Witches of East End (19 page)

chapter thirty-seven

The Salem Trials

F
reya made a face at her sister, who sat stoically next to her in the backseat of the squad car. Her mother was on the other side, and none of them had said a word since they were taken into custody. When they arrived at the station, the three of them were separated, and Freya was left to ponder her fate and that of her family alone in a small room. The patrolmen who were her friends did not look her in the eye when she was led in, a bad sign. She wondered what was going to happen when the door opened, but it was only Ingrid who walked in, her face ashen.

“What’s going on? Did you talk to Matt? What’s happening?”

Ingrid shook her head. “No. They wanted to talk to Mother first. They had to use the room to interrogate someone else, so they moved me here. I have no idea what’s happening.”

“Some friend you got there,” Freya muttered. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the small room with the one-way mirror. She wondered who was watching them. “Well, this brings back memories.”

Her sister closed her eyes and bit the top of her thumb. “I know.”

Freya sighed. In 1690 they had settled in the pretty little town of Salem in Massachusetts. Their lives had brought them to the New World as healers. Their mother had been one of the most sought-after midwives, had delivered healthy babies in a time when so many women died in childbirth and so many newborns died of fevers and pox. Ingrid worked in the community the same way she did now, doling out household charms and spells. Their father was a fisherman, due to his ability to maneuver the waters and bring in plentiful harvests.

Then something terrible happened. Bridget Bishop, who helped Joanna with the washing, came to her for help during her pregnancy and died in childbirth. Bridget was very dear to the family, and Joanna had not been able to help her. Then the rumors started: Freya was said to be conducting an affair with a boy who had pledged to marry Ann Putnam, who would become the ringleader of accusers. Ann and her friend Mercy Lewis testified that they had seen Freya and Ingrid “flying in the air through the winter mist.” The trials were a farce, but effective. The community turned on them, branding Freya a slut, Ingrid a bitch, and Joanna a monster. Norman and Joanna had been spared but they were given a more terrible punishment. They had to watch as their daughters were hanged at Gallows Hill in 1692.

Freya shuddered. She could still remember the feeling of the noose around her neck, the scratchy rope that made her skin itch. The way the crowd had spat and thrown rotten food at their cart, the hatred and the fear and the hysteria.

“Don’t,” Ingrid said, as she knew exactly what Freya was thinking. “It doesn’t help.”

The Salem trials were the beginning of the end of practicing magic in mid-world. When the girls were reborn, they found a new world and new rules awaiting them. The family had resettled in North Hampton, and Joanna explained that the White Council had paid them a visit right after the burial. The Council told them that in order for any of them to continue to live in mid-world, every one of the
Waelcyrgean
would now have to adhere to a new condition: The Restriction of Magical Powers. In effect, it meant that they could no longer practice the art of magic and witchcraft without punishment and recrimination from the Council. They were to live as humans, with lives that were as ordinary as possible. There could be no more undue attention that would jeopardize knowledge of their existence. To continue to survive in mid-world they had to agree to live in the shadows. Those who did not comply would be in breach of Council laws and would be severely punished.

Their mother also told them that Norman had left the family for good, and they never saw their father again.

Back in Salem, as in North Hampton today, Freya understood that they would not be allowed to use their magic to save themselves. That had been made clear from the very beginning, when they found themselves stuck on the other side of the bridge, right in the dawn of the world. Sometimes Freya wondered how it was that she was so old and yet so young at the same time that she found herself in the same place as she had centuries before. Would she never learn? Maybe the Council was right, maybe magic had no place in mid-world. Every time they practiced it in the open, this happened: an anxious mob, a swift rush to judgment; and the result was always the same—witches hanging from the gallows, or burned at the stake, their ashes scattered to the four winds.

They sat in the room for what felt like an eternity but in reality was only a few hours. The policemen were kind and polite, especially those who had worked with Freya before, bringing deli sandwiches and drinks from the vending machine. But they were not allowed to leave. Matt Noble checked in on them from time to time, but Freya had been able to understand from his tight-lipped anxiety and Ingrid’s mournful gazes that while he was not happy about what was happening, he had no power to stop it, either.

Finally, the door opened and their mother was allowed inside the room.

“What’s going on?” Freya asked, helping Joanna to the nearest chair.

“It’s the most absurd thing,” Joanna said. She looked at her daughters, completely mystified by the situation in which they had found themselves. Here there were, afraid of the Council’s recriminations, worrying about thunderbolts from the sky, and they had forgotten that the human realm was historically the area that had brought them the most pain.

