Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel (24 page)

What Joanna had also gathered from the case of Goody Garlick was that around 1658, a fervor had begun to stir in the briny air of East Long Island, the first wave of a witch-hunt.

A sudden realization hit Joanna: something had happened in Fairstone, something important that the witch needed to communicate to her. Joanna would need to travel back in time to find out what it was. It wasn’t her specialty, but she could perform it. Norman’s brother Arthur was the time-traveler of the family. She also had to ensure that she arrived before the girl was dragged to the oak beneath whose long, gnarly branches a hole would have been dug.

The cell phone lying on her desk buzzed, making Joanna jump. She picked it up and read Harold’s name on the screen. She didn’t exactly feel like being interrupted, especially not during her epiphany, but it was her friend Harold, and she answered the call.

“Hello, my dear!” boomed his hearty voice.

“Harold! How are you? Good of you to call.”

“What are you doing next week?” he asked. “My daughter, son-in-law, and Clay will be out of town; they are off to spend the day with his side of the family. I was wondering if you might be free?”

Joanna ran a finger down a paragraph on Long Island history while talking at the same time. “I am but why don’t you come over to the house instead? Thursday is perfect since Freya’s cooking. She’s a marvelous cook. It’ll be divine!”

Harold cleared his throat. “Thursday? Are you sure?”

“Of course,” Joanna said, distracted. “Thursday.”

“Well, that is very generous of you. I would love to join you. I’ll bring some wine!”

“I’m in the midst of a project. Talk later?”

“Of course, my dear,” said Harold.

Joanna hung up and continued to read.

The diner on the county road outside North Hampton was a classic oblong, 1950s-style eatery with black-and-white-checkered floors, red vinyl booths, swivel stools along the counter, blinds on the windows, and cheesecake topped with preternaturally red strawberries inside a glass case. It was aptly, or unoriginally, called Diner, loudly conveyed by the gargantuan neon sign across the front.

It was replete with the usual crowd one found in such places, often themselves in disoriented pockets: the weekend or prom-night teens, the honeymoon or wordless couples, widows, families with screaming infants, truckers, die-hard preppies with shirt collars flipped up, women with bejeweled fingers and Liz Taylor hair (in the latter years), or anyone who had, no matter the time of day, a hankering for flapjacks drenched in hot maple syrup with eggs any which way.

Jean-Baptiste sat in a back booth in a perfectly tailored handmade suit with a red silk pocket square, his cashmere coat slung over the back of the banquette. He was wearing sunglasses even though it was pitch-dark outside. Freya spotted him right away—it was hard not to notice him—and slid into his booth.

“You’re looking good, Freya,” he said in a velvety baritone with a hint of southern lilt. He peered up at her from behind his dark, rimless Ray-Bans and gave her his understated wry smile. Just one corner of his lips that normally turned a tad downward peaked up ever so slightly, and the pronounced grooves at the sides of his mouth creased a little more deeply, indicating his pleasure at seeing her.

“I was just thinking the same about you, Jean.” She stared silently at his handsome face, the faint grizzled mustache and goatee, the perfectly smooth bald head, his lovely amber-brown skin. Jean-Baptiste Mésomier brought to mind the word
suave
, as well as other sibilant ones—
smooth
,
sexy
,
savvy
, and so forth.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Sure, I could go for the short stack special with the works. Just got off of a long shift,” she explained.

Jean took a noisy last sip of his milkshake, the way kids do—not so smooth, but somehow he got away with it—then called the waitress over, and Freya ordered.

When they were alone again, Jean lowered his head to look questioningly up at Freya from behind his shades, his expression grave. “I’m wondering what warranted getting a crotchety old man like me out of bed to fly all the way from New Orleans to the Hamptons in the middle of the night. Glad I know the shortcuts, by the way. If it weren’t the goddess of love and beauty herself calling, I would have much rather snoozed.”

Freya chewed her lip. “I’m sorry. I should have come to you.”

Jean let forth a stentorian laugh that startled Freya, but she found herself laughing along lest she offend the god of memory and have her brain entirely swiped.

“I’m just fucking with you, kid. Truth be told, I’ve been rather bored lately, and I’d give up the alphabet—well, maybe just numbers—to gaze at your pretty face for a few minutes whatever the time of day or place.”

Freya smirked. She hadn’t seen Jean-Baptiste in several lifetimes, and she had been a toddler whom he’d bounced on his knee then. He looked the same. He wasn’t someone anyone could easily forgot, unless he wanted you to, of course.

“As I said in my text, but I couldn’t get explicit”—here she lowered her voice—“it’s about the
bridge
.”

He looked at her askance, cocking his head. “The Bofrir?”

Freya nodded.

Jean let out a whistle, staring incredulously at her. “You know we can’t talk about that. What’s done is done, and there certainly isn’t any goddamn thing this old man can do about it. The bridge was destroyed; our magic is weakened as a result. Period.” He lifted his eyebrows, his forehead creasing with several sideways
S
’s, and suddenly he looked tired and much older. “I don’t know what else to say, kid.”

Freya pushed. “I want to know everything you know about that day, Jean, every detail.”

Jean told her, but it was the same old story: Fryr, her twin, and Loki getting caught, Loki serving his five thousand years in the frozen depths, and Fryr biding his time in Limbo. It had been Fryr’s trident that had destroyed the bridge after all, ultimately consigning the Vanir and Aesir to Midgard, save for Odin and his wife, Frigg. “Someone had to pay,” Jean said. “And Fryr looked awfully guilty.”

