Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel (19 page)

When she opened her eyes, she saw a green wisp of light wriggling out of the earth like a worm. It began to grow on top of the mound, first turning into a glowing orb, then stretching like a flame, until it became as big as she was, and she saw the outline of the wraith.

It was a young woman with a pale round face in a white cloth cap trimmed with lace that was folded back above her wide forehead. She wore a blouse with a large white shirt collar, buttoned to the neck and ripped at the shoulder, a gray bodice, and a dark apron tied around the high waist of a long maroon skirt. Above her rose-petal red lips was a small round black mole. She reminded Joanna of Vermeer’s
The Milkmaid
, although she was not as thick or solid-looking as the milkmaid, thinner but curvy. She hovered there above the grave, with her pouting lips, her shoulders bending toward Joanna. She was breathtaking, really.

Joanna stepped closer. The wraith was speaking, but she couldn’t hear her. As Joanna moved in, the girl’s hand darted out, seizing her by the throat. Her grip was so strong it felt as if she had turned to flesh and blood, and Joanna struggled to breathe as a smell of decomposition wafted across her face. Her arms flailed.

“Find me!” said the girl close to Joanna’s ear.

Then she vanished, like a dream ending abruptly but still holding her in its grip. Joanna gasped as the chokehold released and she fell onto all fours, half outside the circle, her body racked by coughing until she could breathe again.

Freya carried two enormous bags of trash to the Dumpsters in the car park behind the North Inn. It was after midnight on a weeknight, and the very last barfly had drunkenly scuttled out. It had been Freya’s turn to lock up; no one ever liked doing it, especially alone.

“Oh, Kristy,” she muttered to herself. “Why’d you have to go and have babies so young?”

She looked up and saw a full moon. No wonder it had been off-kilter in the bar tonight. She had thought it was all her fault, fixated as she was by the image of the trident on Killian’s back, which she was still trying to understand. She had been distracted, couldn’t focus, and her magic had gone limp: none of the potions had their usual fizz or aphrodisiacal tang, the drinks were oddly flavorless and bland, and today a customer had even remarked that she’d never tasted anything so bitter.

Freya lifted the heavy lid of the Dumpster, dejectedly tossing one bag after another inside it, bottles clanking, then swiped her hands on her jeans. They were dirty anyway, splashed with all kinds of liquor, reminding her of the indigenously named Long Island iced tea. She hugged her thin leather jacket as she started out toward the Mini, feeling uneasy. It was a chilly November night.

She hit the unlock button on her key fob, and her car bleeped back at her among the cars of the lodgers staying at the North Inn in the B&B section. She recognized the red Mazda of the girl who worked the night desk. To the right of the Dumpsters was a dimly lit alley that led to the back of the French beachside restaurant everyone in town, including Joanna, had raved about—although she and Killian had yet to try it. As she walked past the alley on the way to the Mini, she saw two shadows moving. They were walking toward her. She ducked behind a car and peered through the windows.

She would recognize him anywhere: Freddie, her twin. The glow around his face and golden hair lit him up like a firefly. But who was he with? A tall, broad-shouldered man, standing across from her brother but hidden in shadow. She could barely make him out. He was sporting a captain’s hat—that much she could tell—or was it a police officer’s hat? Freddie and the shadowy figure shook hands then parted ways, the man now moving toward her. Still, Freya couldn’t get a better glimpse of him from her vantage point, and she needed to follow Freddie to see what he was up to. He had taken off in the direction of the French restaurant.

Ducking, she wended through the parked cars, as she heard the mystery man get into one of the cars behind her and peel out. It all happened too fast to catch the make of the car or a license plate, and she’d been too intent on following her twin. She scrambled down the alley, hugging the wall, hiding in the shadows, then caught up with him.

Now she watched him in the parking lot of the French restaurant. She scuttled low between the cars until she got as close as she could. He was with a young woman, but she could only make out her tall silhouette and long hair. She had her back to Freya. When the girl turned around, Freya had to duck lest she be seen. But she heard something Freddie said: “It won’t be long now.” Then a door slammed shut. Freya quickly peeked again.

Freddie was coming around the car to get in the passenger seat, and then the two took off.

What had her brother gotten himself into? He was boldly walking around North Hampton, meeting strange characters in dark alleys, when he claimed it was paramount that nobody know he was back.

“What’s that noise?” Freya stepped out of her room on the second floor of Joanna’s house, running smack into Ingrid tightening the belt of her white peignoir.

Ingrid’s eyes fluttered behind her glasses. It was early, and she had barely splashed water on her face when she’d heard the noise and was about to run up to the attic to tell the pixies to pipe down. “What noise? I didn’t hear a noise,” she replied, making a point of saying it in a loud voice, hoping the pixies would hear her and zip it.

The sisters stared at each other. Above them came another loud scudding sound as if something heavy were being dragged across the floor from one end of the attic to the other.

“That noise!” said Freya, pointing toward it.

Ingrid tried to move discreetly toward the stairway to block it. “Oh, that’s nothing. I think Oscar and Siegfried went up there to play earlier this morning.”

Noises resounded again—something crashed, followed by a pattering of feet.

“You mean to say that my cat and your griffin are playing house up there? And that they’ve grown human feet?”

“Yes, exactly,” said Ingrid emphatically. “They’re practicing shape-shifting.”

