure where to place her hands. Matt had closed his eyes. She stared down at his head, his wide, creased forehead, the freckles splashed across his nose, the fetching cleft in his chin. He was really so handsome. “Yep, that was really his name,” she said, running her fingers through his soft red hair. There. That felt natural. Why was she being so self-conscious? Could he tell? He looked like a sleepy, very contented cat. “Continence Hooker, can you imagine!”
“Better than Incontinent Hooker, I suppose, that would be a real problem,” he said, opening his eyes to look at her while she told him a little more about the atmosphere of the times.
Apparently, in late seventeenth-century New England, individuals who were struck by strange fits entailing severe physical contortions and nonsensical babbling were not completely out of the ordinary. Sensational cases of bewitchment were documented by leading Boston clergymen, and these essays were published as pamphlets that became widely popular. Ingrid rattled on excitedly, “You know, they were kind of like cheapie bestsellers, like today’s self-published e-books about the afterlife or alien abductions or paranormal activity.”
Matt whistled the theme song from The X-Files.
Ingrid giggled, then went on. “The thing you need to know about these essays is that they were written for a purpose, which was to encourage a belief in the supernatural. Read, the devil.” She went on to explain what she meant more specifically.
Around this time, in the last decades of the seventeenth century, figureheads of colonial society—both in the church and political office, the two going hand in hand—had grown to fear the effects of commercialism, scientific thought, and individualism on the old Puritan ideals. They believed that these insidious new ways were deleterious to morality. Ingrid concluded, “These pamphlets were designed to show what would happen if one let the devil of modernism through one’s door.”
Matt’s eyes were closed again, and she suddenly feared that all her dry academic talk might have put him to sleep. But then his eyes popped open, bright and alert. “So you’re saying these things were designed to keep the masses in line?”
Ingrid laughed. “I’ve certainly hooked a smart one!”
Matt smiled and brought up a hand to play with her hair.
Ingrid wasn’t finished. Someone like Reverend Parris, she explained, would have subscribed to such a belief system and purchased these kinds of pamphlets in Boston, keeping them as well as a Bible in his upstairs study. “Here’s the thing that gave me the chills when I put it all together. Hooker’s descriptions of one young woman’s fits in a household on the outskirts of Boston were nearly identical to the ones recorded by various witnesses of Abby and Betty. Not just nearly identical, but word for word, action for action, almost the same thing. The girls used the same words, same combinations, phrases, even sentences, to describe the tortures they endured and the specters and familiars they saw, as in Hooker’s account.”
“Could it be a coincidence?” asked Matt.
Ingrid shook her head. “If anything, these girls were lacking in originality.”
“So what you’re saying is…”
“They got the idea from a book. This pamphlet.”
“Okay.” Matt nodded. He sat up. “But remember these are rural girls in seventeenth-century Salem…”
Ingrid nodded, impressed that Matt saw the problem so quickly. “I know. How could they get the idea from a book? They couldn’t read. They couldn’t even sign their names on their testimonies. They used X’s instead. So there goes that theory…”
“Hold on, don’t give up yet…”
Ingrid stared at him.
“The girls couldn’t read… so someone read it to them. Someone who wanted them to know about it, or someone who didn’t know what they would do…” said Matt.
She felt her skin tingle in excitement. “Matt, I could kiss you—of course! Someone read Hooker’s pamphlet to them! But who?”
Matt smiled. “We’ll figure that out later,” he said. “Now about that kiss…”
chapter fourteen
Cavern in the Woods
By early afternoon, Joanna and Norman had arrived at the cave. Up a path through a craggy cliff, there was a wooden door set into the mouth of the entrance. They found it unlocked and it creaked open as they set foot inside.
This was no ordinary cave. The walls were indeed made of the same craggy black stone as the cliff, but it wasn’t what Joanna had envisioned hearing the word cave. There were linoleum floors, a kitchen
in the back, and a couch and bookshelves in front. To their dismay the place was ransacked—papers scattered everywhere, a computer lying on the floor, pillows sliced open, gutted, eiderdown stuffing everywhere. The fridge as well as the stove had been left open. It was a mess. They exchanged a troubled look. “What happened?” Joanna asked. They began to search the place, calling Arthur’s name.
