Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385)

by Jerome, Celia

  Emil the jeweler said he had some diamond dust. We could try sprinkling that.

  Someone else recalled how ancient cultures and some modern religions used blood sacrifices. He offered his mother-in-law.

  We all laughed, but considered how we could get a crowd on the beach to all nick their fingers, so drops of blood dripped onto the sand.

  Chief Haversmith asked, “What if that just causes more rashes? I’m finally getting over this one.”

  “We have to try everything we can think of. We don’t know what they like, what could make them happy or improve their lives. I thought of making them clothes, but I don’t see how.”

  “I do.” That was Margaret, the weaver who ran a needlework shop. “I have a million quilting scraps and threads. We can shred them into smaller bits and carry them into the tide line.”

  “Great. They might enjoy all the colors and textures, after seeing nothing but dark sand and light sand. Maybe pink or white sand on some beaches, but not around here. I thought they might like pebbles, but I don’t know if they are into grinding rocks into sand.”

  “And what if they start using the pebbles as weapons?”

  I didn’t think such insubstantial beings could lift a pebble, unless they worked together the way ants do. They’d built a sandbar, despite their bellicosity, and stabbed Matt with a horseshoe crab’s tail.

  “They stabbed Matt? What if they figure out how to do their forming thing with heavier materials?” A councilwoman asked. “With pebbles they could be a real physical threat to people.”

  “Shoot, don’t give them ideas,” the chief said. “If they like the pebbles, they might start stealing rocks, too, undermining the cliffs entirely.”

  The professor, who’d been quiet up to now, said, “I propose we meet on the beach and bow down.”

  Like worshipers? That didn’t sit right with anyone.

  “No, bow in respect, like Oriental diplomats, or us Brits, to the queen. It’s honor they want, as far as I understand, not material items.”

  “I think we have to try tangibles,” I said. “I tried to thank them from the bottom of my heart, casting mental pictures, but they wouldn’t listen. They did not even acknowledge my presence. We can’t seem to communicate, so we don’t know if our gestures have the same meanings in their world. I want to bring you to the beach, Jimmie, to see if your gratitude gets to them. You’re one they helped save, after all. They did not react to Moses.”

  “You mean they helped part the Red Sea?” someone asked.

  “No, Moses is Matt’s dog, rescued from the ship. Either way, gratitude does not appear to equal a return favor.”

  Grandma Eve spoke up. “We are not sacrificing our children or our pets. Not even the nasty reporters who try to snoop around the Harbor. But what if we bring them roadkill? Would they know?”

  “The Others are usually telepathic, although I could not get through to these. But what if they picked up the image of a car hitting a deer, say? Or read someone’s mind. Can you imagine how insulted they’d be then?”

  “We’ve got some talented telepaths of our own. How about getting them to try talking?”

  “I already have Oey, the professor’s parrot, trying to find out what would satisfy their honor.” I explained about the eggs and the favors and the debts. “But sure, send anyone to the beach to try.”

  “What else?”

  I consulted my list. “We could sing to them.” The House liked music, when the House communicated with Matt and me. “Maybe play ‘Mr. Sandman,’ the Beach Boys or the song they play for Mariano Rivera.”

  “We could have that kid Brock write a rap song dedicated to them.”

  “Or get the school kids to write praise poems about sand. We could hold a contest where the best ones get carved on the beach.”

  “I don’t know if they can read, much less read English. It’s doubtful.”

  Grandma Eve offered to strew bundles of herbs into the water and along the shore. Someone else suggested wine. Harris volunteered to ask Susan to create a cake in their name, then crumble it in the water like breadcrumbs.

  I didn’t think they ate the way we did. Besides, give up one of Susan’s cakes? “I think the seagulls would get the crumbs. And I doubt the Andanstans would think seagull guano is righteous recompense.

  “We have another problem,” I explained. A time limit. “Your Halloween festival is held every year at the full moon, isn’t it? That’s when Oey’s eggs hatch and the Andanstans take them home to Unity, along with all our sand.”