The waitress returned with a stack of steaming pancakes topped with a strawberry and served with eggs sunny-side up and perfectly browned sausage links. But Freya and Jean ignored the food. The waitress blew at a strand of hair falling in her face, straightened her apron, and then clip-clopped away.

Freya gave a sigh of frustration. “Well, I don’t think that’s how it happened, Jean,” she said, finally turning to the heaping plate before her. She poured a thick stream of maple syrup on her pancakes, then dug in, talking while she ate. “I think the Valkyries might not have investigated thoroughly into the matter. I’m not saying they were lazy, but everything was so rushed when it happened.” She rambled on, thinking out loud while she shoveled large chunks of pancake into her mouth. Yes, it was Freddie’s trident they’d found, she admitted, but what if he’d been set up? Framed? What if someone wanted to make it
look
as if he’d done it? Who could have done that? she hinted. Who do we know is capable of such
mischief
?

Jean smiled as if he pitied her. “It can’t be Loki. He served his time. Five thousand years is no small pittance, my dear. They were young boys. It was a dumb prank.”

Freya shrugged. She still had questions. Jean patiently listened as if indulging a small child. If anyone knew anything, Freya thought, it would be the god of memory. He kept the records of history that the Council had determined were fit to be archived. Once a major event got the seal of approval, it was stored inside that large bald head of Jean’s, in the endless Byzantine corridors of his brain. But Freya also believed that he could help her get Killian’s memory back. She believed he possessed the power to help him recover the truth about his past, or at least could steer her in the right direction so she might retrieve it herself.

“Freddie says that when he and Loki got there, the bridge was already destroyed,” Freya said.

The expression on Jean’s face was something between a smile and a frown. “If that’s true, then these questions you are asking are very dangerous. The bridge held all of our powers. They were entwined within it from day one,” he said. “When it fell the gods were permanently weakened. Since Loki and Fryr appeared hapless and guilty, Odin believed that the power of the bridge disappeared into the universe—that it dissipated into the ether. But if what you’re saying is true, then whoever destroyed that bridge is incredibly powerful, since he, or
she
, has those powers now, the powers of the entire pantheon. That is, if you’re right and the boys didn’t destroy it and someone else did. You don’t want to go messing with that kind of god, Freya.”

She leaned closer to him from across the table and whispered fiercely. “I know someone who might have been there, Jean. A potential witness. Another god, but I can’t say who. Somehow he can’t remember what happened that day—just bits and pieces. His memory is gone, or it might have been stolen from him, to keep him quiet. I need to help him remember, so we can know what really happened that day. My brother is innocent, and he’s been punished for a crime he didn’t commit.”

For a moment, Jean appeared perturbed and said nothing. Finally he motioned her even closer so he could speak directly into her ear. The old warlock was relenting. “There is a way to help this …
person. This witness who has memories of the Bofrir’s destruction
. But to even attempt it is forbidden and dangerous,” he said. “You don’t fool around with this stuff; this is black magic we’re talking about here. If you’ll forgive the pun,” he said with a smile. “But I’m serious. This is the real voodoo daddy. Could put you and this friend of yours in a lot of danger. Are you sure you want to go down that road?”

A chill slithered up Freya’s spine. Jean was no longer joking or amused. He was dead serious, if not a little scared, which frightened her, too. If even the god of memory was intimidated by it, then what on earth was she doing messing around with that kind of devilry? But she knew she was also willing to do whatever it took to prevent Killian from going to Limbo.

Ingrid had to rise at dawn, before Joanna woke, to make the pixies breakfast in the morning. Their demands were very precise: soft-boiled eggs in individual eggcups, butter, ripe brie or some kind of gooey cheese, dried salami, orange juice (Kelda told her they preferred fresh squeezed, but this wasn’t a five-star hotel for god’s sake), chocolate (which made them hyper, Ingrid had noted, so she had eliminated it from their diet), and Joanna’s homemade bread and pies as well as whatever else could be brought up to their lair.

She was glad to have the pixies to attend to. It kept her mind off what had happened the other day with Matt: every time she remembered it, she felt herself blushing throughout her entire body. Yet the memory was sweet, too—and hot—remembering the delicious feel of his skin against hers, and how much she had liked looking at him and letting him look at her that way. What was her problem? She’d been ready. She’d felt ready. She’d wanted him so much—but instead … She couldn’t think about it any longer. There was a reason she’d earned the nickname Frigid Ingrid. No wonder he didn’t even bother to call her.

She tiptoed past Joanna’s room, carrying the heavy tray, Kelda and Nyph meeting her in the stairway to help her as soon as she unlocked the attic door. The pixies, extremely active during nocturnal hours, tended to be famished in the mornings.

Ingrid didn’t understand why Freya’s potion hadn’t worked on them, nor had any of her own spells or charms, little knots and pouches of edelweiss petals placed under their pillows. She still had no clue as to the whereabouts of their home save for the scattered cryptic details they had given her: tree houses and underground workers, something beginning with
A
. Ingrid didn’t put it past them to have made it up just to placate her.

She set down the tray on the makeshift dining table, a door propped up with crates, and the pixies excitedly gathered around, fighting over who got what.

“
Shh
, not so noisy,” she admonished. Irdick was behind her, pulling at her peignoir. “What do you want, Irdick? Don’t tell me this isn’t enough food. You’ve just got to be fast like everyone else or you don’t get your share.”

“It’s not that, Erda. Something else,” he said.

Ingrid raised a brow at his apple-round face.

“So last night, we were Dumpster diving like good freegans …”