Winds of Salem Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE

  Witches of East End series

  “Move over, zombies, vampires, and werewolves, and make way for witches. Melissa de la Cruz, author of the bestselling Blue Bloods series, ably sets the stage for a juicy new franchise with Witches of East End… De la Cruz balances the supernatural high-jinksery with unpredictable twists and a conclusion that nicely sets up book 2.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Centuries after the practice of magic was forbidden, Freya, Ingrid, and their mom struggle to restrain their witchy ways as chaos builds in their Long Island town. A bubbling cauldron of mystery and romance, the novel shares the fanciful plotting of Blue Bloods, the author’s teen vampire series… [B]reezy fun.”

  —People

  “A magical and romantic page-turner… Witches of East End is certain to attract new adult readers… The pacing is masterful, and while the witchcraft is entertaining, it’s ultimately a love triangle that makes the story compelling. De la Cruz has created a family of empathetic women who are both magically gifted and humanly flawed.”

  —Washington Post

  “For anyone who was frustrated watching Samantha suppress her magic on Bewitched, Ms. de la Cruz brings some satisfaction. In her first novel for adults, the author… lets her repressed sorceresses rip.”

  —New York Times

  “What happens when a family of Long Island witches is forbidden to practice magic? This tale of powerful women, from the author of the addictive Blue Bloods series, mixes mystery, a battle of good versus evil and a dash of Norse mythology into a page-turning parable of inner strength.”

  —Self

  “Witches of East End has all the ingredients you’d expect from one of Melissa’s bestselling YA novels—intrigue, mystery and plenty of romance. But with the novel falling under the ‘adult’ categorization, Melissa’s able to make her love scenes even more… magical.”

  —MTV.com

  “De la Cruz has, with Witches, once again managed to enliven and embellish upon history and mythology with a clever interweaving of past and present, both real and imagined… [It] casts a spell.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “De la Cruz is a formidable storyteller with a narrative voice strong enough to handle the fruits of her imagination. Even readers who generally avoid witches and whatnot stand to be won over by the time the cliffhanger-with-a-twist-ending hits.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fantasy for well-read adults.”

  —Kirkus

  “A sexy, magical romp, sure to bring de la Cruz a legion of new fans.”

  —Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of the Otherworld series

  “Fans will be delighted with the next entry in her new adult series. A compelling tale of powerful magic, romance, betrayal and suspense.”

  —Library Journal

  For Mike and Mattie

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Praise for The Witches of East End series

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Once upon a time in North Hampton…

  Salem: Spring 1692

  Chapter One: A Violet War

  Chapter Two: Of Plums and Pie

  Chapter Three: Secrets

  Chapter Four: In Bloom

  Chapter Five: Mr. Brooks and Miss Beauchamp

  Chapter Six: The Proposal

  North Hampton: The Present: New Year’s Eve

  Chapter Seven: What Dreams May Come

  Chapter Eight: Brother Time

  Chapter Nine: The Newlyweds

  Chapter Ten: The Most Important Girl in His Life

  Chapter Eleven: Of Gods and Men

  Chapter Twelve: The Salon des Refusés

  Chapter Thirteen: Detective Noble

  Chapter Fourteen: Cavern in the Woods

  Chapter Fifteen: Fighting Fire with Fire

  Chapter Sixteen: The Perfect Family

  Chapter Seventeen: From the Mouths of Babes

  Chapter Eighteen: Gone Baby Gone

  Salem: May 1692

  Chapter Nineteen: Miracle Worker

  Chapter Twenty: Raise the Roof

  Chapter Twenty-One: Thank Heaven for Little Girls?

