“Sheesh!” commented Maggie, and Matt laughed at the expression.
“Parris’s position in the village was tenuous, and he wasn’t a well-liked man. I think he might have been afraid that his girls would soon be accused of being witches themselves. If that happened, he could lose his job, his home, everything. So he did what he could to shift the focus off his girls, off himself. But with his words to his parishioners, in a sense, the devil had been raised. At that point, other girls in the village began having fits, too. Hysteria spread like a contagion. But now Parris needed a culprit, someone to take the blame. He badgered Betty and Abby to tell him who exactly had bewitched them.”
“And did they say?”
Ingrid looked down at her hands. She had lived through the history she was retelling, she knew how it ended. “Sadly, yes. Many people were imprisoned and hanged.”
Maggie shivered. “Do you think any of it was real? Do you think the girls might have been… cursed somehow?”
Before Ingrid could answer, Matt cleared his throat. “Speaking of witch’s cake, I’m having a terrible hankering for dessert. You make us anything, Ingrid?”
Ingrid smiled at Matt’s little inside joke.
“But, Dad, Ingrid hasn’t answered my question,” Maggie admonished.
Ingrid suggested they go into the kitchen for ice cream, strawberries, and whipped cream first before she answered Maggie. She passed around the bowls and took a bite before addressing the issue. “Do I think the girls’ fits were real? No, of course not. They were faking it. In my opinion, it probably started out as a prank that got out of hand and the girls couldn’t recant their statements without being punished themselves. By the time they did take back their words, it was too late. So many of the victims had already perished. The remaining accused were eventually released but still had to pay the jailer’s fees…”
“Ugh! That’s awful!” Maggie scooped up the melted ice cream at the bottom of her bowl, mulling it all over. She attempted to hide a yawn. “I wonder what gave them the idea to even do such a thing.”
Ingrid had been wondering that herself and had recently come across a document that had proven to be very revealing: a pamphlet published in 1689 by an obscure Boston clergyman, a minister who went by the name of Continence Hooker. An Essay on Remarkable, Illustrious, and Invisible Occurrences Relating to Bewitchments and Possessions. But they would be here all night if she got into that, and she knew at this point that Maggie wouldn’t be adverse to the idea. She couldn’t do that to poor Matt.
“It’s hard to believe girls could cause so much trouble, huh?” Maggie asked.
“Not too hard.” Matt smirked.
Ingrid nodded. Girls had done this. Young girls, prepubescents, adolescents, innocent of the consequences of their actions. It was hard to believe they had desired to cause so much pain, so much evil. Could they have been manipulated somehow? Used? She wondered…
“Well, it’s late, and it looks like we’re all tired,” she said. “I gave you an earful! Maybe another time we can talk about it more?”
Maggie nodded as she took a last scoop from her bowl.
Matt tilted his head. “Well, I better get this one home to bed.”
Maggie looked at her father, scrunching her forehead. “I’m not tired!”
Matt laughed. “Sure you aren’t, Pidge.”
“Pidge?” asked Ingrid.
“Pigeon? There’s a kid’s book about not wanting to go to sleep,” Maggie explained.
“It used to be her favorite.”
“Dad still thinks I’m three years old,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes. “Fine, let’s go. Ingrid, where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
Ingrid told her, and when she turned to Matt she had a new appreciation for him. He was a good father, devoted, loving. She had the urge to lean over the table and kiss the freckles on his nose. It appeared he had the same idea, as he put his hands on her face and kissed her gently.
After he pulled away, they stared into each other’s eyes, elbows on the kitchen table. “Did I do okay?” Ingrid asked.
“Better. She’s crazy about you! Like I told you she would be.”
Ingrid smiled. She’d always wanted a daughter, and she had to remind herself that Maggie already had a mother.
chapter eleven
Of Gods and Men
By Sunday, Joanna and Norman had made it most of the way across Pennsylvania but not quite to the border of Ohio and had stopped for the night at the Happy Hunting Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast off I-80, smack in the middle of the snowy woods. The two-story centuries-old brick-and-wood saltbox appeared run-down from the outside, but the interior was clean and cozy.
