WITCHES 101
A
Witches of East End
Primer
Melissa de la Cruz
New York
WITCHES 101
A
Witches of East End
Primer
Melissa de la Cruz
New York
Copyright © 2011 Melissa de la Cruz
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
eBook Preview Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0406-5
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover illustration by Bob Johnson
Cover photos © Neil Smith
With almost three million copies of The Blue Bloods series in print, Melissa de la Cruz has now written her first paranormal romance for adults, Witches of East End, on sale June 21. The first in the Beauchamp Series, the book features a brand-new cast of characters, a fascinating and fresh world to discover, and a few surprise appearances from some of the Blue Blood fan favorites. It’s a page-turning, heart-stopping, magical summer read, fraught with love affairs, witchcraft, and an unforgettable battle between good and evil.
But before you read the book, meet the Witches! In this primer, you’ll meet the three Beauchamp women—Joanna, Ingrid, and Freya—learn a little bit about their special powers, and even get some tips so you can cast a few spells of your own.
North Hampton did not exist on any map, which made locating the small, insular community on the very edge of the Atlantic coast something of a conundrum to outsiders, who were known to wander in by chance only to find it impossible to return; so that the place, with its remarkably empty silver-sand beaches, rolling green fields, and imposing, rambling farmhouses, became more of a half-remembered dream than a memory. Like Brigadoon, it was shrouded in fog and rarely came into view. Perpetually damp, even during its brilliant summers, its denizens were a tight-knit, clubby group of families who had been there for generations. In North Hampton, unlike the rest of Long Island, there were still potato farmers and deep-sea fishermen who made a living from their harvests.
Salty sea breezes blew sweetly over the rippling blue waters, the shoals were heavy with clam and scallop, and the rickety restaurants served up the local specialties of porgies, blowfish, and clam chowder made with tomatoes, never milk. The modern age had made almost no impression on the pleasant surroundings; there were no ugly strip malls or any indication of twenty-first-century corporate enterprise to ruin the picturesque landscape.
Across from the township was Gardiners Island, now abandoned and left to ruin. Longer than anyone could remember, the manor house, Fair Haven, had been empty and unoccupied, a relic in the gloaming. Owned by the same family for hundreds of years, no one had seen hide or hair of the Gardiners for decades. Rumors circulated that the once-illustrious clan could no longer afford its upkeep or that the line had withered and died with its last and final heir. Yet Fair Haven and its land remained untouched and had never been sold.
It was the house that time forgot, the eaves below its peaked roof filled with leaves, the paint chipped and the columns cracked as it sunk slowly toward dilapidation. The island’s boat docks rotted and sagged. Ospreys made their homes on the unadulterated beaches. The forests around the house grew thick and dense.
Then one night in the early winter, there was a sickening crunch, a terrible noise, as if the world were ripping open; the wind howled and the ocean raged. Bill and Maura Thatcher, married caretakers from a neighboring estate, were walking their dogs along the North Hampton shore when they heard an awful sound from across the water.
“What was that?” Bill asked, trying to calm the dogs.
“It sounded like it came from there,” Maura said, pointing to Gardiners Island. They stared at Fair Haven, where a light had appeared in the manor’s northernmost window.
“Look at that, Mo,” Bill said. “I didn’t know the house had been rented.”
“New owners, maybe?” Maura asked. Fair Haven looked the same as it always did: its windows like half-lidded eyes, its shabby doorway sagging like a frowning old man.
Maura took the dogs by the grass but Bill continued to stare, scratching his beard. Then quick as a blink, the light went out and the house was dark again. But now there was someone in the fog, and they were no longer alone. The dogs barked sharply at the steadily approaching figure, and the old groundskeeper realized his heart was pounding in his chest, while his wife looked terrified.
A woman appeared out of the mist. She was tall and intimidating, wearing a bright red bandanna over her hair and a tan raincoat belted tightly around her waist. Her eyes were gray as the dusk.
“Miss Joanna!” Bill said. “We didn’t see you there.”
Maura nodded. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am.”
“Best you run along now, both of you, there’s nothing to see here,” she said, her voice as cold as the deep waters of the Atlantic.
Bill felt a chill up his spine and Maura shivered. They had agreed there was something different about their neighbors, something otherworldly and hard to pin down, but until this evening they had never been afraid of the Beauchamps. They were afraid now. Bill whistled for the dogs and reached for Maura’s hand, and they walked quickly in the opposite direction.
Across the shore, one by one, more lights were turned on in succession until Fair Haven was ablaze. It shone like a beacon, a signal in the darkness. Bill turned to look back one more time, but Joanna Beauchamp had already disappeared, leaving no sign of footprints in the sand or any indication that she had ever been there.
Freya Beauchamp swirled the champagne in her glass so that the bubbles at the top of the lip burst one by one until there were none left. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life—or at the very least, one of the happiest—but all she felt was agitated.
This was a problem, because whenever Freya became anxious things happened—like a waiter suddenly tripping on the Aubusson rug and plastering the front of Constance Bigelow’s dress with hors d’oeuvres. Or the normally lugubrious dog’s incessant barking and howling drowning out the violin quartet. Or the hundred-year-old Bordeaux unearthed from the Gardiner family cellar tasting like Three Buck Chuck—sour and cheap.
“What’s the matter?” her older sister, Ingrid, asked, coming up by Freya’s elbow. With her rigid modeling-school posture and prim, impeccable clothes, Ingrid did not rattle easily, but she looked uncharacteristically nervous that evening and picked at a lock of hair that had escaped her tight bun. She took a sip from her wineglass and grimaced. “This wine has a witch’s curse all over it,” she whispered, as she placed it on a nearby table.
