Serpent's Kiss Read online

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  “Shh,” said Killian. They walked silently for a while but soon he was making her stand in place. “Okay,” he said. His hands undid the blindfold, slipped off the knot at the back of her head.

  The scarf fell and she opened her eyes. They were on the southeast side of Fair Haven, where a greenhouse abutted a wall of the manor.

  Through years of disuse, it had gone to disrepair. Its domed roof and walls had grown bleary with age and many of the panes between the 1800s smith ironwork had broken. The inside had turned into a pandemonium of weeds, brambles, and ivy, so that it had become impossible even to step inside.

  Freya stared in awe. The greenhouse had been completely revamped, and the glass shone in the light. The scene inside reminded her of the tropical conservatory greenhouse at Kew Gardens in England: slim, twisting palm trees, agave ferox, african violets, swiss cheese plants with bright green lacy fronds, a reflection pond with pink water lilies. Resurrected, the greenhouse was a reminder of what Killian had always been for Freya: Balder, the god of tranquillity, joy, and beauty. This was an extension of him but also a manifestation of his love.

  “You did this?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s really just to showcase your new herb garden,” Killian said. “I got a little carried away, and it took a while to get it all growing the way I wanted. You always mentioned wanting to cultivate your own herbs for your magic.”

  Freya felt her eyes blur and Killian took her by the hand as they entered the thick, wet, sun-warmed air filled with the perfume of flowers and the song of cicadas. He gave her a tour, pointing out the herbs he had planted throughout as he called out their names: damiana, hyssop, burdock, feverfew, valerian, catnip, angelica root.

  “Moss,” he said, stopping at a large, round green rock.

  “I see!” she retorted. She put her hand on the moss and pressed, admiring its springy texture.

  He grinned with an irresistible glint in his eye. “It’s nice.” He pressed her against the mossy stone.

  It was really the perfect place to rest her back as Killian moved his lips to her neck, then face, kissing away her tears. Soon they were naked, rolling around among african violets; then her face and hands were pressing against the glass as he entered her again, and she saw her breath form a patch of vapor on the pane.

  They were drenched in sweat, their bodies slick, slipping against each other; then she was pressed against the moss again, as he moved tenderly inside her. He was so strong, and she loved that he held his strength in check as she ran her hands over his muscled torso, and he lifted her knees above his shoulders, pushing them to her chest. They were in sync now, making love—that was what it was—and it was all she could ever remember doing with him. She was screaming as he shuddered in her arms, grasping her tightly, and she peered above at the sky and clouds moving beyond their glass haven.

  They let go of each other, arms at their sides, their foreheads still together, as they gasped.

  “I fucking missed you!” said Killian.

  “Me too!” said Freya. And I missed fucking you.

  He cupped her face in his hands and pulled her mouth to his. He was wonderful. He was all Freya wanted. Only Killian could rock her body and soul that way, and he was the only one who ever had. All she had to do was let go, trust him.

  Freddie was wrong about him. She should never have doubted. Killian would never deceive her. She stopped kissing him, and before she knew what she was saying, she was saying it. “I’ve been hiding something from you. My brother’s back from Limbo. Fryr—I mean Freddie. He’s called Freddie now.”

  Killian stared at her, joy written all over his face. “That’s incredible news! Freddie! You’re not the only one who’s missed him, you know? Where is he? Let’s get him. Right now!” He tugged her hand and with the other began gathering the clothes they had scattered throughout the greenhouse. He handed her the blouse and pants she had worn.

  Freya leaned against the moss-covered rock, holding her clothes to her chest. “It’s not that simple, Killian.” She looked down at the brown mulch covering the ground, then watched him as he dressed. She was going to have to explain.

  Now that she had revealed Freddie was here, she couldn’t hold anything back. She had taken the leap of faith and trust. “Freddie escaped from Limbo. The Valkyries didn’t exactly let him go—and there’s more …” She told him what Freddie believed had happened, that Killian was his nemesis, that Killian was the one responsible for the collapse of the Bofrir bridge and stealing the gods’ powers as his own, leaving him and Loki to take the blame. “I can’t talk him out of it. He really believes you did it. I’ve tried, but he’s insisted on hiding out, on plotting his revenge against you.”

