Serpent's Kiss
Page 12

In the first position she had hagalaz, which meant "hail," whose deeper prescient significance was crisis, upheaval, catastrophe, stagnation, loss of power, a disruptive force awakening from a deep sleep. Here the spirit was telling her that something had gone amiss. This wasn't too surprising. If the spirit was seeking Joanna's attention and had gone through the pains of leaving this message in mid-world, it meant it was in full unrest, desperate enough to breach the thick membrane of the seam separating the dead from the living. The rune had no ambiguous meaning; even upside down it meant the same thing.
The rune in the second position, the current challenge, ansuz, stood for an ancestral god, and its underlying esoteric translation was the revealing of a message, a communique, advice. "Whoever you are, you want me to read them. That is clear," Joanna said. "Or are you saying that the challenge is that I must find you, so that you can tell me something pressing? You have advice for me? You want to tell me what this catastrophe is about, what perturbs you? Okay." She was speaking to the spirit as if it were in the room.
The final rune, the action she had to take, was wunjo. "Aw, that is nice of you," said Joanna. "You want us to become friends, allies, or you are saying that we will be friends in the future?" Wunjo was the symbol for "joy" and meant friendship.
She had resolved that the overall message of this first set of runes was simple: some kind of great calamity had taken place and the spirit needed to inform her of its specifics, while offering friendship and meaning no harm. She would need to travel farther into the glom to find it. If the spirit were as powerful as it appeared, it didn't necessarily have to be in the layer closest to the seam.
In the case of Philip and Virginia, their attempts to contact her had become so out of control that they'd killed the landau driver. Had Joanna intervened sooner, she might have prevented that poor man from being impaled on the spikes of a wrought-iron fence as the carriage tipped and hurled him off. The two lovers had intended no harm. It was only that their love had driven them to desperation. They hadn't wanted a man to die. No one was going to die this time, Joanna thought. She had to figure out what this spirit wanted her to know before it took similar desperate action. This would require research, the correct spell, and she needed to know where to look for this soul. She was about to read the next set of runes when she felt a presence in the room. She peered over her shoulder and saw Ingrid.
"Oh, you startled me!" she said.
"You're very jumpy, Mother!" Ingrid chided, but Joanna could see her oldest was in a good mood. She was glowing, her light blond hair sleekly draping down past her shoulders, the prettiest hue of pink in her cheeks, her skin pale and dewy. She reminded Joanna of a delicate but robust flower, like a white moth orchid or a slim, graceful calla lily. She smiled, happy to see her daughter so relaxed and well. It must be that new cop boyfriend of hers. Matt Virtuous or something, was it? Joanna was amused and secretly pleased. It was about time Ingrid found somebody.
Ingrid strode to Joanna, and her blond hair fell on the desk as she leaned over her mother's shoulder, studying the runes. "Hmm, interesting," she said. "Why are those Scrabble tiles and the dice I gave you included in your reading?"
"Never mind that, darling, just tell me what you see," said Joanna. She wanted to get a quick first impression from her daughter without conveying all the backstory quite yet, a reading unaffected by any other knowledge, one that was pure and objective. Ingrid, her gift being foresight, was adept at reading the oracle of the runes. Since the Restriction had been lifted, Ingrid had begun to regain her memories and abilities, including the formerly lost talent to read and understand their ancient language.
Her daughter also assigned the Norn spread and came to a similar conclusion about the first three runes. She moved on to the second set, and Joanna requested that she ignore the A.
"Algiz, manaz, laguz," Ingrid said, listing the names of the runes. "This means that something or someone has been protecting you until now. Shielding you from evil. However that protection, that connection, this divine structure, if you will, has been disrupted, disconnected, and you need to repair it. You're in danger. That's your challenge. You need to fix that connection to be safe. As for the course of action you must take to do this ... laguz ... water - you must travel. But it's a good thing. The ultimate outcome leads to healing and renewal."
Oscar came traipsing in, then rubbed his large eagle's head against Ingrid's leg. She patted her familiar.