“It’s not me! I swear!” Freya protested. It was the truth, sort of. She couldn’t help it if her magic was accidentally seeping out, but she had done nothing to encourage it. She knew the consequences and would never risk something so important. Freya could feel Ingrid attempting to probe through the underlayer, to peer into her future for an answer to her present distress, but it was a useless exercise. Freya knew how to keep her lifeline protected. The last thing she needed was an older sister who could predict the consequences of her impulsive actions.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” Ingrid asked gently. “I mean, everything’s happened so fast, after all.”
For a moment Freya considered spilling all, but decided against it. It was too difficult to explain. And even if dark portents were in the air—the dog’s howling, the “accidents,” the smell of burnt flowers inexplicably filling the room—nothing was going to happen. She loved Bran. She truly did. It wasn’t a lie, not at all like one of those lies she told herself all the time, like This is the last drink of the evening, or I’m not going to set the bitch’s house on fire. Her love for Bran was something she felt in the core of her bones; there was something about him that felt exactly like home, like sinking into a down comforter into sleep: safe and secure.
No. She couldn’t tell Ingrid what was bothering her. Not this time. The two of them were close. They were not only sisters and occasional rivals but the best of friends. Yet Ingrid would not understand. Ingrid would be appalled, and Freya did not need her older sister’s reproach right now. “Go away, Ingrid, you’re scaring away my new friends,” she said, as she accepted the insincere congratulations from another cadre of female well-wishers.
The women had come to celebrate the engagement, but mostly they were there to gawk, and to judge and to titter. All the eligible ladies of North Hampton, who not too long ago had harbored not-so-subtle dreams of becoming Mrs. Gardiner themselves. They had all come to the grand, refurbished mansion to pay grudging homage to the woman who had won the prize, the woman who had snatched it away before the game had even begun, before some of the contestants were aware that the starting pistol had been shot.
When had Bran Gardiner moved into town? Not so long ago and yet already everyone in North Hampton knew who he was; the handsome philanthropist was the subject of rumor and gossip at horse shows, preservation society gatherings, and weekend regattas that were the staples of country life. The history of the Gardiner family was all everyone talked about, how the family had disappeared many years ago, although no one was sure exactly when. No one knew where they had gone or what happened to them in the interim, only that they were back now, their fortune more impressive than ever.
Freya didn’t need to be able to read minds to know what the North Hampton hens were thinking. Of course the minute Bran Gardiner arrived in town he would choose to marry a teenage barmaid. He seemed different, but he’s just like the whole lot of them. Men. Thinking with their little heads as usual. What on earth does he see in her other than the obvious? Bartender, Freya wanted to correct them. Barmaid was a serving wench with heaving bosoms carrying tankards of beer to peasants seated at rickety wooden tables. She worked at the North Inn, and their gourmet brew came only in pints and had hints of prune, vanilla, and oak from the Spanish casks in which it was stored, thank you very much.
She was indeed all of nineteen (although the driver’s license that allowed her to pour drinks said she was twenty-two). She was possessed of an arresting, effervescent beauty rare in a time when emaciated mannequins were the zenith of female pulchritude. Freya did not look like she was starving, or could use a good meal; on the contrary, Freya looked like she got everything in the world she ever wanted, and then some. She looked, for lack of a better word, ripe. Sex seemed to ooze from every pore, to slither from every inch of her glorious curves. Small and petite, she had unruly strawberry blond hair the exact shade of a golden peach, cheekbones that models would kill for, a tiny little nose, large, catlike green eyes that slanted just a little at the tip, the smallest waist made for wearing the tightest corsets, and, yes, breasts. No one would ever forget her breasts—in fact, they were all the male population looked at when they looked at Freya.
Her face might well be unrecognizable to them, but not so the twins, as Freya liked to call them—they were not too big, they did not display that heavy voluptuousness that droll ex-boyfriends called “fun bags,” which sounded to Freya too much like “fat bags”; no, hers were exquisite: perfectly round with a natural lift and a creamy lusciousness. She never wore a bra either. Which, come to think of it, was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place.
She had met Bran at the Museum Benefit. The fund-raiser for the local art institution was a springtime tradition. Freya had made quite an entrance. When she arrived, there was a problem with a strap on her dress, it had snapped—ping!—just like that, and the sudden exposure had caused her to trip on her heels—and right into the arms of the nearest seersucker-wearing gentleman. Bran had gotten what amounted to a free show, and on their first meeting, had copped a feel—accidentally, of course, but still. It happened. She had fallen—literally—out of her dress and into his arms. On cue, he had fallen in love. What man could resist?
It was Bran’s acute embarrassment that had endeared him to her immediately. He had turned as red as the chrysanthemum on his lapel. “Oh god, sorry. Are you all right . . . do you need a . . . ?” And then he was just silent and staring, and it was then that Freya realized the entire front part of her spaghetti-strap dress had fallen almost to her waist, and was in danger of slipping off entirely—which was another problem, as Freya also did not wear any underwear.
“Let me—” And then he tried to step away but still keep her covered, which is when the hand-on-boob happened, as he had tried to pull up the slippery fabric, but instead his warm hand rested on her pale skin. “Oh god . . .” he gasped. Jesus, Freya thought, you’d think he’d never even gotten to first base with the way he was acting! And quick as a wink—because really, this whole experience just seemed to torture the poor guy—Freya’s dress was back in its rightful place, safety pin procured, cleavage appropriately covered (if barely—nudity seemed a natural progression given the deep cut of the neckline), and Freya said, in that natural, off-the-cuff way of hers, “I’m Freya. And you are . . . ?”
