Once upon a time in North Hampton…
In a rambling colonial house in a little elusive town by the sea on Long Island’s northern and easternmost tip, a silver-haired witch named Joanna Beauchamp lived with her two daughters, Ingrid and Freya. Blond and brainy, thirty-something Ingrid was the local librarian, while barely-out-of-her-teens Freya was the wildest bartender who had ever mixed drinks at the North Inn’s bar. The women lived quiet, solitary lives, suppressing their natural talents in adherence to the Restriction of Magical Powers. The law was handed down from the White Council after the Salem witch trials effectively ended the practice of magic in mid-world after Freya and Ingrid were hanged in 1692.
Immortals, the girls returned to life, scarred by the experience and wary of the mortal world, and small-town life continued apace for centuries until the day Freya won the heart of the very handsome and very wealthy philanthropist Bran Gardiner, whose family owned the Fair Haven estate on eponymous Gardiners Island. Helpless against the force of her desire, Freya celebrated her engagement by having a torrid affair with Bran’s younger brother, Killian, he of the dark, smoldering good looks and devil-may-care attitude.
Following Freya’s lead of throwing caution to the wind, the witches soon unleashed their full powers—Joanna, whose specialty was recovery and renewal, brought the dead to life. Ingrid, a healer who could tap into people’s lifelines and see the future, began to dole out her spells and charms to any patron with a trying domestic problem, and even gave the mayor’s wife a powerful fidelity knot. Freya, who specialized in matters of the heart, served up heady potions, and every night at the North Inn became a wild, hedonistic romp. It was all a bit of harmless, innocent, enchanted fun until a girl went missing, several residents began to suffer from a rash of inexplicable illnesses, and a dark menace was found growing in the waters off the Atlantic, poisoning the wildlife. When the mayor turned up dead, the finger-pointing began, and for a moment it felt like the Salem witch trials all over again.
But these were no ordinary witches, and Fair Haven was no ordinary mansion. Rushing to untangle the mystery, Ingrid discovered archaic Norse symbols in a blueprint of Fair Haven manor, but just as she was close to cracking the code, the document disappeared. Freya discovered she was caught in a centuries-old love triangle with Bran and Killian that harked back to the days of Asgard itself, when she was pursued by her true love, Balder, the god of joy, and his brother, Loki, the god of mischief.
Soon, Norman Beauchamp, Joanna’s long-lost ex-husband, was back in the picture, and everyone was trying to save not just their little town, but all the nine known worlds of the universe from Ragnarok, the doom of the gods.
Because once upon a time in Asgard, the Bofrir bridge connected the kingdom of the divine to Midgard, the mortal world. One fateful day, the bridge was destroyed, and the mighty strength of all the gods’ powers along with it. The culprits of this heinous act were said to be Fryr of the Vanir and his friend Loki of the Aesir, two daring young gods whose childish prank wrought terrible consequences. Accused of trying to take the bridge’s power for themselves, Loki was banished to the frozen depths for five thousand years, while Fryr, the god of sun and harvests, was consigned to Limbo for an indefinite period, as his crime had been the greater one. It was Fryr’s trident that had sent the bridge to the abyss.
With the bridge destroyed, the gods were separated. The Vanir (or as they were known today, the Beauchamp family, gods and goddesses of hearth and earth) were trapped in Midgard, sentenced to live their lives in mid-world as witches and warlocks, while the Aesir (the warrior gods of sky and light, mighty Odin and his wife, Frigg) remained in Asgard, but both of their sons were lost to them for thousands of years. Their sons were Balder and Loki, Branford and Killian Gardiner. It appeared Loki had poisoned Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and unleashed the doom of the gods, so Freya banished him from their world.
Fryr was Freddie Beauchamp, Joanna’s long-lost son and Freya’s twin, who suddenly appeared to Freya in the alley behind the North Inn one evening with unsettling news. He had escaped from Limbo, and revealed that he had been framed for the destruction of the Bofrir and knew the identity of the real culprit.
No, it wasn’t Loki. Not Bran Gardiner at all, but Killian Gardiner, the god Balder, who was responsible for its destruction and Freddie’s imprisonment.
Determined to prove her lover’s innocence, Freya turned Killian’s boat, the Dragon, upside down to follow her brother’s wishes. She didn’t find the missing trident, but one night, she found something else: the mark of the trident on his back, which proved Killian did indeed have the weapon in his possession.
Meanwhile, Ingrid was falling in love for the first time in centuries with Matthew Noble, a sweet police detective. But romance between a virgin witch and a mortal was complicated, not to mention a rowdy band of lost pixies caused further havoc by robbing treasures from the great homes in the area. Ingrid was forced to choose her loyalties—to the mortal who loved her, or to the magical creatures who only needed her help.
Back from Limbo, Freddie spent his time shagging coeds and playing video games until his attentions were focused on the lovely Hilly, the goddess Brünnhilde. Only one thing stood in his way: her father, who manipulated Freddie into signing a document that bound him to marry his daughter Gert instead.
Joanna had problems of her own, as a charming widower and her ex-husband competed for her attentions, while a troubled spirit made contact with her, to warn her that a powerful evil was bent on destroying the Beauchamps—an evil that had begun all the way back in Fairstone in the seventeenth century, with Lion Gardiner, Loki in yet another incarnation.
The pixies confessed to stealing the trident and placing it on the Dragon to incriminate the innocent Killian, but it was too late as Hilly’s sorority sisters, the Valkyries, had already whisked him away for punishment. Freya was still in shock at his sudden disappearance when she, too, was snatched away from North Hampton, a noose appearing around her neck…
Which meant that she had been taken back to Salem, and unless her family could figure out a way to rescue her from the darkness of their past…
Freya was cursed to relive the witch trials all over again… The girls will not stop. They babble and fling their arms, or become deaf and dumb. When anyone approaches, they hide in corners or under the furniture. Physicians, ministers, and men of Salem Town have come, and they advise fasting and prayer from the community. Fasting and prayer.