ALSO BY MELISSA DE LA CRUZ
Triple Moon: Summer on East End
Heart of Dread Series
Book One: Frozen
Book Two: Stolen
Book Three: Golden
Witches of East End Series
Blue Bloods Series
Beach Lane Series
The Ashley Project Series
The Ring and the Crown
Isle of the Lost
Return to Isle of the Lost
Surviving High School
(with Lele Pons)
Something in Between
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Melissa de la Cruz.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: De la Cruz, Melissa, 1971– author.
Title: Double eclipse / Melissa de la Cruz.
Description: New York, NY : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2016]
| Series: Summer on East End ; [2]
Summary: “Trouble continues to bubble and boil for twin witches
(and Norse goddesses) Mardi and Molly Overbrook during their
second summer in North Hampton”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016010052 | ISBN 9780399173561 (hardback)
Subjects: | CYAC: Sisters—Fiction. | Twins—Fiction. | Witches—Fiction.
| Magic—Fiction. | Goddesses, Norse—Fiction. | Mythology,
Norse—Fiction. | Hamptons (N.Y.)—Fiction. | Diaries—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.D36967 Do 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010052
Ebook ISBN: 9780698188297
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For the amazing Moretz family:
Teri, Trevor, and Chloë
Thank you for loving the East End coven
Contents
ALSO BY MELISSA DE LA CRUZ
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
1. LOCKED OUT OF HEAVEN
2. O MOTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
3. YOU DROPPED A BOMB ON ME
4. WOMANIZER, WOMANIZER
5. TELL IT LIKE IT IS
6. MY HUMPS
7. DIVER DOWN
8. MODERN GIRLS AND OLD-FASHIONED MEN
9. GONNA FLY NOW
10. HOMEWARD BOUND
11. IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
12. SAY MY NAME
13. WALKING ON THE MOON
14. TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT
15. HEY, GOOD LOOKIN’
16. WRECKING BALL
17. SAIL AWAY SWEET SISTER
18. YOU’VE GOT ME FEELING EMOTIONS
19. CHANDELIER
20. HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE
21. TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT
22. LEAVING ON A JET PLANE
23. CARIBBEAN QUEENS
24. LEFT SHARK, RIGHT WHALE
25. LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD
26. GOD OF THUNDER
27. SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST
28. WAKE ME UP INSIDE
29. HIGHWAY TO “HEL”
30. SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE
RHIANNON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
LOCKED OUT OF HEAVEN
From the Diary of Molly Overbrook
Dear Diary,
That’s how these things usually start, right? “Dear Diary”? I’m only asking because it seems kind of strange to pretend that I’m writing a diary, which should be, you know, private, when what I’m really writing is a “therapy assignment” that’s going to be read by Dr. Mésomier and my dad and aunts and Odin-knows-who-else. But since right now I’m not really speaking to any of those people, I’m just going to pretend that none of them are going to see this, because if I think of them reading these words, then I’m never going to be able to write down what happened this summer. And although I want to make it clear that I think this is a totally lame assignment and it’s not really anybody’s business but mine and Mardi’s, I do actually want to write it down. Because, well, it was pretty freaking strange, and maybe writing it down will help me figure out how the Hel, I mean, the Underworld, things could have gotten so messed up between me and my sister.
And since maybe this is going to be read by people who have never met me, I suppose I should catch you up on a few things that happened before summer even started.
So:
Most people know me as Molly Overbrook, but in certain very select circles, I’m also known as Mooi, and my twin sister, Mardi, is called Magdi. Most people see us as two fairly normal seventeen-year-olds, albeit ones from privileged backgrounds: Mardi’s normal ride is a vintage Ferrari, while I usually go for something with a chauffeur (I like a chauffeured Navigator or Escalade preferably, but a Town Car will do, or even a taxi—although as I learned this summer, nothing beats a Maybach), so I can sip on some bubbly and check my social media feeds while someone else does the driving. Shopping means department stores and individual designers (although in our case, the department stores are Barneys and Jeffrey and the designers are 5:31 Jérôme and Kim Haller). Good hair is an obsession, and we own approximately one hundred different hair care products between us; of course mine gets a little assistance from the Frédéric Fekkai salon. Like everyone our age, we sweated over the SATs, and we’ll soon be waiting on pins and needles to see which colleges will let us in.
HOWEVER:
Despite the outward appearance of quasi-normality, we are in fact the daughters of Thor, a.k.a. the god of thunder. No, not the one played by Chris Hemsworth. Our dad doesn’t wear a red cape and silver armor, although he does have a hammer, which he doesn’t swing around as much; he keeps it hanging on a couple of hooks above the mantel in the living room of our Park Avenue penthouse while he jets around the world buying and selling skyscrapers and companies and, I don’t know, islands. By which I mean that, yes, our father’s a genuine Norse god, which makes us goddesses—Mardi’s the goddess of rage and I’m the goddess of strength. But we’re a little different from our dad and his ex, Ingrid, a.k.a. Erda, the goddess of the earth, and her sister Freya, the goddess of love. They were all born thousands of years ago in Asgard, which is our real home and where we’re supposed to live, coming to Midgard (the place humans call Earth) only when they mess things up and need our help.
