Winds of Salem (39 page)

Jeans. Freya had acquired a special appreciation for jeans since her return to the twenty-first century, especially the kind that hugged like a second skin, that she could run and jump in. She was wearing her favorite pair along with a tight black tank, motorcycle boots, and a buttery black leather zip-up jacket.

She was back at work. Kristy had taken the day off, and Freddie had already left town. She was alone. When she walked in, the stale smell of liquor and beer filled her with affection. She leaned against the counter. Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” pounded through the speakers.

The place was strangely dead for a summer night. Sal was in the back. Poker night with the boys. There was no one to talk to save the usual set of barflies congregating at one end, already sloppy, teetering on their stools, repeating the same exaggerated tales she had heard last time she’d been here. A young couple was all over each other in a booth, too cheap to pay for a room at the Ucky Star. Their beers were probably warm by now. This was her crowd.

Freya dusted the bottles, wiped the counter and tables till they shone, sliced too much fruit, swept and mopped the floors. There was nothing left to do. It had been about an hour, her standing there, itching for a distraction. Arms crossed over her
chest, she glared at the door, focusing her witchy powers onto it, willing it to open. She threw off the jacket and stared at it some more. The old axiom about being careful what one goes wishing for holds true, especially if one is a witch.

The door swung open, and a man swaggered in, staring at her. Faded blue jeans. White T-shirt. A slow smile formed on his lips as he strode up to her at the bar. He took a stool, tossing back his dark hair away from his smoldering eyes. Killian Gardiner. James Brewster. Balder the Beautiful. She knew all his incarnations. She had left him, when she had plunged to her death, hanged by the noose, but he had been saved somehow. A governor’s pardon had arrived just in time. The noose had not taken him, and with the passages open once again, his magic and power had returned, and he had been able to journey back to the present, alive and unharmed.

Freya smiled. “What can I get you?”

“You know what I like,” he said with that easy, slow smile again. She poured the bourbon and set it in front of him.

He raised the glass and she poured herself a shot, downed it, and exhaled, tossing her head. She poured another round.

While they finished it, the door to the bar swung open.

Her heart bounded into her throat.

Killian turned to look and shrugged.

The tall comely fellow ambled toward them, his suit slightly rumpled, tie swung over a shoulder: a businessman home from a long trip, out for a nightcap before setting home to Gardiners Island. This was
the
Branford Gardiner, the most eligible bachelor in North Hampton. Branford Dashiell Lion Gardiner. Nathaniel Brooks. Saved from the hangman’s noose as well, and free to make his way back to whatever time appealed to him. There was no time but the present. He was still the same soft-spoken, debonair man with the soul of mischief. The god Loki. He leaned
against the bar. “Hi there,” said Bran, making those shy green demon eyes at her. What had he said to her once?
You are more like me than you think, dear Freya.
Maybe it was true. What she had done was just a little bit wicked now, wasn’t it? Certainly the Puritans would never approve.

“Hi yourself,” returned Freya.

Killian handed Bran a shot glass. Freya poured the three of them a round of drinks.

Freya remembered her dream once more. The three of them, naked in the woods, alone, together, and she made love to them then, to
both
of them that night… In her dream she had woken, wedged in the middle between the two of them, with Killian’s hand on her hip and Bran’s mouth on her neck. Would it always be this way? The two of them in love with her and she in love with both of them? It had happened so very, very long ago, was all she could remember.

In the beginning, back when the world was young and so were they, and they were still innocent and in love. She had been given another chance, and she understood that whatever she did, their fates were forever entwined, in darkness or in light. She had chosen light. She had chosen joy. She had chosen love.

It was all such a haze.

But Freya knew something had happened that night.

Something that would bind the three of them together forever—or release them into the wind?

Who knew?

What was a witch to do? Maybe she would leave both of them and find someone new. The future was wide open, unwritten, the games about to begin.

She loved Killian. But she loved Bran, too.

One day, she would have to choose.

But not today.

Today she would pour the drinks.

The Nine Worlds of the Known Universe

Asgard—World of the Aesir

Midgard—Middle World, Land of Men

Álfheim—World of the Elves

Helheim—Kingdom of the Dead

Jotunheim—Land of the Giants

Muspellheim—The First World

Nidavellir—Land of the Dwarves

Svartalfheim—Land of the Dark Elven

Vanaheim—Land of the Vanir

The Gods of Midgard

Jean-Baptiste Mésomier (MUNINN, GOD OF MEMORY)

Arthur Beauchamp (SNOTRA, GOD OF THE FOREST) (
Norman‘s brother
)

Anne Barklay (VER
ANDI, NORN OF THE PRESENT)

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Richard Abate, Erwin Stoff, Maggie Friedman, Jane Francis, Morgana Rosenberg, Ellen Archer, Elisabeth Dyssegaard, Kerri Kolen, Marjorie Braman, and everyone at 3Arts, Hyperion, Fox 21, and Lifetime for believing in the witches and the power of magic.

Thank you to Margaret Stohl, Alyson Noel, Deborah Harkness, and Rachel Cohn, the wonderful writing women in my life, who have taken the witches into their hearts. You are all goddesses in my book!