you a few questions," Matt repeated for the third time, shaking his head slightly at Ingrid, as if to say he couldn't speak freely at the moment.
"Fine," Freya said. "Ingrid, let's go. See what they want to talk about." They motioned toward the door, but the detective stopped and looked apologetically back at their mother.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we'd like to talk to you as well," he said.
"Me? Why?" Joanna's forehead crinkled in worry.
"We'll get into it down at the station. Ladies?" Matt asked, leading them to the patrol cars parked in their driveway. One by one, the Beauchamp women were placed in the backseat, and the police car sped away, sirens on and lights flashing. They might not have been arrested, Freya thought, but it sure felt like they were in trouble.
Chapter thirty-seven
The Salem Trials
Freya made a face at her sister, who sat stoically next to her in the backseat of the squad car. Her mother was on the other side, and none of them had said a word since they were taken into custody. When they arrived at the station, the three of them were separated, and Freya was left to ponder her fate and that of her family alone in a small room. The patrolmen who were her friends did not look her in the eye when she was led in, a bad sign. She wondered what was going to happen when the door opened, but it was only Ingrid who walked in, her face ashen.
"What's going on? Did you talk to Matt? What's happening?"
Ingrid shook her head. "No. They wanted to talk to Mother first. They had to use the room to interrogate someone else, so they moved me here. I have no idea what's happening."
"Some friend you got there," Freya muttered. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the small room with the one-way mirror. She wondered who was watching them. "Well, this brings back memories."
Her sister closed her eyes and bit the top of her thumb. "I know."
Freya sighed. In 1690 they had settled in the pretty little town of Salem in Massachusetts. Their lives had brought them to the New World as healers. Their mother had been one of the most sought-after midwives, had delivered healthy babies in a time when so many women died in childbirth and so many newborns died of fevers and pox. Ingrid worked in the community the same way she did now, doling out household charms and spells. Their father was a fisherman, due to his ability to maneuver the waters and bring in plentiful harvests.
Then something terrible happened. Bridget Bishop, who helped Joanna with the washing, came to her for help during her pregnancy and died in childbirth. Bridget was very dear to the family, and Joanna had not been able to help her. Then the rumors started: Freya was said to be conducting an affair with a boy who had pledged to marry Ann Putnam, who would become the ringleader of accusers. Ann and her friend Mercy Lewis testified that they had seen Freya and Ingrid "flying in the air through the winter mist." The trials were a farce, but effective. The community turned on them, branding Freya a slut, Ingrid a bitch, and Joanna a monster. Norman and Joanna had been spared but they were given a more terrible punishment. They had to watch as their daughters were hanged at Gallows Hill in 1692.
Freya shuddered. She could still remember the feeling of the noose around her neck, the scratchy rope that made her skin itch. The way the crowd had spat and thrown rotten food at their cart, the hatred and the fear and the hysteria.
"Don't," Ingrid said, as she knew exactly what Freya was thinking. "It doesn't help."
The Salem trials were the beginning of the end of practicing magic in mid-world. When the girls were reborn, they found a new world and new rules awaiting them. The family had resettled in North Hampton, and Joanna explained that the White Council had paid them a visit right after the burial. The Council told them that in order for any of them to continue to live in mid-world, every one of the Waelcyrgean would now have to adhere to a new condition: The Restriction of Magical Powers. In effect, it meant that they could no longer practice the art of magic and witchcraft without punishment and recrimination from the Council. They were to live as humans, with lives that were as ordinary as possible.