Winds of Salem: A Witches of East End Novel Page 5

  Ingrid couldn’t help but revisit Freya’s last moment before she was taken, that awful night at Mother’s house. Her sister had been standing by the fireplace, still in disbelief over how Killian had been torn away from her just as she had found him again after centuries of pining. Freddie, their brother, had reassured his twin that they would do everything to find Killian and bring him back. But Freya had not answered; instead she had turned silent, her eyes filling with shock. She appeared to be staring at something that terrified her. Her bright green eyes had clouded over, becoming dull, as her face blanched. She gasped and choked. It all happened within seconds. Ingrid had risen to her feet, moving forward to help. But there was nothing anyone could do. As Freya brought her hands to tug at her neckline, Ingrid saw the invisible rope cutting into her throat, squeezing it and leaving a red mark.

  Then she was gone. Her sister was gone.

  Ingrid knew what had happened the minute she had seen the rope burn at her sister’s neck. Gallows Hill, 1692. When the two of them had hanged for witchcraft. It was happening all over again. Somehow, someone wanted Freya back there. Back to Salem Village and all its horrors.

  Ingrid pulled the rubber band out of her hair to lessen the pinch at her temples. She anxiously scratched at her scalp. “I keep saying sorry, Matt, because I mean it. You know I wish I could be spending my time with you instead, but I can’t, not until we find her. But don’t worry, I think I’m getting closer.”

  “The dreams?”

  “Yeah, I had another one,” she said, and shuddered.

  “Ingrid? You okay?” asked Matt.

  No, she wasn’t. She had drifted off again while talking to him. “You know, I don’t think it’s fair to you to be with me when I’m so distracted.”

  Matt let out a breath. Ingrid wished she could feel the warmth of it against her face and neck. She felt herself almost give in and tell him to pick her up so they could spend the night together. Instead a silence hung between them, fraught with tension.

  Her love for Matt had not waned. If anything, she loved him more than ever—for his patience and always being there when she needed a shoulder to lean on, solid as a pillar. He encouraged her when she lost hope of finding Freya, and was as helpful as a mortal could be in this situation. He didn’t understand everything about her background or her family, but he had accepted her for what she was. A witch.

  “Why don’t you give me a call when you’re wrapping things up?” Matt said. “I’ll pick you up and drive you home.”

  She stared at the books piled on her desk, all different sizes, stacked in towers, then the one open under the circle of light cast by the desk lamp. “I don’t know… I’m not sure when I’ll be finished. I wouldn’t want to hold you up or wake you if you’ve gone to bed.”

  He laughed. “Come on, I just want to see you. Anyway, I’m still at the precinct doing paperwork. We just wrapped up a case.”

  “While I didn’t even ask how you’re doing… I’m so sorry.”

  “There you go again. I’m fine.”

  “I really miss you,” she said, but even as she did, she’d grown distracted by the pile of books in front of her.

  Matt was silent. “Let’s talk later,” he said.

  “I promise this will get better, and we can spend more time together.”

  “Sure.” He remained on the line but was silent.

  She waited a little longer but that was it, so she said good-bye, and they hung up without saying their usual “I love you”s. Ingrid felt empty and awful from the way the conversation had ended. Their relationship was constantly being stalled by something or other. She lowered her head and began to read, then realized she had read an entire page and not retained a word. Because what if Matt grew used to her absence and stopped missing her altogether? The poor guy couldn’t wait forever, could he? He couldn’t wait forever for her to… well, to sleep with him, for one. They weren’t teenagers. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She wanted him more than anything. He was the one for her. Except, there was just one thing.

  He was mortal.

  He would only get hurt, or she would, there was no getting around that. She would only pretend to age, but he would die, leaving her alone forever. While Matt seemed to accept her differences easily, it was a revelation to Ingrid to find she was the one with doubts, perhaps because she knew exactly what their relationship would mean for her in the end. So she had pushed him away, using Freya’s disappearance as an excuse.

  She thought about the dreams. In the first, Freya stood alone in a field of wheat. She saw the village in the distance and recognized it. Salem, with its dark square homes, beneath gigantic clouds moving fast through a blinding blue sky. The sleeves of her sister’s saffron-yellow blouse beneath her dark mauve bodice rumpled in the wind. Her cap fluttered against her sun- and wind-kissed cheeks, as she held it in place, her palm against her crown. Her sister looked so young, she couldn’t be older than sixteen. There was panic in her eyes. The dream ended there.

  In the second installment, Freya stood in the field again. She was whispering something. Something Ingrid couldn’t hear.

  In the third dream, Freya was screaming as the wheat field went up in a great whoosh of orange flame, black smoke licking at the great blue of the sky. The fire consumed the field, moving quickly behind her sister. Freya came running, closer and closer, larger and larger, until she passed Ingrid, but they didn’t touch.

  Ingrid had woken in a hot-cold sweat.

  That had been the last dream.

  Freya was trapped in Salem Village. Freya was in danger and there was nothing Ingrid could do about it.

  Her eyes ached. She squeezed them shut. In Salem, witches had been hanged, never burned. In fact, no witch had ever been burned in the Americas. However, the flames meant something. The fire expressed urgency. Time was running out. Little progress had been made.

