I stood up, a bit unsteadily. The Krug was light on the tongue, but it packed a wallop. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go?” Mum said. “Go where?”
“Home.”
“But this is your home now, Magdi!”
“First of all,” I said, “I go by Mardi. Not Magdi, which sounds like a food supplement or a website for comic nerds. Secondly, this is supposed to be Trent’s home and I was staying here with him. But since you kicked him out, I guess I’ll crash at Ingrid’s with Molly, not Mooi—she’s not a cow—I mean, until Trent and I can figure something out.” I turned to Molly. “You ready?”
Molly looked at me over the lip of her empty champagne flute. I could see that she was a little tipsy too but not so tipsy that she didn’t know what was going on. “I . . . think . . . I’m . . . going . . . to . . . stay,” she said finally, as if she hadn’t made up her mind until the last word came out of her mouth.
“You’re welcome here as long as you want, Mooi,” Mum said, bestowing one of her million-dollar smiles on my sister. “And, Magdi, you are welcome here anytime you wish to return.”
The way she said that made me pause. Anytime you wish to return, she said. Not you’re welcome here like she’d said to Molly. It was like she’d already written me off, and it was on me to make it better. We couldn’t have been there for an hour, making ours what must have been the shortest mother-daughter relationship in history.
But I didn’t know how to express any of that out loud, so all I said was:
“Mardi. Mardi.”
Mum smiled without showing her teeth, and I had the sense that she was snarling behind her pursed lips. “Changing a few letters does not change your destiny. Remember, I didn’t pick this fate out for you. I’m merely destiny’s conduit.”
“Well, I guess that makes me destiny’s child,” I said, “and as an independent woman and a survivor, I, uh . . .” Whatever I was going for got lost in the haze of bubbles that filled my brain. “I’m outta here,” I finished lamely.
“Of course,” Mum said, the edges of her voice mild but concealing a heart of steel. “I’ll have Ivan bring the car around.”
“No thanks, I think I’ll walk. I need to clear my head.”
“Whatever you want, my darling.”
Her my darling could’ve cracked a piece of granite in two.
“I, uh . . .” Again my voice faded away. “I’ll see you around,” I said to both of them, and turned for the door.
As I walked through Fair Haven’s wide, empty hallway—Trent had told me that Mum had been “kind” enough to allow the Gardiners to move their furniture out before she took possession, but she hadn’t replaced it with anything of her own—I couldn’t help but notice how the house seemed indifferent to its change of ownership. Well, Gardiners Island was a magical place, and Fair Haven was where that magic was most heavily concentrated. In a way, the people who lived in Fair Haven belonged to it more than the house—or the island, or the magical portal between worlds—belonged to them. But even so. I had woken up in an upstairs guest bedroom just this morning, a bedroom that had a connecting door to Trent’s bedroom (although he had yet to walk through it, or push it open and invite me to the other side). This might not have been the Gardiners’ house, but the Gardiners belonged here. And yet they’d been banished by a mortal. A mortal who just happened to be my mother.
It took about ten minutes to walk off the island. The bridge to Gardiners Island wasn’t far from the dock where Dad’s plane had crashed. I stared at the water, peering for some sign of the accident, but North Hampton is a fastidious kind of place (I’ve always suspected that Joanna added something to her protection spells to make people more civic-minded, though Ingrid and Freya both deny this), and there was nothing left on the cold gray water to indicate something had happened here. An iridescent sheen was swirling around the dock pilings that might have been oil or gasoline, but also might have been good old-fashioned tide scum.
Nor was there any sign of the whale that had crashed the plane. Matt had told us that it wasn’t all that uncommon for humpback whales to feed near the East End, though they usually stayed a few miles offshore. The Sound is pretty deep near North Hampton, however, and it was possible—just barely—that a whale could have strayed in, attracted by food maybe, or the sounds of ships or music, which could sometimes confuse them and lure them off course. Ingrid and Freya had searched through Joanna’s spell books for magical detection spells, and late on the evening after the crash, after the docks had cleared, they’d cast the spells over the water. But though they tried three or four different spells, they didn’t discover anything incriminating.