Joanna continued to stare at the tiles. "You're absolutely right. That would have taken me forever. Thank goodness I have smart children." She explained everything that had been happening lately, how a spirit had made contact.
"Things were moving around the house? Hmm, that's not good! Darn it!" Ingrid huffed the latter beneath her breath. "You thought it was a spirit?" Ingrid sounded skeptical and appeared distracted, glancing at the doorway worriedly. "Are you sure?" she asked.
"I think I would know, dear." She told Ingrid about her experience in the garden, the flowers wilting at her touch, how Gilly had taken her into the woods where they had followed the path to the grave and found these objects laid out on the mound in this formation.
"You're right," said Ingrid, studying the message. "It is a spirit who needs your help. But this is also a code - the Scrabble tiles, the dice ... It's an encryption, a cipher, an anagram, of some sort. The fact that there are Scrabble letters indicates that. Maybe it says something else entirely different from what the runes tell us, something horrible, something ominous, a threat. We need to decode this, and I think you should enlist Dad ASAP. He's a great help with enigmas."
Joanna cleared her throat, feeling a bit peeved that her daughter would think she wasn't capable of figuring this out on her own. "Well, I'd like to sort it out by myself for now. The message is obviously for me and me alone. I can decode it without Norman's help. But first and foremost, I think I need to get in touch with this spirit, 'travel,' as you say. It wants to speak to me. I think it wants me to raise it from the dead."
"I think you are getting ahead of yourself, Mother. You don't know what this says yet. This isn't just about the runes. There's something else here." She pointed at the line with the dice and upside-down L. "Look, that's a number. One fifty-seven."
"I know it's a number," said Joanna a bit too defensively. She realized her daughter was only trying to help. Of course Ingrid was right to caution, but she sensed it was urgent and said so.
Ingrid shook her head. "You can't raise a dead spirit before finding out what it wants! Remember the Covenant you made with Helda. You can't just go around resurrecting everyone! Your sister doesn't take that sort of thing lightly. Plus, it's never gone well in the past."
"I know. I know. You don't have to remind me."
Ingrid attempted another tact. "I know you feel this spirit needs you, but I don't think that's the best way - "
"This spirit is trying to tell me something important, but the only way I can truly find out is to speak directly to it. Cut to the chase, rather than spending hours decoding this."
"But what if it's evil?" Ingrid said.
"Well, we won't know that until I raise it from the dead, will we? I've already gone into the first layer, and it wasn't there."
Ingrid sat down in the chair beside Joanna's desk, resigning herself to the situation. "I guess I'm not going to be able to persuade you to take your time with this, but will you promise to come to me for help if you plan on doing anything drastic?"
"I promise," said Joanna.
"And the Covenant?"
"I'll think about it," Joanna said.
"Good," said Ingrid, appearing only somewhat satisfied.
Now that mother and daughter had reached a resolution of sorts, Joanna thought it might be the right time to ask about the cop boyfriend. "So, how's that young man of yours?"
"What young man?"
"Ingrid - I'm your mother. I know."
"What do you know?" Ingrid asked, trying to look innocent.
"You're dating that cop - Matthew Good-Guy or something."
"Matt Noble!" Ingrid corrected, aggrieved.
Joanna smiled wryly. "See."
"All right. I suppose I am ... seeing him, Mother, but you don't have to look at me like that. I already have to deal with Freya teasing me day and night."
"We're just happy for you, dear," Joanna said, coming to embrace her girl. "We want you to be happy, you know."
"I know," Ingrid murmured. "Thank you, Mother. I am happy." She squeezed her mother in a tight hug. "I've memorized the code. I'll think it over, see if I can come up with anything." Then she released her hold and left Joanna's office before her mother could ask her any more embarrassing questions or call Matt by some other silly name. Oscar followed on her heels, his nails clicking on the floorboards.
Joanna was left to herself once again staring at the message. Yes, a cipher or anagram, something of that sort, thought Joanna. That is exactly what I thought. She grabbed a pen and paper and began to scribble.