The walls of the room—the “Gleeful Newlyweds Suite” of all things—were lemon, decorated with small oval- and square-framed sepia photographs of stocky-looking men and women with squinty eyes. There was a heavy, antique wooden bed made up with crisp white cotton sheets. In the bathroom, squeezed into a triangular wedge beneath the sloping roof, the brass fixtures gleamed, as did the glossy white claw-foot tub. Joanna found it heavenly to sink inside, washing off the dust from the road. After a long soak, she threw on one of the complimentary plush terry robes.
In the bedroom, she stood over the dresser, her wet silver hair a twist over a shoulder, as she lined up Norman’s evening meds, extracting a pill from each container—high blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on. Altogether, he had four different pills to take. Being immortals didn’t make them impervious to the ailments of age, and these days they found themselves especially vulnerable with their magic ebbing.
She looked out the window into the darkness of the woods, where a thin stream threaded through the trees. An owl hooted. Norman lay on the bed with an abstracted expression, his hands clasped behind his head.
“Remember the first time we walked to the Bofrir?” Joanna asked as she sat on the side of the bed, offering him a glass of water and the pills in her palm. Everything that was happening now had started back then, in Asgard, when the bridge was still standing. They were Nord and Skadi, gods of the sea and earth, back when the universe had begun, when everything in the nine worlds was new, and even their love was a nascent discovery, fluttering eyelashes against cheeks, a very first kiss, delectable, sweet, untainted. They had walked the Bofrir, that rainbow path wrought of dragon bone, the vessel that entwined the powers of all gods within, connecting Asgard to Midgard.
“Remember?” she repeated.
Norman sat up and took the pills silently. He placed the glass on the bedside table next to his phone. “My body might have weakened, my magic waned, but I am not senile yet, Jo.” Lying back down, he took in a breath. “I remember, we stared across that great abyss, wondering what it was like on the other side.”
“And now we’re stuck here, unable to return,” she said.
“Well, would you? Go back?” asked Norman. “I mean now, having lived in Midgard? Would you want it any other way?”
The last was a challenging question. The bridge’s destruction had imperiled their lives—the lives of gods as well as mortals. As paradoxical as it was, she wouldn’t trade her experience in Midgard for anything. “I love it here,” she concluded.
“Yes,” said Norman. “This is home now.”
“But why did it happen? And what exactly happened that day? We still don’t know.” Joanna sighed, frustrated. The bridge had been destroyed and now Killian Gardiner—the god Balder—had been accused as the culprit and seized by the Valkyries. But if anyone believed Killian was truly behind it, Joanna had a bridge to sell them.
“Well,” he said, “we do know that Freddie was there, since his trident destroyed the bridge and was found in its ruins, and that Killian was a bystander. Killian attempted to shift the time line to bring the bridge back, but he couldn’t. He also tried to keep Loki there, but of course he got away. Neither Freddie nor Killian saw what really happened though. Or they don’t remember. Or their memories were tampered with.”
“
It’s Loki, it’s always been Loki,” Joanna said. From the beginning her suspicions always ran toward Bran Gardiner, better known as Loki. Freya had seen to it that he had been banished from North Hampton, but where was he now? The dark god of mischief had a vendetta against Freya and her family. Loki had been sent to the frozen depths for his part in the bridge’s demise, and Joanna was sure he was behind Freya’s disappearance as well. She looked at Norman, her blue eyes shining in the dimly lit room.
Her husband nodded. “It does appear that Loki’s powers prevailed and he can travel through the passages of time as he wishes. But no one actually saw him destroy the bridge, so no one knows what really happened.”
“But it had to be Loki. His powers increased, he can move between worlds; it had to be him.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Norman with a frown.
“You have an alternate theory?”
“I might.”
“Care to share it?”
“Not yet,” Norman said, and it was clear he was thinking of that long ago time, when they had been young and in love. Oh, the suitors she had had. Joanna smiled to herself. She could have had the most powerful god in the universe, but she had wanted Norm.