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Whish Witch

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Loose Lips

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Love and Marriage

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Immortals

  North Hampton: The Present Valentine’s Day

  Chapter Twenty-six: The Hammer Strikes

  Chapter Twenty-seven: The Family Three

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Manny Diaries

  Chapter Twenty-nine: My Boyfriend’s Back

  Chapter Thirty: The Price of Admission

  Chapter Thirty-One: Tequila Sunset

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Shower the People

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Price of Admission, Part Two

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Where Things Come Back

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Put a Ring On It

  Chapter Thirty-Six: The Price of Admission, Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Monster at the End of the World

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Sliding Dates

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Trickster’s Son

  Chapter Forty: Mother Goddess

  Time in a Bottle: Salem, North Hampton: Past, Present

  Chapter Forty-One: Friend of the Family

  Chapter Forty-Two: Black Widow

  Chapter Forty-Three: Fork in the Road

  Chapter Forty-Four: Crucible

  Chapter Forty-Five: The Man in White

  Chapter Forty-Six: Down the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Appointment with Death

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Alpha Girls

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Nemesis

  Chapter Fifty: Freya’s Diary

  Chapter Fifty-One: In the Land of the Blind… the One-Eyed Man Is King

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Goose Chasing

  Chapter Fifty-Three: The Death of Spring

  Chapter Fifty-Four: The Love of a Lifetime

  North Hampton: The Present: Easter

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Left Behind

  Chapter Fifty-Six: One Wedding among the Funerals

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Longest Journeys Begin with a Single Step

  Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Loves of Her Life

  The Nine Worlds of the Known Universe

  The Gods of Midgard

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Melissa De La Cruz

  Copyright

  Jealousy is always born with love,

  but does not always die with it.

  —François, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims

  Once upon a time in North Hampton…

  In a rambling colonial house in a little elusive town by the sea on Long Island’s northern and easternmost tip, a silver-haired witch named Joanna Beauchamp lived with her two daughters, Ingrid and Freya. Blond and brainy, thirty-something Ingrid was the local librarian, while barely-out-of-her-teens Freya was the wildest bartender who had ever mixed drinks at the North Inn’s bar. The women lived quiet, solitary lives, suppressing their natural talents in adherence to the Restriction of Magical Powers. The law was handed down from the White Council after the Salem witch trials effectively ended the practice of magic in mid-world after Freya and Ingrid were hanged in 1692.

  Immortals, the girls returned to life, scarred by the experience and wary of the mortal world, and small-town life continued apace for centuries until the day Freya won the heart of the very handsome and very wealthy philanthropist Bran Gardiner, whose family owned the Fair Haven estate on eponymous Gardiners Island. Helpless against the force of her desire,
Freya celebrated her engagement by having a torrid affair with Bran’s younger brother, Killian, he of the dark, smoldering good looks and devil-may-care attitude.

  Following Freya’s lead of throwing caution to the wind, the witches soon unleashed their full powers—Joanna, whose specialty was recovery and renewal, brought the dead to life. Ingrid, a healer who could tap into people’s lifelines and see the future, began to dole out her spells and charms to any patron with a trying domestic problem, and even gave the mayor’s wife a powerful fidelity knot. Freya, who specialized in matters of the heart, served up heady potions, and every night at the North Inn became a wild, hedonistic romp. It was all a bit of harmless, innocent, enchanted fun until a girl went missing, several residents began to suffer from a rash of inexplicable illnesses, and a dark menace was found growing in the waters off the Atlantic, poisoning the wildlife. When the mayor turned up dead, the finger-pointing began, and for a moment it felt like the Salem witch trials all over again.

  But these were no ordinary witches, and Fair Haven was no ordinary mansion. Rushing to untangle the mystery, Ingrid discovered archaic Norse symbols in a blueprint of Fair Haven manor, but just as she was close to cracking the code, the document disappeared. Freya discovered she was caught in a centuries-old love triangle with Bran and Killian that harked back to the days of Asgard itself, when she was pursued by her true love, Balder, the god of joy, and his brother, Loki, the god of mischief.

  Soon, Norman Beauchamp, Joanna’s long-lost ex-husband, was back in the picture, and everyone was trying to save not just their little town, but all the nine known worlds of the universe from Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.

