Serpent's Kiss

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “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.

  chapter thirty-six

  Live Freegan or Die

  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 …”

  Ingrid laughed. “Freegans?” She was amused. “You guys have really assimilated.”

  At the table, everyone had stopped grabbing at the food, and they were all looking expectantly at Ingrid. Sven gave a smoker’s cough before rasping, “Freegans shmeegans, Irdick is trying to tell you we saw someone.”

  “Who?” asked Ingrid. Then they were all talking at once, and she couldn’t make out anything they were saying. She cleared her throat, and the pixies quieted. They were finally learning to be more obedient and this pleased her. It was like training puppies. They were coming along. “Okay, could one of you explain this clearly to me?”

  Nyph raised her hand as high as she could, crying, “Me, me, me!” as Kelda stared up at her through the black mask.

  Ingrid placed a hand on her waist and cocked a hip. “Okay, Nyph, shoot!”

  The pretty raven-haired pixie’s dark eyelashes batted, suddenly shy now that she was being singled out. She licked her lips then spoke. “We saw someone we thought looked extremely familiar, so we hid in the alley and watched him.”

  Ingrid was taken aback. “Who was it? Someone from your home?”

  “No. It was the one who s-s-sent us away,” said Val. Everyone looked to him. Val dipped a piece of bread in his egg yolk and took a bite. “We did a favor for that guy, whoever he is, then he banished us from our home. At least that’s what we think happened. We recognized him.”

  “Hmm,” said Ingrid. “What did he look like?”

  “He’s tall, big guy, good-looking,” said Kelda.

  These were vague descriptions, not helpful at all. “Can you please be more specific? What color was his hair? How tall? How big? Like, hefty? Or just overweight? What was he wearing?”

  They all began shouting at once, and all of them had different opinions. Some argued the man had blond hair, while others said it was brown. It was dark outside, they all agreed, but they had definitely recognized him as a person they used to know. But now they couldn’t remember at what exact Dumpster they had spotted him, which didn’t help Ingrid at all.

  Ingrid sighed, but at least she was getting a little closer to solving this enigma, however frustratingly piecemeal and slow the information came together. She needed to find out who exactly this man was, find out exactly what he’d done to the pixies to make them forget, and maybe she could finally send them back home.

  chapter thirty-seven

  Blasphemous Rumors

  After that one unseasonable sunny day, the temperature plummeted, and a morning mist now rose from the ground in the woods. Joanna had dressed warmly in rubber boots with thick socks, a wool hat, and a scarf. She stood at the foot of the burial mound and looked up into the sprawling oak. Was this the very same tree where her witch had hanged before being snipped down to plummet into her grave? Sometimes several witches were hanged from one tree at once, dangling from the boughs for days as putrefaction set in—setting an example for those who might think to consort with the devil.

  Hanging was less violent than burning, but neither could be called humane, and now the memories of Salem and her own girls’ hangings returned, as much as she tried to push them away: the townspeople jeering and celebrating, couples kissing and groping as the hangman fit the nooses around each of their necks. Some in the crowd were raising their fists, while others cried out in ecstasy or with smiles on their faces as the condemned swung off the platform. This was a part of humanity that Joanna
would rather not have witnessed. It was the wrong way around; those with blackened hearts were in the crowd, not on the gallows. She wiped away a tear, remembering Freya’s defiant stare and Ingrid’s broken sobs. Joanna loosened the red scarf at her neck because she suddenly felt as if she were being choked herself.

  There were several ways to die from a hanging. The neck could snap, but this didn’t necessarily mean death came instantaneously. If the drop wasn’t high enough and the spinal cord was not fully severed, the hanged could remain in the air, kicking and fully conscious for several minutes while asphyxiation took place.

  If death wasn’t caused by the neck bones breaking, or just plain decapitation if the body was catapulted with enough force, it was the occlusion of the carotid arteries and jugular veins that did it, causing edema followed by cerebral ischemia, or the heart slowing down enough to cause cardiac arrest.

