Our street was a lovely old one. Tall maples lined both sides. Houses sat far back from the road, which provided plenty of room for kids to ride their bikes in loping figure eights. Birds and squirrels flew and scurried about in abundance, and the unique scents of the changing seasons always seemed to fill the air. The overall effect was friendly and relaxing. In short, it was the perfect street to amble along, taking your time to chat with your neighbors.
“We don’t have to run, but if we hurry, we can cross the street before he catches us.”
“Ladies!”
“I don’t know,” Izzy whispered between huffed breaths. “He’s gaining on us.”
“We can make it.”
“Yoo-hoo!”
“It’s fine. Just, whatever you do, don’t look over, and don’t say—”
“Oh hello, Mr. Henderson,” my aunt said in a voice she almost managed to make sound cheerful.
“—anything.” I shot Izzy a look.
She shrugged helplessly. “He’s right there.”
Our neighbor leaned on his rake, his white hair standing on end, his glasses askew on his nose. “I thought I was going to miss you ladies,” he said, struggling to catch his breath.
“Sorry,” I said weakly. “We must not have heard you calling us.”
“It’s a good thing I caught up. I’ve been worried sick about you. Where’s Nora?” he said, looking us over as though we might be hiding her behind our backs. “The ambulance the other night, it wasn’t for her, was it?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry to say one of our guests passed away.”
“Just as I thought. Anyone I would know?”
That was a hard question for me to answer. Mr. Henderson had only moved in a year ago, and he didn’t overly involve himself in the community. He had his own hobbies to preoccupy him. “Um, Constance Graves? She had been staying with us the last few days.”
“I can’t say as I recognize the name, but”—he motioned for us to lean in, then looked side to side—“it’s entirely possible I’ve seen her.” He leaned back again, giving us room to let that information sink in.
“I’m sure you have,” Izzy said. “As Brynn mentioned, she’s been staying with us and—”
He waved a hand in the air, effectively shushing Izzy. Judging by her pursed lips, she did not appreciate the gesture. “I don’t mean I’ve seen her in her earthly form.”
I closed my eyes. Oh dear.
“I mean, I’ve seen her, seen her.”
“Seen her, seen her?” I asked, forcing lightness into my voice. I really hoped this wasn’t going where I thought it might be going.
He leaned in again. “I mean, I saw her afterward.”
Nope, it was going exactly where I’d thought.
“I saw her ghost.”
Izzy and I froze as Mr. Henderson studied our faces intently, waiting for us to react to his big news.
Finally, Izzy said, “Well, that’s ridiculous.” She then let out a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. “You couldn’t have seen her ghost. Ghosts don’t exist. Can you imagine? What a thought. Ghosts in this day and age? Preposterous!”
I put my hand on my aunt’s shoulder. Did I mention Izzy rambled when she got nervous?
She snapped her mouth shut and patted my hand by way of saying thank you.
“Oh, Isabel, Isabel, Isabel,” Mr. Henderson said in a patronizing tone that had unfortunately become all too familiar. It was a really good thing Nora wasn’t with us this morning. “You need to open your eyes to what’s going on all around you. There are forces at work in this town. Strange powers here in Evenfall that you couldn’t possibly understand.” He stopped to look up at the trees. I almost looked up too, but resisted the urge, feeling fairly certain there was nothing up there. “Really, when you think about it, ghosts are the least of our worries.”
You’d think, given I’d spent the majority of my life seeing and talking to ghosts, I wouldn’t easily dismiss someone telling me they had seen one of their own. But as I mentioned, our neighbor was a special case. With special interests.
And it was all our fault.
Mr. Henderson was naturally the type of neighbor who liked to peek around curtains, but we had, unfortunately, provided him with the opportunity to see some things he really shouldn’t have, and in short, we had created a monster.
It had all started when another one of our neighbors, Minnie Abernathy, had accidentally left her gate open, setting her overprotective rottweiler free just as our lovely mail carrier, Bertha, was heading back to her truck. The dog had gotten it into his head to make a run at her, but, as luck would have it, Izzy was outside at the time watching the scene unfold. With the snap of her fingers, she turned a puddle to ice just as the dog was about to lunge, sending him harmlessly skidding out of the way. As a result, Bertha was able to get back in her truck, and Minnie was able to secure her dog. Crisis averted, right?
Not quite.
Regrettably, that particular incident had taken place in the middle of July, and Mr. Henderson, seeing the entire event unfold—save the snap of Izzy’s fingers—made it over to examine the ice before it had fully melted.
For the record, Nora had had a word with Minnie’s dog shortly after that particular event. She was quite good at reasoning with animals—aside from Dog, of course, who was a bird unto his own—and the canine had been beautifully behaved ever since.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Mr. Henderson.
That incident had fostered a curiosity in our neighbor, and he had been on the lookout for strange goings-on on our street ever since. We had tried our best to be careful, but there may have been a few other incidents our neighbor had witnessed that hadn’t helped the situation. Like when a cloud of purple sparks had exploded from the kitchen’s chimney after an experiment of Izzy’s had gone wrong. Or when a pumpkin of ours grew three hundred pounds in a single day after Nora had come to the conclusion our Halloween decorations needed a little extra something. No, those incidents had not helped.
All of this had led Mr. Henderson to believe things weren’t quite right on our street, and he had taken it upon himself to become a one-man neighborhood watch for supernatural activity.
Even worse still? He felt we, the Warren women, were in particular danger, as most of the activity seemed centered around our house. Apparently, it was his duty to protect us single ladies from the dangers lurking right under our silly little noses.
