I told her what happened: the dark mass, the malicious spirit. “You’ve got to come home with me. Sell the bar and join me in North Hampton. We haven’t been all together in so long,” I pleaded. She stared at me, and now I saw the dark circles beneath her eyes, and her face, though youthful, looked puffy, as if she had been drinking too much. She needed a good detox—Joanna’s love and care, Joanna’s rehab center, the country life.
“I can’t leave. I’m happy here. I love the Holiday Lounge. And besides, I help people,” she said.
“Help?” I asked, surprised. “Help them by getting them drunk?”
She scoffed. I knew what I said sounded snooty, and I immediately regretted it. I tried a different tact. “How can you help when we are not allowed to practice magic?”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me!” I challenged. But she only smirked and crossed her arms, turned away from me, and stared out the window as we hurled down Second Avenue.
“I help the lost, the brokenhearted, the bereaved,” she explained later at the apartment.
“Not too long ago there was a human boy, one who’d been abandoned by his vampire…I helped him move on.”
I grabbed her by a shoulder. “I’m not judging you, Freya, but you know we aren’t supposed to intervene. Please come home, or at least consider it. You don’t look happy to me.”
She harrumphed, went about making some coffee before work, her back turned to me, but I knew I had reached her. I decided to give it a break and visit her later at the bar after I had settled in.
That evening, I borrowed a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and boots with not too steep a heel—not my usual dress—and strolled over to the Holiday on St. Mark’s. In the dim light of the neon signs and strands of Christmas lights (apparently Freya hadn’t yet changed the decor to a spring theme), I saw my sister leaning over the bar top in a white tank, locked in a kiss with a young lady with long black hair and tattoos of exotic flowers snaking up her arms. The patrons cheered them on. When they broke away, everyone clapped.
Freya spotted me wedged in my little spot and smiled broadly. “Ingrid, look how cute you look!”
I waved a hand. “What was going on just then?” I asked, changing the topic.
“Oh, just a harmless little game of truth or dare.” She poured me a glass of white wine, then let the other bartender take over as we huddled together at a quieter end of the bar. I needed to drive my point in somehow.
I asked her to place her hands in mine, a game we played as children.
“What? You’re going to peer into my lifeline, Ingrid?”
I begged her to give me just the tiniest peek and not to block me. She relented. We held hands and closed our eyes.
It was odd and confusing what I saw—a jumble of images mixing themselves with my most recent experience. Perhaps I still wasn’t quite right from the accident. I saw a house, or rather a mansion, on a small island in the distance, mist rising around it. I saw the handsome man from the last car. He winked at me this time, then sat down in the passenger seat and opened a newspaper. And there was Freya in a slinky dress at a party, showing Mother the engagement ring on her finger. The teen looking out the window, bobbing his head, suddenly appeared, turning his swollen, bruised face to me. Then Freya in a cramped bathroom, sitting up on the vanity, one leg in the air, a man with his face in the crook of her neck, his body tightly pressed against hers so that I couldn’t see him. That was too much information. But the image was quickly juxtaposed by another: Freya on the deck of what appeared to be a yacht, calling out to someone in the darkness. I couldn’t hear her, but I felt her desperation. Something had gone wrong. She was full of self-hatred and longing in that moment. The images stopped and I opened my eyes.
Freya was beaming at me. I smiled back happily because now I knew she would join me in North Hampton—eventually. She had a mischievous glint in her eye.
“What?” I asked, perplexed.
“You, my dear, are about to meet a very dashing man indeed. He’s very special, Ingrid. Oh my god, it’s all so sweet!”
Freya grinned. I laughed. That was about the silliest thing I had ever heard; she was obviously messing with me. As if I cared about such things!
“I’m rather of incapable of that sort of—”
Freya shushed me, placing a finger to my lips. “Trust me,” she said.
I was going to tell her the truth—well, not all of it. “You are going to come to North Hampton, and you will get engaged.”
Her eyes widened, and for a moment it didn’t seem she would stop laughing. Apparently my pronouncement was hysterical. When she finally stopped, she said, “Now that is a bunch of bogus, Ingrid. A flat-out lie if I’ve ever heard one, and it’s certainly not going to get me to come home.”
A girl in the bar shrieked. Freya and I stared at each other, and I gathered the courage to tell her what I else I had gleaned from my vision.
