The Magic We Made (Witches of West Harbor #2)

Frankie

I’m ripping weeds from between the bricks of my front walkway when a Summer Person wanders over from the rental next door.

“Why, hello, there!” she cries as she picks her way across what had once been my home’s beautifully manicured front lawn.

But now the lush green grass has turned to bare patches of dry dirt, the flowers have all died, and there’s a stray cat living

under the steps to my front porch.

“Are you Dr. Francesca Giovanni?” the Summer Person asks in a too-cheerful tone.

“Frankie.” Dealing with Summer People is the price you have to pay for living in paradise, Dad always said. “You can call

me Frankie. How can I help you?”

Not How are you doing. Not Good to meet you. Because it’s clear how the woman is doing: not great, if the way she’s hugging her thick, knee-length cardigan around herself

on such a warm September day is any indication.

And I’m not sure whether it’s good to meet her. She looks like she may have a problem that’s even worse than a stray cat under her porch—a problem she’s about to unload on me.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” she says, still with obviously false cheer. “I’m Ruth Baumgarten, your new neighbor.

My husband and I recently moved in next door.”

I don’t bother pointing out the many factual errors in this statement. Mrs. Baumgarten is not my new neighbor. She is merely

renting my neighbor Ash Merit’s house so that she can escape her own life for the next thirty days. After that she and her

husband will leave, and then Ash—or rather, the management company he’s hired—will find new renters. Ash himself has never

spent more than a night or two in the house. He bought it last year as a vacation rental property.

And Mrs. Baumgarten does not just want to introduce herself. She wants something from me. Summer People always want something. Never mind that Labor Day

is long past so technically, summer is over. A Summer Person is always a Summer Person, no matter what day it is.

“I’m so sorry to bother you while you’re, um, gardening.” The well-toned, middle-aged white woman glances uncertainly at the

weeds I’ve flung around.

“Yeah, I’m not too sure gardening is the word for it, either.” I steal a look at the front porch. No movement, despite the

mound of tuna I’ve left on a paper plate in the dirt beside the steps. What is wrong with this cat? “Is there something I

can help you with?”

I ask this not because I’m such a kind person, but because the sooner Mrs. Baumgarten leaves, the sooner I can go back to pretending I’m weeding, and not trying to lure a stray cat into my house like a crazy person.

“Oh, yes.” Her gaze flickers briefly back toward Ash’s house. “This is going to sound odd, but I . . . well, I heard that

you’re good with . . . unusual phenomena.”

“Really?” This is a new one. Most Summer People only ever want to know the town’s recycling schedule or where they can find

the freshest produce, even though I happen to know all of this information is listed in a binder sitting in Ash’s house. I

know this because I’m the one who made the binder, then demanded that my friend Rochelle, who works at the rental company,

put it there so Ash’s renters would stop coming over to ask me these things. “Who told you that?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Baumgarten says. “The man who lives with you.”

I don’t live with a man. At least, not anymore.

Buy your own home, Dad said. It’ll be a good investment, Dad said.

What Dad failed to mention is that when you buy your own home, you have to do everything, like weeding and catching stray

cats, yourself . . . especially when the person you bought it with decides to dump you and take off in a catamaran to sail

around the world with his yoga instructor.

Then I realize Mrs. Baumgarten isn’t talking about my ex, Richard, but my younger brother. “Oh, you must mean Mark.”

“Yes, Mark.” Mrs. Baumgarten smiles—though not with her eyes, I notice. They remain anxious. “That’s what he said his name was. I ran

into him yesterday as he was leaving your place, and I just happened to mention my concern. He said I ought to speak to you

about it.”

“Concern?” I purposefully bought a house on the edge of a nature preserve so I could have a minimum of nosy neighbors telling me their concerns.

Just my luck to get someone renting next door who wants to do exactly that.

“Yes, it’s very concerning. I’m sure your young man must have thought I was insane.” Mrs. Baumgarten is laughing at herself,

but the laughter has an edge to it. “But he was kind enough to listen, and I truly was at the end of my rope. Normally, I

don’t believe in this kind of thing, but there’s just no other explanation for what happened.”

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she called Mark my “young man” when she goes on, “I read that West Harbor

has very little crime—that people around here don’t even bother to lock their doors. I mean, just look at this place.”

She gestures back toward Ash’s house, a gorgeous multi-deck three-bedroom with views that, like mine, look out over Walker

Lake, the twenty-nine-acre wooded island in the center of it (imaginatively named “Center Island” by Colonial settlers), and

the thick woods of the nature preserve across the water.

Unlike mine, however, Ash’s house also features a three-car garage, wine cellar, sauna, private dock complete with four personal

watercraft, kayaks, vintage wooden speedboat, and a massive stereo system with outdoor speakers all around his deck. Twice

this past summer I’ve had to sneak over to that deck in the middle of the night and snip the cables to those speakers because

Ash tends to rent to people who think it’s perfectly acceptable to blast Jimmy Buffett outdoors at top volume all day and

night, including when they’re out on the lake in the boat and too far away even to hear it.

I have nothing against music—even Jimmy Buffett—except when it’s disturbing the pastoral tranquility of the lake.

Fortunately Ruth Baumgarten doesn’t look like much of a fan of yacht rock, Jimmy Buffett or otherwise.

“It’s so lovely,” she goes on, glancing back at me. “You’d never suspect.”

“Suspect?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I bought five hundred dollars’ worth of wine and other groceries when we

got here, and then yesterday morning, when I woke up and went into the kitchen, it was gone.”

“Gone?” I’m startled. And it takes a lot to startle me. “What do you mean gone?”

“Gone,” she repeats. “All except the frozen cauliflower-crust pizza. I guess the dead don’t care for cauliflower.”

“The dead?”

“Yes. It’s the only explanation.” Mrs. Baumgarten is still white-knuckling her cardigan. “It’s not the money that bothers

me; it’s the fact that this morning when I checked it, the front door was still locked. Yet everything I bought is gone, except

the pizza crust. They even took my reusable grocery totes.”

My reply—“I’m so sorry that happened to you”—comes out automatically. My mind is reeling. I can’t think what else to say.

But it doesn’t matter, because Mrs. Baumgarten isn’t finished.

“It can’t have been humans because they left my jewelry.” She releases the cardigan long enough to gesture at the diamond

solitaire at her throat, which is only slightly smaller than the ones on her fingers. “And all of the electronics. I would

think that a human would have taken those. Those are things you can sell.”

“Right,” I say. I try to keep my tone as soothing as when I speak to my patients. “Have you called the police?”

“No, I waited to tell you.”

“Me?” Now I’m the confused one. “Why me?”

“Because Mark said you’d be able to help. It’s clear the house is haunted, and you’re a parapsychologist, aren’t you?”