  After a lot of cursing, the consensus was that we should try everything, but try harder to talk to the invaders. Grant might have been able to, but he was in a hospital somewhere. The professor had never spoken with the beings he described in his book, only with Oey. And I felt if the Andanstans had wanted to talk, they would have spoken with me on the beach. “Or sent images for me to visualize. That’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? They didn’t talk to Matt, either.”

  “About you and Matt . . .”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I had so much to do and so little time, with so little sleep last night. And I still had a stalker.

  They’d delegated me to take charge of the Andanstans and all the efforts to placate them or talk to them. How could I do that when I had to stay hidden away, out of danger?

  I met Lou outside when Harris walked me to get Little Red out of the agent’s car. I gave the dog some water to hide my mopping at a suspicious wet spot on the seat.

  Lou walked us back inside. He reported a trace on the email. Not a name or an address, although they felt they had enough evidence of a serious threat to get a warrant on the server. “But we know he sent that last message from an unregistered smart phone at a coffee shop in Queens. So he’s not out here.”

  Yet.

  After Lou explained the new findings, my grandmother decided we had enough time. Or she cared more about the festival going off than she did about my safety. “So you can take Jimmie to the beach, gather the gold and diamond dust, sing songs, have poetry contests and all the rest. If you keep corresponding with the unpleasant person, Lou can keep track of his whereabouts.”

  “Fine. Then you deal with my mother.”

  She pretended not to understand. “Of course I’ll see she is informed before the festival.”

  “Someone will tell her first, then she’ll be furious at all of us, from hearing it secondhand.”

  Grandma Eve looked down her nose at me, hard to do when she stayed seated and I stood in front of her table. “No one will speak of it. I’ll see to that.”

  I believe she could, if anyone could.

  “But what are you going to do about that unfortunate Miss O’Dell?” she asked.

  “Me? I got Carinne here. You people can fix her.” I turned to Lou. “Is she all right now?”

  “Yes, the mayor helped her forget about the kid, and Doc helped her relax. Monteith is taking her home. He’ll help her sleep.”

  “Monte?” Jimmie asked. “My godson is liable to smother her cat while she’s unconscious.”

  I didn’t think Monteith would go that far, but I didn’t think he’d help Carinne do anything but move out.

  “He says he can make her sleep so her body recovers from the trauma.”

  My grandmother turned her scowl on him. “You’d let him drug her? He’s no pharmacist or herbalist. I can send something to help.”

  “No, he doesn’t use drugs. No saying how they’ll react with a wild talent like hers. He said something about doing yo-yo tricks.”

  I’d seen his yo-yo, the shiny, spinning silver circles. “You mean he’s going to hypnotize her?” I was horrified. After my last experience with an egomaniacal mesmerist who used his powers to kidnap, steal, and embezzle, I didn’t trust anythi
ng about that particular mental manipulation. Especially not for Carinne, whose fragile personality could not stand much more.

  The professor agreed with me. “Monte’s good at his parlor tricks, but I do not know about his skill at such a delicate operation. What if he puts her to sleep and cannot awaken her?”

  I patted his trembling hand. “I doubt he’s that foolish. He knows I’ll sic my grandmother on him. And Oey, when she gets back.”

  “Ah, yes. Oey might have answers.”

  Lou shrugged. “We can’t wait for a broody parrot. We don’t have much choice about helping Carinne right now.” He echoed my feelings by adding, “She’s at the end of her rope.”

  “Can’t you do something?”

  “Mayor Applebaum can make her forget, but that won’t help the next time she sees a child that’s not going to grow up. We can wipe out the talent, but sometimes other stuff gets wiped out, too. Like speech and memory and visual recognition.”

  “In other words, she could be a vegetable.”

  “It’s not a chance anyone is willing to take.”

  It better not be. I figured I was Carinne’s next of kin, and they’d destroy her brain over my dead body. I must have squeezed Little Red too hard because he growled. Lou got up and took a few steps back. “Grandma, you must know a way to help. Carinne’s birth is not her fault. She needs us.”

