Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel (35 page)

Easier said than done: finding attire in the middle of the night in Fairstone to dress Killian in less conspicuous clothing than his sweater and jeans. He wore leather boots, so those would pass. The villagers appeared wary of leaving a stitch of clothing, even a pair of underclothes or a blouse, on the clotheslines in their backyards and gardens. The lines hung bare. Freya realized that in the twenty-first century she had come to take her vast wardrobe for granted, whereas someone in the seventeenth century, living in an agricultural and fishing village, could barely afford one outfit, let alone two.

Everyone was asleep at this hour. Since they were not to waste their magic, they had to find clothing the hard way and tried to sneak inside several houses, but the doors were bolted shut. Finally, on the outskirts of town, they found a shack, and inside they crept by a slumbering man, who only flipped over at the sounds of their entry, and they swiftly snatched the loose breaches and linen shirt he had set out on a chair beside the bed. They hoped the poor, unsuspecting heavy sleeper had something to replace these with, although most likely if he did have another set it was just his Sunday best. The clothes fit Killian, but he wrinkled his nose at the smell. As for a hat, they found one on a peg in a barn, along with a goatskin water bag, which they filled at a well, flinching at the groan and squeaks of the bucket rising.

Now Freya and Killian trudged hand in hand through the field toward the wooden barracks where they were holding Anne. The pulsing song of the cicadas drowned out their whispers. A watchman sat beneath the single torchlight, half asleep on a chair. Freya recognized the stocky, big-bellied guard as the very one who had accepted her coin in the square—except that hadn’t happened anymore. Working a double shift. She knew he would be amenable to gold, so she stopped and ripped the seam Joanna had sewn once again and took out the pouch, handing Killian a coin.

The guard happily accepted the money. He was probably used to these nocturnal visits that greased his palm, a perk of the job. “Fourth one down,” he muttered.

There was snoring coming from a pen; they saw forms crouched or curled on the floor in each, no more than four feet high.
These poor people, caged like animals
, Freya thought. They kneeled when they arrived before Anne’s cell.

“Anne!” called Freya. She could see her stirring in the corner in dim moonlight. She was relieved to see the white cap back on her head.

“Anne,” repeated Killian, a bit louder.

“
Oui!
” she whispered. “
C’est toi, mon chou, mon chérie? Tu es revenue?
” Her voice was raspy and weak. She moved out from the corner and wriggled forward toward the bars.

Freya coughed. “She thinks you’re her husband who has returned for her,” she said to Killian.

“Yes,” he said with a sympathetic frown.

Anne’s hands clasped the bars and her nose fell between them. Her eyes were crusted, her big lovely lips caked with blood, her face black with dirt. It was all Freya could do not to throw a hex on the whole populace.

“John!” Anne said.

Freya caressed her hand. “It is not John. It is Killian and Freya. We have come to help you, Anne.”

She let out a sigh and her head fell down. “I don’t want to confess!” she said in her French accent. “If I do, then next they will say John is amiable with the devil. I do not want my husband to hang.”

“I know,” said Freya. “We’re trying to save both of you.” She slipped a hand through the bars and helped Anne lift her head.

“Let me give her water,” said Killian, and he lifted the goatskin bag so Anne could drink.

Freya looked over her shoulder. The guard had his arms crossed above his belly, his legs stretched out, crossed as well, and his head had lolled; he appeared fast asleep. “You called my mother from the grave where you are buried on the hill. You’ve been trying to help us, Anne, sending your spirit through the glom, and we want to help you. You are my mother’s
fylgja
. I must bring you to her.”

Anne stared at Freya, furrowing her brow. “I do not know what you are speaking of. Please tell John about the sick pig—the skinny one—he needs to be fed milk and grain. He came earlier with my cap. Where is he? John!” She seemed delirious. “I do not wish to go anywhere with you.”

Freya looked at Killian, who shrugged. “Anne, you must listen to us. Please, or you’ll die here.”

“Then that is my fate. Leave me be,” Anne said, closing her eyes, falling asleep against the bars.

What Ingrid needed to do was find a branch from the Tree of Life to return the pixies to Álfheim, and she believed she knew exactly where she would find it. At Fair Haven, the portal in the tree’s trunk had closed forever once Loki passed through. Passing through the center of
Yggdrasil
was forbidden, which is why the yellow brick road had been built as a highway to connect the remaining eight worlds. Only the bridge to Asgard was destroyed, that path lost forever.

According to the pixies, the yellow brick road had crumbled, but if she could find a branch on the Tree …

She closed the books scattered inside the carrel, their pages snapping satisfyingly together. She would have Jeannine put them back in their rightful slots; their intern was diligent that way. Ingrid had received a call from Norman and Joanna earlier. Killian had gone missing—he wasn’t answering his phone—so Joanna had made the trek out to Gardiners Island to search for him, fearing the Valkyries had already come for him. Instead she had found a short, succinct note on the bed in the master cabin of the
Dragon
addressed to the Beauchamps, as if Killian had anticipated her: “I’m going through the passage. I will return Freya to safety. Yours, Killian.” This had calmed and reassured Ingrid somewhat; at least Freya and Killian were together.

But now the pixies were in danger of being arrested and possibly deported. It was time to get them to their real home.

If Matt had put a tail on her, so be it. She could easily circumvent that. Who was going to play hardball now? Driving wasn’t Ingrid’s only means of getting to the Ucky Star. Although like Freya she had noticed that her magic had gone slightly awry lately, not as potent as it once was, and she hoped she wouldn’t tumble from the sky on her way to the pixies. She darted to her office, grabbed her coat, wool hat, scarf, and gloves, gave a few instructions to her fellow librarians, then rushed through the back door to the garden, picked up a rake, and flew into the air.