  Killian stood barefoot in his jeans, his shirt unbuttoned. He stared at her the same way he had looked at her last on the Dragon—jilted, hurt, confused.

  She still hadn’t put her clothes back on, and now they fell to her feet. Her brow was creased as she stared back at him. “But he’s wrong about you, right, Killian? Tell me he’s wrong!”

  Killian didn’t answer, only set about buttoning his shirt, without looking her in the eye, without answering her question.

  chapter seventeen

  Teenage Dream

  It was windy on the beach, but none of it mattered: sand hitting their faces and getting in the food, the blanket lifting from their shoes, placed as ballasts at the corners to hold it down, their hair mussed by the sudden gusts. All of it only made them laugh.

  Matt had picked up Ingrid after work and driven her to the tip of Long Island, near the Montauk Point Light house, to watch the sunset. The spot, a deserted sandy alcove surrounded by rocks that cut jaggedly into the sky, was right on the outside of the disoriented pocket, and so the two of them, in a sense, had stepped out of another dimension into real time, or perhaps they were still tottering between the two. They were inside the border of ordinary and extraordinary, but there seemed nothing ordinary about either side at the moment. Perhaps it was a dream zone, because that was how Ingrid thought of it—this second first date. They were starting all over again.

  Matt had brought a blanket and further surprised Ingrid with a picnic basket containing an elegant spread: a white tablecloth and napkins, champagne flutes, a chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot, duck mousse pâté, cornichons, a soft brie, olives, and a baguette, deliciously crunchy on the outside, soft and nutty on the inside.

  “Since we didn’t make it to that restaurant, I thought I’d bring the restaurant to you,” Matt said as he bit into a piece of bread and pâté. “I hope you like it. The waiter there said it was très délicieux.”

  Ingrid was touched and laughed at Matt’s effort at a proper French accent. He had a good ear. He was always surprising her like that. No man had ever been so thoughtful toward her before. Well, unless her father, Norman, counted, but of course dads didn’t count when it came to this sort of thing.

  The sun fell behind a silver-blue cluster of clouds, outlining them in luminous white. Above that horizontal strip, the sky tinged turquoise, below ochre, then tangerine along the water, whose soft ripples reflected back a sunspot and the sky. Waves broke, hissing along the sand. They finished eating, and soon the sun would disappear into the waves.

  “This is magic,” Ingrid said.

  Matt smiled and didn’t respond, but he didn’t disagree, either. She thought she would leave it for now. There was no point in arguing. She also had no desire to glimpse into his lifeline, although it would be easy to do it right now; he sat beside her, pants hitched up to his knees, barefoot, open, receptive, present—the perfect candidate, really.

  He hadn’t once mentioned the “band of homeless kids,” and she was grateful for that. She felt at peace with him, as if she had finally come home. She watched his animated freckled face changing expressions, peered into the blue pools of his eyes, his hair moving this way and that in the wind.

  Matt cocked his hea
d at her. “May I?” he asked. Ingrid blinked nervously, but he turned her away from him by her shoulders and carefully began taking the pins out of her bun. He placed them in her hand, and she faced him again, shaking her hair out.

  “Better,” he said. He put a finger beneath her chin, lifting it up, so she could look in his eyes. He bent his face down to hers, and Ingrid could barely catch her breath.

  “We really should get back to the car before it gets dark, put all this stuff away, don’t you think?” she rattled.

  “Hmm,” said Matt with a dreamy smile. “Oh, well.” He laughed.

  She stood up and brushed the crumbs off her skirt and began packing away the picnic. She felt stupid and foolish for ruining the moment; she should have just let him kiss her. It wasn’t as if it were the first time. Things were going too well, and she wasn’t sure where it would lead—where she wanted it to lead.