“Okay, what is it? What did they want to talk to you about?”

Joanna looked at her girls with an expression of disbelief. “Maura Thatcher woke up from her coma.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Ingrid asked.

“Well, yes. Except she told the detectives I was the one who attacked them the night that Bill died, that she saw me hit him on the back of the head with a rock. Then I did the same to her. Can you imagine? According to her, I killed him. “

chapter thirty-eight

A Good Offense
Is a Good Defense

B
efore the girls could react, the door opened again. Matt Noble entered the room and addressed the three women grouped around the table. “I’m so sorry. It’s quite late and we’re going to have to continue this another day.” He looked plaintively at Ingrid but she refused to acknowledge him.

“So we’re free to go now?” Freya asked.

“Even me?” Joanna asked tentatively.

“Yes, even you, Mrs. Beauchamp.” Matt nodded. “Again, I apologize for the inconvenience. We’re hoping you can come back tomorrow and answer our questions then.”

Freya nodded curtly. “Come on, Ingrid, Mother,” she said, leading her sister and mother out of the room. Ingrid looked as if she had gone catatonic, and Joanna appeared exhausted beyond reason.

“We’re not coming back tomorrow,” Ingrid said, finding her voice and looking straight at the detective. “Not without our lawyer.”

O
ne good thing about lawyers, Ingrid thought, was that they were always punctual. Attorneys and their bills always arrived right on time. Antonio Forseti was a defense lawyer with a sterling reputation. He was also a warlock and an old friend of the family. Like the Beauchamps, he had been unable to practice magic since the restriction had been imposed on all of their kind. Instead he had used his natural talents at negotiating, striking balances, and using mediation to build one of the largest and most successful legal firms in New York City. He arrived the next afternoon armed with news.

“So I talked to the DA down here,” he said, taking a seat at the head of the formal dining room. Forseti was a large man with a powerful barrel chest and a full head of dark hair, and his handshake had left Ingrid feeling a bit bruised.

“What did he say?” Joanna asked, her voice rising a few octaves. “Am I to be arrested?”

The girls had spent the evening calming down their mother, who had been on the verge of hysterics all night. Joanna had argued for leaving town as soon as possible, and only when Ingrid reminded her that leaving forever meant never seeing Tyler did she stop pressing them to run away.

“Not yet. Right now, it’s just Maura Thatcher’s word against yours, and she just got out of a coma. They don’t have anything to prove it’s true, nothing that’ll hold up in court at least. Not yet.”

“What about us? What do they want to ask us about?” Freya wanted to know.

Forseti gazed at them intently. “They want to ask about your potions and Ingrid about her knots.” He took a long sip from his coffee cup. “They found Molly Lancaster’s body buried a few miles away from the beach. She was beaten to death. The Adams boy’s confessed, said it was him, that he killed her that evening.”

Freya put her hands to her mouth, horrified to think of the terrible fate that had befallen the girl. Until Forseti spoke she had been hoping that Molly had somehow skipped town on her own, had merely run away.

“So, Derek confessed. But what about Freya? What does it have to do with her?” Ingrid demanded.

“His lawyer is arguing that Derek was a victim. That he had no control of his actions, they were a reaction to Molly taking one of Freya’s magical potions,” he said. “If they prove he was a victim of your witchcraft, then his charge gets bumped down to third degree. No intent, just misdemeanor; with a first-time offender, he might do a year.”

“What about me? Is that what they think, too? That I killed the mayor?” Ingrid asked.

The bulky lawyer nodded. “Yes, they think they can prove your charm drove the mayor to take his own life.”

“This whole thing is preposterous!” Freya laughed. “Dark magic? Are they insane? They’re going to argue that in a court of law? What century are we living in?”

He sighed and held up his hands to signal that he wasn’t finished. “Corky Hutchinson’s father is a retired judge with some pull with the DA’s office, and the Adams boy’s parents have hired a real expensive sleazebag, bringing up case law that hasn’t been invoked in centuries. But just because it hasn’t been used doesn’t mean it doesn’t stand. There’re a lot of antiquated laws on the books. And don’t forget, in Salem, they hanged nineteen of us without cause.”

