“No one dies of the itch.” She sniffed. That ran in my family, too. “Or would you have the place overrun with ghost hunters, UFO trackers, and paranormal fanatics? And more government acronyms than anyone can keep track of? Or maybe you’d like to be interrogated about your own recent activities? I’m sure some obscure congressional committee would be interested in trolls and night mares and sea gods.”
Gulp. “So how do you give people the rash?”
“I am not poisoning anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re merely exposing as many people as we can to your sand. We’ve had sand castle contests for the children, sand-candle making at the senior center, a beach clean up, on what beach there is.”
“What’s the epidemic lady think about that?
“That we’re all crazy, what else? At least now, if she can trace the condition to the sand, it won’t be just us.”
“Um, I don’t think you’ve thought this through enough. What if the government and Ms. Garcia decide the sand is the cause, so it’s some kind of health hazard? They’ll shut the beaches, for one. And truck away the sand, for another. There goes the tourist season next year, on either count. Worse, heaven knows what the Andanstans will do if someone spreads chemicals on the beach or carts off the top three feet of sand.”
“That’s irrelevant. No one new is getting hives or itches or any kind of dermatitis.”
“I think it’s tied to the blood and being at the scene of the tidal wave. I get the feeling the Andanstans are mad at us.”
“But we didn’t blow up any sandbars! The Coast Guard from Montauk did. Why aren’t they getting suspicious rashes?”
“They didn’t ask for help. We did.”
“You did, you mean.”
“Yes, to save all those lives, and then to get rid of the tornado-tsunami. Which would have wiped out the whole village.”
She cleared her throat, in acknowledgment of my necessary contribution, I suppose. “So what do you suggest we do?” she asked. “From your comfortable little nest miles away?”
“I’ll be there Saturday, I swear. And I’ll try to talk to them.” Shit, now I had to talk to sand? “Or find Oey to talk for me.”
“I’ll make that squash soup you like so much.”
Maybe she had a heart after all.
* * *
Matt called. How would I like to come to dinner Saturday night? He thought he’d take his former wife and me and my guest from the train station to dinner at the Breakaway.
I’d like that about as much as I’d like to have my hair fall out.
I told him I thought dinner among strangers, with a young wait staff, might be too much for Carinne for her first day in the Harbor. Besides, she was staying with the professor. Jimmie’d arrange something with Lily, for sure. And Grandma Eve was expecting me.
But the ex wanted to meet me.
With pink hair and a pink rash and a peculiar relative? I’m sure she would.
He’d told her all about me. “She sounded happy for both of us.”
Then she was a better man than I, Gunga Din. “I hope you didn’t tell her too much, like all the stuff no one is supposed to know.”
“Of course not. I had to tell her about the shipwreck—she heard all about it in the news—to explain how I got Moses. Just your ordinary sea rescue, right?”
I knew I could trust him. And the secret council’s threats to wipe out his memory.
“I miss you.”
“Me, too.”
“Soon.”
“Uh, Marion’s decided to stay another day. To avoid the weekend traffic.”
I thought I could trust him. Now I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
Mr. Rashmanjari called. Uh-oh again.
He merely wanted to reassure me that Nonna Maria had a good night, with no pain or problems, and they were all delighted to have her, except what should they do about church?
I told him to find a Mass on TV. I know Mrs. Abbottini tuned in sometimes when the roads were too icy or snowy. “Unless that offends you?”
It didn’t, bless his tolerant heart.
* * *
Half an hour later, Antony Abbottini called, not quite as tolerant. “Those damned foreigners have brainwashed my mother. She won’t come home with me.”
Let’s see. They waited on her hand and foot, showed her respect and affection, gave her the coveted front bedroom, and let her pray to whatever god she chose.
“Gee, Antony, I wouldn’t take it personally. Your mother’s at home here in the apartment. And they’re taking such good care of her, making her feel important to them.”