They fell silent. The owl outside their window had quieted, too, and the only sounds were of the wind through the forest and the old B and B creaking on its stone foundation. Norman’s cell rang, and they both jumped.
Norm glimpsed at the caller ID. “It’s Art!”
“Oh, thank the gods,” said Joanna.
It was strange to hear his brother’s voice, which sounded so tired and gravelly. “Art! How are you? You sound as if you’ve been living in a cave!”
Joanna could hear Arthur’s muffled response, but she couldn’t make out the words. She stared inquisitively at Norman, egging him on to tell her something.
“Huh!” Norm turned to Joanna. “Well, what do you know?… He’s hiding out in a cave in Ohio.” He signaled to Joanna to grab pen and paper from the suite’s desk, and when she brought them over, he scribbled down the directions his brother gave him.
chapter twelve
The Salon des Refusés
Gert and Freddie’s living room was filled with cigarette smoke that coiled upward to the ceiling. Someone had brought a small vintage record player that scratched out John Coltrane’s Blue Train in the background, a bluesy, moody, slipping, sliding tempo.
Gert’s friends from school had dubbed these smoky, candlelit get-togethers their Salon des Refusés. The French term was usually meant for a gallery displaying art rejected by the mainstream, but in this case it was these kids who saw themselves as the unaccepted masterpieces. They were splayed about the apartment, eating olives, crackers, and cheese, drinking red wine, languidly smoking cigarettes. They all came from wealthy families, but they liked to affect an impoverished air. Discussing Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, they thought themselves incredibly soigné and sophisticated.
Sam, with a thin mustache and soul patch, lay sideways on a beanbag, peering out from behind Ray-Ban Wayfarers. Beside him, cross-legged, sat Gert’s sister Cassandra, a.k.a. Swanwhite: long, pallid, anorexic thin. She had become part of the crew since she began dating Sam, whom she’d met at a campus party Gert had invited her to last semester. She didn’t say much but looked the part. There was another couple, a young man with a scraggly beard and a woman with boyish-short hair and bright red lips, whose names Freddie couldn’t remember.
Freddie thought the pretentious bunch mostly harmless, although the worst among them was Judith—a philosophy major who sported a slanting jet-black bob with uneven feathery bangs high above her wide forehead. The voice that issued from her crimson lips was icy and mocking, especially when directed at Freddie.
Judith took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “So tell us, Fred, when we talk of existence preceding essence, what meaning exactly do you find in being a fireman?” She had a touch of an unidentifiable accent, which Freddie chalked up to coming from Fakeland. “Does it help quell the doldrums? Bring some significance to an otherwise senseless and absurd existence? Or is it simply that you are fulfilling a little boyhood fantasy?”
The kids in the room laughed.
Freddie was very annoyed. Normally her barbs amused him, but this time he wasn’t going to take it. “Well, Judy,” he said, taking liberty with her name as she did with his, “you pride yourself on being such a feminist and yet you say ‘fireman’ instead of the more up-to-date and gender unspecific firefighter?”
“Ooh!” said the room, impressed.
“Touché!” said Judith. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
Although she was just trying to impress everyone in the room, Freddie found her question stupid. It didn’t really deserve an answer, but if she was going to press him he was going to answer. “Being a firefighter is probably as meaningful as it gets, Judy. I save lives.”
“Aha!” said Judith. “Lives that perhaps don’t need or want to be saved!”
Freddie couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing now.
“That’s what it all comes back to,” piped in Sam. “In the overwhelming face of the absurd, there is only one major question we must ask ourselves—”
“Whether to live or die,” finished Cassandra. Sam leaned over and kissed her—his good little student.
Gert, who was sitting on the couch, coughed. “You guys are getting morbid.”
Finally, thought Freddie, his wife had decided she’d had enough of their nonsense. “Yeah, that’s totally idiotic,” he added. “If you’re in a house that’s going up in flames, all you want is to make it out alive. The urge to live precedes everything.” He laughed. “These are all just empty intellectual concepts—theoretical, speculative. They have nothing to do with real life. Firefighting is life.” There. He had said something intelligent and meaningful. He could keep up with these college kids, even though they acted as if he were beneath them. He looked to Gert for approval, but she rolled her eyes.
