The Late-Night Witches

Chapter 1

A man staggered down the sidewalk, his feet swallowed by a swirling blanket of sea fog. At times he veered dangerously toward the curb, but just before he would teeter over its edge, he'd lurch back to shamble over the damp grass of his neighbors' lawns. Each plodding step seemed destined to be his last, but he lumbered on, his unfocused eyes and sickly pale cheeks gleaming under the streetlamps, his jaw hanging loosely like a corpse's.

Cassie Beckett put down the yellow highlighter she had been using to mark up the family calendar as he approached. She tilted her chin to the black cat seated primly on the top edge of her wicker chair. "He doesn't look so good, does he?"

The cat didn't reply.

"Hey, Gary," she called out from the porch. "How's the training going?"

The man stopped his forward momentum but continued to step on the spot. He pulled up the pants of his gray sweatsuit and took a sip from his water bottle. "Made it two K yesterday."

Cassie smiled. "Nice."

"Is it okay if I leave this here?" He shook his bottle. "It's empty and I don't want it weighing me down."

"Be my guest."

Gary was training for a half-marathon. He claimed he ran at night because of work, but that didn't make much sense given that he was an accountant. Cassie suspected he was embarrassed about the shape he was in, but he didn't have to be. Not with her. She admired him for trying something new.

"Thanks." He plunked the plastic container on her mailbox as an infant's cry pealed out from an open window down the street.

Cassie smiled and looked over to the house with the cranberry door, its brass knocker winking in the dark. Every neighborhood had its secret nightlife, and hers was no exception. As though on cue, a man with a baby strapped to his chest emerged from the house. The piercing cries faded away as he walked down his driveway with careful, bouncing steps. When he reached the street, he turned around and walked back toward the house, making sure to keep a steady rhythm.

"Poor guy." Gary pushed up the Rocky-inspired headband that had slipped down his forehead. "Rumor has it the baby is his sister's. She wasn't ready to be a mother, so he stepped up."

Not much stayed secret in the Burrow. The neighborhood wasn't much more than a street in an old suburb of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and nobody could remember how it had gotten its name, but it was quaint with its old homes and tall trees, and Cassie couldn't imagine calling any other place home.

Their newest neighbor had only moved in a month or so ago, and Cassie hadn't had the chance to introduce herself. Granted, she hadn't gone out of her way to either. He was intimidatingly handsome. He had the glasses and bashful air of an English teacher or librarian, but the build of a quarterback. His hair was honey brown and always messy-that was probably because of the baby-but she hadn't seen his eyes up close. If she had to guess, they were hazel. She thought he might have a dimple too, but-all this was ridiculous because Cassie was technically married, even if it didn't feel too much like it these days.

Gary must have caught her look because he chuckled and said, "Yeah, he's a good-looking guy. You'd have to be dead not to notice."

Cassie smiled, hoping the darkness hid the burn coming to her cheeks. "What's his name again?"

"Ben. He's a history professor. Some sort of expert on island lore."

A history professor. She knew she'd been on the right track.

Gary cleared his throat and hiked his pants again. "Anyway, got to get back at it. The longer I stop, the harder it is to get going again."

That observation rang true for Cassie on many levels. "Good luck. And don't forget to take breaks."

He waved and pushed on.

Cassie scratched her cat's chin. "He'll be fine, right?"

She purred.

Janet was right. Gary was an adult. He could take care of himself. Besides, she had enough on her plate. Cassie looked down at the calendar on the old cast-iron coffee table. Crap. All of October was yellow. Every square had something. Doctor appointments. Dentist appointments. Hockey games. Basketball tryouts. It was never-ending. She scanned the to-do list running down the column at the side. She was also volunteering for two field trips, which meant she needed to trade shifts at work, and she had to get her daughter skates before her class started its weekly trip to the rink. Oh God, and the twins needed Halloween costumes! If only she could cut holes in sheets like moms used to do in the old days. Those women knew how to live.

