Serpent's Kiss

by Melissa de la Cruz

  For the rite, she would bake unleavened black bread and uncork the homemade grape juice she had made from the concord grapes picked in September from her garden. Consuming such foods symbolized embracing decay and lifelessness, a gesture of compassion toward the spirit itself, becoming one with it, so to speak.

  She reread the section in the Hrólf Kraki’s Saga, involving one Skuld, a half-elfin, half-Valkyrie princess skilled in the art of witchcraft, an unconquerable warrior but a rather merciless one, as she wouldn’t let any of her soldiers rest, bringing them immediately back from the dead as soon as they’d fallen in battle so they would continue fighting. She glanced at “The Spell of Gróa” in The Poetic Edda to see how Svipdag raised his mother, Groa, whose advice he needed on how to handle the wild-goose chase his stepmother had sent him on—the hand of the fair Mengloth. There wasn’t much there but the following: “Awake, Groa, awake! From the door of the dead, I wake you.” She would need to come up with a better incantation than that, so she continued searching.

  The phone in the living room rang. It was the only landline in the house. Annoyed by the interruption, she walked into the living room, but by the time she had gotten there, Freya had answered the call.

  Her daughter covered the mouthpiece with a hand and crinkled her nose at Joanna. “It’s that man. The one who was here the other day? He says his name is Harold.” She grimaced.

  This is awkward, thought Joanna, taking the phone from Freya, who went and sat back on the couch with Norman. Ingrid flanked him on his other side. They looked cozy those three, complicit, and Joanna caught herself envying them, feeling left out.

  They watched her as she took the call. She turned away from them, facing the window that looked out to the sea. It was pitch-dark out there and they could see her reflection in the glass and she theirs, observing her.

  “Hi, Harold,” she said. “Good to hear from you. How are you?”

  Harold talked enthusiastically and loudly, and most likely they could hear his voice booming from the phone. “I’m great, great, but really I would love to see you again.” Joanna tried to muffle him by pressing the phone harder against her ear, which made it hurt.

  “Yes, that would be fantastic,” she said, then tried to cut the conversation short. “Listen, I have a guest, and my girls are both here tonight. Could I call you back, say, tomorrow?”

  “Not a problem, dear. Just checking in, really. I thought we could set another date.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll be talking to you soon, then, Harold.”

  The girls and Norman continued to glare wordlessly at her reflection. She and Harold said quick good-byes, and Joanna felt awful for nearly hanging up on the poor man. She turned toward the three on the couch and forced a smile.

  Norman’s turquoise eyes squinted at her from behind his black-rimmed glasses. He had shaved for the journey to North Hampton, looked polished and well-groomed, which was something she had always appreciated about him. When they’d been together, she had never needed to tell him to shower, trim his nails, or observe any of the obvious rules of hygiene, which some men annoyingly appeared to require. He had taken to wearing his silver hair in a buzz cut; she knew it was so he wouldn’t have to fuss over it. He had beautiful thick hair and had been fortunate not to lose any of it, but she wished he kept it longer. He was such a practical man.

  “Harold?” he said with a puzzled expression.

  “Yes, a gentleman I’ve been dating,” she said.

  Now he looked seriously annoyed. “You’re seeing someone?”

  Joanna knew they could see her blushing, which only made her cheeks grow hotter. Why was Norman giving her the third degree? They hadn’t even worked out whether they were still married or not. She had put it on her agenda of things to do—broach the topic with him now that he would be occasionally dropping by to visit the girls. Was he interested in her? She had no idea if he might still have feelings for her, and right now he appeared conspicuously jealous. She had thought he wanted peace, to work toward a friendship of sorts.

  Freya stood up, and Joanna could see the little girl who got frustrated and angry and was ready to hex anyone who stepped on her toes. She was pushing her wild red hair this way and that. “Yeah, Mother, what’s that all about. Why are you dating? I mean, you and Dad are still married, aren’t you?”