“My friends are not morons,” she reprimanded.
He hadn’t said that, and he couldn’t believe Gert wasn’t taking his side.
“No, we’re not,” said Judith, smirking in a way that meant she was about to hit them with her SAT scores again—or brandish the name of their university like a cudgel, as if Freddie gave a rat’s ass. “And why…”
“Why what?” What did Gert see in these people? Just then he spotted Kelda and Nyph peeking their heads out of their bedroom. Gert had asked them to stay out of the way for the evening. They mouthed something to Freddie, but he couldn’t make it out. “Excuse me,” he said, and left the room.
“He still hasn’t gotten rid of his little friends?” Judith asked Gert as Freddie strode toward the pixies’ room. He could hear her continuing to poison his wife’s mind, loudly whispering something about a grown man hanging out with teens and how that was weird and how she was worried for Gert.
Val was strumming an electric guitar that wasn’t plugged in. Who knew where he had gotten it. Sven lay on the top of a bunk bed, reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, while Irdick was taking a nap in the lower bunk.
“What?” Freddie asked Kelda and Nyph, who were grabbing at his T-shirt.
“We hate Judith. We hate her!” Nyph said.
“Yeah,” said Kelda. “She’s awful. She deserves a comeuppance.”
“She’s Gert’s friend,” said Freddie. “I’m warning you guys, leave her alone.”
“But why is she so mean to you?” asked Nyph. “You’re the best.”
“She wants him,” said Irdick, rolling over.
“Obvious!” added Sven.
“Who doesn’t want Freddie?” threw in Val, gliding his fingers down the neck of his guitar.
Freddie shrugged, suddenly exhausted. He decided to go lie down in his room. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. There had been a particular nasty fire: a house in the suburbs had burned down, and they h
ad rescued a baby and three-year-old girl. The parents were nowhere to be found. The police suspected foul play.
He lay on his bed, listening to the vapid chatter in the living room and quickly fell asleep. He woke with a start from a dream in which he had been engulfed by flames that wouldn’t obey him as they usually did.
Gert hung over him, shaking him by the shoulders. “Where’s Judith?” she asked.
Freddie blinked his eyes. It took a while to orient himself. “I don’t know. With you? I just came in here to nap.”
“Everyone’s leaving now but Judith’s disappeared. I thought she went to the bathroom.”
Freddie reached a hand to Gert’s peachy cheek and caressed it. “She probably left without telling you.”
Gert turned away, rebuking his caress. “I’m walking them out.”
Freddie watched her go. He listened to his wife see her friends off, then return to do her toiletries in the bathroom. Not a peep from the pixies. They must have gone to sleep or left for their nocturnal adventures. Maybe there was hope for him and Gert to get lucky tonight.
Gert returned to the bedroom. Freddie sat up to watch her undress. She pulled off her jeans, then her striped navy tee, her blond hair cascading down across her shoulders. Standing in only her underwear, her back was long and muscular. She had little depressions at the base of her spine, dimples above each buttock, which he found very sexy. She threw on an old T-shirt, climbed into bed, and turned away from him. Freddie sighed. They had turned into an old, silent, apathetic couple.
A loud thump came from farther inside the apartment, then more thumping.
Gert turned to him. “What’s that?”
“Beats me,” said Freddie. It sounded as if it had come from the terrace. He rose, and Gert followed him.
When he pulled the curtain away from the sliding glass doors to the terrace, Gert right behind him, they both stared. There was Judith, gagged with one of Freddie’s bandannas, strapped to a chair that was now tipped against the glass so that her shoulder and forehead slumped against it. She was staring at them, eyes wide and frantic. It had probably taken her some time to inch the chair to the sliding glass doors so she could heave herself against them and make the noise. Her hair, which was usually neatly styled, looked wild. She shimmied, letting out a muffled grunt, urging them to come outside.
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