Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (29 page)

I had a death grip on my feather, anyway, waiting for Emil's pronouncement. He cocked his head to one side, listening. Then he clapped and grinned and brought out a tray of wedding ring sets.

“We're not ready yet.”

Matt was smiling again, swearing he'd heard wedding bells. I pulled him away from the rings.

Emil went to get the donated gold jewelry. “No matter. This is the one, Willy. Can't you hear the music?”

I couldn't tell if the stones were singing or Matt was humming. I couldn't keep from grinning, either.

“Don't ruin it, you two. You can wait, but don't wait too long.”

No, we wouldn't. I started to glance at the gorgeous engagement rings, for the future, of course, but got saved by the bell, Big Eddie's beeper, anyway. Chief Haversmith had a report of another suspicious package and needed Eddie's nose to check for explosives.

“Where?” I wanted to know.

Harris checked his cell. Baitfish Barry's rang, too. No one looked at me.

Someone said, “Matt, why don't you take Willow back to your place?”

I could hear sirens headed out of town. “Where?”

But I knew.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-SIX

I
had gold coins, a shifty-eyed painting, a bottle of well-aged Scotch, shaved-off dreadlocks from Leshaun the traffic cop, Mrs. Ralston's Phi Beta Kappa key, a high school all-star jacket, Mrs. Merriweather's lucky panties—don't ask—two eighth graders' ponytails, one track trophy, three free passes to the bowling alley, a furry key chain that wasn't so lucky for the rabbit, my GRABYA award for best graphic book for young adults, and plenty more.

And I had a dead cat.

The two girls cried when they cut their hair off. I cried when I heard about the cat. No one would let me see it, but they did tell me it was wrapped in pages from my book, the dog-eared one from the library, and burned. I prayed the poor thing was dead first.

You know what they do to witches, right?

But a girl had taken the book and asked for work, not Danny Boy.

“No matter,” Uncle Henry told me after Matt took the cat away to autopsy. “We've got him this time.”

Harris' cameras had videotaped every car that drove past my house. One camera got the rusted van, and a blur of something flying out its window. Another got the license number.

“It's Denis, all right. And your father was close. He didn't get the car, not the Mustang we kept looking for, but the Mustang is a Ford. Guess your boy's last name? With an E at the end. And guess whose juvey record was missing from the database until Russ recovered it? And whose last known address is an abandoned building?”

“But it was a girl in town last weekend!”

“So he has a girlfriend or a sister. Even sociopaths have friends and families. He's smart enough to know we're looking for your neighbor's mugger, so he brought a decoy. We've got an APB for the car, for him, for a brown-haired female about twenty with glasses. We'll get him this time. Her, too, as accessory.”

“You damn well better, Henry Haversmith.” My mother pushed forward through the row of police to the chief. “And he better hope you find him before I do. No one tortures an animal in my town. And no one threatens my daughter.”

Ah, I was her daughter again. Whew.

Matt came back, gray-faced, silent, and angry. He and I and Mom ate the butternut squash lasagna Susan had prepared, but for once her magic-enhanced cooking couldn't lighten our moods.

The cops and the DUE contingent were looking for Deni's van. So was Joe the scrying plumber, in a rusted bucket. The rest of us still had to concentrate on the missing sand tonight. Tomorrow was the festival. And the full moon.

“You're coming,” I told my mother, when she refused to go to the beach after dinner because Carinne would be there. “Maybe you can talk to the Andanstans like you do dogs. And you're the one who insisted I come help, that you and the town needed me. You said honor and responsibility and kinship demanded I take part. Well, it's sure as hell your town and your kin, too. Therefore, it's your responsibility to do everything you can to help.”

So we went to the beach, with spotlights and blankets and armed guards and as many psychics as we could gather. I accepted that this had to be the secret, invitation-only conclave I'd protested against. How could we explain to normal citizens that some of their neighbors were about to leave knickknacks and souvenirs on the sand in hopes of reversing beach erosion? People put wreaths in the water as memorials, but a two-hundred-year-old Wedgewood dish?

When Jimmie made his way to the beach, leaning on Carinne, I guided him toward where the nest had been, but not even a feather remained. We both called to Oey, out loud and mentally, me with images in my mind. She did not answer. Maybe she was at sea as a fish, out getting her egg babies prepared for part-time aquatic life.

Several people, including shiny-skulled Leshaun, whose hearing was almost as good as a dog's, thought they heard a strange sound that could have been the Andanstans. No one spotted them.

