“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?
chapter four
Every Little Thing
She Does Is Magic
Before acquiring a certain curly-haired bartender last fall, the North Inn bar was a sleepy little place, the kind of shabby pub that locals liked to congregate in to trade gossip and visit with one another without having to fight scores of inebriated preppies for a table. Memorial Day meant that summer had officially arrived, and even if the town was obscure and unknown, the seasonal swell of tourists to the East End brought a good number of visitors who found themselves within the city limits, and several new establishments had begun to cater to this crowd. But not the North Inn. The well drinks were strong and cheap, and other than a decent view of the water, that was pretty much all it had going for it.
How things had changed. It was still a local place but it was no longer quiet or hushed. The joint, as they said, was jumpin’, and did it ever. There was a loud, throbbing jukebox that played only the good stuff, when rock ’n’ roll was performed by real rock stars—yet another dying breed of the new era. Men in tight pants who sang lustily about women, drugs, and depravity had been consigned to celluloid parody or reality-TV rehabilitation. The old rock swagger was the exclusive province of rap music now, the only genre that still celebrated indulgence in all its forms. The boys with guitars had turned to writing moody little songs, safe little emotional ditties that no one could dance to.
Freya liked rap just fine, and was known to blast the latest gangster throw-downs now and then, but at the North Inn she preferred the classics. The Brits: The Sex Pistols. The Clash. The ’70s rock-opera–stylists: Queen. Yes. Early Genesis (this was crucial—Peter Gabriel–led Genesis, not the earsore it became under Phil Collins). Metal: Led Zeppelin. Deep Purple. Metallica. Party Rock: AC/DC. Def Leppard. M?tley Crüe if she was feeling a tad ironic. Since she’d arrived to work at the North Inn, the place was always blasting with the screech of guitars and the fist-pumping dance-floor anthems that drove the crowd to its feet. But next to the drinks she poured, the music was almost irrelevant.
The redheaded bartender had a way of making the cocktails just right: the gin and tonics tart and bracing, the dark and stormies luscious with bite. It was a party every night, and every evening ended with patrons dancing on the bar, losing their inhibitions and occasionally their clothing. If you came into the North Inn alone and feeling blue, you left with either a new friend or a hangover, sometimes both.
However, a week after her engagement party, the bar, like Freya, was a bit subdued. While the music was still loud and strong, it had an underlying mournful echo. The Rolling Stones sang “Waiting on a Friend”: I’m not waiting on a lady, I’m just waiting on a friend . . . , the cocktails were limp and sweet, the gin fizz didn’t fizz, the champagne was flat, the beer turned lukewarm after only a few minutes. It was just like the engagement party, but worse. She was glad Ingrid wasn’t around to notice; she didn’t want her sister any more suspicious than she already was. What happened with Killian that evening had been an impulsive act, but it was over now and everything would be all right. There was no need to panic. So what if all she could dream about was Killian? So what if he had invaded her consciousness, had become the subject of her every waking thought? When she closed her eyes, she could still see his beautiful face, hovering above hers. She would make it go away. She would make him go away. If only it was Killian who was halfway around the world and not her love.
Bran called earlier: he had arrived safely in Denmark and was on his way to his meeting. She knew she had to get used to it; from the beginning he had explained that his life and his work entailed a great amount of travel and that he was rarely home, but he was planning to slow down after the wedding. Hearing his voice had cheered her up a little, but her dark mood continued to build as she leaned back on the bar, watching customers arrive. Dan Jerrods and his new girlfriend, Amanda Turner, walked in, and an image flashed in Freya’s mind: Dan had Amanda up against a wall, the two of them gasping and clutching at each other, Amanda’s blouse unbuttoned, Dan’s jeans at his knees. That was just a few minutes before they’d set off for the bar. It was early in their relationship, and sex was still their way of saying hello. Freya certainly spoke that language.
Right behind the postcoital couple was Mayor Todd Hutchinson (fervent masturbation last night in front of a computer), with his friend, flashy developer Blake Aland (a tangle of some sort in his car the other week: it was blurry and the vision wouldn’t focus, but Freya sensed some kind of sexual frustration here), then the good reverend and his wife (a flash of leather whips and masks over the holiday weekend). Sometimes Freya felt a bit dizzy from all the information. She should be used to it by now, her talent—she refused to call it a “gift”—but it still came as a surprise.
This was just another manifestation of her nature, the ability to see intense emotion—and it wasn’t just sexual passion or romantic love that she was able to see. Freya could also read intense anger and hatred, the opposite of love as it were: murderous rage, overwhelming anxiety. Over the centuries, her talent had been very useful. Although there was very little of it, North Hampton was not immune from crime. When it did happen, it was usually scandalous and spectacular, like the chilling murder of a socialite who had been poisoned at her own dinner party, or sad and unusual, like what had happened to Bill and Maura Thatcher. Their bodies had been found on the beach just last winter, both of them bleeding from the head. Bill died from his injuries but Maura was still in intensive care, comatose at the hospital.