“He’s not here,” Norman yelled from the kitchen.
“Not here either,” she reported from the bathroom, whose tub was carved into the rock.
Norm came around a counter, and they both took a seat in the dining area.
“Now what?” said Joanna in tears, her emotions having gotten the best of her. Arthur had seemed like their best bet at getting to Freya, and now he was gone.
Norman reached out for her hands. His brother had either been taken or he had moved to his next hiding spot. And someone had been here looking for something. Whatever it was, their hopes of Art leading them through the passages of time were dashed. Perhaps it had something to do with the young wolves Arthur was always talking about, some old favor that he had to do for a friend. In any event, that was another story.
Joanna looked up at him, and he wiped her tears. “Don’t despair yet, Jo. There is one last resort.”
She knew what he was going to say but hoped he wouldn’t.
“The Oracle.”
She shook her head. The Oracle was best left alone.
Norman insisted. “It might be the only way to save our daughter.”
chapter fifteen
Fighting Fire with Fire
Snow was melting on the sidewalks of New Haven. The little cul-de-sac was full of the scent of wet leaves and grass, along with a darker, acrid smell. The house on the end of the street was on fire. Flames licked the upstairs windows. A girl on the sidewalk was screaming that one of her roommates was trapped inside. “I know Sadie’s in there. She was asleep when we left for the party. Get her! Please!”
Red, white, and blue lights flashed over the houses. Neighbors in pajamas had come outside to watch. A cluster of frat boys in flannel shirts, hoodies, and jeans commented on the action. “You think chucking that keg of beer at it would help?” one said.
“Why would you do that, dude?”
Another giggled. “The flames are awesome, man! God, I’m high.”
“Me, too. You mean this is real?”
The girl, raccoon eyed and looking rumpled in a puffy jacket over a short dress, explained to the first responders that when she had returned home from the party two fire trucks, an ambulance, and three police cars were already on the scene. The truck ladders were extended and several firefighters had climbed onto the roof and were hacking away. One of the firemen sought to calm the girl down, instructing her to sit on the curb out of the way. The EMTs came over and gave her a blanket. “My other roommates are still at the party, but Sadie—she stayed home. She’s in there,” the girl sobbed to a pair of police officers taking notes.
Inside the house, Freddie was making his way through the smoke-filled corridor upstairs. Somewhere behind him was his team—Big Dave, Hunter, and Jennie, the lone firewoman on the team. The trapped girl had been calling out to them for help from one of the rooms in the back, but now she’d gone quiet.
The hallway seemed to go on forever, the rooms on the way empty, filling with smoke and flames. It was as if someone had splashed the entire place with an accelerant. And there was not one fire sprinkler in this campus house. Huge possible lawsuit, Freddie thought. Underneath his mask with the self-contained breathing apparatus, he could hear his breathing getting louder.
Freddie reached out a hand, pushing at the flames along one wall, redirecting them: they moved down the wall but unexpectedly billowed back. Usually they responded to Freddie’s every command, the way a musician in the orchestra pit follows a conductor’s baton and hand gestures: rising, lowering, fading, stopping. Tonight the flames had a mind of their own.
If he didn’t find the girl soon, they were screwed. First came self-preservation, then rescue. But he knew she was close, and he needed to get to her. At this point, they would have to exit via the roof. The fire had followed them up the stairs. He remembered a recent dream in which he’d been surrounded, engulfed by flames, and realized the nightmare was presently unfolding before him. He had no power over the flame—he had become an ordinary firefighter in the midst of an out-of-control fire, a house on the verge of collapse. Sweat poured off his forehead, trickled down his neck. He heard the axes against the roof.
He moved farther inside a room. He sensed her. He could hear her heart pounding, or was that his? The carpet burned in spots. The crackling grew louder around him. He pointed his flashlight and saw an opened door, the bathroom, the girl on the tile floor, curled in a ball. Something hit hard against his helmet, falling behind him, grazing his bunker jacket—flaming debris. He quickly moved toward the girl in the bathroom. Flames leaped out at him from the side. He made a hand gesture and they rippled away, but then detached and spread, crackling and flickering, barring his way. He couldn’t stop them. The fire paid no attention to him.