If someone had sent a whale to kill our father, he or she had used a plain old Midgardian whale and convinced it to attack Dad’s plane without the aid of magic. Either that, or the person had managed to scrub any traces of magic from the water and the dock before Ingrid and Freya got there—which suggested that Dad’s would-be murderer was living in our midst.
It was hard to say which possibility was more disturbing, and the thought of some evil sorcerer suddenly popping up and deciding to go after Thor’s daughter in lieu of the god of thunder sent a chill down my spine. I hurried past the dark pier and the yacht club, from which came the faint sound of late ’90s Destiny’s Child. I thought it was someone getting the party started a little early, but when I peeked in, I saw it was actually a lone employee, dancing to “Say My Name” while he mopped the floors in preparation for the evening dinner crowd. The guy was lip-synching as he worked, using the handle of the mop as a microphone, and the sight brought a smile to my lips until I remembered the way Mum had refused to say my name—kept calling me Magdi, even though no one, not even Dad, ever uses that name. I’d asked Dad why he’d even bothered giving Molly and me Norse names, but all he’d done was roll his eyes and point upward, by which I assumed he meant Asgard. “I didn’t have a choice,” he’d said. “Someone is very particular about the names of his grandchildren.”
I left quickly, walking past the yacht club and into town proper. North Hampton doesn’t have more than a couple thousand year-round residents, but the summer population swells to about five thousand, most of them well-heeled, though not usually as rich as your typical Hamptonite, or as flashy. As a consequence, Main Street is like a cross between a nineteenth-century New England village and something like Beacon Hill in Boston, where they have the same Burberry and Gucci and Louis Vuitton boutiques they have on Rodeo Drive or in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, but they’re housed in quaint old wooden buildings with cedar shingles on the walls as well as the roofs, and slatted shutters that aren’t just decorative, but can be closed when a squall or a nor’easter blows in off the Atlantic Ocean. In between the boutiques are the usual assortment of artisanal ice cream and fair trade coffee shops as well as a few shops unique to the area, like a smoky boutique that sells nothing but pipes made from whale bones covered in scrimshaw (Dr. Mésomier put a truth hex on this journal, so you know I’m not making that up—as if I even would) and another store that only sells these ridiculous raincoats made out of some kind of shapeless, colorless waxed cotton that weigh about a hundred pounds but keeps you so dry that you’d think it was magic.
And then there was the Cheesemonger, the store where Molly had taken a job last summer, mostly because it was run by this cute boy named Marshall, who unfortunately turned out to be Alberich in yet another of his disguises. Last I’d heard, the space was being taken over by Ocean Vines, the fancy wine shop that sold fifty-dollar bottles of Margaux and Montrachet (as opposed to Bob’s Booze on the highway, which sells five-dollar airplane-sized bottles of whiskey and rum for people who want a drink on the go). But as I walked past the storefront, I was surprised to see that the CHEESEMONGER sign was still up, and inside was none other than Sal McLaughlin standing behind the counter, with a crisp white apron pulled over a worn denim shirt rolled up at the
sleeves. It was so hard for me to imagine Sal anywhere other than at the North Inn that I had to walk in and see what was going on.
There were three people in the store, and I browsed the shelves of twelve-dollar crackers made of “ancient grains” and jars of things that shouldn’t have been pickled but somehow were, including clementines, fiddlehead ferns, and—ugh—snails. I got so caught up in the strange combinations of mouthwatering and disgusting foods that I didn’t notice the last customer leave until the bells rang over the door and Sal called out:
“Mardi? Is that you?”
I put down a jar of “postmodern lasagna” made from layers of tripe (the lining of a cow’s stomach), pureed breadfruit, and aspic infused with basil oil, and turned toward the counter. Sal was already coming out onto the floor, and he gave me a huge bear hug. Sal is a big man in his late fifties, a good six foot two or six foot three and probably around 250 pounds, a healthy combination of muscles and fat, and I disappeared in his grip, my cheek pressed up against his beard.