Branford Lyon Gardiner, of Fair Haven and Gardiners Island. A deep-pocketed and generous philanthropist, he had made the largest contribution to the museum that summer, and his name was prominently featured on the program. Freya had lived in North Hampton long enough to understand that the Gardiners were special even among the old and wealthy families in this very northern and easternmost part of Long Island, which wasn’t Long Island at all (definitely not Long-guy-land, provenance of big hair and bigger malls and more New Jersey than New York), but a place of another dimension entirely.
This little hamlet teetering at the edge of the sea was not only the last bastion of the old guard, it was a throwback to a different time, a bygone era. It might have all the accoutrements of a classic East End enclave, with its immaculate golf clubs and boxy hedgerows, but it was more than a summer playground, as most of its townsfolk lived in town year-round. Its charming tree-lined streets were dotted with mom-and-pop grocery stores, its Fourth of July parade featured wagon-pulled firetrucks, and its neighbors were far from strangers, they were friends who came to visit and sip tea on the veranda. And if there was something just a bit odd about North Hampton—if, for instance, Route 27, which connected the moneyed villages along the coast, did not appear to have an exit into town, or if no one outside of the place had ever heard of it (“North Hampton? Surely you mean East Hampton, no?”)—no one seemed to mind or notice very much. Residents were used to the back country roads, and the fewer tourists to clog the beaches the better.
That Bran Gardiner had been long absent from the social scene did not distract from his popularity. Any quirks displayed were quickly excused or forgotten. During the rebirth of his house, for instance, Fair Haven would be dark for days, but one bright morning the colonnade would appear completely restored, or else overnight the house would suddenly boast new windows or a new roof. It was all a mystery since no one could remember seeing a construction crew anywhere near the property. It was as if the house were coming alive on its own, shaking its eaves, shining with new paint, all by itself.
Now it was the Sunday of the Memorial Day holiday, and what better way to kick off another idyllic summer in the Hamptons than with a celebration at the newly restored manor house? The tennis courts gleamed in the distance, the view of the whitecaps was unparalleled, the buffet tables heaved under the weight of the extravagant spread: chilled lobsters as big and heavy as bowling balls, platters of fresh, sweet corn, pounds and pounds of caviar served in individual tiny crystal bowls with mother-of-pearl spoons (no accoutrements, no blini, no crème fraîche to dilute the flavor). The unexpected rainstorm that morning had put a little damper on the plans and the party had been moved to the ballroom and out of the crisp white tents that stood empty and abandoned by the cliffside.
That Bran was thirty years old, smart, accomplished, unmarried, and rich beyond imagination made him the perfect catch, the biggest fish in the bridal pond. But what most people did not know, or care to know, was that most of all, he was kind. When Freya met him, she thought he was the kindest man she had ever met. She felt it—kindness seemed to emanate from him, like a glow around a firefly. The way he had been so concerned about her, his embarrassment, his stammer—and when he had recovered enough, he had brought her a drink and never quite left her side all evening, hovering protectively.
There he was now, tall and dark-haired, wearing an ill-fitting blazer, shuffling through the party and accepting the well wishes of his friends with his customary shy smile. Bran Gardiner was not at all charming or erudite or witty or worldly like the men from his background, who relished zooming about the unpaved streets in their latest Italian sports cars. In fact, for an heir, he was awkward and self-conscious and Talented Mr. Ripley-ish—as if he were an outsider to an elite circle and not the very center of the circle itself.
“There you are.” He smiled as Freya reached to straighten his bow tie. She noticed the sleeves of his shirt were worn, and when he put an arm around her she smelled just the slightest hint of body odor. Poor boy, she knew he had been dreading this party a little. He wasn’t good with crowds.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said. “Are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m perfect,” she said, smiling at him and feeling the butterflies in her stomach begin to calm.
“Good.” He kissed her forehead and his lips were soft and warm on her skin. “I’m going to miss you.” He fiddled nervously with the monogram ring he wore on his right hand. It was one of his little tics, and Freya gave his hand a squeeze. Bran was traveling to Copenhagen tomorrow on behalf of the Gardiner Foundation, the family’s nonprofit venture dedicated to promoting humanitarian charities around the globe. He would be gone almost the entire summer for the project. Maybe that was why she was feeling so jittery. She didn’t want to be without him now that they had found each other.
The first night they met, he hadn’t even asked her out, which annoyed Freya at first until she realized it was because he was simply too modest to think she would be interested in him. Instead he showed up the next night during her shift at the Inn, and the next night, and every night after that, just staring at her with those big brown eyes of his, with a kind of wistful yearning, until finally, she had to ask him out—she could see that if she left it up to him, they would never get anywhere. And that was that. They were engaged four weeks later, and this was the happiest day of her life.
Or was it?
There he was again. The problem. Not Bran, not the sweet man she had pledged to love forever—he had been stolen away by the crowd and was now in the middle of chatting up her mother. His dark head was bent over Joanna’s white one, the two of them looking like the best of friends.
No. He was not the problem at all.
The problem was the boy staring at her from across the room and from all the way down the length of the great hall. Freya could feel his eyes on her, like a physical caress. Killian Gardiner. Bran’s younger brother, twenty-four years old, and looking at her as if she were on sale to the highest bidder and he was more than willing to pay the price.
Killian was home after a long sojourn abroad. Bran had told Freya he hadn’t seen his brother in many years, as he moved around a lot and traveled the globe. She wasn’t sure where he had just come from—Australia, was it? Or Alaska? The only thing that mattered was that when they were introduced, he had looked at her with those startling blue-green eyes of his, and she had felt her entire body tingle. He was, for lack of a better word, beautiful, with long dark lashes framing those piercing eyes, sharp-featured with an aquiline nose and a square jaw. He looked like he was always ready to be photographed: brooding, sucking on a cigarette, like a matinee idol in a French New Wave film.
