G. P. Putnam’s Sons
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Melissa de la Cruz.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-698-18828-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Mike and Mattie, always
And my Witches of East End family
WitchEEs forever!
With thanks to Jennifer Besser and
everyone at Penguin for making a new home
for a little white magic
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why, so am I. We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,
And wheresoe’er we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
FADE TO BLACK
PART ONE
1. THRIFT SHOP
2. FANCY
3. AMERICAN PIE
4. ROYALS
5. RESCUE ME
6. I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE, PART ONE
7. EVERYBODY EATS WHEN THEY COME TO MY HOUSE
8. YOU BETTER WORK, B*TCH
9. THE DOCK OF THE BAY
10. C IS FOR COOKIE
11. REHAB
12. RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL
13. MEMORY MOTEL
14. KISS
15. WILD HORSES
PART TWO
16. WE ARE FAMILY
17. TAKE ME TO THE WATER
18. DAS RHEINGOLD
19. SHELTER FROM THE STORM
20. COME TOGETHER
21. THE TEXTING SONG
22. A SKY FULL OF STARS
23. GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
24. WAKE ME UP WHEN IT’S ALL OVER
25. I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE, PART TWO
26. LOVE ME TWO TIMES
27. RED, RED WINE
28. PERFECT DAY
29. BAD BOYFRIEND
30. FOUND OUT ABOUT YOU
PART THREE
31. I WILL SURVIVE
32. THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE
33. RING OF FIRE
34. LEAVING HERE
35. YOUR LYIN’ EYES
36. MONTAUK
37. LEARNING TO FLY
38. I SHALL BE RELEASED
39. SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES
40. BLURRED LINES
41. I’LL BE MISSING YOU
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM MIRROR SOULS
FADE TO BLACK
Even by Manhattan private school standards, Bret Farley’s party was unforgettable. It wasn’t just the bottomless flow of top-shelf liquor or the mounds of gleaming caviar, the world-class sculpture collection and the spectacular views of the city from the Park Avenue penthouse, or the rumors of a hidden elevator down to a clandestine indoor lap pool of black marble. It wasn’t the designer drugs or the thousand-dollar stilettos. It wasn’t all the fooling around in gilt bathrooms and between silky Italian sheets.
The night of Bret Farley’s party was unforgettable because, by the end of it, two of the guests were dead.
The prime suspects behind this tragic turn of events, the Overbrook twins, Molly and Mardi, had arrived at Bret’s penthouse a little after ten, bewitchingly identical in their dark features and lush black hair, but oh so different in style. Molly was the height of chic, Mardi the essence of rebellion. Equally gorgeous and equally brilliant.
So why, only moments after taking their first drinks from a caterer’s silver tray, did both goddesses start to feel undone?
Molly was sipping champagne, Mardi a very dry Manhattan. This they both remembered. They also remembered that blue-eyed, ultra-suave Bret had flirted with both of them, telling Molly the vintage bubbles and caviar were all for her benefit, then leading Mardi by the hand among the bronze legs of the enormous Louise Bourgeois spider, the crown jewel of his family’s collection. The only other of that size graced the lobby of the Tate Modern in London. The twins recalled the body of the spider looming in the apartment’s vast entryway, beautiful and malicious.
Each sister had been glaringly jealous of Bret’s attentions to her twin. But neither one could begin to remember where those attentions had led.
There was an obscene swirl of luxury: reflective surfaces, sparkling views, high art, thumping music, and shiny beautiful rich kids who were striking poses for their Insta accounts, gossiping, drinking from priceless crystal, and falling down wasted onto one another.
The Overbrook girls were very much a part of this ruling scene, but they were apart from it as well. Because Molly and Mardi weren’t simply pretty and privileged; they were supernatural.
With supernatural instincts.
The twins could tell that something was up that night, something more than just Upper East Side private school mischief, but they found themselves too spellbound to investigate. Was it in their drinks? Or a deep corruption in the atmosphere? If you’d asked them at the party if they thought it would end in carnage, they would have laughed, but not wholeheartedly. They would have let out tinkling, nervous laughs. Laughs that admitted suspicion. But suspicion of what? Of whom?
The last thing Molly remembered, before blacking out, was the sound of Bret’s sexy whisper in her ear. “This is all for you, Molly,” he was saying, “every flower petal, every flute, every ivory caviar spoon.”
Only she didn’t want to believe him because she had just seen him with her twin, probably telling Mardi the same thing.
