Free Serpent's Kiss: A Witches of East End Novel by Melissa de la Cruz Page A

there was any other kind, and not that there was anything wrong with that. Freya, of all people, understood the need to experiment, the desire to see just exactly how much fun one could have when one was beautiful and young.
    However, this whole Freddie-in-love thing was too much. She’d grown weary of his whole situation—the motel, the accusations, the sloth.
    Freddie sat on the armchair, legs extended. “She’s the one, Freya. I’m telling you. It’s for real this time.” He smiled.
    “Yeah, right. Every week you fall for someone new, and you haven’t even met this …”
    “Hilly Liman.”
    “Yeah. I should really know her name by now. You say it enough.” Freya pushed a hand through her hair. “Look, I’m tired, and I can’t do this. I can’t find that thing you’re convinced Killian stole from you, that will prove he did it, and we really need to move on. I’m going to let the family know you’re back. Mother will be so happy!”
    Freddie jumped from his seat, his face flushed. “You can’t do that, Freya. No one can know! If the Valkyries know where I am … they’ll … they’ll drag me back. I can’t go back to Limbo! You don’t know what it’s like there! I need to prove I wasn’t the one who destroyed the bridge!” Freddie made a frustrated gesture, then fell back into the armchair, deflated. His head fell. When he looked back up at her, tears welled in his eyes. “I can’t go back. You have to help me, Freya. Please.” His voice broke.
    Freya shook her head, staring ruefully at her twin. “Oh, Freddie, stop,” she said. But her voice was cracking, too.

chapter eleven
The Gang’s All Here
     
    A shaft of light poured through the attic gable, illuminating particles of dust. On the floor, leading through the sundry pieces of furniture, was a Hansel and Gretel–like trail of candy wrappers, paper clips, glitter, DayGlo-colored mini Post-its, and childhood costumes.
    Ingrid had come up to search for a book she couldn’t find in Joanna’s study. She glared at the odd trail. When she had last set foot here after returning from Freya’s Manhattan apartment, she had placed those costumes back in the box and set it upright. Tyler couldn’t have done it because Gracella had yet to return after the other day. Was it Freya maybe? Her sister was certainly the messiest of them, but what would she be doing digging through old costumes? Ingrid set about straightening up, picking up a pink tutu here, a plastic glass slipper there, a black leather mask—hmm, that didn’t look like a child’s costume but like something from Freya’s closet—and when she arrived at the end of the trail, she was standing before Joanna’s large steamer trunk. Was that really cigarette smoke? She sniffed at the air.
    She hovered over the trunk and noticed the latches were undone. When she lifted the top, she stared down at five small heads tucked between five pairs of grungy knees. The heads looked up, and she immediately recognized the pixies. They had glitter all over their dirty faces: three boys and two girls.
    Well, it wouldn’t be accurate to say they were children, although Ingrid thought of them as such. They were adult in years but had childlike bodies and childlike minds, as well as mischievous spirits. With their blackened faces, they reminded her of the chimney sweeps of Victorian England, although they were quite the opposite of those poor abused children who had the maturity and jaded attitudes of adults, drinking ale, smoking pipes, and shooting the breeze at the inn after work. The pixies had taken to cheap booze and smoking in mid-world—that much Ingrid had observed at the motel where she’d first met them—but there was something rather naïve about these creatures.
    “Well, look what we have here,” she said, thinking she sounded a bit like Hudson right then.
    “Don’t hate on us, Erda!” said Kelda with her tiny rosebud lips. She lifted a hand in a ragged fingerless glove to