Chapter nineteen
When Doves Cry
Betty Lazar and detective-in-the-making Seth Holding, still going strong, had proposed hosting Friday Night Karaoke at North Inn. Sal had jumped at the idea. That was the thing about Sal. Even at seventy, he was always willing to try something new, as long as it got the joint going.
"We can call it Fri-a-oke!" he said excitedly, to which Freya had responded, "Eh!" The other bartender, Kristy, put it more bluntly. "Lame! How about just Friday Night Karaoke?" The two bartenders were game and helped Sal purchase the equipment and disks on eBay from a recently shut down bar in New York City.
Once they set everything up, they saw that most of the songs and accompanying videos appeared to date back to the eighties. The visuals that provided the lyrics featured women with huge hair, dozens of rosary necklaces, pale skin, glossy scarlet lips, and oversize dresses sloping off a shoulder. The men were no better with tight pants and mullets, either business in the front and party in the back or the other way around.
But this was all very much in keeping with the bar's shifts in the time-space continuum, so now on a Friday eve at North Inn, one might hear anything from a drunken off-key version of Prince's "Little Red Corvette" to a superbly belted out rendition of Billy Joel's "Piano Man" to Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" (a drunken group sing-along), AC/DC's "Back in Black," songs by Tears for Fears, Billy Idol, the Fine Young Cannibals, 10,000 Maniacs, Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, and Michael Jackson, of course, as well as a slew of other artists who had either died, evaporated into the pop ether, been recently arrested for a DUI in LA, or become healthy, sober vegans.
The young people of North Hampton and its surrounding environs did not appear to be missing either the tragic Amy Winehouses or the bubbly Miley Cyruses of their generation, and came in droves dressed in Mom and Dad's old duds to pile into the booths and pore over the song lists.
There were also the fortysomethings who had come of age during the era of too much cash flow and coc**ne, such as smarmy developer Blake Aland, making good with the townsfolk, discussing a bit of real estate he wanted to get his claws into, and recalling the adage of not being able to sing one's way out of a paper bag. Conversely, Justin Frond, the hip new mayor, had surprised everyone with his perfect pitch and lovely, smooth voice tonight.
Gay men are the best, thought Freya, spying some visual teasers of the mayor's private evenings. She saw Frond with his handsome partner, walking along a moonlit beach, pants rolled up, making out in the tall grasses of a sand dune. The mayor had excellent abs, Freya noted. As for Blake Aland's midnight trysts, Freya had to blink her eyes to ward off the unsavory images: spiky heels digging into a spine, something involving a tongue, a black patent leather shoe, a glass table, and a panting, frothing Mr. Aland.
Seth was singing Queen's epic "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was a strange choice for a police officer, being that it was about a boy who had shot someone, but he was off duty, and Betty was doing backup vocals, neither of them taking their eyes off the other as the crowd began to cheer. "Mama, life had just begun, but now I've gone and thrown it all away ..."
"They really are good, those two," Sal said to Freya. He was working the bar with her. Killian hadn't come in to help - Freya missed him, but he'd become obsessed with getting the greenhouse just so - and Kristy served drinks at the booths while collecting the slips with song choices and manning the karaoke machine.
"You don't know the half of it, Sal," retorted Freya. Betty and Seth had sex at least three times a day when they could: lunch break in a restaurant restroom, Seth's police car, an interview room at the precinct (of all the places - they really should be more careful). As she watched them sing, Freya decided to entertain herself beyond casual voyeurism.
She closed her eyes and focused, and when she opened them again, dry ice smoke enveloped Betty and Seth. When it dissipated, they had undergone a costume change and were now in tight white satin one-pieces a la Freddie Mercury. The expert performers and hams they were, they didn't blink, and the crowd only cheered and whooped louder.
Freya joined the hooting but stopped when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. It was Killian, and she asked Sal if she could take the call in the back room. Killian sounded distressed, but she couldn't hear him over the din. She stepped into Sal's cramped office, with its heavy mahogany desk, card table for poker nights with the local geezers, dart board, and old, scratched black file cabinets.