“My God, look at you. Where have you been all summer?” he said when he let me go. “Is it possible that you’re even more beautiful than you were last year?”
From just about any other man this would have come across as pervy, but Sal was so comfortable in his skin that he made everyone else comfortable too—he hadn’t worked behind bars for nearly forty years for nothing.
I waved my hand around the store. “What’s going on, Sal? You branching out?”
“Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. You remember that boy who worked here last summer, Marshall Brighton? Well, we all thought his parents owned the store and he was just working for them. But get this—there were no parents. I mean, I’m sure he had parents somewhere, but he owned the store on his own.”
Given the fact that Marshall, a.k.a. Alberich, was around during the dawn of the universe, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he did not, in fact, have any parents, but I just nodded.
“So anyway, he skipped out at the end of last summer, which is when the Flinzers next door at Ocean Vines decided to move in. But then last October, before they’d even begun renovating, Andy Flinzer checked himself into rehab. Turns out he’d been sampling his own merchandise a little too liberally, if you know what I mean. He’s out now, and doing well, knock wood”—here Sal knocked on my head—“but he and Janice have decided to call off the expansion. They don’t want any extra stress while Andy’s still so new into his recovery.”
“Wow, that’s crazy. But I still don’t get what you’re doing here.”
“Oh,” Sal said, bopping his own forehead. “Didn’t I mention? I own the building. I’ve got three buildings here in town. No wait, four. Five!” he corrected himself. “No wonder my accountant gets so frustrated with me. Anyway, when the Brighton boy took off, he left behind loads of merchandise. The cheese all went bad, of course—you cannot imagine the smell when I came in here in March—but there were all these other things, crackers and pickles and, uh, whatever this is.” He picked up a jar of something that looked a lot like eyes, grimaced, and set it down hurriedly. “And so anyway, when I found out Rocky was coming, I thought, Why not keep this around for him to run? He’s too young to work in the bar and it was too late in the spring to get a tenant in here, so this way I could pay him and it wouldn’t look like charity. Rocky’s my son, by the way.”
“I know,” I said. “I met him this morning actually. I guess his cab dropped him at the bar instead of your house, and Molly was walking him there.”
“One sec,” Sal said because a couple had just walked in. He scooted back behind the counter and whipped up a couple of heroes—thinly sliced speck, shaved Parmesan, and arugula on one, mozzarella and sun-dried tomato pesto on the other. While he was making the sandwiches, the couple also picked up a box of crackers and a jar of pickles—regular pickles—then ordered three different cheeses. Their total came to a whopping seventy-five dollars for what basically amounted to an afternoon snack.
“So how’d he look?” Sal asked as he came back around the counter, his normally smooth brow furrowing with concern. “His mother and I split just after his first birthday, and I’ve hardly seen him since. Poor Sophia died in March, and I get the sense that he’s a little angry at the world.”
I shrugged. “I only talked to him for a second, but he seemed okay. You should ask Molly, though. She spent more time with him.”
“Actually,” Sal said, “I was going to ask Molly if she wanted her old job back. This place is proving busier than I thought, and it’s ridiculously lucrative too. I really can’t figure out why that boy ran away from such a gold mine.”
If only you knew how close you were to the truth, I thought.
“I’ll mention it to Molly, but I’m not sure what she’ll say. I don’t know if you’ve heard about our own family drama?”
“You mean your father and that freaky accident? How is he doing, by the way?”
“Oh, he’s fine; thanks for asking. Ingrid whipped up one of her potions, and he’s practically as good as new. But I was referring to our mother.” As quickly as I could, I filled him in on the story of Janet Steele and her move to Fair Haven.
“Kicking out the Gardiners!” Sal exclaimed, but you could see he was amused. “I can’t say I feel too badly for them. My father always said they were Johnny-come-latelys to the East End—the McLaughlins have been here for four hundred years to their three hundred—but I’m sure they’ll land on their feet. People like them always do.” He frowned then. “Too bad you girls are all caught up in that, though. I was really hoping to get someone in here with Rocky. I don’t want him to feel like he’s in solitary confinement.”