  The Beauchamps’ magic had grown feeble, Ingrid knew; it was a candle at the end of its wick. Her mother, Joanna, could not muster the strength to reopen the passages of time however much she tried. Freya was trapped in seventeenth-century Salem while Ingrid and her family were trapped here, unable to return to the past and rescue her.

  Ingrid began reading her book again. The Salem witch hunt in 1692 had been an anomaly in its intensity, concentration, scale, and death toll. It lasted one year and ended almost as abruptly as it began. Nineteen had been hanged. One man was pressed to death by stones. Four perished in jail awaiting trial. More than one hundred people in Salem and its surrounding communities (mostly women, but there were men and children as well) had been accused and forced to languish for months in prison under horrific conditions in dark, wet, cramped, stinking, rat-infested cells. They were hungry, thirsty, dirty, shaved, manacled to walls, pricked and prodded for “witches’ teats”—nipples or birthmarks or moles where one’s familiar supposedly suckled, proof one was indeed a witch.

  How could she help her sister? Was there a way to prevent the crisis that spread like wildfire from happening again? What had caused it? What was the spark? It had all begun in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, when his daughter Betty and young ward, niece Abigail, began having strange fits. That was the beginning. Ingrid would start there.

  For reasons Ingrid didn’t understand, she couldn’t find her own or Freya’s name recorded in any of the documents or history books. There was nothing about the Beauchamp girls who had been hanged on Gallows Hill. The fact that they were not in any records was puzzling yet heartening. Maybe it meant that the past had already been altered somehow? And that Freya was safe?

  The burning field of wheat and her sister in the middle of it…

  Ingrid grabbed another book and read, pushing past a wave of weariness. There were three facts about the history of Salem that were of great interest to Ingrid. One, that the Reverend Parris was instrumental to the Salem witch hunt, spurring it on and fanning the flames; two, that Thomas Putnam and his clan filed the most accusations against witche
s with the court; and three, that Joseph Putnam, Thomas’s younger brother, was one of the few Salem residents to speak out against the witch hunts. The brothers had been fighting over their inheritance, Ingrid knew, with Thomas feeling as if he had been cheated out of his. Ingrid always suspected Salem had been about more than just witchcraft.

  The phone rang again, startling Ingrid. She picked it up.

  “Hey,” said Matt, “just calling to say good night. I’m heading to bed unless you want me to pick you up.”

  Ingrid didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought.” Matt yawned.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  She wanted to tell him she loved him, but somehow his silence made saying those words too daunting.

  “Night, Ingrid.”

  “Night,” she said, then hung up. She stared at the phone for a moment, feeling a pang, then plunged her nose in yet another book.

  chapter eight

  Brother Time

  Sunlight pierced the curtains, falling over the C of Joanna’s body beneath the duvet, illuminating the strand of silver hair that fell over her lips. She woke with a start and blew at the lock of hair and pressed her eyelids shut again. She did not want to wake up, not yet. This wasn’t the way to greet the day, so full of anxiety and dread.

  Joanna had gotten her beloved son back, only to have her youngest daughter ripped away from her, tugged back through the passages of time, a noose at her neck. Freya… beautiful, free-spirited Freya, back in the dark ages. Puritans. There was a word for those people but Joanna would not use it. She was comforted by Freddie’s assurance that he believed Freya was alive and well for now—he would feel it if his twin were dead, he had told her.

  Still, she was a mess.

  Her body ached from using her magic to break the passages open but it was no use. The passages of time were sealed. Baking couldn’t even help her out of her funk: her pies came out sunken and burned. She had so little magic left in her fingertips she couldn’t even restore them to their rightful plumpness. During the day, Joanna could barely eat, and in the evenings, she’d taken to ordering from Hung Sung Lo’s for the family, the mediocre North Hampton Chinese take-out place.

  At least she wasn’t alone. She snaked a hand between the sheets, reaching for reassurance, warmth, comfort, to pull his body into the curl of hers and make the feelings go away. But the spot beside her was empty, cold.

  “Good morning, gorgeous!” boomed a voice at the bedroom door.

  Joanna sighed with relief. She sat up and saw her husband in the doorway, already dressed in jeans and a bright cotton plaid shirt. He was clean-shaven, his silver-and-black hair standing a tad awry. “Hello, darling!” she cried.

  Norman was holding a breakfast tray, beaming at her. She saw a small vase holding a rosebud, a stack of croissants and muffins, butter, jam, orange juice, and a cup of coffee, the steam highlighted by the morning light. The creases in his forehead and cheeks had turned into grooves. They were both aging as their powers diminished and they worried about Freya. Despite it all, Norman kept up a good front. He made a valiant effort to cheer up Joanna when needed. She couldn’t help but beam back at her man, feeling a teenage crush all over again, a surge of blushing bliss.

  He walked toward her.

  “Don’t you look handsome this morning.” She smiled.