He had been perfectly gracious, well-mannered, and had embraced her as a sister, and to her credit, Freya’s face had betrayed none of the turmoil she felt. She had accepted his kiss on her cheek with a modest smile, had even been able to engage him in the usual cocktail conversation. The soggy weather, the proposed wedding date, how he found North Hampton (she couldn’t remember, she might not have been listening: she had been too mesmerized by the sound of his voice—a low rumble like a late-night disk jockey). Then finally someone else had wanted his attention and she was free to be alone—and that was when all the small but awful things at the party began to happen.
Cat scratch fever. That was all it was, wasn’t it? Like an itch you couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t placate, couldn’t satisfy. Freya felt as if she were on fire—that at any moment she would spontaneously combust and there would be nothing left of her but ashes and diamonds. Stop looking at him, she told herself. This is insane, just another of your bad ideas. Even worse than the time you brought the gerbil back to life (she’d gotten an earful from her mother for that one, lest someone on the Council found out, not to mention that zombie pets were never a good idea). Go outside. Get some fresh air. Return to the party. She glided over to the vase of pink cabbage roses, trying to suffocate her whirling emotions by inhaling their scent. It didn’t work. She could still feel him wanting her.
Goddamnit, did he have to be so good-looking? She thought she was immune to that kind of thing. Such a cliché: tall, dark, and handsome. She hated cocky, arrogant boys who thought women lived to service their voracious sexual appetites. He was the worst offender of the type—screeching up in his Harley, and that ridiculous hair of his—that messy, shaggy, bangs-in-your-eyes kind of thing, with that sexy, come-hither smolder: but there was something else. An intelligence. A knowingness in his eyes. It was as if, when he looked at her, he knew exactly what she was and what she was like. A witch. A goddess. Someone not of this earth but not apart from it either. A woman to be loved and feared and adored.
She looked up from the vase and found him still staring directly at her. It was as if he were waiting the whole time, for just this moment. He nodded his head, motioning to a nearby door. Truly? Right here? Right now? In the powder room? Was that not just another cliché that went with the motorcycle and the bad-boy attitude? Was she really going to go into the bathroom with another man—her fiancé’s brother, for god’s sake—at her engagement party?
She was. Freya walked, as if in a daze, toward the aforementioned rendezvous. She closed the door behind her and waited. The face that stared at her from the mirror was flushed and radiant. She was so happy she was delirious, so excited she didn’t know what to do with herself. Where was he? Making her wait. Killian Gardiner knew what to do with wanton women, it seemed.
The doorknob turned, and he walked in, smooth as a knife, locking the door behind him. His lips curled into a smile, a panther with his prey. He had won.
“Come here,” she whispered. She had made her choice. She didn’t want to wait a moment longer.
Outside the door, in the middle of the party, the cabbage roses burst into flame.
Old Maid. Tight-ass. Spinster. Ingrid Beauchamp knew what people thought of her; she had seen the way they huddled and whispered behind cupped hands as she made her way across the library, putting away returned books to their proper shelves. In the decade that she had worked there, Ingrid had made few friends with her patrons, who found her strict and high-handed. Not only did she never forgive a fine, she had a tendency to lecture on the proper care and maintenance of the books under her jurisdiction. A book returned with a broken spine, a drenched cover or dog-eared pages was sure to garner a cool reprimand. It was bad enough that their operating budget barely covered their expenses; Ingrid did not need the patrons doing unnecessary damage to the books in her care.
Of course Hudson was supposed to do the grunt work, but even if Ingrid was the ranking archivist she enjoyed the physical aspects of the job and didn’t like to sit behind a desk all day, steaming blueprints. She liked the feel and weight of the books—to stroke the pages softened with wear, or put a mismatched jacket to rights. Also, it gave her an opportunity to police the library, wake up any of the bums sneaking a nap in the carrels, and make sure there weren’t any teenagers necking in the stacks.
Necking was such an odd word. Not that anyone “necked” anymore. Most of the teens had moved far beyond and below the neck. Ingrid liked the kids—the teenagers who visited the library and clamored for the latest dystopian post-apocalyptic releases made her smile. She did not care what they did in the comfort or discomfort of their own homes or untidy cars. Against popular belief, she knew what it was like to be young and in love and unafraid—she lived with Freya, after all. But a library was not a bedroom, or a motel room; it was a place to read, to study, to be quiet. While the kids did try to comply with the last rule, heavy breathing was sometimes the loudest noise of all.
In any event, necking wasn’t limited to the kids alone. The other day Ingrid had had to cough quite a few times to make sure a middle-aged couple was successfully untangled by the time she walked through the aisles with her cart.
Located in a grassy quadrangle across from city hall and next to a community park and playground, the North Hampton Public Library was neat, organized, and as well-kept as its meager funding would allow. The city budget had shrunk along with the rest of the economy, but Ingrid did her best to keep it stocked with new books. She loved everything about the library, and if sometimes she wished she could wave her wand (not that she had one anymore, but if she did) and set everything to rights—spruce up those shabby couches in the reading corners, replace the antiquated computers that still flashed with black and green monitors, create a proper storytelling stage with a puppet theater for the little kids—she could still console herself with the inky smell of new books, the dusty musk of old ones, and the way the late-afternoon sunlight flowed through the glass windows. The library was on prime beachfront property; the reference room had a spectacular view of the ocean, and once in a while Ingrid would make a point of stopping by the small, cozy nook just to look at the waves crashing on the beachhead.
