Triple Moon Read online

  “We mess with people. But we don’t kill them.” Even as she was sure she was telling the truth, Mardi was nervous because she intuited that they had been involved at the scene of the crime somehow. She wished she could remember that night with any kind of clarity, but there was a gray fog around her memory.

  Mardi looked to her sister for help, but Molly appeared as confused and uncomfortable as she did. She was fiddling anxiously with the rose gold ring on her right hand. She slipped it off and handed it to Mardi, who put it on her own hand without missing a beat.

  Ingrid, sensing the girls’ discomfort, softened her tone. “Listen, don’t worry about the sequence of events right now. We have all summer to get the bottom of it. Let’s just establish some practical boundaries for the time being, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Mardi, relieved to be off the hook but also dreading the rules that were about to be laid down.

  “First of all, my family. Matt, as you must know, is mortal, and he’s the chief of police. He knows I’m a witch and that I use my magic primarily to help people in town with medical and emotional issues, but we have an understanding that there is no magic in the house. We try to keep things as normal as possible. When the Restriction was lifted, the deal was that we witches could practice magic, as long as we didn’t draw too much attention to our supernatural abilities. Matt”—she cracked a smile—“is a rules guy.”

  “What about the kids?” asked Mardi.

  Ingrid explained that Jo had definitely inherited her powers but that they weren’t sure about Henry yet. He certainly seemed to emerge unscathed from some pretty hairy situations, but maybe he was simply a lucky boy. Matt was hoping his son would take after him, but for now, only time would tell.

  “So, keep it on the down low, here in the house and in town as well. What we are going to work on, girls, is using your magic for good. And using it with subtlety, which,” she said as she smiled at their brash and contrasting outfits, “doesn’t appear to be a strength yet.”

  4

  ROYALS

  You little . . . ! You spilled raspberry fruit goo on my Alexander McQueen top! This was one of that last pieces he designed before he killed himself!” Molly looked desperately down at the large spot spreading over her neckline and glared at Henry. “This piece,” she said, her voice trembling with indignation, “is a treasure . . . or at least it was a treasure.”

  Molly recoiled to a safe distance from the boy’s filthy hands. He squealed with delight at her distress, the organic red sludge dribbling down his chin. At least he was contained in his high chair and couldn’t come after her to do more damage.

  Matt, Ingrid, Jo, and Mardi all milled around the kitchen island as if nothing had happened, making macaroni and cheese (“homemade, never from a box!”) and nibbling on the remains of the otherworldly delicious strawberry rhubarb pies that Ingrid and Jo had baked to welcome the twins into their home. Nobody seemed remotely concerned that this devil in diapers had just ruined a priceless top, one of the linchpins of Molly’s wardrobe, a classic in cream-and-black-striped silk with a built-in corset. McQueen had designed it expressly for his muse Annabelle Neilson. There were only three in existence, Annabelle’s, Giselle’s, and Molly’s.

  Molly was in shock. And the “no magic in the house” rule meant that she couldn’t do anything to lift the stain until she got outside, by which time it would probably be too late for her powers to save the situation.

  Matt and Ingrid were going to a party that night at Fair Haven, which they described as a glorious historic mansion on its own private island facing the town. Gardiners Island it was called, after the Gardiner family, the oldest and wealthiest of North Hampton’s clans. Supposedly the house had just undergone a fabulous renovation and this party was to be the unveiling. There were at least three hundred people invited. Matt and Ingrid hoped the girls wouldn’t mind if they went out on the night of their arrival, but they couldn’t resist the chance to see what the Gardiners had done with the place.

  Molly couldn’t believe she was going to have to sit at home with these kids while there was a party going on where she actually might be able to show off some of her wardrobe and have a bit of fun. After only a few hours in this godforsaken place, she was already feeling totally deprived.

  Affecting dignity in the face of her tragic situation, she announced that she was going upstairs to her room to change into something more appropriate for the evening at home. But as she started toward the staircase, she was struck by a brilliant, if obvious, idea.