  Because once upon a time in Asgard, the Bofrir bridge connected the kingdom of the divine to Midgard, the mortal world. One fateful day, the bridge was destroyed, and the mighty strength of all the gods’ powers along with it. The culprits of this heinous act were said to be Fryr of the Vanir and his friend Loki of the Aesir, two daring young gods whose childish prank wrought terrible consequences. Accused of trying to take the bridge’s power for themselves, Loki was banished to the frozen depths for five thousand years, while Fryr, the god of sun and harvests, was consigned to Limbo for an indefinite period, as his crime had been the greater one. It was Fryr’s trident that had sent the bridge to the abyss.

  With the bridge destroyed, the gods were separated. The Vanir (or as they were known today, the Beauchamp family, gods and goddesses of hearth and earth) were trapped in Midgard, sentenced to live their lives in mid-world as witches and warlocks, while the Aesir (the warrior gods of sky and light, mighty Odin and his wife, Frigg) remained in Asgard, but both of their sons were lost to them for thousands of years. Their sons were Balder and Loki, Branford and Killian Gardiner. It appeared Loki had poisoned Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and unleashed the doom of the gods, so Freya banished him from their world.

  Fryr was Freddie Beauchamp, Joanna’s long-lost son and Freya’s twin, who suddenly appeared to Freya in the alley behind the North Inn one evening with unsettling news. He had escaped from Limbo, and revealed that he had been framed for the destruction of the Bofrir and knew the identity of the real culprit.

  No, it wasn’t Loki. Not Bran Gardiner at all, but Killian Gardiner, the god Balder, who was responsible for its destruction and Freddie’s imprisonment.

  Determined to prove her lover’s innocence, Freya turned Killian’s boat, the Dragon, upside down to follow her brother’s wishes. She didn’t find the missing trident, but one night, she found something else: the mark of the trident on his back, which proved Killian did indeed have the weapon in his possession.

  Meanwhile, Ingrid was falling in love for the first time in centuries with Matthew Noble, a sweet police detective. But romance between a virgin witch and a mortal was complicated, not to mention a rowdy band of lost pixies caused further havoc by robbing treasures from the great homes in the area. Ingrid was forced to choose her loyalties—to the mortal who loved her, or to the magical creatures who only needed her help.

  Back from Limbo, Freddie spent his time shagging coeds and playing video games until his attentions were focused on the lovely Hilly, the goddess Brünnhilde. Only one thing stood in his way: her father, who manipulated Freddie into signing a document that bound him to marry his daughter Gert instead.

  Joanna had problems of her own, as a charming widower and her ex-husband competed for her attentions, while a troubled spirit made contact with her, to warn her that a powerful evil was bent on destroying the Beauchamps—an evil that had begun all the way back in Fairstone in the seventeenth century, with Lion Gardiner, Loki in yet another incarnation.

  The pixies confessed to stealing the trident and placing it on the Dragon to incriminate the innocent Killian, but it was too late as Hilly’s sorority sisters, the Valkyries, had already whisked him away for punishment. Freya was still in shock at his sudden disappearance when she, too, was snatched away from North Hampton, a noose appearing around her neck…

  Which meant that she had been taken back to Salem, and unless her family could figure out a way to rescue her from the darkness of their past…

  Freya was cursed to relive the witch trials all over again… The girls will not stop. They babble and fling their arms, or become deaf and dumb. When anyone approaches, they hide in corners or under the furniture. Physicians, ministers, and men of Salem Town have come, and they advise fasting and prayer from the community. Fasting and prayer.

  But their fits grow worse still. Yesterday they made animal noises, Abby crawling on the floor like a pig, while Betty mewed like a cat. They carry on in such a fashion it is impossible for them to go about their usual employment that delivers them from the temptation of idleness. Ordinarily, they are known to be exceedingly pious and good, docile little girls.

  Finally, at a loss, Griggs was called, and as fasting and prayers had proved futile, the doctor declared the girls “under an evil hand.” The villagers could only come to one conclusion: the girls had been—

  bewitched.

