“Nothing tonight, thanks. I was just looking for my—”
There was a huge whoop from the other end of the counter and Kristy shrugged. “She’s in fine form tonight. I told her if she didn’t settle down I was going to cut her off in a bit,” she said, making a slashing motion in front of her throat. “She won’t tell me what’s wrong but she’s been hitting the tequila pretty hard.”
Ingrid nodded. Tequila was Freya’s answer to any emotional upheaval. She looked to where the commotion was and found her sister downing shots and calling out the answers to trivia questions in between sucking lime halves.
“Freya!”
“Inge! What are you doing here?” Freya asked, looking surprised but happy to see her. She grabbed Ingrid in a bear hug, and Ingrid smelled the alcohol on her breath.
Ingrid wasted no time. She leaned close to her sister’s ear and whispered angrily, “Are you having an affair with Killian Gardiner?”
Freya sobered up quickly after that.
“Don’t deny it,” Ingrid warned, as she drove her sister home. Freya had pleaded to be able to finish her drinks but Ingrid was not having it. Now the sisters were sitting in the car, Freya staring pensively out the window, while Ingrid fumed at the steering wheel.
“I’m not,” Freya said a tad petulantly. Of course Ingrid was bound to find out about her and Killian. She had been waiting for this to happen; the only surprising thing about this development was how long it took for Ingrid to come to this conclusion. Her sister usually knew all her secrets even before she knew them herself.
Ingrid looked at her sideways. “I felt it.”
“Ew! Don’t tell me how! You had one of your creepy dreams?”
“Creepy doesn’t cut it.” Ingrid shuddered, remembering the cold hands around her neck and the way his body had felt on hers. She shook her head. “What are you doing? I thought you were in love with Bran, that you thought he was ‘the one.’ ”
“I know. I told Killian things were over between us this afternoon. I ended it.” Freya sighed.
“Good.” Ingrid looked at her sister from the corner of her eye, so she could still keep an eye out for oncoming traffic. “It’s for the best, Freya. Remember what happened last time you got married.”
Freya did not answer and they drove in silence for a while, along the dark and deserted highway. “I’m scared,” Ingrid said finally. “I had a horrible day. Someone called me a witch this afternoon, in front of everyone at work.”
Freya flinched. “Yikes.”
“Corky Hutchinson. I knew I shouldn’t have given her that stupid knot. She wasn’t going to keep him home. Damnit!” Ingrid never cursed but she was unnerved and upset. “Pardon.”
“It’s not your fault,” Freya soothed. “We all know your magic doesn’t work that way. Your knot didn’t kill Todd. He killed himself, Ingrid. Who knows why.”
“I don’t know . . .” Ingrid chewed her bottom lip. “I want to think that I couldn’t have done anything, but I was so upset. He’s going to tear down the library. . . . What if I didn’t mean to do it but it still happened? It’s been so long since I’ve practiced magic, I might be rusty. I could have inadvertently twisted it the wrong way.” Ingrid felt a cold dread sinking in her stomach. What if, even if she had not meant to practice black magic, she had done so anyway? There weren’t any rules when it came to this sort of thing. Anything could happen. She could have killed Todd. Maybe she did.
“You’re being paranoid,” Freya soothed. “You can’t even hex a fly. There’s no way you are to blame for what happened to him.”
“But I was so angry . . . and Corky, she screamed it, in front of everyone. She called me a witch! Almost everyone in town has been to see me, Freya. They believe I practice magic. They’ve seen it work for them.”
“So?” Freya shrugged.
“So? Don’t you remember what happened last time we practiced magic openly?”
Freya began to doodle on the condensation on the window from the air-conditioning. “Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about? This is North Hampton! And last I checked, the calendar said we were in the twenty-first century. They might think that you’ve cured their aches and pains and made some difficult problems go away, but deep down? Do you think they really believe in magic? No freaking way. No one believes in us anymore. We’re safe,” Freya stressed. “Look around, this is a world of science and technology, of computers and gadgetry. They have iPads and GPS and microwaves. They don’t even worry about death, because according to them, you can beat cancer by just eating tofu! This isn’t like before.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Freya rolled down her window to feel the ocean breeze. “I’m sure I am.”
Ingrid stopped the car with a screech and Freya’s head bumped the dashboard. “Oops, sorry about that,” Ingrid said. “There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you. You know that guy Mom saved from death? Lionel Horning?”
“Yeah? What about him?”
“Well, he’s missing,” Ingrid said. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten to mention it until now, but she had been so rattled by Corky Hutchinson’s actions that afternoon and that terrible dream she had that evening that it had completely slipped her mind.
“What do you mean he’s missing?”
“Emily came by, said he’s been acting weird, talking about a path in the mountains and how he didn’t belong around here, and how he was taking a few people with him.”
“What?”
“I know. It sounds like he might be going zombie.” Ingrid sighed. Like Freya, she knew that when a human soul had spent a considerable amount of time in the glom, there was the risk that the physical body would not accept its resurrection if the soul and the body had grown too detached from the other. It rarely happened, Joanna was too good at her job, but it wasn’t unheard of for the dead to come back to life only to succumb to a bad case of zombititis.
Freya gasped. “You don’t think he had anything to do with Molly . . . ?” she said.
“I don’t know—I mean, Lionel isn’t violent. I mean, unless Helda put more of herself in him before Mom got him out of Deadville.”
“Since when has he been missing?”
“Since the Fourth of July weekend.” The same night Molly Lancaster had disappeared.
“Oh, good lord!”
“There’s another thing,” Ingrid said, twiddling her thumbs. She pushed up her glasses on her nose. In her haste to find her sister, she had forgotten to put in her contacts. Her black-rimmed spectacles made her look older than she was; Ingrid hated wearing them, as she looked too much like the classic small-town librarian already.
Freya turned to her sister. “There’s something else other than a possible zombie on the loose in North Hampton?”
Ingrid tried not to look too sheepish. “Right after the holiday weekend . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Someone came to visit me. One of the Fallen.”
Freya glared at her. “A vampire came to visit you and you didn’t tell me? Why not?”
“I didn’t think it was important.” Ingrid sighed. “I don’t know. I was embarrassed. I couldn’t make her go away so I helped her. I know the rules, we’re not supposed to have anything to do with them. But she asked for help and I gave it.”
“When was this?”
“I told you, right after the Fourth. She said she’d been in town all weekend, mentioned seeing you at the North Inn that Friday night.”
Freya tried to remember. Wouldn’t she have noticed a vampire at her bar? The last time she had come in contact with the Fallen was through the boy she had cured in New York last fall, right before she moved back to North Hampton, and with a start she realized she might have caught a glimpse of him somewhere lately—was it at the North Inn? What was his name again—Oliver? And wasn’t he with some icy blonde? Was that his new vampire? It was all so hazy. But then, that was the evening when things began to happen with Killian. No wonder she hadn’t paid attention. “Who was she? The blonde?” she asked.