“Funny, because I just saw Siegfried curled up on my bed,” retorted Freya. At the sound of his name, Siegfried darted out from Freya’s bedroom and came to rub himself on her calf. She looked down at the purring black cat, squinted dubiously at Ingrid, then smirked. “Okay, spill it.” She knew this wasn’t fair. She had plenty of her own secrets, but she couldn’t help it.

Ingrid placed one hand on the banister and the other against the wall, lifting her chin, clearly barring the stairs. Freya, in her short black kimono, pressed her body against Ingrid’s, trying to push past.

“All right, all right, I’ll show you!” Ingrid relented, letting Freya through. “I can explain!” Ingrid called to Freya’s back, quickly following her up. Freya swung the door open, Ingrid on her heels.

The attic had been rearranged so that the furniture, no longer haphazardly scattered, created what resembled a dormitory room with various sleeping areas. There were no more piled-up boxes. Instead, clothes hung on metal rolling racks, which Ingrid had never seen before. The pixies had bathed. Ingrid noted they cleaned up well and were easy on the eyes, with their pointy, delicate features and shimmering skin.

Sven lay on a daybed in his area, reading an Agatha Christie novel while smoking a cigarette, an ashtray on the bedside table next to his pack of Kools. Irdick was in his own makeshift cubicle, swinging to and fro in a rocking chair. Kelda and Nyph, children’s costumes pulled over their dark clothing, sat on a double bed, playing the popular seventies game Mastermind. Val was taking a break from pushing a steamer trunk into a corner and was now straightening his Mohawk with his palms. They had all stopped whatever activities they were in the midst of to stare at the two witches who had barged in on them.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hiding fairies?” asked Freya, squinting at them.

Ingrid sighed, walking over to Sven to snuff out his cigarette in the ashtray and confiscate the pack of Kools. She turned to Freya. “They’re not fairies. They’re pixies and they’re lost. I’ve been letting them stay here until we can figure out how to get them home, only they don’t remember where home is,” she said in one breath. “So they’re sort of like refugees.”

“She’s letting us crash in her crib until—” Sven began, but Ingrid cut in.

“I just said that, Sven. And there is—as
I’ve
already expressed—a no-smoking policy in here. If you want to smoke, do it outside!” She pointed to a window, knowing that was how the pixies came and went, rather than down the stairs and through the house, adept at scaling roofs and walls as they were.

Freya gaped incredulously at Ingrid. “Does Mom know you’re harboring fugitives?”

“They’re not fugitives. They’re refugees! There’s a difference.” Ingrid glared at her sister. “They haven’t done anything wrong, I mean, not recently. They’ve been
relatively
quiet and well-behaved until this morning. Kind of.” She scanned the room, giving each one the evil eye. “You know what I’ll do if you don’t do everything I say, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Yes,” they all said in unison, adamantly nodding their heads. “Frogs.”

“Ribbit,” Val joked.

“We promise to be good!” Kelda threw in.

“Your promises don’t amount to much,” Ingrid remarked.

She went on to explain to Freya all that had happened from the start with the pixies, how they’d asked her for help by stealing her away to a seedy motel they were squatting in, and how she had been searching for a spell to counteract their collective amnesia, had tried several, but none had worked.

“Motel? What motel?” Freya asked suspiciously.

“You know—the one off the highway, that’s sort of sinking.”

Freya nodded; she knew it well but didn’t tell that to Ingrid. She realized now that she’d seen Ingrid on the night she was describing. She’d thought Ingrid had been with Matt, but no—she’d been helping out these “refugees.”

Ingrid told her about the latest on the burglaries (while surreptitiously keeping an eye to see how the pixies would react), how Matt knew about the pixies but thought they were just a band of homeless kids, and that she’d been forced to lie to him because he would never understand any of it. He, um, didn’t believe in magic.

“He doesn’t believe in magic?” Freya asked. “What does he think you are then—just a librarian?”

“He’ll come around,” Ingrid said. “That’s not the problem right now.”

Ingrid interrogated the pixies—as Freya watched, impressed by her sister’s surprisingly adept police techniques—but they denied any involvement in the current string of robberies and told her they would be happy for her to search the place if she felt the need.

“Well, you could be hiding the loot elsewhere,” Ingrid retorted. “For example, where did those come from?” She pointed to the clothes racks, then crossed her arms and tapped a foot.

“We found them here and mounted them. We thought they would provide better spatial economy than the boxes,” said Nyph.

“Plausible with all the stuff Mother has kept here over the years,” commented Freya.

“Can you please keep this a secret?” Ingrid implored her sister.

“Sure,” said Freya.

“You know Mom’s not fond of pixies—all those cautionary tales she told us as kids about pixies doing horrible things to children. I don’t think these guys are that kind, though, even if they are a handful. But I don’t think Mother will make the distinction.”

“Horrible things to children!” repeated Irdick from the rocking chair, then grinned stupidly.

“Maybe they’re just a little annoying?” said Freya.

Since the pixies came and went through the windows, the sisters agreed they should lock the attic door in case Joanna tried to come up. They would tell Mother they had misplaced the key if she asked. Ingrid would continue to bring the pixies food in the mornings and evenings, although the pixies claimed there were better eats to be found elsewhere, like behind the French restaurant where they’d been scavenging the Dumpsters. But that nice French waiter had noticed and was now feeding them, so Ingrid really didn’t have to bother with dinner anymore. Freya promised Ingrid to look into an amnesia-lifting spell, or perhaps a potion was in order, some sort of antidote.

Ingrid saw that something was troubling Freya, and she had to ask. “You look worn out. What’s up?” She placed a hand over her sister’s forehead.