Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel (31 page)

“How do you know Killian is innocent?” Freya said to her twin as she steered the car back to the road.

“I just do. What Mom said was totally bogus. It’s not him. When I saw him at Thanksgiving, saw how happy he was to see me, I knew. It couldn’t be him. He’s my friend. He’s loyal. He’s one of us.”

Freya nodded. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for months.”

“But there’s something I need to tell you about Killian …” he said, his face pale.

“Just spit it out, Freddie,” Freya said. “Now that you’ve come around you want Killian to be your best man at the wedding?”

Freddie cleared his throat. “I know Killian is innocent, as I said. But I didn’t before. I spied on you, too, Freya. I know about the trident mark. I overheard you talking about it, saw him showing it to you in the greenhouse. I don’t know why he has it. He had to have had the trident in his possession at some point; that’s the only way. When I saw it, I still believed in his guilt—”

“So you went and told the Valkyries …” concluded Ingrid.

Freya pulled over and stopped the car. She swung around to face him.

“I had to clear my name!” Freddie protested. “I was convinced he did it! He had the mark!”

Freya turned back and stared ahead at the dark road. She tapped on the driver’s wheel, and Ingrid reached out to her but she brushed her older sister aside. “Get out of this car right now, Freddie!” They had so little time, and she’d been clueless. Why had her stupid brother waited until now to tell her? Damn him! If they couldn’t find the real responsible person, Killian would be carted away to Limbo for sure. “Get out!” she cried.

“But—” said Freddie.

“Freya—calm down.”

Freya glared at Ingrid, who reluctantly opened the passenger door and stepped outside to let Freddie out. He unfolded his long frame from the backseat and stepped onto the road.

Ingrid got back in the car. “Come on, you’re being really harsh. We can’t just leave him here!”

“For god’s sake, Ingrid, he’s a god! He can make the sun shine! Let him find his own way home!” Freya snapped, and she gunned the engine, leaving their brother behind in the darkness.

A crescent moon hung in the sky, as slim as a fingernail clipping. It was a cloudless night, bright with stars. Freya could see all of this from Joanna’s study’s window—the ocean dark as ink, the moon and stars’ reflections glimmering there. Joanna sat at her desk, Freya on the love seat, and Norman in the armchair by the books. He was acting as mediator. A good thing, too, since the holiday season was upon them—it would be Christmas soon—but no one was in the mood to celebrate.

Joanna had been profusely apologizing to Freya for having accused Killian. She explained that Freddie’s return had blinded her, but now she realized the error of her ways. “I’m sorry about Killian. I was just so worried about Freddie, but apparently now I’m suffocating him and my baby boy is pulling away from me.” Joanna sighed.

Freya listened intently and frowned. “Do you realize, Mother, that you have brought the conversation back to Freddie once again?”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” said Joanna, looking over at Norman for help.

“Okay,” said Norman. “We have that all cleared now. Your mother is very, very sorry, so let’s move on. We have these impending Valkyries to deal with, and there is little time to waste.” He ran a finger along the spines of Joanna’s books. Norman was not fond of conflict—or he simply didn’t like it when his ladies got prickly with one another.

“Yes,” said Joanna. “I want to make it up to you, Freya, and I think I have a solution. I think we need to try a new angle.”

“What’s that?” Freya crossed her legs, picked at a hole in her black jeans, and then pulled at the top of a high-heeled boot.

Norman clapped his hands, as if to mark a shift in the conversation. “Your mother thinks that perhaps this spirit that’s been trying to contact her is a witch trying to help us. The
Waelcyrgean
believe there are several sorts of spirits. We were trying to understand which kind this is. We narrowed it down to two possible ones. There is the
vörðr
, or vorder, the warden spirit.”

Dad had launched into professor mode, and Freya loved to watch him at work, how he sought to make whatever topic palatable to the younger folk.

He rose from his armchair and stretched an arm out, leaning against the bookshelf. “The word
wraith
takes it root from
vörðr
, and
ward
and
warden
are its cognates, actually.” He smiled at Freya. She found her father so handsome, that shock of silver hair slipping over a lens of his black-framed glasses. Ingrid got her delicate, foxy looks from him, as well as her lovely soft pink lips and tall, slim, lanky body. “Anyhow,” Norman continued, “the
vörðr
is very much like a personal watchdog, a tagalong, so to speak, or a guardian angel if you want to think in Christian terms; it watches over a mortal from birth to death. If it attaches itself to a god, it is present through all of that god’s lifetimes.”

Norman went on to explain that there was another type, and that one was called
fylgja
, which in Old Norse meant “someone that accompanies.” “But this kind only checks in occasionally,” he said. The
fylgjur
(plural) were portentous. Aware of one’s fate, they sometimes appeared as an omen of death. However, when they appeared as a woman, as this wraith had, it usually meant that she was warning you and possibly your clan that you were in danger. “What I am saying here is that Joanna and I believe this spirit to be the latter. She wants to tell us something, warn us about something, and she is sending her spirit through time to do so.”

Freya rose and walked to the window, where she made an impression on the vapor with her fist. Then she drew the letter
K
, like a teenager. “So what am I supposed to do about all this?” she said, turning to her father.