  “Hey,” she said. “Ingrid, Matt, you really don’t need both of us to babysit, do you? I mean, I’m sure Mardi could handle it. She’s great with kids. She tells awesome stories. You don’t mind if I come with you, right? Meet some people? It’s not like I’m going to hang out at that skanky North Inn bar.”

  “The North Inn is where my sister Freya works,” said Ingrid matter-of-factly.

  Molly felt Mardi’s hard black eyes on her, scornful and victorious. Mardi loved it when Molly made a fool of herself. Needless to say, it was mutual.

  “Well, I’m sure it’s a cool bar.” Molly tried to backpedal. “I mean, how can it not be? All I’m saying is that I would love to check out Fair Haven and meet some people.” She was already thinking about what she would wear. She could see that Ingrid and Matt weren’t going to mind. It all hinged on her sister now.

  Ingrid stirred a big lump of butter into some whole- wheat penne with grated cheddar and poured the mixture into an earthenware baking dish. “Well, I suppose it’s fine with us, right, Matt?” He nodded, sprinkling bread crumbs, freshly crushed from a day-old baguette, onto his wife’s pasta mixture.

  They really were a team, thought Molly. Bummer that it would only last a few decades. What was Ingrid thinking? Mortals were to be played with, but not married. Hadn’t Ingrid gotten the memo? Wasn’t she supposed to be the smart one here?

  “Do you mind if I go, Mardi?” Molly asked testily.

  “You think I want to go to some silly Gatsby-style party?” Mardi made the finger-down-throat gag-me sign.

  “Okay! Thanks! I’ll go get dressed.” Phew.

  “But you owe me one!” Mardi’s voice followed her up the stairs.

  • • •

  Molly decided on a buttery suede miniskirt that zipped up front and back, purchased this past spring during a long weekend in Paris. Daddy had taken her along on a business trip but of course had had no time for her and had given her his credit card to assuage his guilt. Such an easy target, her father, so much guilt for never spending any time with them. She paired the skirt with a simple blush-colored silk top and silver mules that her personal shopper had sourced for her from an image she’d seen in Italian Vogue.

  As Molly, Ingrid, and Matt crossed the bridge to Gardiners Island in the family’s maroon Subaru wagon, Molly’s spirits lifted. The dunes surrounding the mansion of Fair Haven were lit up to a fiery gold with giant torches. The house itself burned bright and beckoning. This might not be such a lame summer after all.

  After a valet whisked their car into the twilight, they started up a blazing path bordered with iridescent white peony bushes in full bloom. The crowd, Molly noticed immediately, was well-dressed for the most part, in a clubby, preppy sort of way. Not too shabby. This was more like it.

  Through large picture windows, she could see what looked like a ballroom hung with baroque chandeliers, alight with wax candles. Somewhere out of view, a band softly tuned its strings. A rogue flute trilled and then went silent.

  As a waiter handed Molly a flute of champagne and she waved away a tray of hors d’oeuvres, she felt a pair of eyes gazing upon her with startling intensity. She blushed inside. Before she knew it, a graceful hand had whisked away her glass and handed her another. Its champagne had fewer bubbles than the first. The color was darker, more like honey than wine.

  “Try this instead,” came
a suave voice. “It’s vintage. You are much too beautiful tonight to be drinking brut.”

  “Too beautiful tonight?” Molly’s flirting instinct surged. She flipped back her silky curtain of blue-black hair to look squarely at her interlocutor. “Why only tonight?”

  “Not only tonight. But especially tonight.” The voice belonged to a stunning young man of about seventeen. He was olive skinned with jet-black hair and chiseled cheekbones. His blue eyes twinkled in striking contrast to his dark features. He wore a navy blazer over a bespoke shirt of white linen with a discreet monogram on its cuff: the initials TG in delicate silk of the deepest red. Could he be one of the Gardiner brothers who owned Fair Haven?

  As if reading her thoughts, he introduced himself. “Welcome to Fair Haven. I’m Trystan Gardiner. Call me Tris.”

