Witches of East End Read Free Page A

face had betrayed none of the turmoil she felt. She had accepted his kiss on her cheek with a modest smile, had even been able to engage him in the usual cocktail conversation. The soggy weather, the proposed wedding date, how he found North Hampton (she couldn’t remember, she might not have been listening: she had been too mesmerized by the sound of his voice—a low rumble like a late-night disk jockey). Then finally someone else had wanted his attention and she was free to be alone—and that was when all the small but awful things at the party began to happen.
    Cat scratch fever . That was all it was, wasn’t it? Like an itch you couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t placate, couldn’t satisfy. Freya felt as if she were on fire—that at any moment she would spontaneously combust and there would be nothing left of her but ashes and diamonds. Stop looking at him, she told herself. This is insane, just another of your bad ideas. Even worse than the time you brought the gerbil back to life (she’d gotten an earful from her mother for that one, lest someone on the Council found out, not to mention that zombie pets were never a good idea). Go outside. Get some fresh air. Return to the party. She glided over to the vase of pink cabbage roses, trying to suffocate her whirling emotions by inhaling their scent. It didn’t work. She could still feel him wanting her.
    Goddamnit, did he have to be so good-looking? She thought she was immune to that kind of thing. Such a cliché: tall, dark, and handsome. She hated cocky, arrogant boys who thought women lived to service their voracious sexual appetites. He was the worst offender of the type—screeching up in his Harley, and that ridiculous hair of his—that messy, shaggy, bangs-in-your-eyes kind of thing, with that sexy, come-hither smolder: but there was something else. An intelligence. A knowingness in his eyes. It was as if, when he looked at her, he knew exactly what she was and what she was like. A witch. A goddess. Someone not of this earth but not apart from it either. A woman to be loved and feared and adored.
    She looked up from the vase and found him still staring directly at her. It was as if he were waiting the whole time, for just this moment. He nodded his head, motioning to a nearby door. Truly? Right here? Right now? In the powder room? Was that not just another cliché that went with the motorcycle and the bad-boy attitude? Was she really going to go into the bathroom with another man—her fiancé’s brother, for god’s sake—at her engagement party?
    She was. Freya walked, as if in a daze, toward the aforementioned rendezvous. She closed the door behind her and waited. The face that stared at her from the mirror was flushed and radiant. She was so happy she was delirious, so excited she didn’t know what to do with herself. Where was he? Making her wait. Killian Gardiner knew what to do with wanton women, it seemed.
    The doorknob turned, and he walked in, smooth as a knife, locking the door behind him. His lips curled into a smile, a panther with his prey. He had won.
    “Come here,” she whispered. She had made her choice. She didn’t want to wait a moment longer.
    Outside the door, in the middle of the party, the cabbage roses burst into flame.

chapter two
    Country Mouse
     
    O ld Maid. Tight-ass. Spinster. Ingrid Beauchamp knew what people thought of her; she had seen the way they huddled and whispered behind cupped hands as she made her way across the library, putting away returned books to their proper shelves. In the decade that she had worked there, Ingrid had made few friends with her patrons, who found her strict and high-handed. Not only did she never forgive a fine, she had a tendency to lecture on the proper care and maintenance of the books under her jurisdiction. A book returned with a broken spine, a drenched cover or dog-eared pages was sure to garner a cool reprimand. It was bad enough that their operating budget barely covered their