“If you come to North Hampton,” I said slowly, “you will find Balder, your long lost love.”
She stared at me silently, then her eyes suddenly grew watery. “That is so not funny, Ingrid!”
I reassured her it was no attempt at humor. I had no doubt. I knew it wouldn’t exactly be smooth, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
“Balder!” she said, breathless, her mouth falling agape. “Ingrid, that’s a low trick if you are trying to manipulate me to sell this bar and move home.”
From Freya’s opened windows, I heard the crowd from the sidewalk German bar nearby. Cars honk their horns; kids scream in the streets; someone shouts, “Yo, throw down the keys!” A drumbeat sounds from Tompkins Square. The city is perpetually alive. No wonder Freya loves it here. Even so, crammed as it is, I sensed loneliness in nearly every person I passed on the way home, strangers in a crowd, too afraid to reach out to one another.
I’m now propped against the pillows of the big plush vintage couch by the fireplace in Freya’s trompe l’oeil apartment. I will sleep well tonight. My business here is done.
Monday, April 25
Freya’s, New York City
I called Mr. Rafferty first thing this morning and set up an interview for the job at the North Hampton Library. I meet with him on Wednesday. He sounds nice, albeit a bit panicked. We talked for a while. He admitted to me that he is in his seventh year of working on a PhD in Romance languages, and that he has also been interning at the library for that same length of time, perhaps even longer. He told me to call him Hudson. And though he “knows his way around the bookshelves by now,” he is in desperate need of help from someone as experienced as me. I have a good feeling about this.
I also called Joanna and let her know that I will be arriving Tuesday afternoon. She doesn’t know about the train accident. This is the good thing about Mother not having a TV.
Freya and I went shopping. I bought a few new outfits and something for my interview. I’ve shipped my wardrobe ahead to Joanna’s, but could no longer continue wearing Freya’s clothes in the interim. Freya asked if I really, truly think it was Balder I saw in my vision. I told her I was pretty sure.
Tuesday, April 25
Joanna’s House, North Hampton, Long Island
The train ride to Long Island was peacefully uneventful. Joanna picked me up at the station. I saw her coming a mile away in her garden clogs and a big cable-knit off-white sweater, a red foulard around her long white hair. By the way, her garden is a stunning pandemonium of blooms and blossoms and tangles of green. She couldn’t hug or kiss me enough.
I told her what had happened and about my visit with Freya during the car ride home.
“Yes, you are right—we girls will need to be together if something is amiss. I’ve been sensing it myself—a disturbance of some sort. What happened was horrific, Ingrid! I am so delighted you are here.”
Given the gravity of the train wreck, her reaction seemed rather flippant. Perhaps any impact was eclipsed by her happiness at my return.
I assured her that what I saw and felt during the vision appeared true. Well, perhaps it wasn’t Balder per se, but someone charming and special enough for Freya to be willing to accept an engagement ring. Which in her book is almost as bad as a noose—no witch pun intended here, and I really shouldn’t joke about things like that.
“I have a feeling she’ll come home,” I said to Mother.
Joanna glimpsed at me, her eyes shining with joy, then squeezed my knee and told me I did well and how happy she was to have me home. The dozen pies she baked was testimony to that joy.
I haven’t told her about my plans to eventually contact Dad. I don’t think that would go over so well. I’ll wait.
Wednesday, April 26
Joanna’s House, North Hampton, Long Island
So there was a bit of a mishap today at the library, and I am still quite peeved.
It was a glorious, sunshiny day, and when I arrived a quarter hour before the appointed time for my interview, I saw him: a tall, broad-shouldered man sitting on the steps of the library, a book in his lap, waiting, staring right at me with a welcoming smile. He stood. I took it that Mr. Rafferty had been impatient for me to arrive, having been left in the lurch by the previous archivist. He had come outside to greet me. I hadn’t quite pictured him this, well, athletic-looking. Something about his panicked tone on the phone had suggested someone who might, say, sport argyle vests and bow ties and perhaps even round spectacles—someone delicate-looking. This was not the case.