  “Molly Overbrook.” She held out her hand for him to shake. She was surprised to find herself a tad nervous. Usually, she was the one who intimidated all the boys. But Tris was utterly cool, calm, and gracious, while she had butterflies in her stomach. He was so formal, yet so familiar. As she clinked her champagne flute with his, her hand trembled ever so slightly. “Beautiful house,” she managed.

  “Yes, it’s wonderful to come back to. My family was away from it for ages. Until about ten years ago, Fair Haven was a relic. There was no one on this island except the ospreys who nested all over our beaches. They still do make their home here, of course.”

  He was in boarding school in England, and his older brothers had overseen a complete restoration of the house and grounds. They were off again, traveling the world, and he lived in the house with their stepmother. He gestured a few feet farther up the torch-lit path to an immaculately groomed older woman wearing a summery Chanel suit and two-toned pumps, who was deep in conversation with Ingrid and Matt, most likely about finishes and light fixtures.

  “So,” Molly asked, “how are you dealing in North Hampton? Is there anything to do here?”

  He looked her over appreciatively, her glittering blue-black eyes, cascading hair, calf muscles taut in her silver mules. It was as if he were sculpting a masterpiece with his sharp blue gaze.

  Molly had never felt quite so beautiful, and that was saying something.

  “Hm.” He repeated her question: “Is there anything to do here?” His smile was both wicked and winning. “Well, there certainly is now that I’ve met you, Molly Overbrook.”

  5

  RESCUE ME

  Once the grown-ups had pulled out of the driveway, Mardi took Jo and Henry to the beach in front of the house. She tossed a blanket over the silver sand, and they sat down and watched the sunset with Fair Haven lit up on Gardiners Island across the bay.

  Henry had a bucket that he filled with little fistfuls of sand. He dumped it out over and over, with no signs of boredom or slowing down. Kids were so weird. Mardi supposed she was going to have to give him a bath after this to get the sand off his body before putting him to bed, and she shuddered at the drudgery of it all. She was never having children.

  Jo kept running her finger over Mardi’s rainbow tattoo, murmuring, “It’s so, so, so pretty!” It was all Mardi could do not to swat the little girl away from her neck.

  Finally, she pulled herself to standing and suggested they go put their feet in the water.

  “Sure,” said Jo. “But will you tell me why you have a rainbow bridge on your neck?”

  Startled, Mardi inhaled sharply. “Why did you call it a bridge?”

  Without answering, Jo demanded, “Tell me the story of the rainbow bridge! Molly promised you tell good stories!”

  Frigging Molly, thought Mardi with a grimace. Molly was across Gardiner Bay, probably sipping champagne and nibbling caviar toasts and smoked salmon, while she was stuck babysitting.

  Obviously, Jo wasn’t going to leave Mardi alone until she talked about her tattoo. She might as well get it over with. It was a story their father had told them when they were young, when they asked the usual questions about their family and where they came from.

  “I’m surprised your mom hasn’t told you! You see, my rainbow bridge, like you called it, is actually the Bofrir Bridge, a magical bridge built by the king of the gods so that all the other gods could travel from Middle Earth, which is the ordinary world where we all live now, to their palace in heaven, a castle called Valhalla, which was built using the labor of dragons.”

  “Neat!”

  Phew, the kid seemed satisfied. Mardi had always liked that story about Asgard, she thought as she twisted the ring on her finger.

  Suddenly, she felt a brush of soft fur on her ankle. She looked down to see Jo scooping up a black kitten.

  “Midnight!” Jo cried out in delight. “Midnight, where have you been?”

  Mardi understood immediately that Midnight and Jo had a magical bond. “Is Midnight your familiar?” she asked wistfully.

  “Yes. Are you a witch too?” Jo’s question was completely without guile.

  “Yes, I am.” There was no point in lying.

  “And your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, then, where are your familiars? Why didn’t they come to live here with you?”

  “Our dad made us board them for the summer.” Mardi felt a pang for her Siamese cat, Killer, who was stuck in an overpriced pet hotel in SoHo. She missed Killer’s steady companionship, her knowing gaze, and deep purr.