“She says the food is better than my wife’s cooking and the children are better behaved.”
Okay, he could take that personally. “It’s just the pain meds talking. I bet she’ll want to come visit when she feels better.”
Or when Antony moved into a mansion with a guest house, servants, and a view.
* * *
The bright spot of the delay in leaving the city was that Deni did not call, come, or leave any more messages. Reinforcements did arrive from DUE, though, so I felt safer anyway.
I knew a couple of the agents from when they patrolled Paumanok Harbor. Kenneth was a precog; Colin had extraordinary eyesight and weapons skills. Together, they’d keep the whole block safe. Together, they made a great couple.
And they loved my hair. According to Kenneth, bright streaks and happy color hair weavings were all the rage. Maybe I’d take the fad a step farther.
Of course, Kenneth’s hair stood up in magenta spikes. Colin had a blue Mohawk. They might be the best security a girl could want, but maybe they didn’t have the best taste.
But I was in fashion. The second Rashmanjari daughter adored my hair, too, when I went to visit. She wished she could dye her hair like mine, but her father said he’d disown her. The next time I checked on Mrs. Abbottini, the girl had one long pink hair extension, the kind they handed out for breast cancer awareness month. It looked nice with her dark hair, slightly swarthy skin, and the pink sweatshirt she wore. I wanted to borrow the sweatshirt to match my hair. It had a hood.
Mrs. Abbottini clucked her tongue, shook her head, and went back to explaining the ground rule double to one of the younger boys.
* * *
Late Friday night a strange cell phone number showed up on my caller ID. Lou nodded for me to pick up; he was listening.
. . . To Carinne, weeping. She was on the train, in a tiny compartment with all her baggage, afraid to order supper because the server might be younger than her.
Her voice was low, tremulous, sad. I guess mine would be, too, leaving my home for who-knew-what.
“Is it okay for me to come? I know you’d do anything for Uncle Sam.”
No, I wouldn’t join the army— “Oh, you mean my father.” No one called him anything but Tate, or Jackass, as long as I could remember. “Uh, our father.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said on a sob. “That’s what I call him. Harry O’Dell was my father. I know Sam asked and you couldn’t say no. But I don’t want to come where I’m not wanted. My own mother asked me to leave. I was embarrassing her in front of her friends at the nursing home. I can’t help it. I see things, and I have to say what I see, or the voices shout in my head until I think my skull will split with the pounding to get out.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“But I don’t have to come, Willow. Truly.”
“You have other choices? Dad, ah, Sam didn’t mention any.”
“I can get off the train in Washington, DC. I have some money. I can get a room, maybe look for a job.”
While she acted crazy? What kind of job could she get without references? That plan sounded like one of my nightmares: being lost in a strange
city, money running out, no friends, no family, no job. And aberrations.
Her voice grew thready, scared. “I can stay inside.”
“Forever?” She couldn’t even go to the dinner car on the train. “No, this is the place for you. Not this place, Manhattan, but Paumanok Harbor. You’ll see. And maybe you won’t hear all the voices or the warnings. Some scumbag tried to hypnotize a bunch of espers last month to take over the town. It wouldn’t work.”
“Really?” Hope blossomed in the word. “Why?”
“No one is sure. Maybe protection comes with the talent. But you can’t count on it. A psychic diagnostician could read my cousin’s health, the mayor can wipe out memories in ordinary citizens and psychics both, and the truth-seers aren’t stopped by anything or anybody. Remember that.”
“Yes, Un—Sam warned me. But you might be immune to me?”
“We can keep our fingers crossed. But, if not, we’ve got a precog coming to Paumanok Harbor with us. He’ll help. And Professor Harmon knows everything about talent and training.” Unless the elderly gentleman had forgotten.
“Do you think they can get rid of the voices?”
