Serpent's Kiss

by Melissa de la Cruz

  She couldn’t help but be flattered that this man who had known her for millennia was still in love with her. He was passionate, and she could forgive him for such a minor outburst of jealousy. Actually, she came to realize—a sudden epiphany sitting there at her desk—she had already forgiven him for everything: not having exercised his powers during the Salem trials in 1692, which would have been futile, anyway. If he had gone against the Council, they would have all been punished in the end. There had been no way of avoiding any of it. Not only that but also Ingrid and Freya had forgiven their father, so why shouldn’t she? It made no sense to hold on to a useless grudge, which had the power of turning a good witch bad, white magic to black. Joanna was a well-intentioned witch, and she should have known better.

  Last summer, Norman had gone to the Oracle to make sure that she and the girls wouldn’t be punished for having breached the Restriction. He had gotten that seemingly ineradicable law lifted in the end, which was no small feat. His heart had always been in the right place, and now she saw that clearly. Even while they had been apart, she had felt his presence, a safety net she knew was always there to catch and cradle her and the girls if ever they fell. Norman had never left her, though she had been the one to oust him. She loved him for his loyalty, she loved him for all of it, and perhaps she, too, had never stopped loving him. She pushed her hair onto a shoulder. Gilly alighted on her desk.

  “Aw,” she said, feeding her some seeds. “You want us back together, too, don’t you? I know what you’re getting at, sneaky little raven. But Norman and I must take it slowly. I’ve grown used to being a single old hag. What to do?”

  Gilly pecked mindlessly at the seeds in her palm.

  “Yes, I’ll think about it. You know I will.” She continued to read his e-mail.

  <>

  Joanna had spent enough time trying to figure out who this wraith was and she had gotten nowhere, so she immediately wrote Norman back.

  <
  I am sorry to have been angry for so long. I have come to understand the decisions you’ve made and must confess I have been excessively harsh. Feelings, which aren’t always rational, have their own life span and sometimes, for whatever reason, need to be lived out. It was a horrible day watching our daughters hanged at Gallows Hill in Salem. But I understand now that it wasn’t apathy on your part. There was nothing you could do.

  Let’s start fresh. We can begin to work toward being comfortable with each other again. I miss your friendship. It would be wonderful if you could come for Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday, and we can discuss all of this further in person.

  Yes, I want to know what you discovered about the message. Please let me know ASAP! It is urgent. I made contact but am still at a loss, so any additional information would be helpful.

  Jo>>

  She hit the Send button, then stared dazedly at the screen, hoping that Norman’s reply would be instantaneous. It was early evening and classes were most likely out by now. Was he in his tiny monastic cell, an invisible line connecting them from laptop to laptop?

  “Hello, Mother.” Ingrid stood in the doorway of Joanna’s study. “I heard you talking to yourself.”

  Joanna stared at her pretty daughter in the doorway, her blossomed flower, and laughed. “I was just having a chat with Gilly. Nothing to worry about. I haven’t become a crazy witch yet.”

  “Any progress on the spirit?” Ingrid strode to the love seat against the wall and sat down, crossing her long, slim legs.

  Joanna admired how her daughter could wear heels all day long and into the evening. She had a wonderful, understated European style, Ingrid. She recounted everything to her oldest, about how the spirit had told her to find her. She included that Norman had written, saying he had cracked some sort of code in the runes and that she was waiting for his reply, which she made quite obvious by glancing at her computer’s screen every few seconds.

  Ingrid was irritated with her mother for not having consulted her before performing the ritual as Joanna had promised she would. “You know how tricky and deceptive Helda is. There are all sorts of clauses and subclauses to her damned Covenant. That document is as labyrinthine as the nine circles beyond her gates, and she keeps that book locked away so no one can actually read it—classic obfuscation. I hate to say it, but your sister is a bitch!”

  “Oh, my!” said Joanna. “Language, Ingrid.”

  Ingrid barely acknowledged the comment, only continued. “Well, the only way to find out how that Covenant works is through trial and error. Helda pulls it out only when it’s convenient to her. How are we supposed to know every clause if we can’t read the thing? And, of course, she has provided for every type of situation. I think there’s actually a caveat for simply conversing with the dead, isn’t there, Mother?”

  “Yes, there is. Darling, there is a reason for all of Helda’s laws. Everyone would be immortal if they weren’t in place,” said Joanna, distracted. She was looking at the screen of her laptop and clicking the mouse. She had just received a reply from Norman. She began to read it aloud, skipping over the sections addressing their relationship, which Ingrid certainly didn’t need to be privy to:

  <>

  Joanna stared down at the runes spread that was still on her desk as Ingrid came to peer over her shoulder and call out their Norse names. Joanna scribbled them down on a pad as she went, along with their corresponding roman letters:

  hagalaz ------> h

  ansuz --------> a

  wunjo --------> w or v

  algiz ---------> z or r but a per Norman

  manaz -------> m

  A -------------> a

  laguz --------> l

  “The ‘Hávamál’ poem!” cried mother and daughter in unison.

