Just as Ingrid had predicted, Tabitha was soon pregnant. It took only a week for the news to spread around town, and only a few days before certain women decided that they, too, wanted to see if their local librarian could help them with their problems. On a bright Monday morning in June, the glowing mother-to-be regaled yet another group of women gathered around the main counter with her story. It was one they had heard already, but it didn’t keep Tabitha from telling it, and her audience was happy enough to hear it once more while awaiting their turn to see Ingrid.
“The doctors said it was a medical miracle! Because our tests came back, you know, and they were bad. They said it was virtually impossible for me to get pregnant, but it happened! All thanks to Ingrid! Did you hear what she did for Stephanie Curran? Cured her of that rash that never went away! I swear, the woman is a miracle worker! Well, not a miracle worker but some kind of witch, maybe!”
“Witch!” Mona Boyard repeated, a bit shocked.
“Witch, please,” Hudson interrupted, with a hand on his hip. “This is North Hampton. We prefer ‘special caregiver.’ You know, like a reader or a psychic,” he said brightly.
No one knew exactly how Ingrid helped people, only that it worked without any obvious medical or scientific explanation. So it had to be some kind of . . . magic? But who believed in magic in this day and age? The women of North Hampton didn’t care what it was called, only that they wanted it for themselves if it worked.
At first Ingrid had not wanted to take the credit for Tabitha’s pregnancy, or to dispense any more help or advice, but she soon found it difficult to refuse. Since no lightning bolt came flying out of the sky after she’d given Tabitha the fertility charm, it seemed only fair to help everyone who asked. Maybe Freya was right, maybe it had been so long that the Council had forgotten about them, maybe nothing would come of it this time. Ingrid was willing to take that chance. She couldn’t deny it either: practicing magic again was not only enjoyable but gave her a sense of purpose. There was meaning in her life again. She had wasted so much time and effort in denying her innate talents, burying herself in endless small tasks and taking a job at a library: one she enjoyed, of course—but still. This was what she was put on earth to do. To hell with that restriction, surely after so many years they had earned a pass? Maybe the Council wouldn’t even notice. Besides, the citizens of North Hampton were enlightened, neither fearful nor superstitious. They were curious and skeptical, but willing to try something new.
She was surprised to find an unusual run of bad luck in each supplicant’s tale. Some problems, while minor, had been impossible to fix in the ordinary sense: strange aches and pains that no amount of medicine could cure; temporary blindness, bizarre headaches, frequent nightmares. There were several women, much younger than Tabitha, who had also been having trouble conceiving, their spirits blocked by the same silvery mass she had first seen in her coworker. Ingrid worked hard, creating pentagrams, lighting tapered candles, giving out a few little knots, a charm or a spell or two. She accepted clients, as Hudson called them, only during her lunch hour. After all, she had an exhibit to plan and documents to steam. As recompense, Ingrid asked that they donate what they could afford to the library fund, raising money by charging people for something they wanted and that she could give them. Maybe she could close the gap in that budget yet, and their ambitious mayor would drop the idea of selling off the library.
Her last visitor was Emily Foster, an attractive woman in her late thirties. Emily was a well-regarded artist around town, known for her giant abstract murals of seascapes and horses. She lived with her husband, Lionel Horning, who was also an artist, on a farm at the city’s edge, where they raised animals. They kept the Beauchamps stocked with fresh eggs and milk and never asked for payment since Joanna regularly dropped off vegetables from her garden. “How can I help you?” Ingrid asked.
“It’s such an odd thing,” Emily said, blowing her nose. “But I need something to . . . I don’t know . . . it’s so stupid. . . .”
“There are no judgments here, Em,” Ingrid promised.
“I just . . . I can’t seem to focus lately. I’ve never had this problem before . . . being blocked, you know? But it’s like I can’t even paint or anything. . . . It’s so strange. I mean, of course once in a while you get stuck . . . but it’s been two weeks now and I can’t seem to concentrate on it. It’s like my mind is just . . . blank . . . like I can’t see anything, no shapes or anything . . . just grayness.” She barked a laugh. “Can you cure artist’s block?”
“I can try,” Ingrid said.
“Thank you.” Emily’s eyes watered. “I’ve got an exhibit in a few months. I’d really appreciate it.”
She placed Emily in a pentagram, lit the candle, and assessed her spirit. Yes, there it was, that same silvery mass, right in the middle of her torso, and by now Ingrid was quite adept at yanking it out. Ingrid realized it did not just block the creation of life, but it blocked the process of creation itself. Ingrid thought she might have to mention it to Joanna at some point. There were just too many instances lately to be random. There was something odd going on here.
Later that afternoon, Ingrid resumed her real work and began the task of preparing the Gardiner blueprints for the show. She stood at the conference table and slowly unrolled the heavy set of drawings. The sheets were large, almost as big as the table, and the paper was yellowed and fragile. Ingrid expertly thumbed through the pages until she found the site plan. She always started there. A set of design plans was like a novel in a way, a text prepared for the builder, a story written by the architect on how the house should be built. The site plan was like an introduction to the novel.
The site plan showed wavy concentric lines circling a single point at the center, a blocky shape drawn in dark pencil, which represented Fair Haven. She leaned in closely to examine the heavy pencil lines. Each set of drawings contained its own language of keys: symbols and marks that led to specific drawings for each part of the house. A design set blossomed from the outside in, from the site plan to the main floor plan to specific elevations and details.
As she moved through the drawing set, an image of the house began to form in her mind. She glanced from the key on the main floor plan to an elevation of the main ballroom, and turned back to make sure she had read it correctly. That was odd. The elevation key was different from the one that resided on the site plan. Most architecture keys were made up of numbers and letters such as “A 2.1 /1” inside a small circle, but this number tag was elaborately decorated with twisting patterns.
Ingrid pulled a chair out so she could sit down and look more closely at the tiny cartouche. There was something intriguing about the dense pattern of shapes. The swirling lines appeared floral in nature, suggestive of the arabesques of art nouveau, and as she continued to stare at them, the shapes began to resemble letters; but if they were letters they were from a language she could not understand, had never seen before. They weren’t Egyptian hieroglyphs or any dead language that she had a passing familiarity with in all her time on earth.
She went through more of the drawings and found several similarly decorated tags, not just room tags and wall tags, but tags for fixtures and finishes, each emblazoned with the elaborate script, and each one unlike the other. She had never seen anything like it in any drawing set before. Ingrid was familiar with the standard architectural keys, and was certain that whatever was written around the keys was not meant for any builder or contractor. Drawing keys were meant to carry the reader from one drawing to another, but these keys had some other function hidden within them, one that had nothing to do with the architecture or construction of the house.
Ingrid pulled her phone from her pocket, zoomed in on one of the strange tags, and snapped a picture. She dropped it into an e-mail. While she couldn’t read the language, she knew someone who might, thinking of the letters she always kept in her pocket.
chapter eleven
The Sunshine of Her Life