  They hurried to the car as the wind picked up, carrying the blanket and basket over the path through the rocks, putting on their shoes when they reached the parking lot. After they stored everything in the trunk, Matt opened the passenger door for Ingrid and got in the driver’s seat.

  He slammed the door and turned toward her. She looked questioningly back at him, or maybe her face was blank. She couldn’t tell how she was looking at him.

  “I’m sorry …” she said. “I’m new at this …” Her hands twisted in her lap and she felt as if she would die of shame.

  “Hey …” Matt said. “We don’t have to do anything at all. Listen, we can just be friends, okay?”

  Ingrid sniffed and nodded, swallowing her disappointment.

  Matt put his key in the ignition. It was over. He was going to drive her home, and then they would be friends. She couldn’t do this, she thought, have a real relationship with someone she liked. She was a failure and a coward.

  But the car remained parked. Ingrid turned to him. He was smiling at her. It was the smile that did it, the one that said, It’s okay. We’ll be friends. I’ll wait for you. She didn’t have to read minds to know what he was trying to tell her.

  Ingrid reached over and shut off the car, then placed her hand on his and guided it to her lips. She kissed his fingers, each one, a penance. An invitation. She didn’t have to wait very long. He was kissing her again, longer this time, and as she opened her mouth to his she knew it was unlike anything she had ever experienced before, a longing that ached, a hunger they each sought to satisfy, but at the same time sweet, assuaging. Matt was leaning over her, the back of her head pressing against the headrest, her arms awkwardly at her sides.

  She pushed her mouth harder against his, placing her hands, hesitantly at first, on his broad shoulders, then running them more confidently along his arms. She felt his muscles straining beneath the soft sweater. His hands caressed her waist, pushing up her skirt. He kissed her face and her neck, and she heard him sigh audibly, felt the heat rise between them, the windows of the car beginning to fog.

  Wind and sand lashed at the car. It had gotten dark. The lampposts around the lot had lit up at some point. She put her hands underneath his sweater, underneath his shirt, on his hard, flat stomach, and all the while they were kissing, pressing closer and closer, so that Matt was on top of her, his knees between her legs, and her head bumping against the window.

  She hadn’t noticed that while they were kissing she had removed his sweater, that her hands were under his shirt, that while she had been undressing him, he had unbuttoned her shirt, and now his hand was behind her back, fiddling with the clasp of her bra.

  She pulled away, and her blush spread from her cheeks to her chest.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his breath ragged, hovering on top of her, his eyes glazed.

  She sat there with her knees pointing toward him, her skirt hiked up to her black tights, the lights softly illuminating her pale breastbone, her little everyday white bra showing, which embarrassed her. She always wore a bra, unlike Freya, who liked to “set the twins free.” Her bra was so very unsexy, just practical, not lacy or pushup or cleavage enhancing. Just a plain white bra.

  A plain white bra that she wasn’t even wearing but pressing to her chest, because Matt had succeeded in unhooking it.

  She was thirty-two years old. No. She was older than that. So much older. But Ingrid realized no one had ever seen her naked before. No man, at least.

  She was trembling.

  “We can stop,” Matt said, and began to wrench his way off of her.

  “No … don’t,” Ingrid said.

  His eyes on hers, he peeled off her blouse until it fell on the ground, then slowly, ever so slowly did the same to the wisp of cotton that she was holding so tightly. Ingrid closed her eyes and let him see her.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, kissing her neck. And then his hands were on her bare skin, on her breasts, and her pulse thrummed in her ear, and their kisses became tremulous. They were both shaking now, skin to skin. So this is what it’s like, Ingrid thought, although she was past thought. She had surrendered to pure sensation, liking the feel of his warm body on hers, pressing against each other.