  —Freya Beauchamp,

  May 1692

  salem

  spring

  1692

  chapter one

  A Violet War

  Late March in Salem Village and the early spring flowers were in full bloom—the yellow, purple, and white crocuses of the meadow, the lily of the valley in the woodlands, brilliant clusters of grape hyacinth and daffodils the color of baby chicks.Violets proliferated along the ponds and rivers all the way to the town harbor, and everything was peaceful in the vale as fat hogs lolled in their pens and cattle and sheep grazed in green pastures.

  Inside the small wooden houses of the village, servant girls groped for their clothing in the pitch-black, rising before the cocks crowed to revive the dying coals in the hearths with a quick blast of the bellows. The womenfolk donned layers of petticoats and shifts, lacing up their bodices and putting on their white caps, while the men and boys pulled on their breeches and boots to set to work.

  In one particular household, a farm on a substantial property on the village outskirts, encompassing part of the Great River and Indian Bridge, the maids did their best to keep their master’s temper temperate, or at least not blustering their way. The farm belonged to one Mr. Thomas Putnam, the eldest sibling and leader of the Putnam clan, a handsome but austere man, with a near-perpetual somber cast to his brow. Thomas was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Salem Village, although to his dismay and chagrin, not the most prosperous. That title belonged to land-rich families like the Porters and his half brother, Joseph Putnam, who also had a finger in the mercantile business of the port of Salem Town.

  But such taxonomies were neither here nor there at the moment. Mr. and Mrs. Putnam and their children slept tranquilly as the house servants and farmhands began their daily work. On this fine morning, two young maids, Mercy Lewis and Freya Beauchamp, filled large baskets with dirty linens and cookware to wash in the nearby river. Mercy, a sixteen-year-old orph
an, had seen her entire family slaughtered by Indians in the Eastward two years earlier. Freya, a year younger, had also ended up in service after she had arrived at the family’s doorstep one day, fainting dead into Mercy’s arms.

  Freya knew her name but had no recollection of her past or her people. Perhaps she had survived the smallpox and lost her memory to the fever. Or maybe, like Mercy, she had seen her family killed, and the horror of it had caused her to forget. When Freya strained to look back, she saw nothing. She did not know where she came from. She knew the dull ache she felt in her heart was the absence of family, and she knew that she missed them, but for all she tried, she could not remember her mother or father or a single sibling. It was as if her past had been erased—taken—lost as leaves spirited away by the wind.

  All Freya knew was that Mercy was a friend from the start, and for that she was grateful to have found a place in the Putnam home. With the large farm and several young children underfoot, the family had gladly taken her in as an extra hand.

  The laundry and dishes assembled, the girls stepped out of the house and onto the dirt path, baskets balanced on their hips. Freya’s red hair, startling as a sunset, glowed like a halo in the early rays of light. Of the two, she was the more striking one, with her rosebud lips and creamy skin. She had a lightness to her step and a quick, beguiling smile. While Mercy was pretty, with pale blue eyes and a high forehead, it was not her scarred cheek or hands that made her less so, but a tightness to her person that showed in her pinched lips and wary expression. The older girl tucked a wayward strand of blond hair that had fallen out from beneath her cap as she stopped by a bed of flowers, setting her basket on the ground. “Go ahead, pick one,” she urged Freya as she knelt on the ground, “pick a violet, and let us have a violet war!”

  “No, dear, we mustn’t tarry. Poor Annie is all on her own!” Freya said, meaning the oldest Putnam daughter. “We can’t leave her to tend the little ones by herself while Mistress is bedridden.” The lady of the house often took to her room to recover from the many tragedies of her life. Like her husband, Ann Putnam had been disinherited by her rich father, with his wife and sons seizing permanent control of his wealth. Her failed battle in court against them had left her bruised and embittered. Worse, soon after her three beautiful nieces died from a mysterious illness, one right after the other, and her sister, the girls’ mother and her only close friend, died as well, most likely from a broken heart. Their loss had left Mrs. Ann Putnam frail of body and spirit.