Serpent's Kiss
Page 4

"So?" he asked, the question still hanging between them.
She sighed impatiently. "Freddie, I looked everywhere! Every freaking nook and cranny on that boat! Then I looked again. I found nothing. Nothing, Freddie!" She was annoyed to have given in. She was reluctant to let Freddie know that she had conceded to his request, because that meant she didn't fully trust Killian; it was an acknowledgment that he could possibly be guilty. "You've been here all night?" she asked, thinking of the noises she heard on the boat earlier.
"Right here," he said.
The toilet in the bathroom flushed, and Freya did a double take at the closed door. "Who else is here?"
Freddie winced. "Uh ... I forgot her name," he mumbled as a long-legged, towel-wrapped maiden, another college girl most likely, they were obviously Freddie's new weakness, emerged from the bathroom.
"Oh, hi!" she said to Freya.
Freddie smiled at her. "Hey ..." he said.
"Hey yourself," the girl retorted. She'd obviously heard his confession about having forgotten who she was.
"Well, you're obviously busy," Freya said. "I should be going." She rolled her eyes at her incorrigible twin. Apparently, even cooped up in this motel, he had managed to meet plenty of young ladies - and she'd been worried that he was lonely.
"Freya, if you don't act, I will," Freddie warned, following her to the doorway. "There are all kinds of hiding places you know, doors within doors. It's got to be there. He's keeping it nearby. You haven't looked hard enough."
Freya turned to him, her arms crossed. "He didn't take it. I know he didn't."
"What did you lose?" the girl asked, confused. She was now wearing a lacy bra and Freddie's boxers.
"One of his video games. He thinks my boyfriend took it," Freya said, rolling her eyes. "Bye, Freddie," she said, then slipped out into the night.
Chapter five
Here Comes Your Man
Ingrid repaired to a back booth at the North Inn to wait for Matt Noble, safely hidden in one of the high-backed banquettes for now. While she wanted to go somewhere she was comfortable, she didn't want to see Freya just yet. Her sister would tease her mercilessly about the detective and Ingrid wanted to avoid it as long as she could.
It was hard to imagine that someone who had lived so long had so little experience with romance, but Ingrid had always preferred reading about love to getting involved in messy dramas herself. Love stories never ended well. Look at Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Anna Karenina, Lily Bart, Lady Chatterley, Emma Bovary; the list of tragic he**ines went on and on. Love was frightening territory, and Ingrid had always steered clear. Now, of all things, she'd gone and fallen for a mortal, and she suddenly understood how one could be inexorably drawn to a person, no matter how wrong or ill-fated the circumstances.
She sipped her water and looked up to see Freya standing in front of her, with a hand on her hip and a smug smile on her face.
"Oh ... hi," she said.
"You're meeting him here, aren't you?" her sister asked. "Nice of you to come by and say hello."
"I was going to, but ..."
Freya grinned. "I'm just busting your chops, Ingrid. I like the guy even if he did lock us up for a day."
"I'm nervous. It's our first date," confided Ingrid.
"There's nothing to be nervous about - wait - what do you mean this is your first date?" Freya demanded.
But Ingrid didn't have time to explain because Freya was called away to the other end of the bar. Ingrid sighed. Of course her sister wouldn't understand. Freya always called Ingrid a tortoise, especially when it came to men.
It had been a little over a month since Ingrid's first spine-tingling kiss with Matt on Labor Day. Since then an investigation had taken him out of town for a couple of weeks, and every time they had tried to get together, something came up, like the library conference Ingrid had needed to attend in the city, or some other work commitment for Matt. They'd finally agreed on a couple of drinks at the North Inn, then dinner at that new French restaurant by the beach. She wondered if he still felt the same about her - and she alternately dreaded and longed for the moment she would glimpse his handsome freckled face when he walked into the bar. Every time a customer came in, she flinched, looking to the door, her spirit lifting and then falling with disappointment when it was someone else. Matt was usually prompt - at least when he'd been dating her ex-coworker, Caitlin. Ingrid tried not to be too miffed.
