Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (28 page)

Matt parked, but Carinne wouldn't get out of the car. Matt and Kenneth did, one to get a feel for the atmosphere, one to order takeout we could eat at a secluded beach.

“Can you see?” I asked Carinne, who had her eyes shut tight.

“Fine.”

“I mean see futures?”

She opened her eyes and started counting off, starting with the teenagers on line ahead of Matt. “Ad executive, gas station attendant—Hess uniform. Teacher. Uh-oh.”

Doc Lassiter put his hand on the back of her neck.

“What do you see?”

“A wheelchair. A car crash, I think. The girl next to her dies.” Her voice rose to an anguished wail that had Harris and Colin and Matt and Kenneth running to surround the car, obstructing her view. “Oh, God.”

I wrapped my hand with the feather around hers. “It's okay. You can't do anything about it. Breathe. Do you want to draw?”

She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut she couldn't find the pad with a giant crayon. “No.”

I signaled Doc to take his hand away. Carinne trembled, but said she thought she'd be all right, without seeing out the windows. “No voices this time.” She quietly wept for the girl who'd died.

“But one lived. And you didn't fall apart. The feather worked!”

Monte took over, reaching back to stroke her hand. “Come on, ducks, be strong. Be like a battlefield nurse. You lose some, but you save a lot more.”

Carinne nodded, ready to try again, but everyone's phone, pager, beeper, whatever, started ringing at the same time.

Someone had broken into my house!

No way were Carinne and I waiting at the clam bar. We raced home, sirens and all, calling for backup and roadblocks and warning my grandmother and Susan's family not to leave their houses.

We sped up the dirt road, gravel flying, to see Lou and a woman with a little white dog outside, waving.

I had a relapse.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FIVE

I
had to go to Stony Brook after all. Dad had that one almost right.

My mother shouted, “Surprise!” and ran toward the cars, where we were all getting out.

She ignored the men with weapons drawn and rushed to hug Carinne. “How could I stay away when my baby was sick?” Then she saw me.

“Surprise, Mom. That's Carinne, Dad's daughter from before you were married.”

She clutched her chest and keeled over.

Dad was almost right there too. “He said she'd have a heart attack,” I wailed over the approaching sirens.

Mom shoved a helping hand away. “Not . . . my heart. Low . . . sugar.”

“You're diabetic? You should have told me!”

She sniffed around the oxygen mask the EMTs put over her face. “Like you told me about Carinne?”

Stony Brook insisted on keeping her for tests to be sure she had her insulin under control. They recommended rest and no stress.

For her or me? I lost another three days.

Matt got the Maltese to the Willinghams and took Little Red home with him. My poor dog wouldn't know where he lived soon. But he'd be safe. I guess I was too, sleeping in a chair in Mom's hospital room, except when my father called every hour. I shut the door so no one could hear the shouting, crying, blame-naming, and guilt-tossing. And that was before Mom got back from her tests.

I got a crick in my neck, but no further toward a solution to the Andanstans' demands, as Oey saw them. I did get an idea about Deni and Dad's cockeyed premonitions. What if Deni drove a Mustang, instead of riding a mustang? I called it in to Lou, who added it to the file. I couldn't imagine how many Mustangs were registered to a DF, but it might mean something.

Harris and the others ran the plates of every Mustang that drove into Paumanok Harbor. They had the whole police force and all the shopkeepers looking at strangers, comparing young, black-haired men to the sketch I'd done. No one spotted anything while I was at the hospital. No one came up with anything precious that we could part with.

Lou and Grandma Eve picked us up. My mother wasn't talking to me or my grandmother, but she chatted with Lou the whole long ride home. Dogs, Florida, the food at the hospital, her new TV show. When we got home, she sniffed her nose at her sister, who'd cleaned the house, curled her lip at Susan, who'd brought food, dropped her purse on Cousin Lily's foot, who'd brought armloads of get well cards and flowers. Then she demanded the return of her dogs, as if we'd stolen them along with her pride and her trust. No matter that the dogs would be safer at Aunt Jasmine's or be unhappy that they couldn't climb up the stairs to Mom's bedroom, she wanted her dogs, the only loyal creatures on Earth. After labeling the rest of us as traitors, she let Lou help her up the stairs, where she slammed her door.

Oh, boy.

I wanted to go to Matt's, needing to know that someone still believed in me. We'd talked while I was at the hospital, but it wasn't the same. He had a waiting room of sick dogs and cats, though, and I had the whole town counting on me. Besides, I couldn't leave, not when my mother needed me. I couldn't sit in the house, either, pretending I was welcome here. I didn't even have my own dog for company. I had Lou.