  Some claimed that the hanged experienced sexual excitement, but this was bunk, a myth, Joanna knew. There was only agony and suffering and humiliation. Men sometimes appeared to get erections, but that was only due to gravity, the blood surging to the torso and legs. It had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with pain.

  This hanging, if it had been done from this tree, given the short drop, would not have been the quick kind but a slow one to ensure maximum torture. Joanna had watched her daughters’ faces swell, turn purple and blue with cyanosis, blood marks spreading across their skin, their eyes, as the life was snuffed from them. Splotches of red crawled over their skin as veins and capillaries burst. Freya’s tongue had protruded from her lips, as if in a final act of defiance.

  Though it was cold, Joanna’s forehead beaded with sweat. She wiped it off with the back of a hand, trying to erase the memories as well. She realized then why the witch’s spirit had grabbed her by the throat. She had been showing Joanna what it felt like when she’d died.

  Joanna had come to the burial mound to seek a passage into the timeline. She closed her eyes and chanted, reciting the incantation that enabled one to slip through the portal into the passages. She had to be specific: she had to return to the right time, at least a few days before the hanging. She waited for the portal to open, closing her eyes, but her feet remained rooted at the base of the burial mound.

  chapter thirty-eight

  Dance till You Can’t Dance No More

  On the Dragon, Freya gathered strands of hair from Killian’s comb in the bathroom of the master stateroom. She had stopped by the greenhouse earlier to gather the roots and cuttings of herbs that Jean had told her she would need for her ritual. She’d placed them inside a punctured Ziploc, along with a live cicada, which resembled a gigantic fly with its huge eyes and veined gossamer wings. Of course, the cicada had begun to sing, but that was exactly what she needed: a male. Jean had been adamant about that.

  The ritual would also require a drop of Killian’s scent, that delectable, intoxicating one she knew so well, but she wasn’t quite sure how to go about extracting it. She carried a small glass vial, like those used for perfume samples, for that end and had placed it on the sink. “Be creative,” Jean had told her. “Isn’t that what magic is about?”

  “Freya?” Killian asked, unexpectedly behind her. “Did you hear that?”

  She started, quickly turning toward him. Luckily, the cicada had stopped humming. “Hear what?” she asked, feigning innocence as she slipped a bottle of his cologne into her bag. “I’m looking for aspirin,” she lied.

  “A witch with a headache!” He laughed. “Now you’re being secretive again, and we know that’s no good.” He pushed her hair out of her face and kissed her softly. Since they had been waiting for the Valkyries to descend upon them, they couldn’t get enough of each other, treating each night as if it were the last. But Freya had also been busy, trying to figure out a way to stave them off.

  “Hey, you.” She smiled as their bodies pressed against each other in the cramped space.

  “Hey, babe,” he murmured, tugging her closer and cupping her behind.

  She put her bag on the sink, her work forgotten for now. When she placed her hand at the crotch of his jeans she discovered he was already hard. It was as much a thrill as the first time.

  Killian’s lips parted from hers, and he looked at her inquiringly. “So are you going to tell me the truth?”

  “I’m working on something,” she said between breathless kisses.

  “Anything I might help you with?”

  “When the time’s right,” she quipped, unzipping him as he unhooked her belt and peeled off her jeans. “Right now you can help me with something else.” She might get that drop of sweat sooner than she thought.

  “Glad to,” he whispered, grunting as he bent her over the sink and took her from behind in one swift motion.

  Freya closed her eyes and moaned, holding on to the counter, as Killian leaned over her back, his hands on either side of hers, bucking against her, the force of his actions practically lifting her from the floor.

  It was all part of assembling ingredients for her potion, she knew, but that didn’t mean that work couldn’t be any fun.

  “Okay, this time I’m really putting my foot down, Freddie. This is it! I’m done!” Freya said, feeling dizzy. Perhaps it was the slanted room. Or maybe in her haste to collect all the ingredients for the spell she had forgotten to eat? It was just a few hours ago she had left Killian on his boat. She had all the elements necessary to perform the spell, but she was getting cold feet. If it were as dangerous as Jean had claimed, she didn’t know if she could go through with it. And if she didn’t go through with it, then she would never know the truth and neither would Killian. Freya was now irritable, and she had arrived at the run-down motel to confront the source of her current frustration.