This man wore a simple but stylish dark sports jacket and light-colored pants. He had light brown hair; an Irish face; a big, strong, square jaw; a nose sprinkled with freckles; and huge, limpid blue eyes. At the time I did note that his eyes appeared sincere and honest. I don’t know why, but I felt butterflies. I was suddenly nervous about the interview, which is not like me. I’m more than qualified for the position. I just hadn’t expected someone so handsome and manly, someone who looks more like a football player than a librarian. It threw me for a loop. But I told myself one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, of course.
“Ingrid Beauchamp,” I said reaching out my hand. We shook.
“Very glad…well, extremely glad to meet you…Miss Beauchamp?”
I nodded. “Yes, Miss. It was very nice of you to have come outside to greet me.”
“Not a problem. It is such a beautiful day, after all, isn’t it?”
He lingered, gazing at me, and I cleared my throat and said we should go inside and get started. He stared at me quizzically for a beat, then smirked and agreed. My stomach did another flip. What was wrong with me? I wondered. I could feel a bead of sweat collecting at my forehead. This Mr. Rafferty was making me very uncomfortable. There was something suddenly so unprofessional about the whole thing.
“Yes,” he finally said, “let us go then, you and I…”
“When the evening is spread out against the sky,” I automatically continued as we walked up the steps, then caught myself and stopped.
He held the door open for me, ever the gentleman.
The library was filled with light, and out a window, I spied the sea. It was love at first sight.
It was a shame that this Mr. Rafferty was so odd. I knew I was a shoo-in, but I could see it could be uncomfortable working with him. He was…flirtatious? Was that what it was? At any rate, so very unprofessional, I thought.
Right then, almost as soon as we entered, I immediately knew I had been entirely mistaken. A tall reedy fellow in an argyle sweater and bow tie (no spectacles) was quickly making his way toward me, reaching out a hand. “You must be Ms. Beauchamp!” he said. “I imagined you just so. I’m Hudson. Hudson Rafferty. And I see you have already met our local hero?”
I turned toward the other Mr. Rafferty, or rather, the imposter Rafferty, who was grinning at me, pleased as punch with himself.
“Hero?” I said, swallowing. I was utterly mortified for having been so foolish. But why hadn’t he told me he was someone else? Why had he played me like that? I wanted to smack him. He was six-foot-something, but I knew my hand could reach that smarty-pants rosy cheek of his. And the worst of it was he continued to smile stupidly at me.
Mr. Rafferty explained, “This is North Hampton’s senior detective, Matthew Noble. Quite the dashing hero!”
“Pshaw!” said the detective, whom I now despised. He reached out a hand to me. “Call me Matt.” He smiled some more, and I ignored the hand. He looked down, then held up One Hundred Years of Solitude. “Here to return this book, Hudson. I just finished the last pages on the steps outside. You always recommend a good one, Hudson.”
And now I am not sure why I related this very long story. This man does not deserve to take up this much space in my precious logbook. I could have instead written a very brief entry:
Today I got the job at North Hampton’s Public Library. I will be the ranking archivist; in fact, the only one. I am beside myself with joy. Plus, I already adore Hudson Rafferty. Joanna doesn’t understand why I am going to turn down the university job for this one, but so be it. Also, today I met North Hampton’s senior detective, Matthew Noble, and I already loathe him.
About the Author
Melissa de la Cruz is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling series Blue Bloods, which has three million copies in print. She is a former journalist who has contributed to many publications, including Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, and Marie Claire. She spent many summers on Shelter Island, New York, which served as the inspiration for the fictional town of North Hampton. She lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs with her family.
www.melissa-delacruz.com
Also by Melissa de la Cruz
Witches of East End
Serpent’s Kiss
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Melissa de la Cruz
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
eBook Edition ISBN 978-1-4013-0512-3
Hyperion books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact the HarperCollins Special Markets Department in the New York office at 212-207-7528, fax 212-207-7222, or email [email protected].
First eBook Edition
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
www.HyperionBooks.com
To learn more about the world of Melissa de la Cruz, read:
Wolf Pact
An original e-Book featuring
Arthur Beauchamp and the adventures
of the Wolves of Memory
COMING FALL 2012
THE BLUE BLOODS SERIES
The Gates of Paradise
The seventh and final book in the bestselling epic saga
JANUARY 2013
The story of the Witches of East End continues with
The Winds of Salem
JUNE 2013
Coming in Summer 2012
Want to find out more?
Check out Melissa’s website at:
www.melissa-delacruz.com
Or keep up with her on Facebook and Twitter:
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