We laid out all the booty, all the treasures, in a line halfway between the shore and the sea. The beach had gone so narrow that the portrait, lying flat, covered most of the sand. The painted lady looked grim by my flashlight, so I told her she could go home with all the other prized possessions in the morning if the Andanstans rejected her.

One look at what used to be our best bathing beach and Grandma Eve and the five other inner councilwomen present were ready to go home and cancel tomorrow night's seaside ritual. They'd just hold the early All Hallow's party on the green in town. Or move it to after the ragamuffin parade through the village on Halloween itself.

I said no, with more confidence than I felt. This wasn't about the ancient witches' rituals; this was about saving the entire town's future. We could do it.

I placed the gold coin next to the portrait.

Carinne had stayed at the edges of our group, even though no one present was younger than she was. She held her feather so tightly I was afraid it would snap, or she would. She carefully placed a photograph of her deceased father on the sand, not mine, but the man who had raised her.

We waited. And waited. I sat on the cold sand and sketched by the nearly full moon's light and the flashlight Matt held for me. I drew trees, parrots, dotted men, vast beaches with happy visitors.

Jimmie took two steps toward the water. I didn't know if he wanted to reclaim his whiskey or keep walking, but Cousin Lily grabbed him back. She put down a ribbon-tied pack of letters from her dead husband, then brushed away a tear.

Then everyone pricked a finger and spilled a drop of blood among the mementos. We waited another hour, getting colder and more depressed.

What more did these bastards want?

I'd had enough.

I took off my shoes and stood at the tide line. I stamped my foot, cascading the water. I waved my feather and shouted, “It's payback time, Andanstans. We've offered our dearest possessions, and you haven't offered an inch of sand. If it's one of us you want, you can't have them. Or me. I have too much to live for.” I thought of Matt and the triplets. They deserved to be born, too. “We all do. Jimmie has to finish his books and Carinne has to help the Royce students. No one is going to drown here tonight for breaking rules we never knew, never agreed to. You're the ones who broke the rules by staying in our world when every other otherworldly went back to, um, the other world.” People weren't supposed to know about the existence of an alternate universe but how could they not? Everything they'd experienced in the last six months had to be either magic or miracle. “To Unity.”

I shook my fist. “You want more blood? You'll have to get past me. You came because I called for help and your sea god sent you. Oey guided you. I guess you're square with those guys now, so it's you and me. You and me. We're grateful, all right? We'll be grateful forever . . .”

You and me forever.

Oh, hell.

I fumbled under my jacket, my sweatshirt, my turtleneck, and pulled out the chain I hadn't taken off since my mother gave it to me, the one with the pendant made from her wedding ring. The one inscribed with hieroglyphics from that other universe.
One life, one heart, I and thou, forever.
I'd had it so long I never thought about it anymore. Trying to translate it, Grant said the words held a million meanings, all in mindspeak and history and futures, the way Unity beings communicated.

I pulled it off over my head and held it out. “Is this what you want? Is it precious enough? Or is it a bond of good faith and loyalty?” It hadn't been for my parents, which is why I had it. “If so, yes, you and us, forever, in peace, if you bellicose brats know the meaning of peace. We will not steal from you, and you will not steal from us. If you bring the sand back, we will keep the beach clean and try not to blow any of you up. In return we will help you and your friends if called upon. I swear on this amulet and on my love for these people, this place.”

My mother was weeping. So was Grandma Eve at Doc Lassiter's side. Matt put his arm around me, but faced the water. “I swear on my honor and on my love for this woman.”

Now every voice on the beach rose up. “I swear on my honor.”

I placed my necklace on the wet sand at the water's edge. And I held my breath, expecting a thunderbolt or a tidal wave or a sinkhole opening up beneath my feet, something to acknowledge our presence and reject my oath. Nothing happened.

We decided to leave the offerings until morning, just before the tide would come in again. Colin, with his superior eyesight, volunteered to keep watch, but I saw a picture of Oey in my head, looking pleased. “No one needs to stay. The treasures will be safe. The Andanstans are waiting for us to leave. We're too big.”

So we all went home, giving backward glances for what we'd left and lost. Some gave backward glances at me that weren't so fond, as if I'd conned them out of their cherished belongings to sell on eBay.

