She whispered fiercely, "Try it for once. Wear your hair down. And get rid of those shoes. And that sweater. Wear slip-on shoes. One of those cardigans that open in the front. No zippers. No buttons. Nothing but free-floating fabric. Free. And no knots."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just try it for a couple months. I read somewhere that it might work, it's like a karma thing." These days New Age wisdom was an easy enough explanation for a little bit of white magic. Tabitha told her she would consider it, but she left the storage room shaking her head.
Ingrid brushed off signs of the pentagram and went back to work, her mind still racing. Of course, wearing flowy fabrics didn't cut it on its own. She had to fight fire with fire, or knots with a knot of her own. When Tabitha wasn't looking, Ingrid took some of Tabitha's hair that had shed on her office chair. Now all she needed was one of Chad's. . . . Then she thought, Tabitha kept an afghan in their car. . . . Chad had dark hair, so it would be easy enough to find one of his since Tab was blond. During her break, Ingrid let herself into Tabitha's Camry and found what she was looking for. Back at her office, she threaded the two strands together, making a tiny, insect-size knot, while she hurriedly chanted the right words for the charm.
Her heart thrummed within her chest, and goose bumps prickled her arms as her fingers worked quickly, twisting and turning. This wasn't magic, she kept telling herself. It was just a few words. A tiny little knot. No one would ever have to know. This was even more fun than removing that blockage; instead of merely cutting out the garbage, here she was creating something. Ingrid felt the magic bubbling inside, the thrilling rush that came from harnessing and directing a wild and unimaginable power to her bidding, and she felt her cheeks turn red with excitement. She had missed this more than she could admit.
"What are you making?"
The sound of the voice shook her and the spell broke. Ingrid quickly put the knot away in her pocket. "Matthew Noble! You surprised me." She didn't answer his question.
"It's Matt, I keep telling you." Matthew Noble smiled. He was a senior detective with the police department and even at thirty still looked like the college athlete he had once been, tall, with light brown hair, a pleasant Irish face, pale skin, sunburned nose, clear blue eyes, wearing his uniform of rumpled sports jacket and tan slacks. She could sense something in the way he looked at her - too frankly and too, well, appreciatively. He was certainly good-looking, but she wasn't interested - not at all - and it was becoming something of a nuisance, his crush on her. It made her uncomfortable. Especially since he never did anything about it. If only he would ask her out so she could crush his crush. Yet he seemed satisfied with merely looking at her and needling her for books. She doubted he ever read them. He didn't seem the bookish type.
"Sorry to bother you, but there was no one at the front desk. And I thought you might have a book to recommend." When he smiled his teeth actually shone.
"I sure do," Ingrid replied, thinking quickly. "Here," she said, pressing J. J. Ramsey Baker's latest into his hands. Ha. See what he thought of that! Serves Matthew Noble (did they live in Our Town? Could his name be even more corny?) right. At least she had found a way to put his attraction to her to good use. "If you like the book I'd love it if you could recommend it to a lot more people." Maybe that way she could keep it on the shelves and the sensitive author wouldn't have a temper tantrum when he found it kicked to the curb, she thought, as she stamped his library card and logged the transaction in the computer.
"Sure will." Matt nodded, putting the book away without even glancing at its cover. He looked as if he were going to say something more, then decided against it. Ingrid watched him leave, noting his broad shoulders and easy glide, then went back to her weaving. Before the end of the day, she slipped the little knot of hair in Tabitha's purse.
No magic here. Just a lucky knot to help a friend, that was all it was, Ingrid kept telling herself. No one would ever know or find out.
Chapter seven
A New Boy
Motherhood had robbed Joanna of her figure, of that she was sure. No matter how much she dieted (and she had tried them all: the Atkins and the Zone, the low-cal and the low-carb, the cabbage and the cookie, the Jenny and the Watchers, the South Beach and the Sugar Busters, the tea and juice cleanses, the endless hours spent exercising - first the running and then the spinning - the step classes and the yoga and the Pilates), she never could get rid of those dreaded last ten pounds, that tire around her belly. Her daughters chided her on her obsession, telling her she looked good for her age. And what age would that be exactly? Six thousand years?
It was understood that women of a certain age no longer cared about their looks, but it was a lie. Vanity did not die of old age, especially in beautiful women, and oh, she had been beautiful once - so beautiful that she had wed the most fearsome god of all. But it was too late to think of what had been. Her husband had abandoned her, along with her good looks, a long time ago. Oh, in the right light she was attractive, she supposed, she was still "handsome," but who wanted to be called handsome when one was once beautiful?
The problem, as she saw it, was that right when she would finally get her figure back, bam, she would find herself pregnant again, and the whole cycle of gaining and losing would start up once more. The children had to be reborn whenever they got themselves into trouble and had to leave the world, or else had been pushed out of it by accident (a car crash, maybe; Freya had once perished in a hotel fire) or malice (like the crisis that had claimed their lives in the seventeenth century), and Joanna would begin to feel the symptoms. It usually happened after she hadn't heard from her girls in a century or two. First, her gray hair would turn blond again. She would marvel at her changed appearance, the loss of wrinkles, the fat in her cheeks, strong hands that did not ache from arthritis. Then it would happen: the vomiting, the nausea, the exhaustion. And she would realize: goddamnit, she was pregnant!
Nine months later she would have a fat, crying baby to care for and love. This time the girls were reborn just a few years apart, so that in the current lifetime they had grown up like proper sisters again, squabbling over toys, annoying each other on long car rides. Life had been a happy tedium of preschool and swimming and gymnastics and endless birthday parties along with the occasional accidental magical outburst: Ingrid's griffin causing havoc with the flower beds; and having to keep Freya from hexing mean girls she did not like.