Unfortunately it was this same breathtaking view that threatened the library’s very existence. Recently North Hampton’s mayor had made not-so-unsubtle noises that selling off the prime beachfront property would be the easiest way to pay off the city’s mounting debts. Ingrid was not opposed to the project per se, but she had heard that the mayor thought it might be a fine idea to do away with the library altogether, now that so much information was available online. The bureaucratic destruction of her precious library was too distressing to think about, and Ingrid tried not to feel too helpless that morning.
Thank goodness nothing terrible had happened at Freya’s engagement party last Sunday. For a moment there Ingrid had been worried when one of the floral arrangements inexplicably caught on fire, but a quick-thinking waiter doused the flames with a pitcher of iced tea and no more harm was done. The fire was Freya’s doing of course, her nerves causing havoc with her untamed magic. Understandable that Freya would be skittish about making a commitment of this magnitude, but she usually displayed better control, especially after centuries of living under the restriction. For now, Ingrid was just glad to be back at work and the routine of her daily life, finding comfort in the familiar. It had not been so long ago when her life had been quite different, when her work had been exciting and unusual. But that was the past, and it was best not to dwell on it too much.
The library was not merely the usual suburban outpost, at least. Upon its establishment, thanks to a generous bequest from a grande dame of the neighborhood, it also housed one of the foremost collections of architectural drawings in the country, as many famous designers had built homes in the area. As an archivist, Ingrid was responsible for preserving the work for posterity, which meant setting up a steam tent where the drawings were unrolled; and once they were moisturized, flattened, and dried, she tucked them away in drawers under linen. She had one under the plastic tent now, the paper soaking up all that moisture. Archiving was tedious and repetitive-injury making, so Ingrid liked to take a break by walking around, shelving books.
Tabitha Robinson, the middle-aged librarian for young adult books, a bright, cheerful woman with a passion for children’s literature, stopped for a friendly chat when they chanced upon each other in the aisles. Ingrid was very fond of Tabitha, who was efficient and professional and took her job seriously. When Tabitha wasn’t reading the latest coming-of-age novel, she had a weakness for what Ingrid dubbed “man-chesters,” romance novels featuring shirtless hunks on the cover. Bodice rippers (heaving cleavage bursting out of corsets) were passé. These days it was all about the beefcake. To each her own, Ingrid thought. Her guilty pleasures involved historical sagas: anything concerning those quarreling Tudors got her vote. They exchanged the usual cozy pleasantries and town gossip shared by old friends and colleagues when Tabitha’s cell phone vibrated. “Oh! It’s the doctor’s office,” she beamed. “Sorry, I have to take this,” she said as she walked away hurriedly, her long braid swinging down her back.
Ingrid picked up the next book to put away—tsk tsk, another doorstop-heavy tome from that local author who was something of a pest. He had thrown a hissy fit to find his books heaped in the cardboard boxes left in front of the library for patrons to take for free. But what could she do? They only kept books that were in regular circulation on the shelves. No one had read his last one, and it was clear this one would soon be consigned to the remainder bin as well.
Ingrid tried to give each author a fair shake by placing less-popular books by the front desk, suggesting little-known titles to those who asked, and borrowing each book at least once. But one could only do so much. The author, one J. J. Ramsey Baker (good lord, what was that, four names?—certainly two initials too much), author of Moribund Symphony, The Darkness at the Center of the Essence, and his latest, an obvious desperate grab for a book club pick, The Cobbler’s Daughter’s Elephants, would have just another month to tell his story of a blind cobbler in Lebanon in the nineteenth century and his daughter’s pet elephants until out it went. Ingrid thought that not even a little magic could help move that product.
It was really too bad none of them were allowed to practice magic anymore. That was the deal they had made after the judgment had been handed down. No more flying. No more spells. No more charms and powders, potions or jinxes. They were to live like ordinary people without the use of their ferocious powers, their magnificent, otherworldly abilities. Over the years they had each learned to live with the restraint in their own way. Freya burned through her energy through her manic partying, while Ingrid had adopted a severe personality in order to better suppress the magic that threatened to well up from inside.
Since there was nothing she could do to change it, Ingrid found she could not quite resent their present reduced circumstances. Resenting and regretting only made things worse. Why hope for what could not be? For hundreds of years she had learned to live like a quiet mouse, tiny and insignificant, and had almost convinced herself that it was better that way.
Ingrid patted the bun at the back of her head and put the cart back against the wall. On the way to the back office, she saw Blake Aland perusing the new releases. Blake was a successful developer who had given the mayor the idea of selling the library in the first place, offering a handsome bid if the city ever decided to take it on the market. A month ago he had dropped off his firm’s documents and Ingrid had had the delicate task of telling him their work was not aesthetically important enough to keep in their archive. Blake had taken it well, but he had not taken her rejection of his invitation to dinner quite as graciously. He had continued to persist until she had finally agreed to dine with him last week, on an evening that had gone disastrously, with hands fending off hands in the front seat of the car and hurt feelings all around. It was him she had to thank for giving her the odious nickname “Frigid Ingrid.” How unfortunate that in addition to being despicable he was also clever.
She hurried away before he spotted her. She had no desire to wrestle with Octopus hands any time soon. Freya was so lucky to have found Bran, but then again, Ingrid had known for a long time that one day Freya would meet him. She’d seen it in her sister’s lifeline centuries ago.
Ingrid had never felt that way about anyone. Besides, love wasn’t a solution to everything, she thought, patting a cache of letters that she kept folded in her pocket.
In the back office, she checked on her blueprint: almost all the creases were out. Good. She would put it in its flat box and then put the next drawing under the steam. She made a note on an index card, writing down the architect’s name and the project, an experimental museum that had never been built.
When she returned to her cubicle there was a sniffing noise from the next desk, and when Ingrid looked up, she noticed Tabitha was wiping her eyes and setting down her mobile phone. “What happened?” Ingrid asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. There was only one thing Tabitha wanted even more than getting Judy Blume to visit their library.