  “I’ll read some of my research books, but I’ve never heard of a cure for sorrowful or frightening foretelling. Maybe someone in England knows more.”

  Lou pulled his chair closer to Grandma Eve, away from me and Red. “I’ve already sent out the call for assistance. They’ll try. And we’ll try to keep tabs on the kid she saw today, steer him in safer directions. Monte wants to document everything that went on this morning. That way, he says, he can justify the expenses as necessary research.”

  “Good for him.” Yes, that had a touch of sarcasm. I still felt the new director of Rosehill cared more about the bottom line than about helping people. “But if you keep Brock away from motorbikes, he could drown surfing or get hit by a car or get food poisoning.”

  “Bad things happen all the time. We’ll do what we can. We have to see how unchangeable Carinne’s prophecies are, and how accurate. Sometimes a seer misinterprets what he sees.”

  Grandma Eve made a snorting sound. “Just ask the poor woman’s father. The jackass never gets anything right, or not so anyone can figure out.”

  “I never said Dad was her father!” Between my mother and her mother, only one jackass existed.

  “You didn’t have to. I was with your mother when you were born. She did not give birth to twins.”

  “Carinne is two years older. They weren’t married.”

  Another snort. “It wouldn’t matter if she were ten years older than you, he never told us about her. Maybe if he got her help sooner . . .”

  And maybe if my mother had been easier to talk to, he would have. It was too late for finding fault. “So what happens in the meantime? I wanted to take her around, introduce her to people so she could see she’s not the only freak. That is, the only psychic here. Now I don’t dare. But you cannot keep her cocooned, or locked away at Rosehill. If you”—I glanced between my grandmother and the man from DUE—“can’t help her, she’ll be a prisoner in her room there, afraid to see the new students when they come or Lily’s grandchildren or the young lawn-mower guys. Jimmie will be her only companion except when a couple of us visit.”

  Jimmie looked even more troubled. “I won’t be around forever, you know.”

  No one wanted to go there. Lou hurried to say, “I’ve got a task force working on it, checking for any precedents.”

  Like my father’s mother, who heard voices, too. She never told fortunes, as far as I knew.

  Lou rubbed at his bristly chin. “It could take a while. We’re spread kind of thin right now. There’s a lot of stuff going on.”

  Trust my grandmother to say, “There always is, when Willow is involved.”

  “You’re blaming the Andanstans and Carinne’s misery and Brock’s dire prophecy on me?”

  “Of course not.”

  But I know she was. They all were. They always did.

  “I’ll try to work with the Andanstans, but that’s it. I don’t know how to save Brock, or how to train Carinne to tune out bad news. Maybe the mayor could teach her to have a selective memory. I can’t, and I cannot be the one to tell my mother about her. Not if I have to live with Mom in my apartment while she tapes her new show.”

  Grandma Eve nodded, but she didn’t say anything.

  I went on: “She has to know before she gets here. It’s only fair, so she doesn’t walk into Lily’s kitchen and find Carinne there, in front of scores of people, all watching for her reaction. I tried to tell her not to come on account of the stalker, but it’s like telling the Andanstans to put our sand back. Or trying to hold one of them in your hand. Dad thinks she’ll have apoplexy or something when she sees Carinne, so someone has to warn her.”

  “I do not see why,” Eve said. “Rose loves being the center of attention, my TV star daughter, so let her rant and rave all she wants when she gets here. There’s nothing she can do about it, is there? If I call and tell her, she’ll fume and fuss all the way here. That’s not good for her driving, or her manners at rest stops and gas stations. Or airports if she flies.”

  I could imagine my mother’s road rage through seven different states. And what she’d say to the guards at the security gates when they wanted to pat her down. Not a pretty picture.

  Lou rubbed his chin. “We already have an agent on the way to see she gets here safely. He can block her calls. Or slip her a sedative.”

  Now both Grandma Eve and I gave him dirty looks. “You cannot solve problems by drugging people.”

