Witches of East End (5 page)

chapter seven

A New Boy

M
otherhood had robbed Joanna of her figure, of that she was sure. No matter how much she dieted (and she had tried them all: the Atkins and the Zone, the low-cal and the low-carb, the cabbage and the cookie, the Jenny and the Watchers, the South Beach and the Sugar Busters, the tea and juice cleanses, the endless hours spent exercising—first the running and then the spinning—the step classes and the yoga and the Pilates), she never could get rid of those dreaded last ten pounds, that tire around her belly. Her daughters chided her on her obsession, telling her she looked good
for her age
. And what age would that be exactly? Six thousand years?

It was understood that women of a certain age no longer cared about their looks, but it was a lie. Vanity did not die of old age, especially in beautiful women, and oh, she had been beautiful once—so beautiful that she had wed the most fearsome god of all. But it was too late to think of what had been. Her husband had abandoned her, along with her good looks, a long time ago. Oh, in the right light she was attractive, she supposed, she was still “handsome,” but who wanted to be called handsome when one was once beautiful?

The problem, as she saw it, was that right when she would finally get her figure back,
bam
, she would find herself pregnant again, and the whole cycle of gaining and losing would start up once more. The children had to be reborn whenever they got themselves into trouble and had to leave the world, or else had been pushed out of it by accident (a car crash, maybe; Freya had once perished in a hotel fire) or malice (like the crisis that had claimed their lives in the seventeenth century), and Joanna would begin to feel the symptoms. It usually happened after she hadn’t heard from her girls in a century or two. First, her gray hair would turn blond again. She would marvel at her changed appearance, the loss of wrinkles, the fat in her cheeks, strong hands that did not ache from arthritis. Then it would happen: the vomiting, the nausea, the exhaustion. And she would realize: goddamnit, she was pregnant!

Nine months later she would have a fat, crying baby to care for and love. This time the girls were reborn just a few years apart, so that in the current lifetime they had grown up like proper sisters again, squabbling over toys, annoying each other on long car rides. Life had been a happy tedium of preschool and swimming and gymnastics and endless birthday parties along with the occasional accidental magical outburst: Ingrid’s griffin causing havoc with the flower beds; and having to keep Freya from hexing mean girls she did not like.

It was easy enough to fool the neighbors; the restriction did not prohibit Joanna from using her considerable power to keep their immortality hidden. It wouldn’t do to have people wonder why the “widow” Beauchamp suddenly looked half her age and was pregnant to boot. Magic was useful in that matter at least.

No matter what, though, no matter how long it had been, with every hopeful pregnancy she never got her boy back. Never. Of course she understood it was useless to hope that she would. That had been made clear to her during the sentencing after the bridge between the worlds had collapsed. Joanna knew he was still alive, but no witchcraft could help him now. He was out of her reach.

One would think after so many lifetimes the pain would dull a little, but it never did. If anything, every passing year just made it ache that much more. She missed him more than ever and thought about him every day. That was the problem with motherhood: not only did it make you fat and put anxiety lines in your forehead, but the love you felt—that intense, all-consuming love for one’s child—was like owning the sharpest and most exquisite knife. It stabbed her right in the heart. Her boy was alive somewhere but he might as well be dead to her, since she would never get him back. They had taken that away from her. It was the worst kind of sentence a mother could endure, which was why it had been given.

Her beautiful boy, her happiest child: his smile was the sun, his light lit up the whole entire world. It was true what they said about mothers and sons: it was a special bond, a mutual admiration society. It was also true what they said: one loved one’s children the same amount, but sometimes you
liked
one child more than another. She had been mourning his loss for so long, and the girls were a great comfort. Still, it had never been the same. But now she had this wonderful new boy: this Tyler Alvarez, of the quirky flapping hands and the mischievous smile, who would not embrace her yet would head-butt her if he wanted a kiss on the top of his head. He did not heal the hole in her heart, but he did fill a gap that had been empty for a very long time. Joanna took to the boy immediately. He called her Abuela, or “Lala” for short, and she called him Checkers. She wasn’t sure where that came from, something with his cheeks maybe. She was constantly pinching them. She loved her daughters, but they did not need her anymore. They were grown-ups with their own problems. Tyler was another story.

Right now they were making a pie. Motherhood might have robbed her of her figure, but to be honest Joanna had been something of an accomplice in that matter. Aside from constantly renovating the house, her other weakness was baking. The kitchen always smelled like melted butter, enveloping the air with its rich, creamy, caramel fragrance. Joanna was teaching Tyler how to make a nectarine and blackberry pie. The fruit had been picked from the family orchard, the nectarines bursting with sweetness and the blackberries tart and tangy.

Tyler held the measuring spoon. “How much sugar?” he asked, his fingers hovering above the bag of sugar on the counter. She had given him the task of sweetening the syrup.