Joanna rose and walked over to her daughter, then stood behind her. She placed her hands on her shoulders, and Freya flinched, but then reached a hand to her mother’s. She wanted to forgive her. She was still angry, but there was no use holding on. Her mother had apologized and said she wanted to help Killian now. They needed to work together, and if her parents thought they knew how to resolve this, then she was willing to do whatever it took. She trusted their knowledge and experience.

Joanna squeezed her daughter’s shoulders. “Someone needs to go back in time and find this witch before she is hanged. She will draw us to the correct time and place and help us, and we might in turn be able to help her. I’m too old to make the journey. I tried, but the portal wouldn’t open for me. It requires youth and vitality, which I am not sure I have.”

Freya turned to her mother, her eyes shining. Perhaps it was because she had been straining to see Gardiners Island. Killian was there, and she wanted to be with him. “I’ll do anything to help Killian. If you think this is how we need to proceed, I’m willing,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“Good, good!” said Joanna. “There is much preparation to be made, and we need to get right to it. I need to brief you, and you also need to change into the proper attire.” Here a distasteful look crossed Joanna’s face. “We’ll dress you like a good Puritan, cap and all. I’ve already put the costume together.”

Freya frowned. Such clothes brought back awful memories, and she had grown so very fond of her twenty-first-century clothes. There was something to be said about Lycra.

“We’ll do the ceremony on the beach. It’s a perfect night for it. Isn’t that right, Norm?” Joanna said, turning to her husband, still by the bookshelf, and he nodded gravely at his wife.

The waves were tumultuous, crashing hard upon the shore, and the wind lashed at her white cap and beige blouse, too tight at the neck, the large collar flapping in her face. Joanna had tied a shawl around her daughter’s waist and sewn a pouch full of gold coins into her skirt. Inside a circle in the sand, Freya pressed the heavy dark mauve skirt against her legs, one hand clasped around the runes that the
fylgja
had placed on the grave. As part of the ceremony, Freya needed to be touching something the witch’s wraith had made contact with to make it all work.

“Look up, darling,” Norman shouted. “It should be relatively painless.”

“In godspeed!” cried Joanna. “I love you, my sweet!”

Freya looked up into the darkness pierced by stars. Something was pushing through, like an enormous weight on the other side, dropping toward her, sagging through the cloth of midnight-blue sky. The wind began to spin around her as if she had been swept inside the eye of a twister, a centrifugal force, the sand lifting and hitting her in the face like birdshot. She bent over, protecting her head and cap with her hands.

“Painless, my ass!” she muttered, and the words seemed to be sucked out of her by a vacuum, pulling at the inside of her throat, clasping it shut. She felt as if every molecule of her being were being disassembled, pried apart, and it hurt, a physical pain, but also an excruciating emotional one, like losing someone deeply loved, a death.

Freya awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep. Her entire body ached. Something wet lapped at her face. She felt heat, the sun beaming down hard upon her side and back. She smelled the ocean. She lay on something uneven, hard, and gritty, and what were those sounds? She heard bleating. Again she felt a swipe of wetness across her face. She opened her eyes. A black dog was panting at her, wagging his tail. She put a hand in front of her face to shield her eyes from the sun. She lay on an outcropping of rock, tall grasses swaying about, sheep everywhere. She was surrounded by them, grazing in the grass, stepping onto her stone. Then she saw the runes scattered on the rock and quickly scrambled onto all fours to gather them.

“Ragbone!” a boy’s voice cried.

Freya rose to her feet, batting the sand off her skirt, setting her cap to rights. She unwrapped the shawl from around her waist and threw it over her shoulders, then was happy to feel the coins hidden below the waist of her skirt. The dog watched her, cocking his head. The boy, around eleven years of age—a shepherd she deduced—ambled toward her with his staff.

“Good morrow,” he cried, and Ragbone ran to him.

“Good morrow,” replied Freya, smiling. She looked about. She was at the edge of a field, right before where the beach began. She looked toward the sea. She saw an island. She couldn’t tell whether there were houses there or not, certainly no Fair Haven, but the line of the shore was its same pointy shape, the promontory and long sandy finger pointing toward the
U
of Long Island. She looked toward the land. Gone was Joanna’s house, built in 1710. Instead there were trees, overgrowth, and the occasional large, ominous brown wooden house looming in the distance.

The boy stood a few feet away, staring at her. “Where did ye come from, Missus?” he asked. “I have not seen ye round these parts.”

“I am from another village.” Freya pointed vaguely down the shore. “I was rambling along the beach; then I decided to rest. I must have fallen asleep, dear me! What village are you from?”

“Why, I am from Fairstone,” he said, studying Freya, who was staring out at Gardiners again. “Have ye been to the Isle of Wight? I would very much like to go there someday. A very rich man lives there now, Mr. Lion Gardiner, he does. There is work aplenty there. He bought the island a year ago.”

Bingo. It was 1640. Lion Gardiner and his wife had bought the island in 1639, settling here. This had been part of Joanna’s brief. It was hot, probably August. These clothes were so damned uncomfortable and were making her itch. She loosened the shawl around her shoulders and smiled encouragingly at the boy. “May I ask what the happenings are these days in Fairstone?”