In short, the whole situation was awkward.
It also brought up a number of ethical issues regarding the use of magic.
The easiest solution to our Mr. Henderson problem would be to use a spell that implanted a suggestion in his mind that he hadn’t really witnessed any of the things he had witnessed. But that sort of spell bordered on black magic, which meant there could be consequences. It was a little like the human concept of karma or the Wiccan Rule of Three that dictates whatever you put out into the universe comes back to you threefold.
But the line wasn’t always clear. Intention was very important when it came to magic and often affected the severity of the price to be paid for the darker arts. Debates over right and wrong were essential to a healthy coven. A dark spell could be performed as long as it had been determined to be for the greater good, and in those cases, any consequences could be spread out among all the coven members. Dark magic was not something you wanted to try alone.
To make matters even more complicated, sometimes the consequences for dark spells never materialized at all. Not even when they were expected. Capricious was probably the best word to describe the forces that governed our magical choices. So, it was quite possible we could spell Mr. Henderson and get away with it. But it was also possible we could spell Mr. Henderson and all of our hair would fall out.
In the end, we had decided to leave our neighbor to his hobbies. There wasn’t any real danger as far as we could see. Mr. Henderson tended to be his own worst enemy when it came to getting others to buy into his stories. Even when he was telling the truth, he had a penchant for embellishing the details to a point they were difficult for anyone to believe.
All that being said, I couldn’t discount the possibility entirely that our neighbor had seen something when it came to Constance’s passing. “If you don’t mind me asking, Mr. Henderson,” I began.
“Yes?” he replied, nodding at me enthusiastically.
“What exactly did you see? I mean, what makes you think it was a ghost? Especially Constance Graves’s ghost?”
“Well, it was a woman, for starters.”
“Right.”
“A beautiful young woman.”
“Oh, well, Constance wasn’t a beautiful young woman,” Izzy said, shaking her head. “I mean, she was lovely in her own way, but not young. I think she must have been in her sixties. Which some may consider young, but—”
All I had to do was look at Izzy this time for her to quiet down.
“Ah!” Mr. Henderson said, pointing a finger in the air. “That just shows what you don’t know. Ghosts often revert back to their younger selves when they pass on.”
I struggled to stay quiet this time. That wasn’t true. While ghosts did take on a certain ethereal beauty, they looked mainly as they did when they died.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes, I knew it was a ghost because even though she only visited me for a moment,” he said, adjusting his thick glasses on his nose, “it was long enough to see her float across my yard in a glowing white gown.”
“I see.” It might have seemed like I was replying to Mr. Henderson, but the words were just as much, if not more so, for myself, because as he was relaying his tale, I spotted something in the lawn of one of our other neighbors. A clothesline with shirts, pants, and towels swaying in the light breeze. Then I noticed something else. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was a sheet crumpled up under the hedge that covered the fence separating our two houses. A sheet that could have easily floated from the clothesline across Mr. Henderson’s backyard to ours. If I had to guess, that, with a little imagination, was Mr. Henderson’s ghost. “It must have been quite the thing to witness.”
“It was. It was.”
“How remarkable,” Izzy said, taking a step back. “Well, thank you for sharing, but we should probably be on our way.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep you, but you ladies be careful, and don’t hesitate to pop on over should anything go bump in the night. As I always say, it sometimes takes a keen eye to see what’s going on right underneath your nose.” He tapped the side of his nose to really drive the point home.
“Yes, thank you,” Izzy said. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
“No need for thanks,” he called after us. “But you know I’d never turn away a slice of the B&B’s pie.”
“Of course! Of course,” Izzy said. A moment later she started muttering under her breath. “Ah! That just shows what you don’t know,” she said, mimicking his voice. She even put a finger in the air the way he had. “And the B&B’s pie? Does he think it drops out of thin air? He wants a pie? I’ll make him pie. I’ll make him a pie that screams when he cuts into it. Or is filled with centipedes that come spilling out.” Izzy frowned. “Brynn Warren, are you laughing at me?”
“I’m just laughing because you would never do either of those things.”
She made a noise that sounded a little like a harrumph. “Maybe you’re right, but it’s nice to think about.”
I laughed some more.
“Do you think it’s wrong for me to think about it?”
“Not at all,” I said, linking my arm more tightly with hers. “Not at all.”
The sun had risen far enough into the sky that the frostiness of the morning had passed by the time we reached town.
“So, who is it you’re visiting?”
“Sorry?” Izzy said, meeting my eye. I suddenly noticed how tired she looked and worried.
Mr. Henderson and his ghost had distracted us for a little while, but we had fallen into silence on our way into town, allowing the seriousness of the situation to creep back in.
“You said you were going to pay someone a visit?”
“Oh,” she said with a forced smile, “I thought I’d go see Roxie.”
I stopped walking. Izzy turned and looked at me.
“That’s a really good idea.”
Her smile brightened. “I thought so.”
Roxie, originally named Dorothy, was Beatty’s older sister and occasional legal secretary. She also happened to be the local dance instructor, a onetime Vegas showgirl, and an infamous town gossip. If anyone knew what was going on with Constance’s case, it would be her.
“Do you mind if I come along?”
She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. I thought I might like to go alone.”
My face dropped.
“I’m teasing,” Izzy said with a laugh. “Of course you can come, but would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.” As soon as the word had left my mouth, a bad feeling came over me. Like somehow I had made a mistake without even realizing it.
“It’s just one little spell.”
Oh yes, I had definitely made a mistake.