  He shot back: “You can keep them from getting arrested.”

  I thought about it. “No matter how we try, we can’t do anything about her broken heart.”

  The old witch snorted again. “That’s a crock, Willy. Not even you with the stars in your eyes can believe it. She divorced the jackass decades ago. She hasn’t been pining for him all these years.”

  I couldn’t deny the other men my mother regularly dated, or stayed with. “No, but she rushed to his side when he got sick. And she always wanted to believe him.”

  “But she never did. She mistrusted his fidelity from the day they wed, and you and that woman proved her right. So, no, she won’t be brokenhearted. She’ll feel vindicated.”

  I had to concede the possibility. Mom could gloat with the best of them. Her I told you so would be loud and lasting. “I’ll stay at Matt’s.”

  “Speaking of that, Rose will be more upset to hear you are not officially engaged.”

  “Then she’ll just have to be upset, won’t she? I already tried to tell her, and I am certain your spies have already called to give her the latest update. Maybe besides Carinne, you can get your friends to keep their mouths shut about me and Matt, too.”

  Lou cleared his throat to interrupt an argument about gossip vs. caring interest that had gone on for at least ten years. “Ladies, we have to talk about the stalker, too. We’re getting closer, and we’re showing your sketch to where we think he bought the phone we traced. All we need is a name and address and we can scoop him up. Meantime, Eve is right. We need you to stay in touch with him. Keep him communicating.”

  I hated the idea, but the tech guy, Russ, came in when the chief buzzed him, carrying a clone of my computer already set up with a “compose mail” box. “You’ve got to respond, Willy, so we can track his whereabouts. The fool shouldn’t have switched to his cell phone, even if we can’t get him ID’d through it if he used cash and got a prepaid card for it. What do you want to say?”

  Uncle Henry came and stood over my shoulder whil
e I reread Deni’s last hateful message about my mother. “Don’t threaten him, or he’ll take it as a dare to escalate. And don’t sound scared. That’s what he wants.”

  “I am scared, and I would wring his scrawny neck if I had it between my hands.”

  “Not the message you want to send, Willy.”

  So I typed in: MY MOTHER IS A DOG TRAINER, NOT A WITCH. SHE SAVES ABUSED AND ABANDONED ANIMALS AND WORKS WITH THEM UNTIL THEY ARE ADOPTABLE. RIGHT NOW SHE HAS A GERMAN SHEPHERD THAT WAS KEPT TIED OUTSIDE A METH LAB, A PIT PULL FROM A DOG FIGHTING RING, AND A DOBERMAN PINSCHER SENTENCED TO DEATH ROW ON ACCOUNT OF HIS AGGRESSION.

  “Should I add anything else? Like mess with her at your own risk?”

  After he chewed a couple of stomach pills, Uncle Henry said, “I think even a moke like this punk can get your message. Good job, Willy. But add some kind of question, to make sure he responds.”

  “Like how about lunch?”

  “I don’t think he’ll believe you if you invite him over for soup and a sandwich,” my grandmother said.

  “Not Deni. Me. I’m starving.”

  “Finish the letter.”

  I wrote: ARE YOU PUTTING ALL THIS IN YOUR NEXT BOOK? DO YOU WANT TO BE IN MINE?

  “That should do it,” Lou said, after making sure Russ saved copies of all the notes as evidence. “You’ll have Harris and maybe Colin and Kenneth to go wherever you and the professor need to go. I’ll stay at Rosehill with Carinne.”

  The chief said he’d put one of his men on watch at my mother’s house until Harris got back. Russ swore he put beepers on my computer and his clone of it to monitor any incoming mail. He also had any phone calls at Mom’s house transferred here to police headquarters where someone would be on duty at all times, listening for threats.

  Between all of them—the police, DUE, the cyber crimes geeks and the agent left in Manhattan to guard my apartment and Mrs. Abbottini and the Rashmanjaris—they really were spread thin, and really were looking out for me.

  Lou brushed my thanks aside. “We’re not taking any chances, especially not until you get the sand back.”