“More, darling, more,” Joanna urged as she pounded and rolled the dough that would form the crust.

After Tyler had added what looked like two cups of sugar into the mix, she cut into a long black vanilla bean and scraped the contents, adding it to the filling. Once the pie was assembled, Tyler helped her place it into the oven, an old Aga stove that she had purchased during a previous renovation.

“Now what?” he asked, his face smeared with fruit stains and his hair white with flour.

“Now we wait,” Joanna smiled.

Yesterday they had made brownies, the day before cupcakes, the day before that a moist and chewy nut roll. It was an orgy of baking, more so than usual, and Ingrid and Freya had begged the sugary tidal wave to stop. They might be immortal but their bodies were not immune to the havoc wreaked by a steady diet of baked goods.

Joanna had told them they would just have to deal with it the way everyone else did, with discipline and restraint. Just because she made these delicious treats did not mean they had to eat them. She wasn’t shoving brownies and cake into their mouths, now, was she? Besides, Tyler loved baking, and she was enjoying herself too much to stop. She was finding it was great fun acting like someone’s mother without the burden of responsibility. All she had to do was nurture and feed while someone else would do the disciplining and the time-outs.

“We’ll need ice cream to eat with the pie,” Joanna said, removing a carton from the freezer. “Extra scoops?”

Tyler nodded vigorously and she ruffled his hair. There was something about little boys. Boys in general adored their mothers. Girls were tricky. She knew the girls loved her, but she also understood that deep down, they blamed her for their father’s absence. They didn’t understand her, and sometimes she didn’t understand how to talk to them. Everything she said was taken as criticism, as judgment. Over the years she had learned she should never comment on anything.

So did she say anything when Ingrid moved back home and, instead of taking that position at the university, chose to work as a clerk at the local library? No! Did she ever mention her disappointment that her brilliant daughter with the doctorate had steamed paper for the last several years? Not a word! Did she say anything when Freya opened that bar in New York without a proper liquor license? Nope! Did she ever suggest that Freya might want to dress a little less provocatively? Never! Or that perhaps she was rushing into marriage? Of course, Freya and Bran were meant to be together; just one look at their happy faces told her everything a mother needed to know. But even if she did not approve, Joanna knew better than to get into it with her daughters. Because just one “Perhaps we have had enough cookies?” (After all, the girls had eaten three each already!) and there was
that face
. The one that said
Mother knows least
.

Or else she would be shut out as she had been that morning. Did they think she did not notice? She was jealous sometimes, of the bond the sisters had between them, just as she had been jealous a long time ago of the easy relationship they had had with their father. Daughters. They could cut you with a look.

She knew Tyler would never look at her that way. Tyler adored her and the feeling was mutual. Joanna now paid for him to attend a fancy children’s year-round preschool, and while his parents shared the morning drop-off it was Joanna who picked him up every afternoon with a snack or a treat in hand. After school they would go to the beach, where Tyler would spend the rest of the afternoon chasing birds and collecting seashells while Joanna watched him.

There hadn’t been anything odd since the three dead birds a week ago, and Joanna was starting to relax. Maybe that nagging worry in the back of her mind was just a by-product of their history. Perhaps she was just seeing signs where there weren’t any. Life in North Hampton never changed; she herself had seen to that when she first moved into town.

Oh dear, the pie had burned. She had forgotten to set the timer and now it was black and smoking. If she had been Freya, this would never have happened, but her magic was of a different sort. Tyler’s face crumpled, threatening an avalanche of tears. Lala had
promised
that there would be pie and ice cream.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” Joanna sighed.

“Pie,” Tyler said stubbornly. “Pie.”

“We’ll just have to make another one . . .”

“Pie.”

Joanna put her hands on her hips. She had overheard her daughters talking that morning. Something about how Freya had made a love potion—of the three of them, Freya had always been the bravest due to her natural impulsiveness and daring. But if nothing had happened to Freya, then . . . well . . . wouldn’t it stand to reason that she could do the same? It would just be a simple flick of the wrist, one little incantation and all would be right with Tyler’s world. It wouldn’t use up that much energy, after all, and truly, the oracle had been silent for many years; who knew if the restriction even applied to something so
small
? . . . Joanna’s hands began to shake. She wanted to do this. She
would
do this. It was just a pie, after all, she told herself. It was just part of the baking process. Bake pie. Burn pie. Restore pie.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered. Recovery and renewal was her brand of witchcraft. She covered the burned pie with a dish towel, whispered a few words, and when she removed it, the crust was golden brown and perfect.

Tyler’s eyes widened and he began to bounce on his heels. “You’re a witch!” he said with glee.

“Shhh!” Joanna’s eyes danced but she looked around in fear. No one had called her that for centuries. It brought back too many memories, not all of them good.

“Are you? Are you a witch?”