“Nice lady, your mother.”

Fine. He could stay with her while I went to see if anyone came up with a way to placate the sand guys. It would be easier than placating my mother.

The beach was my first destination, to consult with Oey. I figured I was safe for two days, until the weekend. Deni would be back at work now.

Lou had the police chief send extra police guards with me: Big Eddie and Baitfish Barry. He had others positioned along the road to the farm stand, to keep Mom and her dogs and her house safe.

Barry let out a sharp breath when he saw how narrow the beach was. Not a minnow in range of his fish-finder, either. I saw no sandmen, no nest, no para fish, not even when I rubbed the feather like you would a magic lantern. No genie popped up. No inspiration, either, only the same sick feeling that everything was going to hell in a hand cart and I had no brakes. This was worse than the flu.

I really needed Matt. The cops and the DUE agent had enough couth to wait outside so that Matt and I could have a quick hug between a cat with a cough and a dog with diarrhea.

I whined, too, I admit, about how my mother would never forgive me, and I hadn't even been born yet when the crime got committed!

Matt promised to talk to her. I'd forgotten they were old friends, that she'd been instrumental in getting him to set up an office in Paumanok Harbor. He couldn't wait to see if some of her dog-whispering skills could rub off on him now that he had an aura of esper ability. His admiration and affection ought to soothe Mom. It sure worked for me.

He'd help with my errands as soon as he got done at the clinic, then we'd go relieve Lou. Matt would sleep on the couch if he had to. He was not leaving me alone. We'd been apart too long.

I felt wanted again, and stronger. I had a wonderful man's affection, and a feather in my cap. Literally. Yankee Doodle, that's me.

* * *

Everyone in the village was relieved to see that I was recovered from the bug and my mother was out of the hospital. Time was running out, with the sand. Now if I only had a rabbit to pull out of my hat the way they expected.

We went to the library first. This time Mrs. Terwilliger handed me
Mothers and Daughters
and cookbooks for diabetics. I assumed the cookbooks were for my mother.

Mrs. T related how a young woman came into the library Sunday and asked for my books because she heard I lived here. She couldn't afford the thirty dollars for a temporary library card so she could take them out, though, so Mrs. Terwilliger found her a damaged copy from the paperback trade rack. The girl said she hoped to stay in the Harbor a while, if she could find a job. Then she'd get a library card, first thing.

The librarian wanted to know if Dr. Matt was still looking for office help. She'd get a résumé from the young woman when she brought the book back, as promised.

I'd ask Matt. He might need a temp for when Marta had to take a kid to the doctor or one of them got sick. Right now, I needed to ask Mrs. Terwilliger what she thought was precious.

“Why, books, of course, but they don't do well underwater, naturally. The beach is bad enough, when sand gets under the plastic slipcover and gets in the spine. A library card is perhaps more priceless than any individual book. Read a book, open a mind, I always say. And it's free. I'd issue one to your sand people, but they have to be able to write their names. We can forgo the proof of residency, since everyone knows where they live, but not that.”

I appreciated that she readily accepted how I'd seen creatures no one else could see, creatures that couldn't possibly be of our universe. They existed on my word and in Professor Harmon's memory, and they stole our sand. That was enough for her and the other esper villagers.

I got that same trust and the same good wishes at the deli and the grocery store. And the same question about Matt's office help. No one was hiring this time of year, but they felt sorry for the young woman who'd come by on Sunday, so conscientiously asking in every business establishment.

I remembered the girl's voice I'd heard when Deni pretended to be a female fan. This girl had brown hair, though, not the black Mrs. Abbottini had seen on her mugger. She had glasses that Mrs. Abbottini never mentioned. According to Joanne, she did not drive a Mustang, either, but an old rattletrap van. Joanne thought she was sleeping in it. I felt sorry for this kid, but I had more important business right now.

Vincent the barber deemed his family, his skill, his customers, and his community as precious to him. The little bastards were already claiming the Harbor's most valuable commodity though, shovelful by shovel. He'd sacrifice his fancy German Jaguar scissors if I thought that could help.

Walter at the drugstore didn't hand any of us freebies in a bag, to my companions' regrets. I still had some at Matt's house, if I ever got there again. Walter did offer a portrait of his great-grandmother, a truth-seer in her day. The portrait still saw. The eyes followed viewers around, and Walter vowed the mouth puckered up in disapproval or gave a slight smile, depending on if a lie was heard. Walter knew the thing was a masterpiece of mentalism, but he'd be glad to get it out of his house.

I doubted the Andanstans wanted a dead divinator either, but I took it because the painting held great magic.