  He dismissed the comment with a scoff. That was also what she found so attractive about him—he had no clue just how handsome he was, even if he was rumpled and worn out, like an older, more weathered James Bond.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, handing her the tray. The curve of his neck caught her eye. She could take a bite of him right there instead of eating this divine breakfast he had brought her. She was grateful that they had decided to give this another go.

  They were trying. Actually, they weren’t.

  That was the thrill of it—they didn’t have to try. There was nothing to fix; it was easy and tender. This kind of love, the love-of-one’s-life kind of love, was the only cushion for pain during a crisis such as this one. Joanna propped the tray on her legs, still smiling admiringly at Norman. If it weren’t for Freya gone, she would have thought, Magic be damned. I am happy to live as a mortal, with my husband.

  “You are one to speak, old girl! In this morning light, you look as stunning as the day we first met on that beach, even though you claim to feel…”

  “Like crap?” finished Joanna.

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to ruin the moment.” He frowned, then reached and squeezed her hand, and they kissed.

  “What a lovely breakfast, fit for a queen!” she said, when they pulled away. She looked at the offerings. “Where did you get all this?”

  Norman cleared his throat. “An idea struck me last night, and I didn’t get much sleep. I was down in your office working, and I went to the bakery when it opened.”

  Joanna grabbed a blueberry muffin and sniffed it. It was still warm, freshly baked, and to her surprise, its scent jump-started her appetite. She bit into the warm, buttery, crumbly moistness. “Mmm.”

  “I thought that might give you a lift since you haven’t had time to bake.”

  “So thoughtful!” She couldn’t get enough of the muffin.

  Norman told her of his plan. His brother Arthur had popped into his head in the middle of the night. Arthur Beauchamp worked with the Wolves of Memory, the historical keepers of the passages of time.

  “How is dear old Art?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in ages. But I did find him online.” He told her Arthur was still teaching at Case Western in Ohio. Yet when Norman had tried calling his line this morning, the phone rang and rang. No voice mail. Then he couldn’t get through to anyone at the university, and for nearly an hour had struggled to find his way out of an endless labyrinthine loop of voice-activated options.

  Finally, he found a cell number and called that—it went straight to voice mail, so he left a message, but he wasn’t even sure if it was his brother’s cell phone because the message just repeated back the number he had dialed. Then when he tried that same number again, a message said the number was no longer in service. Something or someone appeared to be preventing him from reaching Arthur.

  There was only one solution. They needed to hit the road and head to Cleveland to find him.

  “We’re driving there?” asked Joanna.

  “Why not? We can break it up. Drive five hours, find a motel, drive another five. How about it, Jo?”

  “A road trip!” She removed the tray from her lap. One muffin and a few sips of coffee, and she suddenly felt invigorated. She and Norman were taking action, not simply despairing and sitting back. Inspired, she began to make preparations for their journey. Yankee practical, she thought: thermoses with coffee, crackers, cheddar and brie, fruit, nuts. Joanna loved thinking about projects in terms of food.

  Arthur—of course! The old timekeeper had to possess the key to the passages she couldn’t unlock herself.

  “You’re a genius, my dear! But I do hope Arthur’s all right. I hope nothing has happened to him.”

  chapter nine

  The Newlyweds

  Freddie heard the shower turn off, followed by Gert’s loud sigh. The little New Haven off-campus apartment had walls that were so insubstantial that whatever anyone did in another room could be heard as if you were standing side by side. He could tell that she was annoyed because he had used all the bath towels again without putting out new ones. He had made a mental note, of course, to do some laundry and throw some in there, but it had slipped his mind when he put on Warhammer and just had to get to the next level.

  “Freddie!” called Gert.

  Gullinbursti, Freddie’s piglet familiar, snorted against his foot as if to tell him to get moving. “I know, Buster,” said Freddie, throwing the remote down on the little black couch, among popcorn kernels, crumbs, magazines, and fast-food wrappers. “I know I know I know!”

>   Married life. You had to get your wife immediately out of a jam if she were in one. That was how one showed everlasting love.

  “Dammit!” he muttered to himself.

  All the towels were dirty. He hadn’t done the wash. He smelled one and decided she wouldn’t notice. He was supposed to keep the house running while Gert was studying for finals, but he had stuff on his mind and had been busy, too. He was worried about Freya. It had been so long since she’d disappeared and the family seemed to be getting nowhere. If anything, his anxiety over his twin had driven him to play even more video games.

  There was also his volunteer work as a firefighter. The local firehouse had given him a ton of shifts because—as Fryr, the sun god, which they didn’t know about, of course—he had a knack with flames. Fighting fires, observing RECEO (Rescue, Exposures, Confinement, Extinguishment, and Overhaul), was hard work, exhausting, and by the time he got home, he was just too tired to throw a load into the washing machine. Of course there had been a clean one for his shower after a day at the station with the boys and tromping around in flames in that heavy bunker gear. He felt just a tad guilty at that.

  “Freddie!” Gert screamed.

  “Uh-oh,” Freddie remarked to Buster. “Here goes nothing.” Best to play dumb. In a couple of leaps (everything was within a couple of leaps in this apartment), he made it to the bathroom, opened the door, and spied his beautiful wife hiding behind the shower curtain, dripping wet and looking angry.