  Killer had an archenemy in Molly’s Fury, a small Löwchen dog, with the typical long feathery hair in front, smooth hindquarters, and upturned fluffy tail. Of course Molly would be shadowed by a specimen of one of the priciest dog breeds on the planet, and one that required heaps of grooming to maintain its absurd hairstyle.

  For the most part, the two animals despised one another. Fury yapped at Killer. Killer hissed at Fury. They sometimes even peed in one another’s water bowls. But every once in a while, for no apparent reason, they would curl up together and nap, their eyelids fluttering in unison as if to the same dream.

  “Henry!” Jo screamed out to sea, shattering Mardi’s reverie. “Oh, no!”

  Mardi followed the little witch’s anxious gaze to discover that the baby boy had somehow managed to launch himself in an orange kayak and was drifting off into the twilight at an alarming rate.

  “No!” Mardi screamed, yanking off her sandals. “Jo, stay right here! Don’t move! I’ll get him!”

  As she ran into the water, Mardi watched in horror while the kid stood up, wobbled, spread his arms, and jumped out of the kayak as if he thought he could fly. Then Henry disappeared under the water.

  Mardi swam faster than she ever had in her life, knifing through the darkening sea toward the spot where she had seen Henry disappear. Her heart was pounding. Her arms and legs tensed with the muscle memory of the thousands of laps she had swum this past year as a way to calm her anxiety and steady her racing pulse. She had to remind herself to breathe.

  She reached the kayak and began diving around it, waving through the water with her arms and legs in the desperate hope of touching a little limb. Nothing.

  Then she heard the distinct chime of baby laughter. Miraculously, Henry’s chubby fingers were grasping the front tip of the kayak. He was hanging there, feet dangling in the sea, cackling to himself. She grabbed him and held him close.

  “Henry, why on earth did you do that?”

  By way of answer, he stuck his thumb in her mouth to touch her emerald tongue stud. “Wowie,” he squealed. As far as Mardi could tell, his vocabulary consisted of four words: Mama, Dada, more, and wowie.

  The rush of gratitude she felt toward the universe was intense. She burst into tears, then realized she should wave to reassure Jo, who was standing motionless in the surf. Had Jo used magic to rescue her brother? Or was he simply really lucky and really coordinated? Or was it something else?

  Mardi lifted him into the seat, grabbe
d the back of the kayak, and kicked her legs like an outboard motor, propelling it to shore. As she pulled it up onto the wet sand and let Henry scamper out, vowing never to take her eyes off him again when he was in her charge, a gorgeous dark-haired figure appeared on the beach.

  Mardi was not easily impressed by physical beauty, but this woman was a total fox. Her hair was dark with red-gold highlights. She was small, more petite than the long, lanky Mardi, and much curvier. She was barefoot in skinny jeans of an iridescent, opaline black that perfectly cinched her tiny waist, along with a silver and bronze silk bustier that would have been cool in any decade over the past thousand years. Her breasts were mesmerizing, perfectly full and high. They should have seemed disproportionate to her tiny frame, but they looked as right and natural as full blossoms on a slender stalk. Her cheekbones popped, and her large green up-slanting eyes twinkled in the light of the rising moon. She didn’t look remotely troubled by the fact that the baby had just been pulled from the jaws of the sea.

  Mardi recognized this creature instantly as one of her tribe, a goddess from Asgard stuck in Midgard, or Middle Earth, for all eternity after the bridge connecting the two worlds was destroyed centuries ago. Here in Midgard, the gods lived among humans as witches and warlocks. Molly and Mardi’s own father, Troy Overbrook, was once known as Thor, god of thunder. And this gorgeous woman on the beach, exuding ripeness and sexuality, had to be Ingrid’s sister, Freya, goddess of love. She had reached her eternal age of about twenty-five and would not grow physically older until the end of time, unless of course she chose to.

  As if to confirm Mardi’s hunch, the young woman held out her pretty hand, smiled blinding white, and said, “Hi, I’m Freya Beauchamp. You must be one of Troy’s girls. Ingrid told me you guys were here this summer. Welcome!”

  “Thanks. I’m Mardi.”