I shrugged. “I’ll talk to Molly, but I dunno. I think she only took the job last year because she kind of liked Marshall, and when he took off, she felt a little burned.”
“Well, if she doesn’t want it, maybe you do?”
“Maybe,” I said noncommittally, although I had a hard time picturing myself in an apron stained with pesto and ketchup. “I’ll let you know.”
And, after submitting to another bear hug, I headed off to Ingrid’s.
13
WALKING ON THE MOON
From the Diary of Molly Overbrook
That night—my first in Fair Haven—I had the dream again.
The ruined mansion. The ice-cold swampy yard. The strobing light in the east wing.
The outline of a female figure, appearing and reappearing with each pulse of the light.
In my dream, I pushed my way toward it across the puddle-filled lawn. Even as I struggled through the mud, I remembered that the east wing was the oldest part of the house, which housed the kitchen and servants’ quarters. I’d heard from Trent (and Alberich when he pretended to be Trent) that despite its age, it was by far the sturdiest part of the house: its posts were entire tree trunks, and it had stood through dozens of hurricanes and even one earthquake, and even in the dream I realized how strange it was that this part of the house was in far worse shape than the rest of the mansion. It was almost as if the main part of the mansion had fallen to ruin through natural means, but this part was a complete ruin.
As I grew closer, the outline of the woman grew more distinct. I could see that she was slender, and her hair was long and flowing, but what I couldn’t tell was if she was Mum or not. I thought of calling out, but something kept me silent. It wasn’t that dream thing where you open your mouth and nothing comes out. My lips were sealed—I didn’t want to call out to her. No, that wasn’t quite it. I didn’t want her to answer.
I didn’t want it to be Mum.
By the time I made it to the house, I was covered in mud, grass, leaves. My bare feet were so cold they were numb, but not so numb that they didn’t hurt. At least it was easy to get inside—the front door was long gone. But once inside, I had to tread carefully. The hallway floor was destroyed. It looke
d like someone had taken a hammer—like, say, Thor’s hammer—and smashed it to bits. Whatever had happened, it had been done so long ago that trees had had time to grow up through the basement. They reached all the way through the second story and the attic and the holes in the roof, and the light that pushed around their leafless, tangled branches was the only thing that helped me see. I picked my way from one solid foothold to the next, slipping and sliding on my numb, wet feet, until I reached the door to the ballroom. The ballroom was on the east side of the main house. The new wing should be right on the other side.
The ballroom was also where the seam to Niflheim was hidden.
But this is a dream, I told myself. Nothing can actually hurt you here.
But somehow that didn’t make me feel better. It was like knowing that I was dreaming somehow made it more real. Made me feel more vulnerable rather than safer. But I didn’t see that I had a choice. The hallway beyond the ballroom doors had been completely ripped away. There was nothing but shadows disappearing down who knew how far. No way was I going down there.
The ballroom still had its doors, but when I grabbed the one on the right, it turned out it was only leaning against the frame. It was made of solid wood, though, and must’ve weighed a hundred pounds, and it seemed to be wedged in place, so I had to jerk on it several times before it came away, and then I had to jump back before it fell on me. It clattered and slid across the broken floor before disappearing down a hole. It was a good couple of seconds before I heard it hit bottom—not a crash, but a splash.
I shuddered as I turned back to the . . . well, I was going to say I turned back to the ballroom, but the space beyond the opened door wasn’t a ballroom anymore. It was more of a . . . a cave, I guess, or a tunnel, really. In place of the expansive parquetry floors and intricate marquetry walls, there was just dirt and rocks. No, not rocks, I realized. Ice. Great big chunks of dirty, jagged ice, as if they’d been frozen somewhere else, then broken off and dumped here. I remembered what I’d heard about Niflheim. That it orbited a tiny, cold white star and was covered in glaciers the size of continents. Could the seam have been opened somehow? Could Niflheim be pushing into our world? Or was it sucking our world into its own dimension?
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