Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel (18 page)

Killian began unbuttoning his shirt, his expression deadpan. “There’s something you need to see …”

Freya laughed. “Haven’t I seen it all?” She was grateful to him for attempting to lighten the mood.

Killian wasn’t laughing, though. “I don’t think you’ve ever noticed. Or maybe it just didn’t register.” He removed his shirt, pulled off the T-shirt beneath it, let both drop, and then stood bare chested before her.

“You want to show me your perfect six-pack?”

“No.” He turned around.

His summer tan had almost entirely faded. He instructed Freya to look at his back, where she now saw a smattering of freckles across the shoulders. It continued across his spine. At first glance, the freckles appeared haphazard, but on closer inspection, she saw that if she connected the dots, the lines would form the shape of a trident. Now she saw it clearly and remembered what Freddie had told her:
Whoever stole it will bear its mark
.

Killian bore the mark of the trident.

Freddie was right. Killian was guilty.

It was halfway through Counseling Services hour, and a lineup of North Hamptonites sat in the waiting area outside Ingrid’s office. A tall, pallid, anorexic-looking blond stared glumly ahead, tapping a toe on the floor, an elderly lady and gentleman chatted, and a woman with a frosted graduated bob (who obviously got her hair done on the other side of Long Island) filed her nails, a tot in the chair beside her playing a video game on an iPhone.

Inside Ingrid’s office, redolent of burnt sage, the curtains had been drawn, a pentagram sketched in chalk on the floor, five white candles lit at each corner of the star within the circle. A young man, Sander Easterly, stood inside the star in his grease-stained mechanic’s coveralls. He was a tall twenty-one-year-old and so thin as to make his chest appear concave, or perhaps it was that he slouched, ashamed of his height. He had jet-black hair, blue eyes, and a prominent case of acne.

He told Ingrid that his face had started to break out midway through high school and how he had gone from popular kid to pariah. There had been myriad visits to doctors and dermatologists; he had tried every type of prescription, traditional and experimental, as well as all the infomercial panaceas touted by an endless parade of famous faces with flawless skin. In short, nothing had worked. He had been called horrible names and continued to be—“pizza face,” uttered by a small child, the most agonizing. A math and science whiz, Sander was a lover of Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene, and had been offered a scholarship to study physics at a highly reputable Massachusetts university but had been held back by his “handicap.” He had remained in North Hampton, working as a mechanic at a local garage. He had never fallen in love, but that was okay, because love, as he saw it, was a fable. Ingrid felt a deep sympathy for him, even though she knew her own handicap had been fortunately invisible.

She faced him, eyes closed, mumbling beneath her breath, asking for guidance from gods and spirits alike. Then she found herself zipping through the underlayer, her body hurtling through darkness, as if she had fallen into a wormhole, an Alice tumbling down to Wonderland kind of feeling—scary but thrilling. She came to a sudden stop and floated there. She saw Sander in what appeared to be the not-so-distant future, doing a salutation to the sun on a beach. Was it in North Hampton? He was perfect, really, so beautiful, his black hair lifting in the wind, just a few scars left over from the acne that had plagued him, giving him character, as they say. There was a book in the sand, and she had just enough time to glimpse its cover—
Bhagavad Gita
—before she was speeding down again, as words whispered past her. There was another catch in the wormhole, as if a parachute had opened above her and yanked her up, and now she floated down as gently as a feather, spying an arena below her dangling feet. As she descended further, she saw an older, confident Sander speaking at some sort of international conference. Her eyes popped open.

“It’s all going to be fine,” she said. “I am going to release you.”

Her hands fluttered around his head, neck, and then above his chest. She saw his pounding heart, a black tar resembling mechanic’s grease enveloping it.
A black heart
, she thought, momentarily frightened, but the ooze hadn’t seeped into his soul yet. Her hands squeezed the black goo from the organ as it contracted and expanded. She worked until she could see each artery, the thick superior vena cava and aorta. She shook her hands above her head, sending the viscous substance back from whence it came. A light shot out from his heart, and as it did, Ingrid experienced her own kind of deliverance.

“There you go. You can step out of the circle now, and I am going to write down a few things for you—a prescription, but not like any you’ve ever been given before.”

Sander smiled at her, stepping out of the pentagram. “I feel lighter,” he remarked.

“That’s good!” At her desk, Ingrid wrote down a list on her pad that included yoga, the book
Bhagavad Gita
, the words
string unification
, the name Melody, and a list of herbs and tonics. “Freya, my sister, can probably supply you with some of these herbs if you stop by the North Inn. Or you can try Whole Foods if you’re not a ‘bar person.’” She handed the list to Sander.

“Whole Paycheck? Actually, I very well might hit your sister up. Thanks so much, Ingrid. I don’t know if I am a believer, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ve heard great things about you.”

Ingrid walked Sander to the door, where Tabitha and Hudson waited outside.

Tabitha gave Ingrid a huge grin. “Gentleman to see you! He’s looking at the new arrivals display.”

“Your man?” whispered Hudson, raising an eyebrow.

“Okay, got it!” said Ingrid, and the two shuffled off, although
waddled
might have been a better description for Tabitha. Ingrid looked at her lineup. “I am really truly sorry,” she said. “But you are all going to have to come back tomorrow. I have some unexpected business to attend to.”