Joanna laughed. “What if I am?”

For a moment the little boy looked frightened and shirked away from her, probably thinking of witches in fairy tales, ugly hags who shoved children into ovens and baked them into pies.

Joanna wrapped him in her arms and for once he let her hold him, let her soothe him with a kiss on the nape of his neck. The little boy smelled like baby lotion and sugar. “No, my darling. Never. You have nothing to fear from me.”

chapter eight

Gift Horse

E
xcuse me, Ingrid? There’s someone here for you,” Hudson Rafferty whispered, coming into the back office. The junior librarian raised an eyebrow so that Ingrid would understand this wasn’t a usual patron with a question about toddler storytime hours or whether their library fines could be waived (the answer was always “no,” so why they even continued to ask, Ingrid could never understand).

“Who is it?” Ingrid asked, taking off the spectacles she used to read the fine print in the design elevations.

“I don’t know but he is
quite
fetching,” Hudson said in his usual understated way. He favored argyle vests, engraved cuff links, and bow ties, and was in his seventh year of getting his doctorate in Romance languages at Harvard. Hudson’s family practically owned the eastern shore, and truly he did not need a summer internship shelving books. The other librarians joked that he was the world’s oldest (he’d just turned thirty) and best-dressed intern; his suits alone cost more than their entire wardrobes. He was exacting in his work and moved very deliberately. One could not imagine Hudson running, for instance, or hurrying for any reason, or perspiring. He was a natural dilettante, with a breadth of knowledge on many subjects concerning the humanities and the arts, as well as a seasoned world traveler. Hudson was the one to ask if you needed to know, say, the price of a Ruscha lithograph, where to find the best tapas in Madrid, and whom to call if your hotel in Cairo suddenly “lost” your prepaid reservation. He had “fixers” and a network of acquaintances around the globe and happened to be one of Ingrid’s best friends, as they shared a love for theater, opera, and classical music.

“Do excuse me, allergies are bad this year,” Hudson said, wiping his nose and coughing. “Well, don’t keep the gentleman caller waiting. Someone else might snatch him up.”

For a moment Ingrid thought Hudson was talking about Matt Noble, and she felt irritated that the detective had come back so soon. Surely he couldn’t be done with that thousand-page book yet? But when she walked to the front desk the man waiting for her was not Matt.

Killian Gardiner was leaning against the main desk. His gray T-shirt was pocky with holes and his jeans were slung low on his hips. Even in the heat, he was wearing a black motorcycle jacket. He looked like a movie star, with the gold-trimmed aviator shades and the five o’clock shadow. No, not a movie star. Like an icon. He had the kind of face that should be plastered on posters in every teen girl’s bedroom. When he saw her he took off his sunglasses and pecked her on the cheek.

“Hi, Killian,” she said, trying to inject some warmth into her voice. Something about the younger Gardiner brother put her on edge. It wasn’t just that he was spectacularly good-looking; as a rule, Ingrid was skeptical and hostile toward pretty men—she found them vain and self-assured and selfish. Blake Aland had pretty much confirmed the fact on their first and only date. She preferred homely guys; not that Matt Noble was homely—far from it—which was probably why she felt annoyed with him, since she liked him despite his looks. Handsome men took female adoration as their due, and Ingrid did not take to people who assumed too much.

Killian Gardiner was a vain peacock, and it was clear he knew exactly how good he looked, with that dark hair that fell over his eyes just so, and that lean, ripped body underneath the worn T-shirt and battered jeans. She could see the carved V shape of his hip muscles jutting above his waistband. When they had met at the party she had asked him what he did, and he’d been purposefully vague. Later she found out it was because he didn’t seem to do much of anything. She heard that Killian was a fly-by-night, that he moved with the seasons, he’d run a scuba-diving boat off the coast of Australia, worked as a galley chef on an Alaskan freighter. There were other rumors: that he’d gotten a girl pregnant, that he’d been in jail, that he was a drug addict. Whether they were true or not, Ingrid knew that a man that beautiful was definitely Bad News and she didn’t expect to hear anything that proved otherwise.

“I thought you had left town already,” she said. Hadn’t Killian seemed bored and preoccupied at the party? “How can I help you?”

“Actually I’m helping you,” he said, picking up an extra-large L.L. Bean tote bag and setting it on the table. In the bag were several rolled-up blueprints. “I overheard you asking Bran for them at the engagement party, and I thought I’d drop them off this morning.”

“Oh—that’s so nice! I didn’t expect to get them so quickly! Bran said he had to get back to me—he wasn’t sure where they were or if they even existed. How wonderful!” She took the bag, handling it reverently. The library was setting up an exhibition of drawings from the collection that would showcase the design plans of all the important houses in town. As the oldest and most prominent house in the area, Fair Haven was crucial to their catalog. Many architecturally important homes had blueprints lying around somewhere; the former owners kept them pristine for the new owners as part of a tradition of handing down a precious object of art.