Mr. Whitside at the bank asked if I thought the sandmen would take gold coins with presidents on them. No one else seemed to want them. They were wondrously shiny, so I put one in my pocket.

So it went, all through town, encouragement, but not a lot of great possibilities. I had a dragon's hoard of treasure, some sentimental, some with appraisal slips. Some making no sense at all, like the free bowling passes. It was the thought that counted.

We went to Rosehill to see what Jimmie thought, now that he felt better.

He took me aside while Lily offered coffee and apple pie. I worried about how pale he looked, how he turned down the pie.

He'd been thinking, he told me. (And drinking, Carinne told me.) He knew what the Andanstans wanted. They'd saved lives. They should have one back. His.

“No!”

“Yes, my dear. You said it yourself. I am precious to you, which I truly do appreciate. But that's about all. Rosehill can get along without me now that Monte shows some signs of humanity. You have all my notes so the book can get done without me, too. And I am old, old and tired, without much to look forward to. What better way to go than saving this lovely place that did so much for me in my dotage? Saving it so my new friends can stay and enjoy the beauties of their surroundings? I found the best bottle of Scotch in the wine cellars here, which I intend to enjoy every last drop of, then walk into the water. It's cold this time of year, you know. It won't take long. I doubt I'll feel a thing, full of spirits almost as old as I am. With luck, the Andanstans will take me back with them and I'll get to see their world again. If not, I have seen it before, which is a memory I shall cherish. That and the friendship of you and dear Carinne.”

“No! We need you! And Oey will not let them take you. She thinks you belong to her, she thinks all of us do. I need your help with the book and I need you to stay until it's done, to get the recognition you deserve. I need you to tell stories to the triplets. We'll find another way to save the Harbor. I know we will, if we just keep trying. Promise me you will not do this crazy thing. I'll . . . I'll pour out your liquor, see if I don't.” I held his hand, devastated at how frail it felt, how trembly. “Please. I need you.”

He patted my hair. “I liked the pink. It made me smile. We'll see. But what's an old man compared to an entire town?”

“We'll find a way. I swear.”

So he gave me the bottle to offer the Andanstans.

Carinne stared at me when I went back to the kitchen holding a bottle of booze, so I stared at her, wondering what she was thinking. Her hair was darker than mine now, with the browner roots coming in. Her blue eyes—my father's eyes that we'd both inherited—had shadows under them. She said she'd saved me a piece of pie. And she offered to save the Harbor by being the human sacrifice.

Her life wasn't valuable to anyone, not even her, she said, but the sand people might want it on account of the paranormal power. And look what she'd done, almost killed my mother.

“No, you didn't! And no you can't. Sacrifice is not going to happen! Not you, not the professor, not babies, not pets. I will not let it happen. And your life is so much better already, isn't it?”

She looked toward Monte, who had his computer out. “But what if . . .?”

I dragged her to the backyard. The day had a chill and we had no coats, but I didn't care. A whole squad of gardeners worked on the grounds, wrapping burlap around tender bushes before winter. “Look at the young ones.” I handed her my feather to hold with hers, then ordered: “Tell me.”

“Gardener, gardener, doctor, drug runner, double amputee.” But she didn't flip out. “It hurts.”

“It hurts both of you, but you can handle this. You can help him find rehab facilities and vocational training when the time comes. You can help at Rosehill when the students start arriving in January. And Monte can track them and try to change any dangerous behavior. You can save lives, I know it!”

She nodded. She wouldn't drown herself, unless the Andanstans asked for her.

Great. Except all I had to offer them was an Antique Roadshow collection of stuff the sand guys could never use or appreciate.

They might covet the magic. But here the people were magic and they weren't getting any of them. Mine.

* * *

By now I was drained. I still had a few more places to visit, without much hope of finding the perfect gift for the beings who had nothing.

Matt met us in town, took one look at me and bought me a hot chocolate, with whipped cream. “You're too skinny.” There was magic in those words, too.

He wanted me to go home, I looked so tired. We still had to face my mother, though. I wanted to make one more stop, at Emil the jeweler's place. I wanted to get back the gold we'd collected to return to its owners. And I wanted to check out the stones, with Matt.

“No,” I told him. “Not the diamonds. We are
not
engaged. But Emil's stones tell him if a couple is good together.”

“We're good.”

“But the stones will confirm it.” I had to know I wasn't making a mistake.

Matt lost his smile. “You'd believe some cold chunks of rock and a crazy jeweler instead of me? Instead of what we share? What I know you feel?”

“Emil believes I've seen the Andanstan. I believe his gemstones talk to him. And they are always right.”