Dammit! He knew his magic had been losing vigor, but he hadn’t been aware it had become this feeble. He needed to save the girl and get out. He moved forward, but the flames moved toward him. He lunged to the side. The flames lunged, flinging Freddie onto the floor like a wrestler, clasping a hand of fire at his neck. His mask fell off, and Freddie gasped in scalding flames. This is it, he thought.
Images flashed through his mind. He remembered the first time he had really seen Gert—that day on the campus when Hilly had broken up with him. He saw her dancing along the lamppost-lit path, her blond hair swaying, reflecting the light, the way she smiled as she turned to him.
Fire burned at his neck as the flames squeezed the air out of his lungs. He had never experienced death before, unlike the other gods, who would die and come back; he had been trapped for almost all of his long life in Limbo. He wondered if he should be afraid. They always came back, of course, but it would mean saying good-bye to this life. Good-bye to Gert for now, and who knew if he would be able to find her again? Then someone was pushing him, rolling his body, calling his name, spraying him with foam. The fire vanished, its hot weight dissipated. Jennie kneeled beside him. “Big Dave’s got this one,” she said. “It’s okay, Freddie. You’re okay. We’re getting you out of here.”
Freddie woke to faint noises: beeping, whispers, squeaking, breathing. He blinked his eyes open and found himself staring up at a pale pink ceiling. His vision was blurry, the fluorescent lights too glaring. He felt his body’s deadweight, so heavy on the hospital bed. He turned his head to the side, and there was Gert, staring at him with so much tenderness. She was here.
“You’re awake,” she whispered, rising from her chair. She came over and touched his forehead, leaned over and kissed him gently.
His throat was dry and sore, and he could barely get a word out. “Gert,” he managed. “The girl… is she okay?”
“She’s fine. You saved her. They wouldn’t have known she was there if it hadn’t been for you.” Gert smiled lovingly at him and brought a glass of water up to his parched lips, helping him hold his head up so he could drink. “I was so scared when I heard what happened! They told me a beam fell on top of you, pinning you down! What happened—is it because we can’t do anything anymore?”
Freddie nodded. His body ached, and there was a stinging sensation along his neck. All out of magic. Gert could feel it, too. They didn’t talk about it much, but it was there—a slow transition to mortality. What did it mean?
“I’m sorry about Judith,” he said. “She didn’t deserve that.”
“It’s not your fault. The pixies confessed.” A small smile played on her lips. “And anyway, it was sort of funny…” She laughed.
He laughed. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you so much!” Gert blinked, and tears pushed out from beneath her thick lashes, rolling dow
n her cheeks. “I thought I had lost you!”
“Never!” said Freddie.
When they returned to the apartment they discovered they had the place to themselves for once, the pixies out of sight.
Freddie lay on the bed and Gert lay on top of him, her thick hair cascading over him as she gently kissed at his wounds, her lips a healing balm. He reached for the clasp at the back of her bra and took it off one-handed.
“You’re such a pro,” Gert teased.
He grinned as they moved together, Gert on top, grinding. Freddie felt alive, so alive, and life was good again—Gert was back.
chapter sixteen
The Perfect Family
Matt had Maggie for the weekend. Even though Ingrid had made a point of telling him she would be busy, she harbored a small, secret wish that he might call, surprise her, ask her to do something impromptu with them. The truth was Ingrid was lonely. Her research was at a standstill: while she had zeroed in on the probable source of the hysteria, there were still so many things she didn’t know. Why? Why did the girls do it? Why did they suddenly begin to point fingers and call their various acquaintances and friends witches?
In the meantime, Joanna and Norman had gone MIA, and she had called Freddie to see if he and Gert wanted to spend the weekend on Long Island, at home, bring the pixies even—but they were all busy, too. Ingrid had visited the other week after Freddie’s accident, and she was relieved to find her little brother doing well. She missed him, but as she understood it, he and Gert were having some kind of second honeymoon.