But Thor (whom we call Troy, when we’re not just calling him Dad) and Ingrid and Freya and a few other Aesir and Vanir (which is what the gods call themselves in Asgard) ended up getting trapped here after the rainbow bridge that connected Asgard to the rest of the nine worlds was destroyed almost five hundred years ago, leaving them pretty much stuck here. Like, forever.
Literally.
Despite the fact that Thor and Tyr—the god of war (a.k.a. Trent, whom we’ll meet later)—and Ingrid and Erda and about a half dozen other gods have been trapped here for so long, none of them ever had any children—that is, until Mardi and I came along seventeen years ago.
To be sure, our births were prophesied a long time ago, but that was before the Bofrir was destroyed, and everyone figured those prophecies had been canceled when the link between the nine worlds was cut—especially because in the legends our mother is supposed to be a Jotun (a giant) from Jotunheim, a world that was also cut off from Midgard by the destruction of the rainbow bridge. And as far as everyone knows, there aren’t any giants here on Earth. But then one day our dad showed up with a cute little bundle of joy in each arm (so we’re told anyway; we may be goddesses, but you can’t expect us to remember things from when we were a couple of months old, let alone a couple of days), and judging by the way glass shattered when we cried for our bottles and the trays on our high chairs would break into a million pieces when we threw temper tantrums, it was pretty clear we were the goddesses from the ancient prophecies. Needless to say, our appearance on the scene raised a lot of questions, but one of them was kind of more important than all the others:
Where was our mother? And who was she?
Well, we’ll get to that, but first I want to tell you about this dream I had around the start of the summer. Not once, but every night for more than a week. I know, it’s the twenty-first century and no one really cares about dreams anymore besides Jungian analysts—and how can you take someone seriously when their job is to sit on a couch and listen to people talk? Except gods’ dreams aren’t like humans’ dreams—our unconscious is plugged into the magical currents that govern time itself, as in, they’re prophetic. (How do you think they came up with the prophecy about Mardi and me all those thousands of years ago? It wasn’t from gazing into a crystal ball. It was a dream.)
So:
In the dream, I’m at Fair Haven, which is this beautiful colonial-era mansion on Gardiners Island, just off the East End, where Mardi’s boyfriend, Trent, lives. Besides being the Gardiners’ ancestral home, Fair Haven also happens to sit on what’s called a “seam” between our world and the Land of the Dead, also known as Niflheim, the most fearsome and inhospitable of the nine worlds, with a cold white sun that’s not even as bright as the full moon and covered in endless sheets of ice—including Hel, the vast city where dead Vikings are banished if they fail to die a heroic death.
The reason why I’m telling you all this background stuff is because I didn’t know it in my waking life—I found it out in the dream. And only after I did a little digging around did I realize it was all true. Which is why I knew this dream was important.
Important, and terrifying.
In the dream, I’m walking toward Fair Haven across the front lawn. In real life, that lawn is as flat and manicured as a croquet pitch or tennis court, every single blade of grass perfectly trimmed to 1.5 inches. But in the dream, the yard is a swampy, cratered mess, alternating puddles of sludge and muddy mounds the size of muskrat nests. Plus, it’s raining. Plus, the puddles of water are freezing cold.
Now, I’m a serious shoe girl, and a muddy lawn is not my normal habitat. (Not good for the Zanottis!) Yet in the dream, I’m barefoot and wading right into this vast field of sludge like it’s the Mediterranean lapping on the Côte d’Azur, plopping one foot into six inches of ice-cold muck and then the other, as I charge toward Fair Haven. I don’t know why, but I have to get to the mansion, and I have to get there soon, or it’ll be too late. And so I’m splashing through the mud as fast as I can, slipping every other step and falling on my hands and knees and splashing my face with brown goo. I don’t even care what my hair looks like—so you know I must be completely out of my mind.
I’m so caught up with just trying to get across the lawn that I’m not really paying attention to my destination. But then, after what seems like hours, I manage to climb onto one of those muddy but still comparatively dry mounds, and when I pause to catch my breath, I look up for the first time, to see how far I am from my destination.
That’s when I see the mansion—which just last year was described by Architectural Digest as “not only the most beautiful, but the most elegant home on the whole of the East End.” Except in my dream it’s not beautiful at all, let alone elegant. It’s a ruin. Every single pane of glass in every single window has been smashed, and two out of every three of the thousands upon thousands of cedar shingles that normally cover the house have been blown off, and the simple white Ionic pilasters and window frames have been ripped away or hang in splinters from the walls—and that’s only what I can see of the house, because the whole enormous building is covered in dark, droopy tangled vines that look more like seaweed than ivy or creeper. The vines cling to the house not like they’re growing up its walls but like they’re trying to pull them down, and there are big holes in the roof with tree branches growing through them, as if the house had been abandoned for a hundred years or more. Which is impossible. I was there just last summer. The house was in perfect condition. I played croquet with Mardi on this very lawn.