She twirled the straw in her drink. The ice had nearly melted, and her nerves were too raw to take even one sip. It was eight minutes past the appointed time. She tugged at the scoop neck of the little black dress she'd bought in the city during the library conference.
"Don't worry. You don't look like a floozy, Sis. That's my department," Freya said, coming back with a glass of champagne and setting it on the table.
Ingrid glanced dubiously at the champagne flute, strings of pearly bubbles floating on the surface. "This isn't one of your potions, is it?"
"Um, you've got plenty of your own magic. You certainly don't need mine. It's champagne with a touch of cassis, a Kir Royal. I can sense your anxiety from all the way over at the bar, and it's making me anxious. Relax, you look great!"
It was true. With her hair down, in a tight black dress that showed a hint of cl**vage, a thin red ribbon around her small waist, Ingrid looked ravishing, her arms and face shimmery, a flush in her cheeks. She followed orders and bravely downed most of the Kir Royal. "I'm not overdressed, am I?"
"God, no! You look elegant, but not overstated," said Freya, giving her sister a reassuring smile. "I'm sorry about before. It's just that I thought - "
But Matt was standing by Freya's side, which made her instantly change the subject. "Ah, there he is, the Beauchamp family savior!" she teased fondly, for it had been Matt who had pressed his colleagues to drop the investigation. Even if he had hauled all three of them in for questioning originally, he was also the detective who had solved the murder cases that cleared the sisters and their mother of any wrongdoing. "What can I get you guys? On the house!"
Matt wagged his finger at Freya and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Ingrid. Freya leaned over and took away Ingrid's empty champagne glass. In a flash, the table was set with a bottle of the bubbly in an ice bucket and two full champagne glasses.
Ingrid came out of the booth to greet Matt. They stood slightly apart, looking so shyly at each other with excited smiles that they didn't even notice how quickly the drinks had arrived.
"Hi," Matt said.
"Hi," Ingrid returned. She gathered he had gone home, showered, and changed. His hair was still a tad wet, and he looked clean shaven, dapper in a dark suit with a crisp green shirt and blue tie. She liked him in his dress up civilian clothes, and admired his solid shoulders inside the suit.
Matt moved toward her, putting a hand at her waist. It was all so natural, no fumbling for each other's cheeks, just that same ease she felt when they had last stood face-to-face - and then the jolt that went straight to her heart as he touched her.
"You look amazing," he said. "I couldn't wait to finally see you again."
"You, too. I mean me, too. I mean you look amazing as well and I was looking forward to seeing you, Matt." Ingrid blushed, embarrassed for being so voluble.
For a moment, Matt didn't look sure whether to sit beside her or across from her, and finally decided on the latter. They sat. Ingrid stared into his clear blue eyes. "So, uh, that author of The Cobbler's Daughter's Elephants has a new one. Should I place it on hold for you?" she asked. He looked stricken for a moment, and then saw that she was teasing him and they laughed together.
She took a sip of her drink, and when she placed a hand on the table, Matt stared at it as if he was contemplating whether to touch it or not. She sort of wished he would. "I really am sorry for making you read all those boring books. I'll make it up to you. I have a bunch I think you'd really like," she said.
"Ah, I would have gone on reading them just because you recommended them."
"Really?"
"Truly." He smiled. "I'm glad we finally got together. It's pretty obvious that um ... I mean at this point, I'd say it's a pretty incontestable fact that ..." He shook his head. "I mean I want to apologize. Clear the air. It was lousy of me to date Caitlin when I wasn't interested in her ... and I don't want you to think that that's the kind of guy I am ... because I'm not." He looked down, shaking his head.
"You don't have to explain. I understand. I was sort of awful to you, and I'm sorry."
"No, no you weren't." He looked up at her.
"What?" she said when he didn't say anything after a long time.
He grinned. "You're just so adorable, Ingrid. Can I ask you something?"
