Ingrid gave her friend another tight hug and walked out of the office, her cheeks burning and her heart thumping in her chest because she of all people knew that what Tabitha said wasn't true. There was someone who could help, someone who could change her life, someone much closer to Tab than she thought. But my hands are tied, Ingrid said to herself. There's nothing I can do for her. Not without breaking the bonds of the restriction. Not without putting myself in danger as well.
She went back to her station behind the front desk, just another small-town librarian immersed in her daily task. Her sweater was still damp from her friend's tears. If Ingrid had never resented their situation before, had never chafed against the restriction that was placed upon them before, well. There was always a first time for everything.
Chapter three
Home Fires
Old houses had a way of getting under your skin, Joanna Beauchamp knew; not just your skin but into your soul, as well as deep into your pocketbook, defying reason or logic in an ever-elusive quest for perfection. Over the years, the Beauchamp homestead, a stately colonial built in the late 1740s with pretty gables and a saltbox roof located right on the beach, in the older part of town, had been refashioned in many ways: walls torn down, kitchens moved, bedrooms redistributed. It was a house that had weathered many seasons and storms, and its crumbling walls echoed with memories - the massive brick fireplace had kept them warm for countless winters, the multitude of stains on the marble-topped kitchen counters recalled various cozy repasts. The living room floors had been stripped, redone, then stripped again. Now oak, then travertine, currently wood again - a gleaming red cherry. There was a reason old houses were called money pits, white elephants, folly.
Joanna enjoyed putting the house in order on her own. To her, a home renovation was constantly evolving and never quite finished. Plus, she preferred doing it herself; the other week she had personally retiled and grouted the guest bathroom. Today she was tackling the living room. She dipped her roller back into the aluminum tray of paint. The girls would laugh - they teased her for her habit of changing the wall colors several times a year on a whim. One month the living room walls were a dull burgundy, the next a serene blue. Joanna explained to her daughters that living in a static house, one that never changed, was stifling and suffocating, and that changing your environment was even more important than changing your clothes. It was summer, hence the walls should be yellow.
She was wearing her usual tromp-about-the-house attire: a plaid shirt and old jeans, plastic gloves, green Hunter boots, a red bandanna over her gray hair. Funny, that gray. No matter how often she dyed her hair, when she woke up in the morning it was always the same color, a brilliant silver shade. Joanna, like her daughters, was neither old nor young, and yet their physical appearances corresponded to their particular talents. Depending on the situation, Freya could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty-three years of age, the first blush of Love, while Ingrid, keeper of the Hearth, looked and acted anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-five; and since Wisdom came from experience, even if in her heart she might feel like a schoolgirl, Joanna's features were those of an older woman in her early sixties.
It was good to be home and to have the girls with her. It had been too long and she had missed them more than she would admit. For many years after the restriction had first been imposed, the girls had wandered far and away, alone, aimless, and without purpose, and she could hardly blame them. They checked in only once in a while when they needed something: not just money, but reassurance, encouragement, compassion. Joanna bided her time; she knew the girls liked knowing that no matter where they went - Ingrid had lived in Paris and Rome for much of the last century, while Freya had spent a lot of time in Manhattan lately - their mother would always be at the kitchen counter, chopping onions for stock, and one day they would come home to her at last.
She finished with the far wall and assessed her work. She had chosen a pale daffodil yellow, a very Bouguereau shade: the color of a nymph's smile. Satisfied, she moved on to the other side. As she carefully painted around the window trim, she looked through the glass panels across the sea, to Gardiners Island and Fair Haven. The whirlwind around Freya's engagement had been exhausting, all that bowing and scraping to that Madame Grobadan, Bran's stepmother, who made it clear she thought her boy was too good for Freya. She was happy for her daughter, but apprehensive as well. Would her wild girl truly settle down this time? Joanna hoped Freya was right about Bran, that he was the one for her, the one she had been waiting for all these long years.
Not that anyone needed a husband. She should know. Been there, done that. And if some days she felt like a shriveled-up old hag whose insides were are dry as dust, whose skin had not touched that of a man for so long, those were the days when she was just feeling sorry for herself. It wasn't as if she had to be alone; there were many older gentlemen in town who had made it quite clear they would welcome the chance to make her nights less lonely. Yet she was not quite a widow, and she was not quite divorced, which meant she was not quite single or as free as she would like to be. She was separated. That was a good word. They lived separate lives now, and that was how she wanted it.
Her husband had been a good man, a good provider, her rock, when it all came down to it. But he had not been able to help them during the crisis and for that she would never forgive him. Of course it was not his fault, all that hysteria and bloodshed, but he had not been able to stop the Council from passing down their judgment either, when the dust finally settled and the evil had passed. Her poor girls: she could still see them, their lifeless bodies silhouetted in the dusk. She would never forget it, and even though they had come back relatively unscathed (if one considered being declawed, powerless, and domesticized unscathed) she could not quite find it in her heart to make room for him in her life once again.
"Right, Gilly?" she asked, turning to her pet raven, Gillbereth, who was privy to her thoughts and was currently perched on top of the grandfather clock.
Gilly fluffed her wings and craned her long black neck toward the window, and Joanna followed her gaze. When she saw what the raven wanted her to see she dropped her roller, splashing a few drops of paint on the stone floor. She rubbed it with her boot and made it worse.
The raven cawed.
"Okay, okay, I'll go down and check it out," she said, leaving the house through the back door and walking straight down to the dunes. Sure enough, there they were: three dead birds. They had drowned - their feathers were mottled and wet, and the skin around their talons looked burned. Their bodies formed an ugly cross on the pristine stretch of sand.