Witches of East End (15 page)

chapter twenty-eight

The Hidden Door

I
ngrid looked around the empty ballroom at Fair Haven and shook out her legs. Flying always gave her cramps, especially when she took Oscar’s form. Like Freya with Siegfried, and Joanna with Gilly, Oscar was part of her, and she could turn into his shape at will. She did not do it often, only on occasions that demanded it. During Freya’s engagement party she had noticed that the top windows to the ballroom were always left open. Now Ingrid had flown in through one of them before dawn, when everyone in the household was sure to be asleep. She could have taken a broom, but since Joanna had been spotted the other day Ingrid thought it would be more prudent if she assumed an animal-like shape. There were many ways for witches to travel, and like her brethren Ingrid preferred the more natural one: lifting into the air and rising to the heavens as her magic lessened gravity’s hold on her core. They used the brooms to ground and center themselves, an anchor to the earth that no longer held them when they were flying.

She texted to her source.

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He was right. There was something a little off about the center tag in the ballroom floor plan; the little diamond that pointed toward the walls in the room she was standing in was surrounded by that strange calligraphy of symbols. And one of the points on the diamond was just a little askew. It may have been the careless hand of the draftsman, but the whole tag seemed to cant slightly toward the right-hand corner of the room. The tip of the diamond on that corner was just a bit longer than the others’, as if it were reaching toward that far corner, pulling the eye toward that part of the room. She scanned the room and found that corner. It was an exhilarating feeling, understanding an abstract drawing of a space and its relationship to the real world.

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she texted.

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As directed, she knocked on the wall, making a dull heavy thud.

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Ingrid knew that a standard wall would have a hollow sound, sharp and round.

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Ingrid left the room and returned a few minutes later with a crowbar that she had found in the garage. She took the sharp end and dug it into the corner of the wall. The blade slid forward, splitting the paint as it bit into the wall. Ingrid decided she would just have to try one of Joanna’s restoration spells to fix it after she found out what was behind it. No time to think of the damage she was doing now. She was on to something here.

She pushed the blade deeper into the wall, but it stopped after half an inch. She wedged the end of the crowbar sideways and a chunk of the wall the size of a baseball fell off and landed on the floor. She picked up the piece of plaster and examined it. A renovated house like Fair Haven should have walls made from cement plaster spread in layers on a wire mesh. The cement would be coarse and sandlike, but Ingrid was holding a chunk of Sheetrock that was much older. She tossed it back to the floor and knelt below the hole she had made. Along the break she saw the paint chipped by the blade of the crowbar. The outer paint layer was a thick, glossy emulsion. It had the dark, rich sheen of lead-based paints. But underneath the paint, where the crowbar had cracked the finish, there was something else. She kept chipping at it until all the new paint was gone and she could see what was behind it.

It was a door. It did not have hinges or knobs but Ingrid recognized the shape right away. The cracked wood gave off a faint scent of pine. As she inhaled its bright, clean smell, she was transported into her deep past.

She thought of a place long forgotten, which had become more myth and legend than any truth, a dream. She remembered what she had told that young vampire.
You’re a myth yourself.
They all were, they who lived and breathed and walked in mid-world like and unlike the humans surrounding them.

She touched the pine gently and turned back to the drawing of the wall she had broken. It showed a wood door stretching from floor to ceiling, an elaborate design sketched on the surface. They were instructions for the artisan, who no doubt would have to spend years carving the elaborate panels. The designs, she saw now, were the same as the small decorative scrolls around each of the key tags.

She took several pictures with her cell phone and zapped them over to her source.

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Ingrid waved her wand and muttered an incantation that restored the wall to its former state. It was a shoddy spell; she wasn’t as good as her mother at restoration, but having the wand helped. She was almost done when she heard footsteps in the great hall, coming closer. Ingrid quickly took Oscar’s form and flew out the window, just as Killian Gardiner walked into the empty ballroom.

“Is anyone here?” he called. “I heard someone in the house. Show yourself!”

Ingrid flew away, her heart thudding in her chest. That was a close one. What was that door and where did it lead? She left the island, thinking of the sentence her family had endured for millennia. The broken bridge, her lost younger brother. What was behind that door? Her source knew. She would find out soon enough.

chapter twenty-nine

Husbands and Wives

T
he last time Joanna had been at the sprawling university in western Connecticut, only a few hours away from North Hampton, was at Ingrid’s college graduation. The school had looked particularly fine that day, with its blue banners flying and the apple-cheeked graduates milling among the alumni in shiny black top hats and greatcoats, swinging mahogany canes bedecked with ribbons in the school colors. Oh, she had been so proud that day! Joanna had been nervous, of course, that she would run into her husband, but thankfully he had kept his distance even then. If Ingrid ever discovered that her father had taught at the same university she had attended she was certain to hate her mother for keeping it a secret. Joanna had forced the good professor to take a leave of absence for four years while his daughter was enrolled.