  She sat at the foot of one bed to steady herself. “I’m really sick of it, Fred. You won’t listen to me, and then you expect me to cater to your every whim, bringing you food, making sure you have warm blankets.”

  Freddie peered at her dejectedly, hanging his head. “I don’t mean to be a mooch,” he said like a little boy. “If I could leave here, I would. Plus, I miss Hilly. She won’t see me until her dad gives the approval, and he won’t do it until I get some job done for him. But he won’t say what it is or how to do it.”

  “You know, enough of that silly flirtation. She’s just some chick you met online! There are hundreds—thousands of them out there. Forget her if she’s such a problem. Look,” said Freya, “I think you’re depressed. You need to be more active. Being cooped up in here is not helping you. Throw on a disguise, morph into something … I don’t know … Why don’t you go over to Mother’s and help yourself. There’s a fridge there. Something they don’t have in gross, lopsided motel rooms.”

  “You don’t have to be mean about it,” Freddie said.

  “Well, I’m just telling you. Mom and Ingrid are out tomorrow. No one will be home in the evening, either. Stop by and stock up. I’m tired of doing it for you. I’ll leave the back glass doors open for you. You can get in from there,” she said, hoping he was still ignorant of the holiday calendar and the traditions most people observed. She had a plan in mind.

  Freddie looked sad. “Okay, Freya. I didn’t realize it was so inconvenient for you to help me.”

  “It’s not, Freddie. Of course not. But I’m going away and I’m worried you’ll be hungry and alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I have Hilly,” he said.

  “Right.” She picked up her purse. “Remember to come by tomorrow,” she said. And before Freddie could rise from his armchair, she was out the door and already peeling out of the parking lot in her Mini.

  chapter thirty-nine

  Frozen, When Your Heart’s Not Open

  Ingrid set the alarm in the library, and then outside she locked the doors and the black gate with its gigantic key. She shivered, winding her scarf around her neck.

  “Hey,” a voice said from behind her.

  She spun aroun
d, and there he was, the one person who had been hounding her thoughts as usual.

  Matt held one of the wrought-iron bars of the fence that wound around the library, his head cocked, eyes doleful. Ingrid walked up to him as they looked tentatively at each other.

  She stopped a foot away. She wished she hadn’t been wearing her glasses, and that her hair wasn’t up in its tight, efficient work bun. She hadn’t worn any makeup, and she shoved her hands into her pockets, remembering how the polish was chipped from biting her nails.

  “I know you probably don’t want to see me. I didn’t call because I figured you needed some space,” he said. “I’ll go away if you tell me to. I just wanted to see you and talk.”

  Ingrid picked up her head. She was surprised to hear this. He was the last person she wanted to hurt and hadn’t realized she could have that kind of power over him. The wind pushed fallen leaves from the park down the street. She yanked up her collar. She moved in closer, whispering, “I’m sorry, Matt. It isn’t you … It’s me.” She looked away.

  He swung out from the bar, still holding on to it. “Oh, that old line.”

  “It’s not a line. Will you let me explain?” she asked. “Walk with me?”

  “Sure.” They moved away from the fence to cross the street. They strode silently for a while. Ingrid passed the entrance to the park, and Matt grabbed her arm, pulling her toward it. She hoped he would kiss her then, but instead, he said, “We can cut through.”

  Ingrid gave him a dubious look, taken aback. “I thought …”

  “Hey, you have a police escort,” he joked with a thin smile. “Come on.”

  They made their way down the park’s winding path, leaves crunching underfoot. Ingrid wished they were holding hands, moving through this cold darkness. She wished there wasn’t any awkwardness between them and that things had gone differently the other afternoon. When she lay alone in bed at night, she tossed and turned, thinking about him. She imagined him stroking her back, kissing her neck, playing with his hair, or just lying alongside, staring into each other’s eyes. Sometimes she wished for him so hard she would wake up in a cold sweat—or else gasping for air because her craving for him was so strong.