Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) by Celia Jerome Page A

pull you out.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t—”
    â€œAnd now that dear old man is losing his will to live and you give him a cough and rash?”
    â€œI didn’t—”
    â€œYou get out here and fix it, damn you, Willow Tate, or I am calling your grandmother.”
    â€œI already spoke to her. I’ll be there tomorrow, if I can.”
    â€œYou can’t not.”
    * * *
    My next call was to Oey. I’m no telepath, but she is. I did not know how far away she was, or how far away her powers worked. I tried anyway.
ET, phone home. We need you.
    Stupid. I’m no telepath but I am the Visualizer. So I grabbed a pencil and a fresh sheet of paper, drew a willow tree, a weeping willow, then added three little people made of dot sand. They wore scraps of seaweed to hide their privates. They carried shell hatchets and rock hammers in their tiny hands, battering at the tree. I fixed the image in my head, then silently called,
Help!
I added a magnificent parrot with a forked, scaled fish tail and shouted in my head,
Come back
. Then I drew a handsome glittering fish with a long feathered tail, swimming in the water that lapped at the tree.
Please, Oey.
    No response reverberated in my head or in my thoughts, just that painful pounding. Shell hatchets and stone hammers, all right. I was out of Tylenol and didn’t know if I could mix them with the Advil I had, whose expiration date was long past. Worse, I was out of candy and cookies. If I was leaving tomorrow, I needed snacks for the three-hour bus ride, too. Maybe Mallomars to get me through the night. And treats for Little Red so he’d stay quiet on the Jitney. The dog needed to go out before September’s early dark, too.
    I packed him in the carrier, went to the drugstore on Third Avenue, bought enough goodies for a week, unless I got desperate, and then freed Little Red to do his stuff near some sidewalk trees.
    I put down my bags and his carrier to pick up his leavings. He walked on the leash nicely until we neared our building, where I put down my bags, his cleanup bag and his carrier. He got in without protest for once, because he knew it was suppertime and we’d get home sooner that way. So I picked everything up again and went home, cursing the need to hide a six-pound dog from the building manager.
    Then I cursed the man and his custodial staff some more when I saw garbage on the building’s doorstep. No, that wasn’t garbage; it was a big rat, as common in Manhattan as taxis. This one was dead, though, with its head cut off.
    Anybody would have freaked out. I screamed and dropped all the bags, except Little Red in his carrier, thank goodness. Between the missing sand, the missing bird, and the bogwilly, I’d completely forgotten about Deni.
    She hadn’t forgotten about me.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    I had a decapitated rat and a deranged reader. I also had a pissed-off Pomeranian and a panic attack. Anyone would.
    I rushed inside the building and slammed the door behind me, as if the dead rat could get in and go for my throat. Little Red snarled at being shaken up and kept in his carrier. I ignored him and leaned against the inside wall, catching my breath. Then I realized I had to go back outside to get my shopping bags. I really needed those painkillers, and the Mallomars. Anyone would.
    The rat was still dead. Both pieces. People walking past averted their eyes, the way New Yorkers did when confronted with crazy bag ladies. I looked around. I was the crazy bag lady.
    I gathered my broken cookies and stepped-on candy bars. Everything was in pieces, including the rat. The only item intact was the Tylenol bottle, which no one could open at the best of times. This was not one of them.
    I gathered my stuff into one bag and covered the psycho’s victim with the other. I stopped gasping and shaking and whimpering. My shock turned into anger.
    How dare that . . . that person lurk at my building, waiting