  “Stanza one fifty-seven!” said Joanna, rushing over to her bookshelf. “I was making the puzzle so complicated, looking for an anagram.” Joanna scanned her shelves, then pulled out her leather-bound copy of The Poetic Edda, a collection of ancient Norse poems. Composed of 165 stanzas, “Hávamál” was a gnomic poem attributed to Odin, written as if he were imparting its wisdom himself—the word hávamál meaning “the high one’s words.” The poem was broken down into five sections: in the penultimate one, Rúnatal, Odin discovers the runes as he hangs wounded from a tree, while in the last section, Ljóðatal, Odin enumerates a list of spells. It was in this last section of the poem that Joanna found stanza 157, and she held the book aloft, reading aloud to Ingrid:

  A twelfth I know:

  If I see in a tree

  A corpse from a noose hanging,

  Such spells I write and paint in runes,

  That the being descends and speaks with me.

  “Oh, my goodness, Mother, could she be a witch who was convicted and hanged?” exclaimed Ingrid.

  Joanna thought of the girl and what she was wearing. “Yes, of course, it’s a witch who needs my help. One of us, a goddess,” added Joanna. “But where is she? Where would I find her and why hasn’t she regenerated? Why is
she roaming around as a spirit? What’s wrong?”

  They both spoke over each other. Joanna’s dragon-bone runes had been familiar to the wraith because she was one of them—and obviously she knew The Poetic Edda well. The grave with the blank headstone had very likely been her hanging as well as burial site. She was from the region. A convicted witch, excommunicated from the church, would be denied a proper burial on hallowed ground. A convicted witch was a dead one, hanged, buried in a shallow grave, usually with no headstone, often without even a record of death, leaving no traces, as if she’d never existed. However, someone had taken the care to provide a headstone for her, a bold and risky act, which suggested she had been loved.

  “Dad said she was a girl, but how did he know that? We knew because you saw her,” Ingrid said excitedly.

  “The Norn spread,” said Joanna. “She could have placed the runes another way. But she set them in clusters of three. Maybe Norman is guessing that she is one of the Norns since they’re female.”

  “The girl said, ‘Find me!’ Where is what I want to know,” Joanna said.

  Ingrid exhaled a lengthy sigh. Decoding messages from the dead was perhaps a fun pastime, but wherever this was leading was apt to be dangerous. “Earlier when I asked you about whether there were consequences to speaking with the dead, you started to say yes, then got distracted.”

  Joanna peered up at Ingrid, bunching her lips. “Getting information from the dead is a minor infraction. If you take something from that side, Helda takes something back from this side—quid pro quo.”

  “Well, these quid pro quos might possibly add up if you don’t stop here, Mother.” Ingrid stared questioningly at Joanna. “Are you going to make contact again?”

  “Oh, I am. This girl needs me. I have to help her. It’s my calling, darling. I just need to figure out where to find her. Worry not, my child!” This was the thing about the Beauchamp women, the common thread that ran through all of them, hubris: they were each stubborn in their own way and sometimes too confident for their own good.

  Ingrid knew there would be no dissuading her mother, but she tried nonetheless. “But I am worried!”

  “Bah!” said Joanna. “I will do a protection spell to counteract all that. It’s nothing. She smiled at her sweet, concerned daughter. “On a lighter note, your father is coming for Thanksgiving. Maybe we can get Freya to cook! Wouldn’t that be marvelous?”

  Ingrid laughed. “Go ahead and deflect, Mother! You’re incorrigible.” Once again, Ingrid asked Joanna to promise to come to her for help, despite the fact that her mother had broken the last one. “Double promise this time!”

  Joanna winked. “I double promise!”

  chapter twenty-nine

  The Lying Game

  A streak of lightning ripped through the blanket of gunmetal clouds, then big, fat, hard drops began to pelt the Mini. The windshield wipers thrummed as Freya tried to peer through the downpour lashing at the window while she gripped at the steering wheel. Along the sides of the small road, cattails and reeds swayed wildly in the squall. It was nasty out there—cold, windy, and now this heavy rain. She pulled into the lot of the Ucky Star and put on the navy slicker she kept in the backseat. She tugged the hood over her pouf of red hair that became irritatingly static during a storm, grabbed the shopping bag of food on the passenger seat, then made a mad dash toward Freddie’s door, splashed by the sheet of water cascading down from the walkway above. The place looked like a sinking ship.

  Freddie let her in. The flimsy walls and windows rattled in the wind, and she heard a drip, drip, drip in the bathroom. A leak like that would drive her bonkers. Freddie took the shopping bag and helped her take off the rain slicker, then placed it on a hook by the door. He was in jeans and a turtleneck, a blanket slung over his shoulders. The heaters didn’t have much effect, and the room’s scent carried a tinge of mildew. It was extremely humid in here.