  Freya would be so proud of me, she thought. Second base! But it was as far as she would go, and she knew she could trust Matt. She wouldn’t have to say anything. Instead they kept kissing, like two tentative and frightened but eager adolescents, having their own private awakening, inside the only parked car in the lot.

  chapter eighteen

  Message in a Bottle

  Joanna laid out the spirit’s message on her desk, just the way it had been displayed on the grave:

  Now that she could read the runes at her leisure, she decided to go by the Norn spread, reading the six of them in groups of threes from left to right, because they had been placed in two distinct clusters. The first one, called Odin’s rune, represented the factors leading up to this point (past) and was the overview of the situation, the second summed up the situation (present) and identified the current challenge, and the third was intended to suggest a course of action (future) and its possible outcome.

  In the first position she had hagalaz, which meant “hail,” whose deeper prescient significance was crisis, upheaval, catastrophe, stagnation, loss of power, a disruptive force awakening from a deep sleep. Here the spirit was telling her that something had gone amiss. This wasn’t too surprising. If the spirit was seeking Joanna’s attention and had gone through the pains of leaving this message in mid-world, it meant it was in full unrest, desperate enough to breach the thick membrane of the seam separating the dead from the living. The rune had no ambiguous meaning; even upside down it meant the same thing.

  The rune in the second position, the current challenge, ansuz, stood for an ancestral god, and its underlying esoteric translation was the revealing of a message, a communiqué, advice. “Whoever you are, you want me to read them. That is clear,” Joanna said. “Or are you saying that the challenge is that I must find you, so that you can tell me something pressing? You have advice for me? You want to tell me what this catastrophe is about, what perturbs you? Okay.” She was speaking to the spirit as if it were in the room.

  The final rune, the action she had to take, was wunjo. “Aw, that is nice of you,” said Joanna. “You want us to become friends, allies, or you are saying that we will be friends in the future?” Wunjo was the symbol for “joy” and meant friendship.

  She had resolved that the overall message of this first set of runes was simple: some kind of great calamity had taken place and the spirit needed to inform her of its specifics, while offering friendship and meaning no harm. She would need to travel farther into the glom to find it. If the spirit were as powerful as it appeared, it didn’t necessarily have to be in the layer closest to the seam.

  In the case of Philip and Virginia, their attempts to contact her had become so out of control that they’d killed the landau driver. Had Joanna intervened sooner, she might have prevented that poor man from being impaled on the spikes of a wro
ught-iron fence as the carriage tipped and hurled him off. The two lovers had intended no harm. It was only that their love had driven them to desperation. They hadn’t wanted a man to die. No one was going to die this time, Joanna thought. She had to figure out what this spirit wanted her to know before it took similar desperate action. This would require research, the correct spell, and she needed to know where to look for this soul. She was about to read the next set of runes when she felt a presence in the room. She peered over her shoulder and saw Ingrid.

  “Oh, you startled me!” she said.

  “You’re very jumpy, Mother!” Ingrid chided, but Joanna could see her oldest was in a good mood. She was glowing, her light blond hair sleekly draping down past her shoulders, the prettiest hue of pink in her cheeks, her skin pale and dewy. She reminded Joanna of a delicate but robust flower, like a white moth orchid or a slim, graceful calla lily. She smiled, happy to see her daughter so relaxed and well. It must be that new cop boyfriend of hers. Matt Virtuous or something, was it? Joanna was amused and secretly pleased. It was about time Ingrid found somebody.

  Ingrid strode to Joanna, and her blond hair fell on the desk as she leaned over her mother’s shoulder, studying the runes. “Hmm, interesting,” she said. “Why are those Scrabble tiles and the dice I gave you included in your reading?”

  “Never mind that, darling, just tell me what you see,” said Joanna. She wanted to get a quick first impression from her daughter without conveying all the backstory quite yet, a reading unaffected by any other knowledge, one that was pure and objective. Ingrid, her gift being foresight, was adept at reading the oracle of the runes. Since the Restriction had been lifted, Ingrid had begun to regain her memories and abilities, including the formerly lost talent to read and understand their ancient language.

  Her daughter also assigned the Norn spread and came to a similar conclusion about the first three runes. She moved on to the second set, and Joanna requested that she ignore the A.