The line had gotten longer, and some people were standing, because there weren’t enough chairs. They let out a collective “
Aw!
” The frail-looking blond, who would have been next, rushed up to Ingrid, pleading in the quietest voice. Ingrid wondered whether it was because if she spoke any louder she might crumple from the effort. She had the kind of face that wasn’t particularly arresting at first glance, until Ingrid noticed the perfect symmetry, the beauty in its simplicity and ingenuousness, like a single line drawing.
This girl could be a supermodel
, she thought. But she said, “Again, I apologize. Come promptly at noon so you’ll be the first in line. What’s your name?”

“Melody,” the young woman said in that same wispy voice.

“Oh!” said Ingrid, surprised to be hearing the name so soon—or even hearing it at all—that it seemed like an echo of the whisper she’d heard during her trance with Sander. The marvelous synchronicity of it gave her goose bumps. “Yes, please come back. I’ll be sure to see you first thing at noon tomorrow, Melody.”

Her clients filed out of the waiting area with hangdog expressions, and Ingrid returned to her office, where she opened the curtains to let the light flood back in. She put her placard in the drawer, snuffed out the candles, put them away, and then used a chalkboard eraser to remove the pentagram from the floor. There was a knock at the door. Ingrid rose, brushing the chalk off her skirt, and went to open it.

“Hi,” said Matt, standing in the doorway in his usual beige sport coat and tan slacks.

“Come in,” she said, beaming. “Nice to see you.”

“Yeah, me, too. I mean, great seeing you, Ingrid.”

She closed the door behind him, and they faced each other in the middle of her office. He placed a hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the lips, but they both jumped at the screech, followed by a voice booming from his hip. He hadn’t turned off his walkie-talkie.

“I’m on Seashell Lane and Vine. Have not spotted suspect yet, over.”

“Hang in there, Holding. I mean, Holding,
hold
your position, over.”

“Very funny, McCluskey! Over.”

Matt pulled the walkie-talkie out of his holster and turned it off. “Sorry about that!”

“You had it on in the library?” she asked.

Matt looked at her sheepishly. “Kind of. Sorry! Actually, I’m here on business.”

There was a lot of getting used to with a person you liked so much. Ingrid remembered all the online lingerie shopping she had done the other night, and she blushed, as if Matt might be able to read her mind. “Have a seat,” she said.

Apparently, there had been another burglary in the North Hampton area, and Matt wanted to know the latest on the band of homeless kids Ingrid had mentioned earlier.

Without batting an eye, Ingrid lied to him and said they had most definitely left town. The pixies were, of course, still plaguing her up in Joanna’s attic. They had promised to be good, but were they up to their pranks again? Had they been involved in these thefts? She was going to have to sit down with them again and have a chat. They had seemed to be behaving themselves, but she really had gotten nowhere with them. She’d been unable to help them remember where was home, and now she believed they might be suffering from some sort of spell that kept them from knowing. She really needed to get them home.

Ingrid winced but attempted to reassure Matt, saying that she had seen to it herself, put them on a bus and sent them home. “Gone. Bye-bye. Adios. Sayonara,” she said.

Matt rubbed his eyes. “You’re sure?”

“I made sure I saw them get on the bus. Then I watched it leave,” she reiterated. She felt horrible but manage to force a smile.

“Okay,” said Matt. “It’s the strangest thing, Ingrid. We’re dealing with a highly skilled thief or group of thieves. Like all the recent burglaries, this one showed no signs of break-in—no busted locks or broken windows. And it’s not just the small stuff, like jewelry, that disappears but large items—paintings and sculptures. Some of it quite priceless.”

“Oh, my!” remarked Ingrid. If the pixies were the ones behind the burglaries, surely she would be able to find the loot somewhere in the house. Something like a painting took up space. She would sift through the attic and see if they were hiding anything up there and return it immediately. The pixies never stole for money, however. They only took things that caught their eye, whether it was a marble or a Picasso; they had no understanding or concept of money. They just liked beautiful things.

“I missed you,” said Matt. “Did I tell you that or was I just thinking it?”

“Thinking it,” said Ingrid with a laugh.

He smiled. “Want to do something this weekend? I’d really like to.” He appeared to be hinting at something.

“Sure,” she said, wondering if he was thinking what she was thinking.

A blood moon had risen, casting a soft, eerie light into the woods. The wind swept leaves across the clearing, where five torches surrounded the burial mound beneath the large oak tree. Joanna had worked since dusk, gathering stones to make a circle around the torches. Such rituals worked best during nocturnal hours.

She placed a bowl of water at the foot of the mound. The torches, rocks, and water represented three elements, and for the fourth she had brought a Tibetan singing bowl, whose vibrating harmonic overtones would stand for air and also wake the spirit from the dead. After the ritual of
utiseta
(sitting at the crossroads) had been completed, she would recite a simple Norse incantation to tease the spirit out further.

Inside the circle, she kneeled by the water, her singing bowl and wand in her lap, the basket of unleavened black bread and chalice of grape juice at one side. She had decided on an amalgam of practices, to improvise, letting her witch senses guide her. She took a piece of black bread.
Decay
.

“Return to the flesh,” she said, placing the bread in her mouth. “Return to the blood.” She took a sip from the chalice.

She swallowed, dipped her hands in the bowl of water for purification, then ran her wand around the rim of the singing bowl, drawing out its sound, and the hum spread through the forest. The leaves of the trees shivered as a sudden gust swept through the woods.

She put the singing bowl and wand down and stood for the incantation, feeling the air grow electric inside the circle. She loved this feeling, the intoxication and power of magic. She was careful to pronounce the words correctly, enunciate each syllable.