* * *

Matt thought I'd been incredibly brave, standing up to the eldritch beings, standing up to the few espers who doubted me. “That's the sign of a great leader, you know. Getting people to follow you when you don't know where you're going. I am so proud of you.”

“That wasn't me. Everyone knows I'm the world's biggest coward. It was the feather.”

He kissed me, gently, tenderly. “You're the only one who believes that. I think Oey and the professor watched
The Wizard of Oz
too many times. You're brave and brilliant and see things us poor average psychics can't. And you gave up your pendant, which might have more magic in it than the entire rest of this screwball town.”

I automatically reached for it, then felt naked. Which I was, of course, on the couch with Matt under the quilts. Mom was in her room and Harris was in the guest room upstairs with all his electronic surveillance stuff. That left my old room with its two narrow single beds, separated from my mother's bedroom by one thin wall. No way.

Matt leaned over me for his jeans and pulled a little box out of the pocket. I recognized the local jeweler's signature gold paper wrap.

“You didn't! I told you, I'm not ready.”

He smiled. “I didn't. Open it. I never thought I'd be replacing what you lost, but it's another sign of love and a promise of forever, if you want it.”

The box held a gold chain with a piece of blue beach glass hanging from it.

“I tried to match the color of your eyes, but there's no magic shining through the glass.”

Maybe not, but a tiny gold lighthouse charm dangled in front of the glass, framed by the blue of the sea and the sky. Matt helped me clasp the chain around my neck. “I'll try. That's all I can do. I love you.”

He meant he'd try to find a lighthouse, the idiot. I said, “I love the necklace and I love you, too. I'll try.” I meant I'd bend like the willow tree, so we could overcome the insignificant logistic problems. What did it matter where we lived if we were together?

We made love again, to seal the deal. And to stay awake, waiting for another attack from the stalker, some sign that the next big wave wasn't going to wash over half of Paumanok Harbor.

Sleep was out of the question. Patrol cars kept riding up and down the street, cops on foot called back and forth with all clears; floodlights bathed the backyard. Little Red wanted to sleep on the couch. Mom's old dogs snored.

Maybe sleep wasn't so impossible. Sirens woke us at dawn, but other sounds came, too: church bells ringing, truck horns beeping, someone's car speakers, way too loud.

Then the phones started. And shouts, bullhorns, whistles, engines revving.

“Come to the beach!”

Mom and the big dogs piled into the Subaru, with Matt and me and Moses and Little Red stopping to pick up Grandma Eve and Doc Lassiter in Matt's car. Susan hopped into Harris' SUV, and her parents pulled out behind us. When we got stuck in traffic, cars and trucks trying to park up and down the streets, we got out and ran.

The sun broke through the clouds in perfect time for us to see the beach. A new beach, a glorious beach, the prettiest beach in the world. Surely the widest, cleanest, smoothest beach on the north side of the south fork of Long Island.

A line of driftwood remained near the beach grass and a circle of stones sat in the middle of the sand, waiting for tonight's bonfire. I had no idea how the little guys managed to do all that, but inside the circle, in a shallow depression, rested all the treasures. The pictures, the gold, the medals, the letters, the Wedgewood, all dry and unscoured by sand. People ran to reclaim their mementos, laughing, embracing, almost dancing with happiness.

My pendant wasn't there, not that I expected it. I had a better talisman anyway, all my own. And everyone called me a hero.

The crowd from Rosehill arrived and joined the celebration. But then others came to see what the commotion was all about. They brought their kids to marvel at the sudden reappearance of our beach. Carinne's feather couldn't fix this, not even when I handed her mine.

That's when Oey appeared, seemingly out of the blue. Or the blue water. Mayor Applebaum got busy among the non-talented, urging them to forget the new beach and the bird. Monte did yo-yo tricks for the kids. Or hypnotized them not to notice that the biggest, most splendiferous parrot anyone had ever seen had just materialized from thin air.

Heaven knew what he'd do if they saw the fish tail. Not even Grandma Eve or my mother could see the scales and the split fins, but Matt and I and Jimmie could, and now Carinne could, too. I introduced Oey, who took up a perch on her shoulder. She gave me a thumbs up and a big grin. Jimmie led them away, looking twenty years younger. Monte pocketed the yo-yo and went with them, looking confounded, but willing to follow them anywhere. I guess he'd glimpsed the fish tail.

“Tonight, tonight,” my mother was yelling. “Come back to our beautiful beach to say thanks and ask for another year of good luck.”