  Ingrid wasn’t much help; Joanna thought at least her oldest would jump to her defense. Instead she gaped at her hands that lay limply in her lap.

  “Am I suddenly under attack?” was all she could think to say.

  Norman took a breath and sighed. “I just thought that we were going to give this a try, you know, being a family again.”

  Joanna studied all three of them expectantly watching her. She shrugged. “I really had no idea that was on the agenda for tonight!” she said. “Why don’t you and I go in my study, Norman, and have a talk while the girls make dinner. There’s something I want to show you in there anyway.”

  Norman rose, following Joanna; then Ingrid and Freya’s eyes locked as they smiled gleefully at each other.

  chapter twenty-three

  Wanted: Dead or Alive

  Freya stepped into the greenhouse to search for Killian. She saw him at the far end, crouched by the Venus flytraps. He was feeding them with a pair of long metal tweezers, placing insects inside the jaws of those odd light green flowers with long teeth, until each flower mouth clamped shut over the squirming ant or cricket.

  He hadn’t heard her enter, so she watched him for a while, admiring his fine profile, the curve of his lips, the perfectly straight nose, his body lean and languid in his flannel shirt and torn jeans. He found solace here, she knew, lost himself in nurturing the plants, adding new ones, a little world he could control, make just right. His face looked troubled, the bend of his shoulders heavy. Her impulse was to run to him, hold him, reassure him, but she knew she couldn’t. She moved along the path by the lily pond, calling out his name.

  He turned to her and smiled. “I missed you.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  “I’m glad you came.” He walked toward her, and they hugged, but she could feel the sadness in his hold, the tentativeness of it, all the confidence he had always appeared to possess was gone. The binds that had held them together even while they had been apart had begun to fray. She heard a noise outside and started and stepped away from him, listening. It sounded like cans falling, clanking against each other. “Don’t worry, probably a deer. Maybe a raccoon. They’re always getting into the trash and compost.”

  “I came to tell you something,” Freya said. There was a small bench between two palms nearby, and they walked to it. The air in the green house grew cloyingly thick, and Freya found it difficult to breathe. She sat, staring into Killian’s face while he remained standing. “Freddie told me he could prove you were the one who destroyed the bridge. The thing I was searching for on the Dragon … I looked and looked and couldn’t find it.” She stared imploringly.

  Something flickered in Killian’s eye. “What was it?” he asked.

  “His trident. I need to know if you have it. Do you?”

  He stared at her silently, his face clouding over. “I don’t, Freya, but …”

  “But what?”

  Killian began unbuttoning his shirt, his expression deadpan. “There’s something you need to see …”

  Freya laughed. “Haven’t I seen it all?” She was grateful to him for attempting to lighten the mood.

  Killian wasn’t laughing, though. “I don’t think you’ve ever noticed. Or maybe it just didn’t register.” He removed his shirt, pulled off the T-shirt beneath it, let both drop, and then stood bare chested before her.

  “You want to show me your perfect six-pack?”

  “No.” He turned around.

  His summer tan had almost entirely faded. He instructed Freya to look at his back, where she now saw a smattering of freckles across the shoulders. It continued across his spine. At first glance, the freckles
appeared haphazard, but on closer inspection, she saw that if she connected the dots, the lines would form the shape of a trident. Now she saw it clearly and remembered what Freddie had told her: Whoever stole it will bear its mark.

  Killian bore the mark of the trident.

  Freddie was right. Killian was guilty.

  chapter twenty-four

  Do You Believe in Magic

  It was halfway through Counseling Services hour, and a lineup of North Hamptonites sat in the waiting area outside Ingrid’s office. A tall, pallid, anorexic-looking blond stared glumly ahead, tapping a toe on the floor, an elderly lady and gentleman chatted, and a woman with a frosted graduated bob (who obviously got her hair done on the other side of Long Island) filed her nails, a tot in the chair beside her playing a video game on an iPhone.