"Sure, anything," she said, feeling a bit flushed. How many glasses of champagne had she had? Two?
"I'd really like to kiss you right now. Can I?"
How formal of him. She liked it. There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. He was nervous, probably as nervous as she was. This brave man was nervous about kissing her. Ingrid felt even warmer toward him.
"Here?" she asked, looking around.
But either he'd decided to stop being shy or not to wait for an answer, because Matt was already leaning over the table toward her. She leaned forward to meet him, and he cupped her chin with his hands, gently pulling her face toward his, and Ingrid closed her eyes, feeling that same trembling sensation as the first time, even with the table between them. It was even sweeter than she remembered, the warm, melting softness of it all. When they parted Ingrid sat back down, a little dazed after the experience. She'd always thought kissing came at the end of the date, not the beginning.
Matt exhaled. "I just needed to get that out of the way. I couldn't get that first one out of my head." This time when he saw that Ingrid's hand was on the table, Matt reached for it and clasped it in his.
Ingrid wanted to say, Neither could I. But she was breathless, and she also thought she might need to - what? Slow things down maybe? She had no clue how to go about any of this. "You know, I was attacked the other day," she blurted out, not sure why she was mentioning it now.
It caught Matt off guard. "Excuse me?" His expression changed, and Ingrid saw a sudden spark of anger in his eyes, but when he saw her distress his face softened. "Did I hear that right? You were attacked? When? Are you okay?"
Ingrid pulled her hand away from his and took a nervous sip of her drink. "Sorry, it occurred to me just then. It was nothing, just a harmless homeless person," she lied.
"What happened?"
"I was walking through the park at night, taking my shortcut home from work - "
"You were walking through the park alone at night? What time was it?"
"I don't know. After midnight?"
"Ingrid!" Here Matt did the strangest thing: he took out a small, rectangular leather-bound pad and began scribbling notes in it. "Continue," he said, looking up at her.
She launched into the story, deciding to stick as close to the facts as she could. "It was actually a band of homeless kids, and I did think at first that they meant some harm, since I couldn't speak their language, but it all turned out fine. I'm fine!" she stressed. It had been scary at first when she woke up in that room at that dingy motel, but she didn't want to tell him that.
"Hold on a sec. Besides the fact that you shouldn't be walking alone in the park at that hour, first you tell me it was 'a harmless homeless person,' and now you say it was a roving band of foreign kids. Kids can be dangerous in groups, you know."
"They're not dangerous. I swear. Forget I mentioned it," she said.
"Ingrid, look at me."
She looked at him.
"This is serious. There have been a bunch of burglaries in town, and we're convinced it's a group that's not from around here, which sounds very much like these kids you're describing."
"You sound like a cop," Ingrid said.
"I am a cop."
There was really no way of explaining this properly, so she backpedaled. "They're just a bunch of desperate kids who're new to the area. They're not from here, Matt, and they don't know this culture - how things work." This was all kind of true.
She was being honest. Her attacker had not been a homeless person at all but rather a group of pixies. The reason the stranger in the park had appeared tall and lumbering was because the five pixies had climbed one on top of the other's shoulders and covered themselves in a long, draping coat - thus the bizarre gait. But the pixies were homeless, since they certainly were not from this world. So in a sense they were foreigners, refugees really. They were not allowed to use money, only barter, and in a pinch they resorted to theft. The pixies had kidnapped her - stolen her from the park - since that was the way they operated. But it was all very harmless. Pixie magic, while powerful, could be contained, and they had contacted her because they needed help. Still, she couldn't exactly tell Matt that they were magical creatures somehow trapped in mid-world and had sought her help to find their way back home. Ingrid wasn't sure exactly how much Matt believed in her magic; he still seemed a bit skeptical, unlike most of the townsfolk who had easily acclimated to the small enchantments that now pervaded daily life in North Hampton. She hoped it was just his careful nature and not a sign of closed-mindedness.