One of life’s greatest pleasures was returning home after a long trip, Joanna thought, as she put her carpetbag down in the hallway and hung her hat back on the hook. Gilly flew to her usual perch on the ceiling cove as Joanna turned on the lights. She was surprised to find the living room a mess, pillows on the floor, water bottles and wineglasses on the coffee table. The kitchen was worse, with its usual pile of dirty dishes and used pots on the stove. Joanna had gotten used to having the Alvarezes taking care of everything, and Gracella kept a very neat house. She rang the cottage but there was no answer. It was too late to say hello to Tyler anyway, she decided. She heard a car pull up and her daughters’ voices carry up from the driveway. Oh, good, they were home, she had quite a lot to tell them.
“Girls!” she said, throwing open the door.
“Mom!” Freya said, feeling guilty at the sight of her mother, even though nothing that had happened was technically her fault and at least one was certainly Joanna’s doing. Still, she did not relish telling her mother that in her absence, Ingrid had helped a vampire who had visited their town and that the nice guy Joanna had raised from the dead was now a zombie or, more likely, possessed by a demon.
“Where have you been?” Ingrid wanted to know.
Joanna ushered them inside and closed the door. “I’ve been looking for your father,” she said, wringing her hands. “I need his help. Listen, girls, there’s something you need to know about him—”
“I know where he is,” Ingrid interrupted.
“What do you mean, you know where Dad is?” Freya asked, staring at her sister. “And you didn’t say anything? How could you?”
“I’m sorry. He wrote me a few months ago. He wanted to get in touch with all of us, but he thought he’d try me first. He thought Mother would be too mad and that Freya would just burn his letters.”
Freya crossed her arms and flopped down on the nearest couch. “He was right about that. He left us, Ingrid. He abandoned our family! Don’t you get that?”
“I’m sorry, Mother. Freya. I didn’t want to tell you . . . I knew you would be angry, but I miss him so much. And he misses us, too. He just wants us to be a family again.”
“Yes, about your father,” Joanna said, her forehead creasing. “I need to tell you girls something. It’s very hard for me to say and I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.”
“Why? What are you talking about?” Freya asked.
Joanna looked them both straight in the eye, with her head held high, as if steeling herself for the gallows. “Your father did not leave you. I tossed him out. I told him he had to leave us alone and that if he tried to get in touch with either of you I would make sure he regretted it forever.”
For a moment neither of the girls spoke and a heavy silence fell, fraught with centuries of loss and heartache and resentment. Ingrid thought about all they had missed: years of her father’s sage advice, his protection, his love. Freya could not even speak. The betrayal was so cruel she felt a compression in the pit of her stomach, as if she were going to vomit. “Why, Mother?” she finally whispered.
“I’m so very sorry, my darlings. I could not stop myself, I was so angry about what happened during the trials. I wanted him to do something about it—break you both out of jail, use his power to sway the judge—but he would not. Because of the laws of mid-world of course. But I wasn’t thinking rationally.”
Freya blinked back tears. “You lied to us. You told us he left us, that he was ashamed of us. That he didn’t want anything more to do with our family.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Ingrid said, sitting on the couch and putting her arms around her sister. “We can’t get those years back. But there’s something else you need to know. Dad was helping me with something important. And I think something might have happened to him. He hasn’t returned any of my messages for several days.”
“Something has happened to him,” Joanna said. She took another deep breath. Freya wondered if she could stand to hear another revelation.
“He’s gone to see the White Council,” their mother told them. “I went to his apartment and waited for him. A messenger from the Council came by, with a letter granting him permission to speak, but obviously he decided not to wait for it. He’s left to consult with the oracle. He’s probably there already.”
Freya gasped. “But why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Unless word about our actions here have gotten back to him somehow; maybe he was reporting our violations of the restriction.” Joanna crossed her arms.
“Dad wouldn’t do that,” Ingrid said loyally. “If he went to the oracle there has to be a good reason for it.”
“What was he helping you with, anyway?” Freya asked.
“The Fair Haven blueprints. I found something—these odd little design keys. Dad was decoding it for me. He said he’d figured out what they were, but then he disappeared.”
“So maybe he wanted to talk to them about that?” Freya suggested.
Joanna whipped around to address Ingrid. “Fair Haven? You and Dad were doing something with Fair Haven?”
Ingrid described the key tags with the decorative scrolls. “I guess I should have asked you first, Mother, since you might know if there’s something unusual about Fair Haven that we should know about.”
Joanna shook her head. “Only that the Council told us when we settled here in North Hampton that the seam was there, the boundary where the living and the twilight worlds meet. But I think there might be something more to it. Before I left, I went out to Fair Haven, where the gray darkness in the water seems to have concentrated.”
“It’s not just here; it’s in the South Pacific, and near Alaska as well,” Ingrid said. “And I saw on TV the other day they think they might have found one near Reykjavík.”
Joanna inhaled sharply at the news. “Whatever is in the oceans is not of this earth, I’m quite sure of that. I went to look for your father because I was hoping he could help me figure out what it was and where it came from so we could stop it. That spell I put on it won’t last. I’m going to need both of you to help hold it up.”
“We’ll start immediately.” Freya nodded.
“Good. With the three of us I think we can hold it back a while longer until we figure out how to get rid of it entirely.” Joanna looked at her girls. “One more thing. What happened to the house? Has Gracella not been by to clean it? And how’s my Tyler doing?”
“Tyler’s in the hospital,” Freya said. “Don’t worry, I checked on him. He has a fever and an infection but the doctors say they have it under control.”
Joanna tried to keep calm. If Tyler was sick, the hospital was the safest place for him to be. “First things first: Gardiners Island and then the hospital.”
They were preparing to leave when there was a sharp knock on the door, and the three women jumped and looked at each other fearfully.
“The Council!” Ingrid yelped.
“The oracle doesn’t knock,” Freya scoffed. She peeked out the window and saw several police cars parked in the driveway, their lights flashing. “What on earth?”
“Open the door,” Joanna instructed.
Ingrid moved toward the front door and flung it wide. “Matt!” she cried, her hands flying to her glasses. In all the ways she had imagined Matthew Noble visiting her home, this certainly was not one of them. The detective looked apologetic as he stepped inside the doorway with two policemen behind him.
“Hey, Ingrid, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m hoping your family has some time this afternoon to come down to the station and answer a few questions,” he said, looking tired and anxious.
“Why?”
“Can we talk about it when we get there?”
“Do we have to?” Freya demanded. “Don’t you need a warrant—or something?”
“No, we just want to ask some questions,” he said sternly. “It’s standard procedure.”
“Matt—what’s going on?” Ingrid asked fearfully.
“Why do you need to talk to the girls?” Joanna asked, her manner and tone imperious, as if the police detective were an underling daring to address the queen.
Freya snorted. “We’re being arrested, aren’t we?”
“Not at all, not at all. Look, we just want to ask you a few questions,” Matt repeated for the third time, shaking his head slightly at Ingrid, as if to say he couldn’t speak freely at the moment.
“Fine,” Freya said. “Ingrid, let’s go. See what they want to talk about.” They motioned toward the door, but the detective stopped and looked apologetically back at their mother.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’d like to talk to you as well,” he said.
“Me? Why?” Joanna’s forehead crinkled in worry.
“We’ll get into it down at the station. Ladies?” Matt asked, leading them to the patrol cars parked in their driveway. One by one, the Beauchamp women were placed in the backseat, and the police car sped away, sirens on and lights flashing. They might not have been arrested, Freya thought, but it sure felt like they were in trouble.