And I mean, I know it was a dream, so the normal rules of reality don’t apply. But the thing is, I knew I was dreaming, and in the dream I wasn’t surprised to see Fair Haven looking like this. It was exactly what I expected to see. It was only the part of me that was watching myself dream that was confused. Was I seeing the future? Or maybe some alternate version of the past? And if so, how? Though it was said that the Aesir possessed magical artifacts that allowed them to change time itself, all those were trapped on the other side of the destroyed rainbow bridge. So how was I seeing this vision?
But before the not-dreaming part of my brain could ask the dreaming part of my brain for the answer to this question, I noticed something off to my right, in the east wing of the mansion. The east wing was built in the early seventeenth century, and Trent always said it was the strongest part of the house. Its posts and beams had been cut from solid tree trunks two feet thick and had stood for nearly four hundred years. But now the whole wing swayed like a poorly built tent in a hurricane, and much of the roof had caved in, and some kind of vast . . . mound rose from the hole, like one of those creepy termites’ nests in Africa, but a hundred times bigger. But it was only when it flashed a second time that I realized it wasn’t the mound that had caught my eye, but a pulse of light somewhere deep within the crumbling walls of the east wing: a thick greenish-yellowish glow that pulsed on and off. And each time it shone on, it cast a shadow that, though monstrously distended, was still recognizable as human, and female.
And even though I didn’t know who this woman was, I knew I had to get to her, I had to save her.
2
O MOTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx
Let me guess: the first thing Molly wrote in her diary was “Dear Diary,” wasn’t it?
Gods, she can be so predictable, not to mention conventional. That’s the difference between us. I like to surprise people. When Molly got extensions in fifth grade so she could look like every other Britney-Christina-Beyoncé-Gaga-Katy wannabe, I went all Sinéad (or Amber Rose, if you don’t remember Sinéad) and buzzed my long wavy locks down to the skull. And when it grew out, I dyed my hair black to make sure I’d stand out from the basic bimbos of the world even more. I pierced my tongue when I was thirteen and tattooed the rainbow bridge on my neck when I was fifteen. Troy, a.k.a. Thor, a.k.a. Daddykins, says I do these things because I grew up without a strong female presence in my life, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I do these things because it’s fun.
I do them because I can.
No doubt Molly will tell you everything started to go wrong or, I don’t know, weird between us, when Janet Steele (yes, the Janet Steele) dropped her little bombshell after winning the F
rench Open this past May (yes, the French Open), but I don’t think that’s true. I think everything changed last summer, after Troy booted us off to the East End to get away from a little trouble in Manhattan—trouble that was not actually our fault, as later events made clear. Neither Molly nor I was particularly thrilled about spending the summer babysitting for one of Dad’s old exes, Ingrid, but Ingrid turned out to be pretty cool, and her sister Freya makes the best cocktail-cum-love-potion you’ve ever guzzled.
But of course what really made last summer interesting was meeting Trystan Gardiner, a.k.a. Trent, a.k.a. Tyr, the god of war. (Molly mentioned him, right?) Although it wasn’t as simple as just meeting him—when you’re a goddess masquerading as a witch pretending to be a normal human, nothing ever is.
Molly and I both met Trystan Gardiner in different places, at the same time. If that sounds fishy, that’s because it was. See, the Trystan I met—who called himself Trent—was the real Trystan, whereas the Trystan Molly met—who called himself Tris—was really this evil shape-shifter named Alberich who was just trying to steal our ring, which happens to be made out of Rhinegold and has all kinds of magical powers.
Anyway, when all was said and done, Alberich had been defeated and banished, the Rhinegold was safely locked away in Hel, and Trent and I were the only couple left standing, while poor Molly realized she’d been dating an absolute troll all along.
But wait, you’re asking, isn’t Tyr one of the multi-thousand-year-old gods? What’s he doing dating a seventeen-year-old? Isn’t that a little, you know, ew? That’s a very good question, and I’m going to get to it eventually, but for now let me just explain that the gods trapped here in Midgard are a little different from the gods who still live in Asgard. See, Asgardians are immortal. Like, they really live forever and ever, and pretty much nothing can kill them, and if they do get killed, then they stay dead. But here in Midgard, the gods’ bodies are practically as vulnerable as human bodies, which means they can be destroyed. But only the flesh: the soul sticks around and migrates to a newly conceived body. Joanna, Ingrid and Freya’s mother, who was also trapped here in Midgard with her children, has not only had to watch each of her children die, in some cases more than once, she’s also had to give birth to each of them two or three times, which has got to be pretty weird, not to mention kind of horrible, since when they first come out, they’re like any other baby: crying, breast-feeding, diapers, the whole nine yards, with no knowledge of who they used to be. It’s not until puberty that their powers start to manifest and their memories return to them, a drawn-out and not-particularly-fun process known as the Reawakening—although I imagine it still beats dying.
Double Eclipse Page 1