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh, Tab,” Ingrid said. She walked over and embraced her friend. “I’m so sorry.” For the past several weeks Tabitha had been resolutely optimistic following yet another in-vitro procedure, expressing a manic certainty that it had worked mostly because it was their final attempt at parenthood. “Surely there’s something else you can do?”
“No. This was our last shot. We can’t afford it anymore. We’re already in debt up to our ears for the last one. This was it. It’s not going to happen.”
“What happened to the adoption process?”
Tabitha wiped her eyes. “Because of Chad’s disability, we got passed over again. Might as well be a dead end. And I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish, but is it so wrong to want one of our own? Just one?”
Ingrid had been there since the beginning of Chad and Tabitha’s journey: she knew all about the turkey basters (the IUI treatment), the hormone pills, the infertility cocktail (Clomid, Lupron); she had helped push syringes as big as horse needles into Tabitha’s left hip at the designated hours. She knew how much they wanted a baby. Tabitha kept a photo on her desk of her and Chad at a luau during their honeymoon in Kona, goofy in Hawaiian shirts and leis. It was fifteen years old.
“Maybe I’m just not meant to be a mother,” Tabitha cried.
“Don’t say that! It’s not true!”
“Why not? It’s not as if there’s anything anyone can do to help.” Tabitha sighed. “I have to stop hoping.”
Ingrid gave her friend another tight hug and walked out of the office, her cheeks burning and her heart thumping in her chest because she of all people knew that what Tabitha said wasn’t true. There was someone who could help, someone who could change her life, someone much closer to Tab than she thought. But my hands are tied, Ingrid said to herself. There’s nothing I can do for her. Not without breaking the bonds of the restriction. Not without putting myself in danger as well.
She went back to her station behind the front desk, just another small-town librarian immersed in her daily task. Her sweater was still damp from her friend’s tears. If Ingrid had never resented their situation before, had never chafed against the restriction that was placed upon them before, well. There was always a first time for everything.
Old houses had a way of getting under your skin, Joanna Beauchamp knew; not just your skin but into your soul, as well as deep into your pocketbook, defying reason or logic in an ever-elusive quest for perfection. Over the years, the Beauchamp homestead, a stately colonial built in the late 1740s with pretty gables and a saltbox roof located right on the beach, in the older part of town, had been refashioned in many ways: walls torn down, kitchens moved, bedrooms redistributed. It was a house that had weathered many seasons and storms, and its crumbling walls echoed with memories—the massive brick fireplace had kept them warm for countless winters, the multitude of stains on the marble-topped kitchen counters recalled various cozy repasts. The living room floors had been stripped, redone, then stripped again. Now oak, then travertine, currently wood again—a gleaming red cherry. There was a reason old houses were called money pits, white elephants, folly.
Joanna enjoyed putting the house in order on her own. To her, a home renovation was constantly evolving and never quite finished. Plus, she preferred doing it herself; the other week she had personally retiled and grouted the guest bathroom. Today she was tackling the living room. She dipped her roller back into the aluminum tray of paint. The girls would laugh—they teased her for her habit of changing the wall colors several times a year on a whim. One month the living room walls were a dull burgundy, the next a serene blue. Joanna explained to her daughters that living in a static house, one that never changed, was stifling and suffocating, and that changing your environment was even more important than changing your clothes. It was summer, hence the walls should be yellow.
She was wearing her usual tromp-about-the-house attire: a plaid shirt and old jeans, plastic gloves, green Hunter boots, a red bandanna over her gray hair. Funny, that gray. No matter how often she dyed her hair, when she woke up in the morning it was always the same color, a brilliant silver shade. Joanna, like her daughters, was neither old nor young, and yet their physical appearances corresponded to their particular talents. Depending on the situation, Freya could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty-three years of age, the first blush of Love, while Ingrid, keeper of the Hearth, looked and acted anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-five; and since Wisdom came from experience, even if in her heart she might feel like a schoolgirl, Joanna’s features were those of an older woman in her early sixties.
It was good to be home and to have the girls with her. It had been too long and she had missed them more than she would admit. For many years after the restriction had first been imposed, the girls had wandered far and away, alone, aimless, and without purpose, and she could hardly blame them. They checked in only once in a while when they needed something: not just money, but reassurance, encouragement, compassion. Joanna bided her time; she knew the girls liked knowing that no matter where they went—Ingrid had lived in Paris and Rome for much of the last century, while Freya had spent a lot of time in Manhattan lately—their mother would always be at the kitchen counter, chopping onions for stock, and one day they would come home to her at last.
She finished with the far wall and assessed her work. She had chosen a pale daffodil yellow, a very Bouguereau shade: the color of a nymph’s smile. Satisfied, she moved on to the other side. As she carefully painted around the window trim, she looked through the glass panels across the sea, to Gardiners Island and Fair Haven. The whirlwind around Freya’s engagement had been exhausting, all that bowing and scraping to that Madame Grobadan, Bran’s stepmother, who made it clear she thought her boy was too good for Freya. She was happy for her daughter, but apprehensive as well. Would her wild girl truly settle down this time? Joanna hoped Freya was right about Bran, that he was the one for her, the one she had been waiting for all these long years.
Not that anyone needed a husband. She should know. Been there, done that. And if some days she felt like a shriveled-up old hag whose insides were are dry as dust, whose skin had not touched that of a man for so long, those were the days when she was just feeling sorry for herself. It wasn’t as if she had to be alone; there were many older gentlemen in town who had made it quite clear they would welcome the chance to make her nights less lonely. Yet she was not quite a widow, and she was not quite divorced, which meant she was not quite single or as free as she would like to be. She was separated. That was a good word. They lived separate lives now, and that was how she wanted it.