  Inside Ingrid’s office, redolent of burnt sage, the curtains had been drawn, a pentagram sketched in chalk on the floor, five white candles lit at each corner of the star within the circle. A young man, Sander Easterly, stood inside the star in his grease-stained mechanic’s coveralls. He was a tall twenty-one-year-old and so thin as to make his chest appear concave, or perhaps it was that he slouched, ashamed of his height. He had jet-black hair, blue eyes, and a prominent case of acne.

  He told Ingrid that his face had started to break out midway through high school and how he had gone from popular kid to pariah. There had been myriad visits to doctors and dermatologists; he had tried every type of prescription, traditional and experimental, as well as all the infomercial panaceas touted by an endless parade of famous faces with flawless skin. In short, nothing had worked. He had been called horrible names and continued to be—“pizza face,” uttered by a small child, the most agonizing. A math and science whiz, Sander was a lover of Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene, and had been offered a scholarship to study physics at a highly reputable Massachusetts university but had been held back by his “handicap.” He had remained in North Hampton, working as a mechanic at a local garage. He had never fallen in love, but that was okay, because love, as he saw it, was a fable. Ingrid felt a deep sympathy for him, even though she knew her own handicap had been fortunately invisible.

  She faced him, eyes closed, mumbling beneath her breath, asking for guidance from gods and spirits alike. Then she found herself zipping through the underlayer, her body hurtling through darkness, as if she had fallen into a wormhole, an Alice tumbling down to Wonderland kind of feeling—scary but thrilling. She came to a sudden stop and floated there. She saw Sander in what appeared to be the not-so-distant future, doing a salutation to the sun on a beach. Was it in North Hampton? He was perfect, really, so beautiful, his black hair lifting in the wind, just a few scars left over from the acne that had plagued him, giving him character, as they say. There was a book in the sand, and she had just enough time to glimpse its cover—Bhagavad Gita—before she was speeding down again, as words whispered past her. There was another catch in the wormhole, as if a parachute had opened above her and yanked her up, and now she floated down as gently as a feather, spying an arena below her dangling feet. As she descended further, she saw an older, confident Sander speaking at some sort of international conference. Her eyes popped open.

  “It’s all going to be fine,” she said. “I am going to release you.”

  Her hands fluttered around his head, neck, and then above his chest. She saw his pounding heart, a black tar resembling mechanic’s grease enveloping it. A black heart, she thought, momentarily frightened, but the ooze hadn’t seeped into his soul yet. Her hands squeezed the black goo from the organ as it contracted and expanded. She worked until she could see each artery, the thick superior vena cava and aorta. She shook her hands above her head, sending the viscous substance back from whence it came. A light shot out from his heart, and as it did, Ingrid experienced her own kind of deliverance.

  “There you go. You can step out of the circle now, and I am going to write down a few things for you—a prescription, but not like any you’ve ever been given before.”

  Sander smiled at her, stepping out of the pentagram. “I feel lighter,” he remarked.

  “That’s good!” At her desk, Ingrid wrote down a list on her pad that included yoga, the book Bhagavad Gita, the words string unification, the name Melody, and a list of herbs and tonics. “Freya, my sister, can probably supply you with some of these herbs if you stop by the North Inn. Or you can try Whole Foods if you’re not a ‘bar person.’” She handed the list to Sander.

  “Whole Paycheck? Actually, I very well might hit your sister up. Thanks so much, Ingrid. I don’t know if I am a believer, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ve heard great things about you.”

  Ingrid walked Sander to the door, where Tabitha and Hudson waited outside.

  Tabitha gave Ingrid a huge grin. “Gentleman to see you! He’s looking at the new arrivals display.”

  “Your man?” whispered Hudson, raising an eyebrow.

  “Okay, got it!” said Ingrid, and the two shuffled off, although waddled might have been a better description for Tabitha. Ingrid looked at her lineup. “I am really truly sorry,” she said. “But you are all going to have to come back tomorrow. I have some unexpected business to attend to.”