Joanna walked about the tree-lined paths, past the Gothic buildings. It looked the same as it always had, the limestone and the ivy. “Excuse me,” she asked the nearest young person. “Could you help me find Professor Beauchamp?”

Just because she had not spoken to her husband for the better part of the century did not mean she had no idea what had happened to him. Far from it. She had kept tabs on him since their separation. It wasn’t too difficult. She knew he had spent most of his time along the coast; but when the work dried up along the shore, he had left the fishing business and settled into the quiet life of a university professor. He had been teaching for many years now; it was a miracle no one noticed how old he was, but then he was probably just using the same spell she used to be able to live in North Hampton for as long as she had.

She visited his office, but his teaching assistant said he hadn’t been keeping office hours all week. Joanna was able to procure his home address, which turned out to be not too far from campus. In a few minutes she found the small, well-kept building. The superintendent let her inside the front door when she told him she was the professor’s wife. His apartment was on the ground floor.

“Hello? Anyone home? It’s Jo.” She rapped on the door before entering and found it was ajar. She slipped inside. It was a small studio apartment, and Joanna was not prepared for what she found. A tiny room, spare and monastic. There was one small futon, with folded blankets, a refrigerator the size of a small cabinet, one writing desk with nothing on its surface except for a few photographs. There was a picture of Ingrid taken during graduation at the university—he had probably snuck that one while no one was looking—and one of Freya from when she had been on the cover of a magazine, when she used to live in New York. She felt a pang of sorrow and regret.

They had been happy once, as happy in a marriage as anyone could be, imperfect and struggling against each other as all couples did. There had been fights and rages and tempers. He was not a patient man and she was as stubborn as he had been. If not for the trials, perhaps they would still be together. If only he had done as she had asked maybe things would have turned out differently for them. . . . What was she thinking? There was nothing he could have done, nothing any of them could do to stop the trials from happening. That was made clear the moment the bridge was destroyed and they were trapped in mid-world. To remain here, they would have to follow the laws of its original inhabitants; they had no jurisdiction and could not interfere in the human realm.

Joanna removed her coat and sat on the futon, with Gilly perched on her shoulder. She was going to wait for as long as it took for her husband to come home.

After a few hours, she had dozed off, when the door opened slowly.

“Norman?” she called. “Is that you?”

chapter thirty

The First Stone

T
he next day, Ingrid was still thinking of the hidden door she had discovered in Fair Haven. The minute she arrived at work she sent an instant message to the address she knew by heart. There had been no communication the night before, which she found a bit strange, and she was eager to find out what her source had discovered. He usually responded within minutes, if not seconds, but after an hour there was still nothing.

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She hit Send and waited. The screen remained unchanged. She went back to work, deciding to tackle the rest of the Gardiner prints and ready them for the framer. The other day she had picked out a nice balsa frame, cheaper than the ones they were accustomed to in years past, but now that every little penny counted she had to cut corners somewhere. Strange, the drawer where she usually kept them was empty. She distinctly remembered putting the main floor plan back in its storage container with the rest of the drawing set when she returned to the library yesterday afternoon. Maybe someone had moved them to the conference table? No. There was nothing there.

Ingrid’s heart began to pound. She walked quickly back to her computer and sent another message to the same address.

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She saw her messages piling up on the screen with no response. Finally, she wrote:

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“Did you move my prints?” she asked Hudson after hitting Send. “You know, the Gardiner blueprints of Fair Haven for the show?”

Hudson looked up from his work and removed his noise-canceling headphones. He cleared his throat. “No. I haven’t touched them. Maybe Tabitha knows?”

Tabitha did not know anything about the blueprints and neither did Caitlin, who was back to work after a bout with the flu. Hudson had locked up the night before, activating the alarm as usual. There was nothing amiss: the alarm hadn’t gone off, and aside from the blueprints, there was nothing else missing. Not that there was anything particularly valuable in the library in the first place.

Ingrid tracked down the janitorial services they used, but they reported seeing nothing out of the ordinary the night before. She went back to the storage room and opened the drawer again. Empty. She checked her computer. No reply yet. The blueprints were gone and her source was unreachable. She picked up her phone and dialed Killian Gardiner.

“Hello,” he answered sleepily.

“Killian—hi. It’s Ingrid Beauchamp.”

“Hi, Ingrid,” he said sleepily. “What can I do for you?”

“Killian, did I wake you? I’m sorry but it is half past noon,” she couldn’t help but add.

