The sand by the water’s edge was cold and wet, so Joanna decided to walk up the sandy dune instead. She climbed up, feeling the thick grass and withered stems scrape at her legs, until she was on top of it. The wind was colder up here, but the view was better. She could see all the way across to Gardiners Island and Fair Haven, to the lighthouse that Bran had restored. Joanna decided to sit and rest for a minute, and idly grasped a stalk of the long, dead grass that covered the mound. She hated to see dead things, and the brittle gray stem began to loosen and expand in her grip, its ashen color changing from silver to a brilliant green as life poured back into the plant. Hold on, what was happening? She had not done anything to bring it back to life, she was quite sure. Joanna watched in fascination as the green spread like a wave across the dune, bringing all the plants to life. She threw the stalk away and gazed in wonderment at the thick green grass. It felt lush and soft to the touch, and had grown waist-high.
She almost laughed, but there was a sudden tickle at the back of her neck and she spun around. All around her the grass had multiplied and was winding upward around her on all sides. The verdant green now seemed a darker color, as if covered by a shadow. The stalks whipped violently around her. This was not cute anymore, nor part of her magic, if it had ever been. She turned to leave, but before she could act, Joanna felt a powerful tug and she was thrown to the ground. The stars faded as a wash of darkness flowed over her body and the grass wrapped and twisted around her throat and chest. The texture of the grass was no longer soft but coarse, its stems harder and denser. Joanna struggled, but as the grass wound tighter it formed a kind of natural straightjacket, binding her limbs and flattening her chest. She felt a mass push down on her as if to force the air from lungs. Joanna screamed and heard her voice echo against the lonely beach. The party was distant, its loud sounds inaudible.
Joanna pulled at the stalk nearest her head and squeezed, shouting an incantation she had not used in a very long time. But the words worked, and the tangle around her face dispersed. She could see the stars again, and the stalks began to weaken and slide away, thinning like an old man’s hair right before her eyes.
Whatever had brought the plants to life was gone, and all around the grass was gray and withered as before. She wasn’t sure if the plants had reacted to her presence, or if her magic had accidentally disturbed them. Certainly North Hampton was a place where things like this could happen, being so close to the seam and all. Ingrid had mentioned something in passing the other morning, about how she had noticed a gray darkness in the spirits of the people in town. Joanna had meant to look into it but had been busy with home renovations and with Tyler. The boy had recovered from that nasty ear infection and was back to his old habits: lining up his trains, running around in circles, refusing to eat anything but tunafish sandwiches.
Joanna chided herself for allowing herself to be distracted; constant vigilance was key to keeping North Hampton protected. She stood and scurried down the bluff, tearing at the dead grass as she cut through it on her way back to the beach. First the three dead birds, now this. There was something new and strange in town; something wicked this way had come.
chapter sixteen
Friend or Fraud
Shall I send in the rabid hordes?” Hudson asked, leaning on the office door, his hand on the doorknob. Ingrid knew he found the whole enterprise on the droll side—he insisted on calling her the White Witch of the Library, and had threatened to market T-shirts, or worse, start a Web site.
“Don’t make fun.” Ingrid frowned as she put away her files and cleared her desk in anticipation. She liked the office to look generic when her clients entered and not messy and stacked with blueprints and archival material.
Hudson looked hurt. “I’m not. I find it all sweet, really.”
“Do you believe what they say about me?” she asked. They had never really talked about what she was doing; everything had happened so quickly that they hadn’t had a second to themselves to chat. They used to spend lunch hours together, but Ingrid had little time for office camaraderie lately.
“The magic thing?” Hudson asked. “The spells and charms?” He put a finger against his cheek. “Not sure I believe in anything, really. I think you just tell them what they want to hear. Isn’t that how so-called ‘psychics’ work? Like that bearded quack on the cable network who speaks to the dead?”
“Hudson! You think I’m a fraud!” Ingrid barked a laugh, trying not to feel too offended. She had expected to hear that he was skeptical or doubtful, but not that he assumed she was merely playing parlor tricks.
“You’re not?” Hudson asked, a face of innocence. “I thought it was all a ruse to get people to come to the library and read books, and donate to the cause. Very clever, really. You’re always trying to figure out how to make the library more popular—I assumed you’d finally figured out how.”
When he put it that way, it sounded so reasonable, but Ingrid itched to show him just how much she could do. She gave him a look.
“Wait a minute, so you’re not just making it up?” Hudson asked.
“Try me,” Ingrid said. “Surely there’s something you want that you can’t get otherwise.”
“You can’t help me.” Hudson shrugged. He fished in his back pocket and showed her a worn brochure. Ingrid unfolded it slowly and read the headline. gay? you don’t have to be! heterosexuality is just 12 steps away!
“Mother is insisting I consult this . . . ‘therapist.’ One of those people who can, you know, cure me of my disease.”
“Oh, dear.” Ingrid put a hand on her mouth.
“I suppose it is amusing.” Hudson sighed, rolling his eyes in agreement.
“Of course not. It’s just . . . Hudson, this is ridiculous.” She returned the brochure to him and held his hand for a beat longer than necessary. “Hudson?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Come to the back with me, let me read your lifeline.”
“No thanks. I don’t like knowing the future. I don’t even know where I’ll be tomorrow.”
“You’ll be here. Working at the library until the wrecking ball hits. Come on. I insist,” Ingrid said, leading him to the storage room. She placed him in the middle of the room and drew a pentagram around his feet.
Hudson tried not to giggle. “Spooky!” he said.
“Shush!” Ingrid said, trying to peer into his lifeline. With the witch sight from the pentagram, it should have been clear, but there was something blocking her view—a hazy gray darkness, a blankness right where the vision should be. She lit another candle and murmured a few words, and the gray haze dissipated somewhat and she was able to see a little more clearly.
She switched on the lights and faced her friend. “For what it’s worth, your mother will come around one day,” she told him. She had seen it in his lifeline, the slow thawing of his mother’s stubborn heart, the ingrained homophobia (it was all right for her hairdresser, her interior decorator, her personal chef to be gay—just not her son!) battling with the fierce love she felt for her handsome boy. Missing him during every lonely Christmas. The slow, tentative steps toward reconciliation and forgiveness. A mother, son, and son-in-law trip to Paris. “She loves you, Hudson. Don’t give up on her.”
“Hmm” was all Hudson would say, but she knew he was moved. Later he left a bouquet of her favorite flowers on her desk.
Over the next hour Ingrid helped a variety of women with their concerns: more headaches, more bizarre skin infections, a pet or two who had died suddenly. Ingrid was not sure what they thought she could do about their dead animals, but she made a note of it, thinking of the dead birds her mother had seen earlier that summer. Emily Foster, the artist who had been blocked in her work, walked in at the end of the hour.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she told Ingrid, looking pale and wan in an Indian tunic and silk pants stained with paint.
“It’s not a bother, Em. Blocked again?”
“No, no, the work is going well. It’s Lionel,” Emily said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know if you heard, but he’s in bad shape.”
“I hadn’t heard, what happened?”
“He was out in the water the day of the accident—you know, that big explosion off the coast. He always takes his sunfish out in the mornings. The waves knocked him out cold and he swallowed a lot of water.” Emily wiped the corners of her eyes with her fluttering hands and took a deep breath. “He would have died—he would have drowned—but luckily a couple of surfers found him and brought him to shore.”
“Oh my god.”
“I know.” Emily nodded. “They knew CPR, so they got his heart to start beating again and they took him to a hospital.”
Ingrid looked relieved. “So he’s alive?”