  “Thanks for the food, Freya. I really couldn’t do all this holing up without you.” He came in for a hug, but she didn’t see it, eluding his grasp as she wandered over to the desk.

  “I can’t stay long. Just here to check up on you. See what’s going on, what you’ve been up to.” All this holing up, she thought skeptically, picking up a pen on the desk, then throwing it back on the pad. It did look tidier. She gave him that. “So you’ve just been holing up.”

  “Yeah … exactly,” he said, nervously picking at his fingernails. He seemed agitated, as if he wanted to say something more but decided not to. “What about you?” he said, his words coming out in a big rush. “Has Killian said anything to you … anything that might help me?”

  “No! Of course not!” Freya said, suddenly suspicious.

  They stared at each other, as if they were trying to get a read, attune their twin senses, but each came up against a wall.

  Freddie shrugged. “Anyway, it’s not like I can leave. You know that, Freya. I can’t risk the Valkyries finding me. Until I know what to do, I absolutely cannot set foot outside this room.”

  So her brother was blatantly lying to her. She had unmistakably spied him in the alley behind the North Inn. She had never known him to lie, not to her. It wasn’t like Freddie to tell a fib; he was too sincere, as earnest as the sun. Although lately, he’d been more of a mercurial twin than a bright and constant one. And what if she were wrong? What if this weren’t Freddie at all? She thought of Bran and his deception.

  “What’s wrong, Freya?” Freddie moved toward her, but she began to back away.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Freddie. I’m just in a hurry.” She had turned around and was already collecting her rain slicker from the hook. “I have to open the bar. I just wanted to say a quick hi and drop off that food.” She was thinking of her last moments with Loki. Could he have returned? Might this be him in another disguise? Had she been deceived again?

  When she had fallen for Loki’s ploy and their love was consummated, he was bound to her, obliged to obey her forever. She had made him give her the ring that allowed him to move between worlds, then return through the hole inside the Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life that also connected all the worlds from whence he had come. But before he had slipped back into Yggdrasil, he had muttered something in a language she didn’t understand. Had he said he would return then? Perhaps Freya would be stuck with Loki forever, the god of mischief chasing her throughout eternity, the albatross that never let her rest. “You are more like me than you think, dear Freya.” Had he returned as her twin to prove that to her this time?

  She reached for the slicker and felt her arms being clasped. Freddie—or Loki—swung her around. Their eyes locked. If she looked hard enough would she see that unscrupulous soul peering through these large green eyes? Instead she saw her reflection, and Freddie let go of her.

  “What’s gotten into you, Freya?”

  Was he trying to manipulate her, tug at her heartstrings? Loki knew her well. He knew how strong her love was for Freddie.

  “I’m sorry. The storm has made me jumpy, and I really have to get to work,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you sure you haven’t found anything? Nothing? Nothing at all to make you think that your little brother might be right? That there might be something about Killian that you’re not telling me?”

  “God, Freddie, I told you already. I haven’t!” She certainly wasn’t about to tell him—whoever he was—about the trident mark on Killian’s back. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore, only that she needed to get out of there.

  chapter thirty

  Like a Circle in a Spiral

  “I think there’s a forest and houses above maybe?” Kelda crouched to tie the laces of her combat boots. She had permanently appropriated Freya’s black leather mask and looked up at Ingrid through it.

  They were up in the attic, and Ingrid had passed around the amnesia antidote Freya had made for her, and now she and the pixies were waiting for it to take effect.

  “Does that ring a bell for anyone else?�
�� asked Ingrid. “Anyone?” She held her wand in one hand and tapped it against her palm. Actually, she felt a bit like a schoolmarm, the wand a ruler, the pixies gathered around, staring at her with too much reverence. Well, except for Sven, always the loner, presently sprawled on his bed.

  “I think it starts with an A,” said Irdick. “But it makes my head hurt to think about it.”

  “What starts with an A?” asked Ingrid.

  “The place where we’re from starts with an A, Erda,” Sven grumbled from where he lay, an arm swung over his eyes. He hadn’t joined them, claiming it made his body too achy thinking about any of it, but Ingrid suspected he was hungover.

  “Okay, okay, that’s great!” said Ingrid. “We know you can’t use money, that the name of the place starts with an A, and you live in trees?”

  “It’s a c-c-c-city,” said Val. The front of his Mohawk swooped over an eye.

  “There are noises below, other pixies working,” said Irdick. “I think … Ouch!” He put a hand to his forehead.

  Ingrid scratched at her head with her wand. “I’m confused.”

  Nyph came over to Ingrid and tugged at her sleeve. “This antidote isn’t working, Erda.”

  Ingrid started with a sudden realization. “How do you know my name is Erda? How do you know my ancient name?”