She alighted with a thump on the second story of the motel, straightened her coat and hat, then clumped down the metallic steps in her sturdy heels, removing her gloves. She found the room at the corner and knocked. Val opened the door, and as Ingrid burst in, she declared, “I think I know how to get you home.”

The leak in the bathroom had worsened considerably; it sounded like a downright waterfall in there. The pixies, who were eating around the desk, looked up at her in awe.

“It makes complete sense,” said Ingrid, briskly pulling off her wool hat and removing her scarf. She shrugged off her coat, drew the wand out of its pocket, and then tossed everything on the twin bed, hanging on to the slim baton of dragon bone. She unbuttoned her cuffs, then pushed her sleeves up to the elbows. “This is where you arrived. This is where Freddie chose to stay. The portal to your home is right here—in the Ucky Star.”

Kelda’s mouth fell open, and the rest of them continued ogling her with flummoxed faces. Ingrid rushed toward the bathroom.

“No, no, don’t go in there!” cried Sven. “You’ll get your nice clothes wet!” He blushed, having lost his cool in his concern for her.

But Ingrid was already tugging at the bathroom doorknob, and the entire door, moist and rotting, fell off its hinges. The pixies raised their arms to help protect Ingrid as she crouched, and the door collapsed in a gooey mess beside her.

The bathroom was a deluge, water dripping from the ceiling and along the walls. The tub and sink (the toilet’s lid was fortuitously closed), whose drains gurgled, overflowed, trickling onto the sunken white tile floor, where a pool had formed as clear and turquoise as the Caribbean sea.

“Don’t you see?” said Ingrid, turning to the pixies with a smile. “This is sacred water dripping from a branch of the Tree of Life, from its very leaves. Now we just need to find the right door.”

Ingrid kicked off her shoes before stepping in. The water reached a few inches above her ankles, like a wading pool. The pixies watched her from the doorframe. She pointed her wand at the walls, but it seemed to have a will of its own, like a divination rod, and tilted downward, aiming at the center drain in the tile floor. “It’s here. Come help. We need to be fast. I need to send you home before the police find you; otherwise I might not be able to get you out later,” she said, feeling her stomach drop from nerves and more than a hint of separation anxiety.

“What will they do to us … the lawmen?” Kelda asked.

Ingrid didn’t know. If they believed the pixies were illegals, they would deport them back home—but where was that? The pixies could languish in a jail cell for years before they determined where to send them. “I don’t know. I don’t think we want to find out.”

Irdick and Sven stepped in. The drain came out easily enough, its screws seemingly stripped. Kelda stuck her small hand inside the hole and pulled, and the tiles around the drain lifted in one piece. Ingrid was on her knees, drenched to the bone. They pulled out the tiles and scooped out goopy white stuff that resembled a doughy wet plaster. The pixies formed an assembly line, coming and going, dumping tiles and goo on the wreck of a bathroom door.

The water began to drain down some of the straight cracks they had uncovered; some were wide enough to slip a hand through and seemed to form a square. It was a hard surface that turned out to be made of dense dark wood: a door, about four-by-four feet, ornately carved with an image of
Yggdrasil
. They lifted it open by slipping hands inside one of the cracks, and as it opened water trickled down onto a flight of wooden steps that led to a branch. Ingrid lay prone to poke her head inside the trapdoor. First, she was struck by the clamorous din: birds twittering, insects humming, everything tapping, pulsing, and clicking. There were more boughs beneath this one, and they stretched and stretched for as far as the eye could see, with huge unctuous leaves dripping water and dewy white flowers that exuded a scent of gardenias, or was it camellias? A few of the pixies had squeezed in beside Ingrid on their bellies, squinting down, oohing and aahing.

“Okay, we need to get you down there onto the branch,” said Ingrid. “Then you’ll follow it home. I’ll close the door as soon as I see you’re all safely on it.”

“No!” yelped Irdick.

“Can we do it another day?” asked Val.

“Pussies!” said Sven, puffing on a cigarette. He had switched over to the green pack of American Spirits, which he had rolled up in his T-shirt’s sleeve.

“I don’t want to go!” whined Nyph.

“Neither do I,” said Kelda. “I like it here. We want to stay. And we still want to help you find the man who made us steal the trident.”

Ingrid pushed a strand of wayward hair back. “I know,” she said wistfully.

“What the …?” boomed a voice from inside the motel room.

Ingrid quickly rose to her feet—the voice had a kind of snap-to effect on her. She stared at Matt. She was filthy wet, and shivering. She must have looked a fright, she thought. The pixies, sensing her alarm, had stood and gathered behind her protectively outstretched arms. “How did you find me?” Ingrid demanded. There was no way he had been able to tail her from the sky.

Matt shrugged. “A hunch, as they say.” He came toward her, static and a voice crackling from his walkie-talkie.

It was too late. No one was going to go home anytime soon. The only place they were going—including Ingrid—was jail.

Anne had fallen asleep, holding on to the bars, one hand slowly slipping down.

“We have no choice,” said Killian. “We’ve got to take her with us, even if she doesn’t want to go. They’re going to hang her this afternoon.”

“So what do we do?” asked Freya, peering into her lover’s eyes that sparkled in the darkness, reflecting the torchlight above the guard.

Killian instructed Freya to place a hand around Anne’s left wrist. He took Freya’s free hand, then Anne’s right that had fallen outside the bars as her body slumped. They were all connected. “Hold on tight!” he said with a wink.