Ingrid clasped her hands and beamed at Killian, whom she regarded much more fondly this time. What he did with his time was no business of hers, after all. He was free to waste his life on indolence and apathy. “This is going to be so great!”

“Glad to help,” Killian said. “I can’t wait to hear what you think. It’s a really interesting old house, there’s a lot of history there. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call.” He glanced at the wooden postbox Ingrid kept by the main desk for “Library Donations.” “What’s this?”

She explained the situation: the city’s deficit, the library’s precarious fate at the hands of the city council.

Killian frowned. “You’re not going to raise money by keeping a box by the door. You know what you should do, Ingrid, is get them to pay for something only you can provide.”

“I’m not really sure I know what you’re talking about,” Ingrid said, slightly confused. “But thanks for the plans.” He really was so charming, she thought, getting the benefit of his megawatt smile. So thoughtful, too—to drop off the plans without being asked, and asking about the library as if he truly cared about its future.

“My pleasure,” he said, waving a hand. “See you at the hoedown on Saturday?” A hospital charity was throwing a “barn-raiser” that weekend, complete with haystacks and square-dancing, the usual North Hampton summer theme party.

Ingrid shook her head. Freya threw herself into the social scene, but Ingrid liked to stay home to knit, read books, and listen to old songs on her turntable. If she ventured outside the home it was usually with Hudson, two hens off to see a Truffaut revival. “I’m not going but I think Freya is.”

At the mention of Freya’s name Killian perked up. “Is she, now?”

Ingrid nodded. “So you’re staying then? For the summer?”

“I think so.” Killian nodded. “See what kind of action I can get going around here.” He winked. “Don’t worry, I’ll be good.”

“Guess we’ll be seeing you around, then.” Ingrid nodded.

Killian bade a cheerful good-bye and roared off on his motorcycle, making a huge noise that rattled the windowpanes.

W
hen she returned to the back room, Hudson was waiting for her with his arms crossed. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Did the handsome young man invite you out? Or did the two of you just exchange phone numbers”—at this juncture Hudson made air quotes with his fingers—“for a future ‘booty call’?” His lips twitched with a smirk. Sometimes Hudson was thirty going on eighty with the way he faux-adopted the language of “the youth,” as he called it.

“No!” Ingrid wrinkled her nose. “Course not! He was just dropping off blueprints of Fair Haven. You know, for the show,” she said, holding up the bag. “And anyway, he’s much too young.”

“Oh.” Hudson looked disappointed. “
Quel dommage.
You looked so ecstatic for a moment I believed you had a date.” He went back to the card catalog. He had the thankless task of typing in all the archaic information into the computer. After resisting for many years, the library system was finally going digital. He began to type, hunting and pecking with one delicate finger.

Ingrid shook her head. She checked on the drawing under the steam tent. Once she was done with it she would begin steaming the Gardiner blueprints. The exhibit was scheduled for the end of August, as part of the library gala that usually closed the summer season. The fund-raiser would be the library’s last hurrah, and all the proceeds would help offset the costs of moving, if it came down to that.

Caitlin Parker, who had a desk next to Hudson’s, pretended not to hear their conversation. Unlike the others, Caitlin did not have a particular affinity for books or design and had fallen into the job almost by accident. She was pleasant and amiable enough, and never gossiped about anybody. Pretty and sweet, like a kindergarten teacher. Ingrid wanted to like Caitlin, there was nothing
not
to like, but she found her dull and insipid. Honestly, the girl was almost too nice; she always let patrons take out the rare books that were not allowed out of the reserve room and she never, ever collected late fees. It drove Ingrid crazy.

The three librarians worked in silence for a while, until Hudson piped up. “So, have you seen her yet?”

“Who?” Ingrid asked.

“Stevie Nicks.”

“What do you mean?”

Right at that moment, Tabitha walked in. Her hair was long and loose. She was wearing a long T-shirt, a skirt that swept the floor, and some kind of drapey caftan-like cardigan. The entire effect was not unlike a seventies hippie chick at the beach.

Hudson began humming “Landslide” under his breath.

“What’s so funny?” Caitlin asked, looking up from her computer as Hudson stifled a giggle and Ingrid smiled broadly. “I don’t get it.”

“I feel weird,” Tabitha admitted, looking self-conscious as she took her seat by the doorway.

“No, you look great. Really,” Ingrid told her. She didn’t need a pentagram to see that there were no more traces of the silvery menace anywhere around Tabitha; her friend projected health and happiness. Unloosening the knots had done the trick. Already she could see the magic working its way through Tabitha’s body, weaving an invisible glow around her, opening her chakras, letting in the air, freeing the spirit, preparing her body and soul to create new life and bring it to the world. She would conceive by midweek.