“I don’t know.” I was pretty sure Lou could, if he saw Carinne as a threat. I decided instantly that I’d protect her from him, no matter what. The foretelling was part of her. No one had the right to wipe away her talent, and what made her special. “But it doesn’t matter. We need you here. We need all the psychics we can get to help solve bigger problems, like saving the entire village. I’ll explain on the ride home.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive. I want you on my side.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I had a half sister. And a hat.
I still intended to keep her connection to me and my father private, or as private as anything could be in Paumanok Harbor where people had eidetic memories, built-in lie detectors, pride in their ancestry, and eyes to see for themselves. To myself, though, Carinne was family.
Maybe I had a strong sense of kinship and loyalty because of my parents’ split. A shrink could explain it better, if I ever went again. The last one cost a lot of time and money, and we both still thought I was crazy.
I knew there was a lot of my mother in me, wanting to rescue needy creatures. Maybe I was a glutton for punishment, like the way I’d adopted Little Red. The Pomeranian was a royal pain in the ass, snippy and snarly and decidedly unconcerned with notions of loyalty, obedience, or housebreaking. But he was mine, and I’d protect him from harm or Deni or going back to the pound, unloved and unwanted.
Just so Carinne. Maybe she wasn’t a lost dog that’d been abused and abandoned. Maybe she represented a horrid mistake in my father’s past, a humiliating episode in my mother’s future, but right now Carinne needed me. Dad was right about the gossip and backbiting and general unpleasantness facing her. Who else amid the close-knit community would stand by her but her sister?
So I put on a Yankees cap over my pink hair and went to meet her train.
The good thing about having death threats, if there was a good thing, was the ease of accomplishing stuff a person on her own could not do without a retinue of big, tough, armed bodyguards. Like having Colin go find a parking spot while Kenneth the precog and Lou walked beside me, ready to nab evil-doers or carry Carinne’s luggage. Harris got to stay outside with Little Red in the other car, both of them on the alert for suspicious characters.
Ken wanted to know which train car Ms. O’Dell was on. Or how we’d recognize her when she got off.
“Trust me, we’ll know.”
She had a Florida Marlins cap over red hair, but she looked like me, a little taller, a little thinner, but enough that Kenneth let out a gasp.
Lou gave me a dirty look for not warning him, then said, “The shit’s going to hit the fan for sure, now.”
That’s how you recognize a half sister.
We’d be almost identical, except she had red hair where I had pink. I guess we thought alike, too, because I fingered my Easter-eggy hair and said, “I thought you were blonde. I thought it best if we didn’t appear so obviously related.”
Carinne touched her red curls and said, “You’re blonde in all the pictures Un— Sam Tate had of you. I thought we should look less like sisters.”
Then we laughed, as she pulled a wig off her head to reveal my usual sandy blonde hair. And we hugged, right in the middle of hurrying passengers towing their luggage. Kenneth and Lou formed a barrier around us. Hell, Lou could have kept people away with one of his glowers.
We embraced awkwardly at first, not knowing if it could be misconstrued or bring insult if we didn’t. No etiquette books covered this situation.
Then she started to cry. “I saw your future, when you’re my age, thirty-seven.”
Lou frowned harder, if possible. “Ladies, can we take this out to the cars, in private?”
“No,” we both shouted, Carinne through her tears. “I saw you.”
“And it’s so horrible?” I felt like crying, too. “Was I dead? Decapitated like the rat?”
Kenneth handed her a tissue so she blew her nose. “What rat?”
“What future?” I demanded. “What’s so bad that you saw it and cried?”
“I saw it, that’s what. You were wrong, that your talent protected you. It’s not what I saw, but that I hoped the future thing wouldn’t work around you. It does. For him, too.”
She pointed at Kenneth, who had to be in his late twenties, and said, “When you are thirty-seven like me, you’ll be in charge of ten other agents, in an underground office. And you’re wearing a wedding ring.”
Kenneth grinned. “I can’t wait to tell Colin. We’ve been looking forward to it being legal. And my own squad, huh? And an office at HQ, besides. That’s great.”
