Read Online Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) by Celia Jerome - Free Book Online

botox injection. Or a battered wife.
    Deni hadn’t called. Sure, she didn’t have time, watching the apartment, catching rats.
    My father had. “I’m on my way out of the house, baby girl, but I got a whiff of someone telling secrets, something bad.”
    As in I smell a rat? Thanks, Dad. You’re too late.
    â€œ. . . And I need to make sure you won’t go anywhere in the morning until I call before my tee time. I won’t be home tonight, but I really need you to do this favor for my friend. Unless that’s the secret. Maybe. No, it doesn’t smell.”
    I ignored my father’s mental wanderings. His friend was going to be out of luck if he needed me to show him around town or let him sleep in the spare bedroom. I hated to disappoint my father, but he’d understand. He’d be a hell of a lot more disappointed if I ended up like the rat. And if his friend’s problem was so critical, Dad could have canceled his date for tonight.
    I kept cleaning and packing and looking out the window.
    The downstairs buzzer went off, too soon to be Van. I didn’t answer it, but someone else in the building could buzz the door open, like Mrs. Abbottini did with the flowers.
    I got my pepper spray out of my purse and dragged the love seat in front of my apartment door. Of course I had to stand on the cushions to reach the peephole to see who knocked on it.
    Deni might have been better than the person on the other side, banging on the door with a heavy, double-sized fist.
    â€œWho is it?” I called out, stalling for time while I pushed the furniture back into place.
    â€œYou know damn well who it is, Willy, so let me in.”
    â€œWho called you?” I sure as hell didn’t call Lou the Lout, Lou from DUE, Lou who was hard, ruthless, with a sense of duty as oversized as his meaty paws. The older man’s duty these days appeared to consist of eliminating threats to paranormals everywhere, but to Paumanok Harbor psychics in particular. I lived in dread he’d find me more of a menace than a benefit because his methods did not bear considering. His means encompassed magic, and his modus operandi had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill of Rights. His saving grace, and my continued existence, I felt, was that he liked to stay in my grandmother’s good graces. I think so he could stay at her house. Or in her bed, which did not bear considering either.
    â€œEveryone called. Your grandmother, your cousin Lily, your friend at the police station, his lordship in Ireland, Chief Haversmith at the Harbor. Oh, and Mrs. Abbottini next door.”
    â€œI told her to stop buzzing in strangers.”
    â€œI’m not a stranger, and she didn’t have to let me in. I have a key.”
    Great. The scariest man I knew had a key to my building. He was big and mean and wore disguises. I’d seen him pretend to be a janitor, a farmhand, a limo driver, and a wealthy man about town. Today he had on biker leather, complete with a helmet in his hand, which did not give me confidence in his friendly intentions. “Well, everything is fine now. You didn’t need to check on me.”
    He lifted a plastic bag with my drugstore’s logo on it out of his helmet and held it up so I could see it through the tiny viewer. The rat. Both of them.
    I opened the door, in time to watch him put a key in my bottom lock. “You have a key for my door, too?”
    He didn’t answer, just stared at my face. “What the hell happened to you? No one said the berserker gave you a fat lip.”
    So much for the concealer and the Band-Aid.
    â€œIt’s an allergy, nothing else. An allergy to, um, strawberries.”
    â€œIf you’re allergic to strawberries, why do you eat them?”
    â€œListen, I am fine. So you can take your friend”—I gestured toward the plastic bag—“and go. Van is coming.”
    â€œHe can’t get here for an hour or more.