Her husband had been a good man, a good provider, her rock, when it all came down to it. But he had not been able to help them during the crisis and for that she would never forgive him. Of course it was not his fault, all that hysteria and bloodshed, but he had not been able to stop the Council from passing down their judgment either, when the dust finally settled and the evil had passed. Her poor girls: she could still see them, their lifeless bodies silhouetted in the dusk. She would never forget it, and even though they had come back relatively unscathed (if one considered being declawed, powerless, and domesticized unscathed) she could not quite find it in her heart to make room for him in her life once again.
“Right, Gilly?” she asked, turning to her pet raven, Gillbereth, who was privy to her thoughts and was currently perched on top of the grandfather clock.
Gilly fluffed her wings and craned her long black neck toward the window, and Joanna followed her gaze. When she saw what the raven wanted her to see she dropped her roller, splashing a few drops of paint on the stone floor. She rubbed it with her boot and made it worse.
The raven cawed.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go down and check it out,” she said, leaving the house through the back door and walking straight down to the dunes. Sure enough, there they were: three dead birds. They had drowned—their feathers were mottled and wet, and the skin around their talons looked burned. Their bodies formed an ugly cross on the pristine stretch of sand.
Joanna looked down at the small, stiff bodies. What a pity. What a waste. They were beautiful birds. Large raptors with pure white breasts and ebony beaks. Ospreys. The birds were native to the area, and a large colony lived on Gardiners Island, where they built their nests right on the beach. The birds were dangerous creatures, natural predators, but vulnerable as all wild creatures were vulnerable to the march of progress and development.
Like her girls, Joanna struggled to conform to the bounds of the restriction. They had agreed to abide it in exchange for their immortal lives. The Council had taken their wands and most of their books, burned their broomsticks and confiscated their cauldrons. But more than that, the Council had taken away their understanding of themselves. They had decreed there was no place for their kind in this world with magic, and yet the reality was that there was no place for them without it either.
With her fingers, Joanna began to dig at the wet sand, and gently buried the dead birds. It would have taken only a few words, the right incantation, to bring them back to life, but if she even attempted to wield an ounce of her remarkable abilities, who knew what the Council would take away next.
When she returned to the house, she shook her head at the sight of the kitchen. There were dirty pots everywhere, and the girls had taken to using every piece of china and silverware they could get their hands on rather than run the dishwasher, so the sink and the counter were overflowing with a messy jumble of expensive antique porcelain plates. The china closet in the hall was almost empty. If this went on any longer, they would be eating from serving trays next. It would not do. One expected this of Freya, of course, who was used to chaos. Ingrid always looked impeccable and that library of hers was spotless, but the same could not be said for her housekeeping skills. Joanna had raised her girls to be lovely, interesting, as strong in character as in their former talent for witchcraft, and as a consequence they were completely useless in domestic matters.
Of course, as their mother she was not completely blameless in this field. After all, she could have spent the morning cleaning up rather than painting the living room again. But while she enjoyed refurbishing and renovating, she detested the daily household chores that kept life on an even keel. Or at least kept it sanitary. She saw Siegfried, Freya’s black cat and familiar, slink in through the pet door.
“The girls have invited lots of little mice here for you, haven’t they?” She smiled, picking him up and cuddling his soft fur. “Sorry to tell you it’s not going to last, liebchen.”
For want of a wand, a house was lost, Joanna thought. If she could use magic to clean her house, she would not need a dishwasher. The doorbell rang. She wiped her hands on her jeans and ran to answer it. She opened the door slowly and smiled. “Gracella Alvarez?”
“Si,” smiled a small, dark-haired woman standing at the doorway with a little boy.
“Bueno! Come in, come in,” Joanna said, sweeping them into the half-painted living room. “Thank you for coming so early. As you can see we really need some help around here,” she said, looking at the house as if for the first time. Dust bunnies sprouted in the corners, large sacks of laundry bloomed in the stairway, the mirrors were so cloudy it had become impossible to see one’s reflection.
The agency had recommended the Alvarezes highly. Gracella kept house while her husband, Hector, took care of the grounds, which included the pool, the landscaping, the gardens, and the roof. Gracella explained that her husband was finishing a job out of town but would meet them that afternoon. The family was to stay in the cottage out back, and they had brought their things in the car.
Joanna nodded. “And who’s this cherub?” she asked, leaning down to tickle the boy’s belly. The boy jumped away and flapped his arms, giggling.
“This is Tyler.”
At his mother’s prompting the boy spoke. “I’m four,” he said deliberately, rocking his heels up and down. “Four. Four. Four. Four Four.”
“Wonderful.” Joanna remembered her own boy, so long ago. She wondered if she would ever see him again.
Tyler’s Mickey Mouse T-shirt was stained and his eyes were bright and merry. When Joanna moved to shake his hand he shied away from her but allowed her to pat his head. “Good to meet you, Tyler Alvarez. I’m Joanna Beauchamp. Now, while your mother gets settled, would you like to take a walk down to the beach with me?”
Tyler spent the afternoon running around in circles. Joanna looked at him affectionately. Every once in a while he would look over his shoulder to make sure she was still there. He seemed to take to her immediately, which his mother remarked upon before letting him accompany her to the beach. When he got tired of running, they picked seashells together. Joanna found a perfectly formed cockleshell that the boy immediately brought up to his ear. He laughed at the sound and she smiled to see it. Still, she could not help but feel apprehensive, even in her delight at her new young friend. It throbbed right underneath the idyllic moment, just below the surface.
There was something not quite right about the three dead birds on the beach this morning, the ones she had buried a little ways away in the sand, but Joanna could not put her finger on it just then. Was it a threat? Or a warning? And for what? And from whom?