  The line had gotten longer, and some people were standing, because there weren’t enough chairs. They let out a collective “Aw!” The frail-looking blond, who would have been next, rushed up to Ingrid, pleading in the quietest voice. Ingrid wondered whether it was because if she spoke any louder she might crumple from the effort. She had the kind of face that wasn’t particularly arresting at first glance, until Ingrid noticed the perfect symmetry, the beauty in its simplicity and ingenuousness, like a single line drawing. This girl could be a supermodel, she thought. But she said, “Again, I apologize. Come promptly at noon so you’ll be the first in line. What’s your name?”

  “Melody,” the young woman said in that same wispy voice.

  “Oh!” said Ingrid, surprised to be hearing the name so soon—or even hearing it at all—that it seemed like an echo of the whisper she’d heard during her trance with Sander. The marvelous synchronicity of it gave her goose bumps. “Yes, please come back. I’ll be sure to see you first thing at noon tomorrow, Melody.”

  Her clients filed out of the waiting area with hangdog expressions, and Ingrid returned to her office, where she opened the curtains to let the light flood back in. She put her placard in the drawer, snuffed out the candles, put them away, and then used a chalkboard eraser to remove the pentagram from the floor. There was a knock at the door. Ingrid rose, brushing the chalk off her skirt, and went to open it.

  “Hi,” said Matt, standing in the doorway in his usual beige sport coat and tan slacks.

  “Come in,” she said, beaming. “Nice to see you.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I mean, great seeing you, Ingrid.”

  She closed the door behind him, and they faced each other in the middle of her office. He placed a hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the lips, but they both jumped at the screech, followed by a voice booming from his hip. He hadn’t turned off his walkie-talkie.

  “I’m on Seashell Lane and Vine. Have not spotted suspect yet, over.”

  “Hang in there, Holding. I mean, Holding, hold your position, over.”

  “Very funny, McCluskey! Over.”

  Matt pulled the walkie-talkie out of his holster and turned it off. “Sorry about that!”

  “You had it on in the library?” she asked.

  Matt looked at her sheepishly. “Kind of. Sorry! Actually, I’m here on business.”

  There was a lot of getting used to with a person you liked so much. Ingrid remembered all the online lingerie shopping she had done the other night, and she blushed, as if Matt might be able to read her mind. “Have a seat,” she said.

  Apparently, there had been another burglary in the North Hampton area, and Matt wanted to know the latest on the band of homeless kids Ingrid had mentioned earlier.

  Without batting an
eye, Ingrid lied to him and said they had most definitely left town. The pixies were, of course, still plaguing her up in Joanna’s attic. They had promised to be good, but were they up to their pranks again? Had they been involved in these thefts? She was going to have to sit down with them again and have a chat. They had seemed to be behaving themselves, but she really had gotten nowhere with them. She’d been unable to help them remember where was home, and now she believed they might be suffering from some sort of spell that kept them from knowing. She really needed to get them home.

  Ingrid winced but attempted to reassure Matt, saying that she had seen to it herself, put them on a bus and sent them home. “Gone. Bye-bye. Adios. Sayonara,” she said.

  Matt rubbed his eyes. “You’re sure?”

  “I made sure I saw them get on the bus. Then I watched it leave,” she reiterated. She felt horrible but manage to force a smile.

  “Okay,” said Matt. “It’s the strangest thing, Ingrid. We’re dealing with a highly skilled thief or group of thieves. Like all the recent burglaries, this one showed no signs of break-in—no busted locks or broken windows. And it’s not just the small stuff, like jewelry, that disappears but large items—paintings and sculptures. Some of it quite priceless.”

  “Oh, my!” remarked Ingrid. If the pixies were the ones behind the burglaries, surely she would be able to find the loot somewhere in the house. Something like a painting took up space. She would sift through the attic and see if they were hiding anything up there and return it immediately. The pixies never stole for money, however. They only took things that caught their eye, whether it was a marble or a Picasso; they had no understanding or concept of money. They just liked beautiful things.