The last thing Mardi recalled was the bronze underbelly of the giant spider. Bret was telling her it was called Maman, because the artist believed that spiders were protective and benevolent. “You’re the only girl here who could possibly get the reference,” he whispered. His arm rested on her shoulder. “You love spiders, don’t you, Mardi?” She managed to say, “Yeah, spiders are cool,” and then her memory went blank.
The next morning, the legendary Overbrook twins stared at each other across their kitchen table through raccoon eyes. Neither one had taken off her mascara. They were still in their rumpled party clothes. Molly in her cocktail dress, Mardi in her torn black jeans. Somehow they had managed to order coffee and eggs online from the diner down the street.
They were too spent to start their usual argument about whose fault it was that the eggs were over easy instead of sunny-side up and who had been stupid enough to order whole wheat toast instead of sourdough. Som
ehow, there was no energy for fighting.
When they finally managed to speak, they sighed, in unison, “What happened last night? What the—?”
Then they sank silently into their breakfast, each straining to remember the previous night.
It was several hours before they got the news.
PART ONE
HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME
1
THRIFT SHOP
Mardi Overbrook shifted into fourth gear on the Montauk Highway, gunning to pass what had to be yet another banker’s kid in a brand-new black Ferrari. She belted along to Macklemore, singing about the twenty dollars in her pocket, her car vibrating to the powerful beat as it dusted the ultimate Hamptons douchemobile. Sucker had probably paid extra for automatic because he never learned to drive stick.
Her own car was a Ferrari too, but it was far from new—a 1972 red convertible Daytona that had lived many lives. It didn’t look anything like Banker Boy’s car, and she didn’t look anything like his preppie girlfriend either. Mardi had a rainbow tattoo that circled her neck like a python and an emerald-studded barbell through the tip of her tongue, which she stuck out at the astonished driver as she blurred by him, screaming along to her favorite song.
At the light, she glanced down at her phone, which was sitting faceup on the ebony leather passenger seat. Her social media feed was flowing in a steady stream, showing the streets and interiors of the city she was leaving behind. Unlike the majority of the stuck-up kids at her stupid prep school, she wasn’t getting the posts of sunsets in Mustique or cocktail parties in Nantucket. No, her feed was full of the real stuff from after-hours clubs all over the five boroughs of New York City, places without names or defined locations, places that appeared and disappeared in water towers and in abandoned fleabag motels, places she called home because she traveled there in a manic rebel pack that she called family. The pictures were of passed-out teens, teens staggering out into the daylight like disoriented moths, teens in various states of undress. She smiled down as they migrated across her phone screen. Her tribe.
She adjusted the strap of her vintage leopard-skin push-up bathing-suit bra, which she was wearing with a pair of threadbare rhinestone-encrusted denim shorts. The outfit had been left decades ago in the back of a closet by one of Dad’s girlfriends from his Studio 54 days. There was great stuff to be pillaged from Dad’s past in the Overbrook loft in Greenpoint—if you knew where to look.
Mardi grabbed the phone, puckered her lips, and took a quick close-up, posting it for all her friends back in the city with a tagline: “Don’t you dare forget me while I’m gone.”
Why in the Underworld was she leaving her life behind? Could someone please remind her?
Oh, yeah—she was leaving her life behind to spend the summer babysitting in a sleepy town lost somewhere on the East End of Long Island. With her princess of a twin sister, Molly, no less.
It was a fate worse than being badly dressed.
As she drove farther out from civilization, the landscape grew more pastoral and the salt smell in the air grew more pronounced, irritating her eyes so that she started to tear up. She was not one to cry, but this summer stretching ahead of her, an endless ribbon of small-town boredom, was a depressing prospect. She hadn’t even arrived in North Hampton, and she already felt trapped.
Mardi Overbrook hated feeling trapped.
She gritted her teeth, shifted into fifth gear, and turned the music up, determined not to admit defeat. If she was going to live for the summer in North Hampton, then she was going to make North Hampton worth living in.
A post popped onto her phone, which she instantly knew was from her twin. Not only because it was a phony artistic shot of some sand dune, complete with endangered shrubs and a pensive-looking seagull, that Molly had surely stopped to capture along her route—typical pretentious Molly—but because of the pink gold ring rolling over the image, undulating like soft taffy across the screen.
This was what young witches did lately to wink at one another through cyberspace. They overlaid their static posts with moving images visible only to their kind. Everyone had a symbol, like a living emoji. There were waxing and waning moons, twinkling stars, beating hearts, all sorts of romping mythical creatures. It was a tribal thing. And tribes were the whole point of social networking, right?