“And your point is?” he asked amiably.

“I apologize, that was rude of me. It’s been a long day. I was just calling about those blueprints of Fair Haven. Did you by any chance come by to take them back?”

“Why would I take them back?” he asked, sounding more alert this time. “I gave them to you. Why do you ask? Did something happen to them?”

“No, no . . . no.” Ingrid shook her head vigorously even if Killian could not see her. It would not do to panic anyone else. “I think the staff moved them to the other closet. Sorry to bother you.”

“No worries,” Killian said.

She hung up the phone, her heart beating wildly. The scans. She had scanned all the prints, she thought, executing a search on her computer. She had scanned all the sheets that contained the strange tags and elaborate symbols. But just as she suspected, every single file connected to the blueprints was gone.

Ingrid tried not to panic. Who would steal the blueprints? And erase all the records on her computer? And why? Then Hudson burst into the room. His tie had come unknotted and he looked uncharacteristically frazzled. “I think you better come out to the front—it looks as if Corky Hutchinson has lost her mind.”

I
ngrid followed hudson to the main area to find the news anchor standing by the returns desk, looking hysterical and crazed in a pajama top and baggy sweatpants. When she saw Ingrid she pointed a red-manicured finger in her direction. “It’s all her fault!” she screamed.

“Excuse me?” Ingrid asked. The library was full of mothers with toddlers, teenagers at the computers, and the regular patrons at the magazine racks. Matt Noble was returning a few paperbacks and rushed to her side.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking from Corky to Ingrid.

“She was the one! She did it!” Corky screeched. “She made me give Todd this . . . this knot under his pillow! He couldn’t sleep . . . he’s been acting so strangely—she did something to him!”

“Corky, calm down, what are you talking about?” Matt came around to restrain Corky by the shoulders since it looked as if she might take a swipe at Ingrid.

“She’s a witch! She did it! She made this happen! With her black magic and those stupid knots!” Corky screamed.

“I’m so sorry . . . but it doesn’t work that way,” Ingrid said, backing away and shaking her head. Every part of her body was shaking as well, but she tried to project a sense of calm.

Matt looked questioningly at Ingrid. “Hold on . . . what do you mean? What’s all this about magic?”

“He hung himself! With a knot! It looks just like this one!” the woman hissed, holding up the little brown knot that Ingrid had given her a month ago.

“What’s going on?” Ingrid looked to Hudson for help. People were beginning to stare and congregate, looking at Ingrid with curiosity and fear. Ingrid had a flash back to her past, when the crowd had first gathered around her at the square that fine morning. They had circled her, just as the patrons of the library were doing now.

“As if you didn’t know! They found his body this morning! Todd hung himself! At some skeezy motel on Route 27!” Corky cried.

Ingrid gasped. “Is that true?” she asked Matt.

The detective nodded. “We answered a 911 call from the motel this morning. The police are still there. Corky, calm down. Let’s get you to the station.” He gave Ingrid a long, searching look and led the newswoman out the door.

“Christ . . . what a crazy bitch!” Hudson said, walking out of the office. Ingrid noticed that everyone in the library was looking at her skeptically, some with outright hostility. “Are you okay?”

Ingrid nodded even though she wasn’t. First the blueprints went missing, and she had stopped receiving texts or instant messages from her source, and now she was being accused of what . . . she wasn’t even sure . . . but she couldn’t shake off Corky’s hateful words and accusations.

Tabitha gave Ingrid a pat on the back. “Don’t worry, no one will listen to her. You had nothing to do with this,” she said stoutly. “She’s lost her husband and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

There were only a handful of women waiting to consult with her that day, which made Ingrid feel even worse. She tried not to think too much of it, but she couldn’t help but think it had something to do with those terrible things Corky had said that morning. What was it that awful woman had said? Black magic? That she was a witch—a hag—a false medicine woman?

Ingrid thought of what Freya was going through: Sal had told her to stop making potions and had, effectively, fired her. From now on, the town would keep its eyes on them. Ingrid felt a chill up her spine. She had lived through this once before; she knew how the story ended.

Once upon a time in Massachusetts, Ingrid had a thriving practice, a clinic just like this one, but then the whispers had begun, and the accusations had started to fly. But this was not back then, Ingrid tried to tell herself. Maybe no one needed her help because everything was peachy-keen. Right. And if Ingrid believed that, she had a bridge she could sell to herself. Gallows Hill might be gone, but its shadow lingered, and Ingrid was not foolish enough to think that what happened once could never happen again.

And the day was still not over. Before the library closed, she received another visitor. Emily Foster walked in, pale and trembling. “Ingrid. Do you have a second? I need to talk to you.”