Ingrid Beauchamp and The Book of White Magic
As the head librarian of North Hampton, Ingrid spends her days matching books to the right patron. She is also working on compiling the spells her family has used over the centuries in a work entitled The Book of White Magic. Ingrid becomes famous in town for her knots, charms, and spells that address everything from infidelity to infertility.
Here are two you can try at home:
Money Bags
Everyone needs money, of course, but more than money, people need luck. Try Ingrid’s money charm to let your fortunes prosper and your dividends multiply.
Ground clove
Crushed marigold petals
Add a dash of ground clove and crushed marigold petals to your coffee (or cappuccino or whatever you drink in the morning.)
Ingrid likes to make her spices ahead, and keeps her magical herbs in a pretty velvet pouch. (Hence “money bags.”) Clove and marigold mixed together is a powerful elixir that will bring good fortune to your life.
Sailing Knots
Ingrid learned to sail off the coast of North Hampton, and never leaves shore without a length of cord tied with three knots tied in a row, as Finnish sailors were instructed to do so by their wizards. Bring the knotted cord on your next sailing trip, and untie the knots as needed to bring a lucky wind. The first knot unravels to call a moderate wind, the second a strong one, and the third—to be used only in emergency—releases a full gale. Remember to hold on!
Freya Beauchamp and Lovers’ Libations
Freya, the sexy and energetic bartender at the North Inn, brews a variety of love potions to cure any number of ailing or aspiring hearts and lovers. Over the centuries, from her travels across the globe, she has perfected an array of enchanted elixirs sure to conquer even the most indifferent crush and cure the most devastating heartbreak.
Here are her current favorites:
Heartsick in Havana
(also known as Inconsolable in Instanbul or Miserable in Minneapolis)
Sometimes love means being apart, and Freya knows this better than anyone. As a girl who has loved and lost and loved and lost again, Freya has weathered it all. In 1955, she strolled through the empty streets of Havana, missing a boyfriend who had left her to join up with Che Guevara in Mexico. Havana was then the Latin Las Vegas, a town where good food, good music, and beautiful people reigned, and a certain sexy witch made the most of it. But magic is no haven from heartbreak, and even the most gorgeous witch can feel blue from boyfriend troubles.
One ounce of very good rum
(the best you can buy)
Thirteen mint leaves
(thirteen is a lucky number for the witches and mint is a cure-all for heartache)
One tablespoon of sugar
Half ounce of lime juice
Two ounces of soda
Place mint leaves in the bottom of a glass and press them until they release their juice. Add crushed ice, rum, sugar, lime juice, and muddle the whole thing together. Add soda water and garnish with a few more mint leaves.
Drink until you stop feeling the need to call him, or else call him for naughty conversation ONLY. No whining or sobbing allowed.
Chucked in Charleston
(also known as Dumped in Davao or Abandoned in Albuquerque)
There’s nothing worse than being dumped. When your lover tells you he loves you no more, there’s nothing to do but pull him back from the door, tear his shirt, sob into his chest, and try to make him stay. But if that doesn’t work, Freya has this solution. Grab your best girls and serve them a nice Southern-style sweet tea with a punch that gets everyone feeling comfortable. Then burn everything he ever gave you, except the jewelry. You get cash for gold these days, she hears.
Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka
(a local Charleston favorite)
A tall glass of ice
Water
For a “John Daly” (the alcoholic version of an Arnold Palmer) add lemonade, for a “mo-tea-to” add lime juice, mint leaves and soda.*
Drown your sorrows, cry on your girlfriends’ shoulders, and remember that love is not magic, it is fickle and cruel, and it is better to have loved and drunk sweet tea vodka than never to have loved at all—at least that’s what Freya believes.
Joanna Beauchamp and Recipes for Restoration
Joanna’s power comes from the ability to bring things back to life: dead people, plants, animals, burnt pies, old homes. She believes that rearranging the furniture, painting the walls a different color, and caulking your own bathroom tiles are good for the soul and restorative for the spirit.
Here are some of her suggestions for bringing old favorites back to life.
“Living” Rooms
Joanna hates a room with a couch against the wall; not only is it ugly, but it traps the energy in the room. A room should flow, and the feeling in the air should be one of movement and light. Move the couch to the middle of the room, or at least two feet away from the wall, and see what happens. You will notice you don’t slump on it as often as you did, gazing at the television and wondering what snacks are hidden in the cupboards.
How Not to Die
If you are unlucky enough not to know a witch who will be able to drag you back from the Kingdom of the Dead, you should do your best to live as long as possible. There are many ways to do it: eat healthily, exercise, see a doctor annually, blah blah blah. But for Joanna, a life is more than a body going through the motions. What is life if there is nothing to live for? Feed your soul as much as your physical self.
Soul Foods
Make friends, take an interest in people, meet your neighbors (Joanna bets you don’t know their names), make sure you see your friends if not once a week, then once a month. Take the time to laugh, and not just on your couch with the television. Laughter restores the spirit, creates bonds between people, and brings happiness to your daily life.
Don’t be a zombie. Don’t sleepwalk through life. Participate. You don’t have to be a witch to have a long and immortal life.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little sneak peek at Witches of East End!
Hope you enjoy the book when it comes out June 21, 2011.
xoxo
Melissa de la Cruz
Melissa de la Cruz is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling series Blue Bloods, which has three million copies in print. She is a former journalist who has contributed to many publications, including Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, and Marie Claire. She spent many summers on Shelter Island, which served as the inspiration for the fictional town of North Hampton. She lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs with her family and is hard at work on the second book in the Beauchamp Family series.
* adapted from The New York Times
