Witches of East End - By Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,14
cooked tasted delicious, a consequence of her magical heritage.
But the ugly scene she had just witnessed - and she did not know who exactly was in peril, Becky, Ross, or their baby; the image did not reveal that much - made her think. Maybe if there hadn't been a shred of love between them Freya would never have considered doing what she was about to do. But there was. She saw the two of them sneaking glances at each other when they thought the other was not looking. Besides, Natasha Mayles was all wrong for Ross. She swanned into the North Inn with her haughty accent and bored, quasi-European attitude.
Truly, it was a ridiculous rule anyway, why couldn't they use magic? Why not? Just because of a few silly girls who told a few lies? So a couple of lying bitches were allowed to ruin their lives forever? Freya would never forget the way those awful girls had spun their artful story, their crazed histrionics in the courtroom, the growing list of suspects, the carriages that took the condemned down to Gallows Hill. How stubborn and blind she had been! She had assumed no one would believe their accusers, that no one in their right mind would think that she and Ingrid were capable of such evil. To add insult to injury, her own kind, their own Council, took away their powers after everything they had been through - hard punishment indeed. Well. She had had enough. She was tired of feeling afraid. Tired of feeling useless. Tired of trying to pretend she was something she wasn't. Tired of hiding her light in a corner. Under a lampshade, behind a curtain, in a dark room. Tired.
Freya Beauchamp was made of magic. Without magic she was just someone who poured drinks. She had been so good for so long, all of them had, and for what? What was the point of it all, really? It was a waste of their talents; were they really supposed to just live in the shadows and fade away? Act as if they were ordinary for the rest of their immortal lives?
Freya thought of everything they had given up: flying, for one; she still remembered how it felt, zooming through the skies, the wind in her hair. She missed the midnight capers in the woods as well, the powerful rituals that were taboo now that pagan was a bad word. The world had moved on, of course, that was to be expected; maybe it would have happened even without the restriction, but now they would never know. Like the rest of her family, she was stuck on this side of the bridge, with no way to return home.
She made up her mind. She touched Ross's beer glass and added just a smidge of gingerroot and lemon zest. Then she stirred it with the red straw from Becky's cocktail. The pint of beer turned a bright shade of pink for a split second. Now, this was definitely against the rules, this little concoction she had made, this little love potion. Sure, she had practiced a little magic before, here and there - that boy back in New York, that vampire's familiar she had healed, for instance. But that was in the East Village, where she had been fairly certain what little, insignificant, inconsequential magic she had performed had been artfully concealed and absorbed by the city's own kinetic energy.
This was something quite different, different even from the little nudges she gave the police to help solve crimes. This was the first real love potion she had created in . . . well, when the number of years was so big, who was counting? Besides, it was a shame to let such a good couple go to waste, and she shuddered at the thought of what might be if she did not: that terrible argument, a child growing up without parents, one dead, the other in jail. Freya increased the potency of the drinks she was about to serve. It didn't have to happen. All they needed was a little help to get over the bump. They just needed a little reminder of why they had been together in the first place. She set the martini in front of Becky and the beer in front of Ross. "Cheers!" she told them, holding up her own glass.
"To our health," Becky mumbled. She was probably embarrassed to have revealed so much to Freya earlier.