That took the fight out of Freya for a moment, while Joanna began to sniff and Ingrid clasped her hands together. It was just as it was before. The only difference was that Forseti was wearing a more expensive suit. This was Salem all over again. A small town in hysterics. Accusations from high-ranking families in a tight-knit community. Witches on trial. Magic the root of all evil. What humans did not understand they were always afraid of. The Beauchamps had believed that the people of North Hampton might be different; they were wrong.

“What’s the worst they can do?”

“If they prove their case, which I’m not saying they’ll be able to, you’ll both be convicted of being accessories to murder, which is a felony, and, depending on what they can prove, could carry a sentence of life in prison.”

“What about Mother? Is Maura’s testimony going to hold up?”

“Possibly, if they can find more evidence to build their case. Right now we could argue that she’s confused, that she’s not a reliable witness. According to Mrs. Thatcher, they bumped into Joanna that evening, and when they turned around to walk away Joanna attacked them. On a good note, they’re not accusing you of being a witch, so your case is pretty straightforward. If Maura Thatcher’s all they’ve got, it’s not much; so for now, I’m not too worried.”

“But I wasn’t even anywhere near the shore that night! It was January. I was in bed by then! And why would I possibly hurt them?” Joanna asked, fanning herself.

“Can you prove it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check my calendar, see where the girls were that night and what they remember.”

Freya frowned. “I’m pretty sure I was working that night.”

“And I would have been asleep.” Ingrid sighed. “This is hopeless.”

“All right, fine. So they think Mom’s a murderess who goes around knocking old folks on the head, and that Ingrid and I are big bad witches. What do we do now?” Freya asked.

Forseti took a big gulp of his coffee. “You want my advice? And I know you do, otherwise Joanna here wouldn’t have called my office at two in the morning. It’s an easy out. You ready?”

The girls nodded.

“You answer their questions, you tell them what you know but you hammer home the point. Magic. Does. Not. Exist. What, are they crazy? Your potions were just cute little cocktails and Ingrid’s a kook, you know, one of those ladies from the library who’ve read too much Zoroastrianism.” Forseti shrugged. “This isn’t Salem. It’s a different time. A secular time.”

“That sounds reasonable enough.” Joanna nodded. “What do you girls think?”

Freya shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I’m with you, Mr. Forseti, I don’t see how their accusations could get very far in court, but . . .”

“But?”

“I’m worried.”

“Of course you’re worried, sweetheart. Being questioned by the police is not a laughing matter. I’m not laughing. But trust me, I’ve got this one in the bag.”

Ingrid frowned. Forseti certainly looked different from the last time they had seen him, but otherwise everything else, including his absurd confidence in the legal system’s ability to give them a fair trial, was exactly the same. “With all due respect, Mr. Forseti, the last time you advised us, you also argued that magic was not real and we were hanged anyway,” Ingrid said.

“So, what are you saying?” the lawyer asked, looking offended.

Ingrid looked at her family. Her mother had aged a hundred years in one night, and Freya looked as if she were about to faint. “We tell the truth this time. Our magic
is
real. We
are
witches. But we had nothing to do with this. We don’t practice black magic and we didn’t cause Molly’s murder or the mayor’s suicide.”

Freya nodded slowly and the color returned to her cheeks.

Mr. Forseti shook his head. “Dicey, dicey, dicey.”

“Are you sure, Ingrid?” Joanna asked. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’m sure.” Ingrid nodded. She remembered Salem all too well, sitting in that small prison cell for eight months, subsisting on stale bread and water. She had watched her fellow witches carted off down the hill never to return. She had sat in the courtroom and listened as a succession of her dearest friends had called her names, had blamed her for every disease and run of bad luck they experienced, had turned her helpful advice into a twisted tale of black magic and devilish sorcery. Every day she had waited for the sound of the carriages that would take her to her death. She had not been afraid of death, but she had been deathly afraid of pain. A round of questioning was only the beginning; soon there would be an arrest, a trial, a conviction if they were not careful. The hanging trees were gone now, but one could still live out the rest of this lifetime in a prison cell. Life imprisonment meant something else for the immortal.

Maybe her mother was right: their only chance was to run, to hide in the shadows and disappear. But this was her home. She thought of her friends, and of Matt, who had whispered in her ear as she was led away: “I believe you.”

She looked at her family. “It’s time to own up to the truth. When they ask us what we did, we’ll tell them. We’ll admit to who and what we are. Freya?”

Her sister nodded. “I don’t see any other way. And Ingrid’s right. I don’t want to live a lie anymore. What can we lose?”

Everything, Ingrid thought. But she was willing to take that chance.