Molly and Mardi always had the rose gold ring, subtly carved with a diamondback pattern, floating through their posts, but only the two of them could see it. They had other images for sharing with the general witch population. Mardi used a vaulting rainbow, Molly a galloping thoroughbred horse. Only to each other did they make the golden ring visible. They’d never talked about it. But that’s how it was.
So, when Mardi sent the image of her red lips out into the world, Molly alone would notice the symbol of their sisterhood floating across the screen, while the rest of Midgard’s witches saw a snaking rainbow and the general population saw nothing but a cherry-red pout and a hint of leopard and lace.
Normally, this notion that she shared something unique with Molly wouldn’t faze Mardi. It was no big deal, a stupid twin thing. But today she had to admit that she found it just a little bit comforting that, as she left the known world, there was someone—even if that someone was the most irritating person in the universe—who was truly on her wavelength.
The phone rang, and her father’s handsome face filled the screen. She turned the music down and instinctively slowed, as if he could see her, although she was still twenty miles over the limit.
“S’up?”
“How about ‘hello, Dad’?” Troy Overbrook asked.
“S’up?”
“Are you almost there, my sweet?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. The GPS is acting weird.”
“Well, can’t your sister navigate for you? I told you it was tricky.”
Mardi looked at the empty seat beside her. “Molly’s right here, but I’m afraid she’s fully occupied painting her nails a lovely shade of lavender and simply cannot be bothered to come to my aid, Your Majesty. So sorry, Your Highness. At your service, My Lord. Deferentially yours, Master. Is that what you want to hear?”
Troy sighed. “Well, at least you girls are together. And what I want to hear is that you are both going to take this summer with Ingrid seriously. She’s an old, dear friend of mine, and I’m afraid she may be our last hope. Show her some respect. Take good care of her children. I’m asking you to try. For your own good.”
“I still can’t believe you’re making us do this—for the whole summer!”
“Do it you will. You have no idea how ugly things will get if you blow it.”
“Life is an ugly thing, Dad.”
“Not as ugly as Hell, my sweet.”
A flashing red light appeared in Mardi’s rearview mirror.
“Dad, gotta go. I’m being pulled over.”
“What?” There was a groan on the other end. “Okay, but I want you to promise me that there will be no funny business. Take it like a mortal. A mortal who deserves a speeding ticket. I’ll pay the fine. You have got to learn some self-control.”
“Okay, promise, Dad. I swear. Okay. Bye.”
She hurled the phone onto the floor and downshifted to a perfect stop. Before the police officer could open his door, she had already appeared between the exhaust pipes of her ridiculously powerful cherry-red car.
Her hair was jet black and knotty. Her eyes were dark and defiant, her makeup artfully smudged. Her legs were endless, sprouting pale and willowy from a pair of gladiator sandals covered in bronze spikes. The effect, with her studded shorts and pointy leopard bra, was quite unnerving. Her stomach was so defined and her arms so ripped that she looked hard to the touch, both wildly attractive and severely off-putting at the same time. The green glow emanating from the precious stone studding her tongue gave her the hypnotic quality of a cobra.
; “Young lady,” said the cop as he stumbled from his car door, “you should remain in your vehicle.”
“Noted for next time.” She laughed, squinting at him until he stumbled again. “Next time, I will remain in my vehicle. Promise.” Control her powers? Seriously, Dad, what were powers for?
“Next time?” he slurred. Then, making a superhuman effort to get ahold of himself, he said, “License and registration, please.”
“Say ‘pretty please.’”
“Pretty ple—wait a second, you’re not old enough to be driving a car like this!”
“I’m sixteen. Last time I checked that was the legal driving age.”
“License and registration,” he repeated, making his syllables yawn in slow motion. Then he said it again, way too fast, three times over, in a high, squeaky cartoon chipmunk voice: “License and registration! License and registration! License and registration!”
“Officer”—she grinned and took a step toward him—“are you harassing me?”
He looked down at his shiny black beetle shoes and clenched his fists, attempting one last time to get a grip on himself in the presence of her overwhelming magic.
“Miss, you were going over ninety miles an hour in a fifty-mile-per-hour zone. License and registration.” This time his voice sounded as though he were underwater.
Gleefully, Mardi watched him close his mouth for fear he would start blowing bubbles. This was one of her favorite tricks to play on authority figures: to fill their mouths with so much saliva that they became terrified of becoming human soap-bubble wands.
“My speedometer told me I was right at the limit, Officer,” she said sweetly.
He made a sound, but his lips wouldn’t part to form words.
She laughed and hopped effortlessly back into her car.
“I’m afraid,” she said as she revved the engine, “that you and I are going to have to agree to disagree, Officer.”