I wanted to strangle both of them. “What about me? What did you see?”
She wiped her eyes. “Oh, you’re reading a picture book. With your name on the cover. You’re reading it to a baby.”
“You know, I always wanted to write a children’s book. Maybe after people see my illustrations for the professor’s book, they’ll pay me to do one.” I felt a nice glow at the idea.
“What about the baby?” Lou wanted to know. “Her grandmother is anxious.”
“I have no idea if it’s Willow’s baby or not, but she loves it. I can tell from her smile.”
I was more excited about the book. It’d be about Little Red and his sad life until he came to Paumanok Harbor and—
“All this luggage belongs to you?” Lou said with a growl.
Carinne started weeping again.
“Ignore him,” I said. “He’s always grouchy.”
“He’s scary,” she whispered, close to my ear.
“Yeah, but he’ll lay down his life for us. Or maybe he’ll lay down my life.”
She went white.
“Just kidding.” I hoped. “For now, he’ll keep us safe. And we have two cars, so all your stuff will fit.”
“I didn’t know what to bring for northern weather, so I brought most of my clothes.”
She had a nice southern drawl. Not a y’all accent, but softer, slower than New Yorkese. “That’s fine,” I told her. “The weather changes every hour at this time of year. But what’s in the carry case?” I had a bad feeling about the familiar-looking bag at her feet.
“It’s my cat. I couldn’t leave her behind, could I?”
Oh, lord, a cat. With that new director at Royce-Rosehill already on the warpath about the parrot, and Matt’s dog coming to stay sometimes, and me and Little Red visiting, he’d have a cat fit. Literally.
We’d face that later. First, we had to get Carinne and her bags out of the train station. Kenneth located a redcap, or whatever you called a train porter these days. He got
everything onto a rolling cart and asked where we were headed. Lou spoke into a hidden mike to alert Colin and Harris, then led us in the right direction in that vast warren. We tried to cordon Carinne off from families with children, teenagers with earbuds, and young executives in a rush. The baggage cart piled high helped some, and Kenneth and I at either side blocked her view more. We could still hear her mutter “school teacher, dentist, shop clerk, prisoner, janitor. Oh, no, don’t keep smoking. Please.” And she started to cry again.
No wonder she was having a breakdown. So I talked to distract her, telling about Deni and Paumanok Harbor and Little Red, who did not like cats any more than he liked dogs. Or strangers. Oh, boy.
Outside, she told Colin he’d have a wedding band to match Kenneth’s, but Harris would be in a jungle, chasing rumors of a creature that was supposed to be half man, half jaguar. They were both happy.
We loaded the cars, while Lou grumbled because I’d brought a lot of suitcases too, besides my computer and reference books and art supplies. I didn’t know how long I’d be staying, or if I needed fancy clothes if Matt and I went out, after his ex left. Little Red had his carrying case, of course, and another tote bag filled with his food, toys, bowls, leashes, and a new sweater I bought him, for when it got cooler.
Each of the men had a duffel bag, plus computers and electronic gear. They had two large metal boxes, presumably for weapons, and a larger cooler, hopefully for food, because I’d eaten all my traveling snacks days ago. Both cars got crowded. Carinne and I sat in the back seat of the Beemer, Red trembling on my lap because of all the commotion, the cat yowling in its carrier on Carinne’s lap because it wanted to get out. Or to get at Little Red.
Kenneth drove; Lou rode shotgun, or light saber. One never knew about him. Colin and Harris followed in a big white Jeep. Lou murmured to them and his headquarters constantly through his walkie-talkie and cell, running license plates on any car that got too close, having the guys behind us check on any drivers who seemed suspicious.
While he was busy, and to get my mind off the seemingly endless Midtown Tunnel—with water pressing down on it—I asked Kenneth to describe his precog ability to Carinne, to help her get a handle on her own.
Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) Page 11