The jack-o'-lantern sitting on the top step of the porch drew Cassie's eye. At least that was done, and she hadn't had to lift a finger. It had been the strangest thing. The pumpkin had shown up that morning, its carved face peering into her front door. Someone had obviously spent time on it. Its triangle eyes-peaks pointed in-had been cut to a devilish angle, and its mouth with its two long fangs looked ready to tear through steel. There had obviously been some sort of mistake, but she had no clue what to do about it.

Cassie stared into the dark hollows of the jack-o'-lantern's eyes. While its sudden appearance was somewhat convenient, it was too creepy for her liking. It almost felt like it was challenging her.

"You want to go, Creepy?" she muttered, then looked back at her packed calendar. Who was she kidding? She didn't have time to duel with jack-o'-lanterns. Not with this schedule.

Cassie leaned back in her chair. Being out on the porch of her century-old home always brought her peace. The wood planks were wobbly, and the sage-green paint was peeling, but she had fixed it up with hanging plants, rugs, blankets, and lanterns, and over time it had become her favorite part of the house. It was the perfect spot to watch the moon rise and soak in the night air. Not that she'd have a whole lot of time for that this month. She put her feet on the table, pushing the calendar an inch or two away with the toe of her boot. It was fine. She could do this. As long as she didn't get sick or require more than six hours of sleep-something she didn't seem capable of anyway-it was fine.

Janet nuzzled Cassie's ear as she pulled her mug of herbal tea close to her chest, inhaling its sweet grassy scent. She'd been having some insomnia lately. Stress, probably. She did her best to keep everyone on track, but ever since her husband, Matt, had left for his second tour with Doctors Without Borders-leaving her with their fifteen-year-old daughter and eight-year-old twin boys-it always felt like she wasn't doing enough. Or doing it right. Or doing it the way everyone expected her to. Other moms made it look so easy. At least the ones on social media did.

But ongoing stress aside, something more was going on with her. She'd had this strange, tense feeling lately that there was something she was supposed to be doing. Something aside from all the other things she was supposed to be doing. It was like there was an undercurrent of electricity constantly pricking at her skin, prodding her to do . . . something.

It was probably the change in weather. Those first gusts of cold wind always made her restless.

Cassie shifted her tea to her other hand and dug her fingers into her jean pocket as she watched the heavy fog swirl. She slipped out her coin, a relic from childhood, and flipped it mindlessly between her fingers, feeling the familiar grooves of the engraved sun and moon on either side.

The day had been brilliant and pleasantly cool. The kind of fall day that made a person want to walk around under a canopy of red and gold leaves, wearing a scarf and drinking pumpkin-spiced coffee. Not that Cassie had done any of that. She had spent the day at work discussing circular saws with chainsaw attachments and the intricate workings of septic bed treatments. But it was still nice getting in and out of the van. As soon as the sun had set, though, tendrils of cold mist reached in from the harbor, flooding the neighborhood in a gloomy haze. It had a strange murkiness to it. At times, instead of reflecting the light from the streetlamps, it swallowed it, darkening all it touched. And it moved in peculiar ways too. One minute she could see all the way down the street, but the next, the world beyond her front steps disappeared. For all she knew, someone could be in that cold mist right now staring at her. The thought sent an icy shiver up the skin on the back of her neck, even though she knew there was nothing in the fog. Janet would know if there were.

A low growl rumbled by her ear. Cassie jolted, spilling her tea. "What the heck, cat?" She said it quietly though. Janet did sometimes growl at absolutely nothing-or ghosts, she couldn't be sure-but there were other times when her feline friend picked up on real creatures going bump in the night. Cassie held her breath to listen and heard a grunt come from up the street. Her shoulders dropped. She knew that grunt. And she should have seen this coming.

It was Thursday. Karaoke night.

Cassie slipped her coin back into her pocket and swatted at the drops of tea on her cable-knit sweater, but her hand fell away when the willowy silhouette of a woman emerged from the fog. She was swaying, not unlike Gary, but that wasn't what had Cassie concerned. She was also dragging something. Its metal tip scraped noisily along the pavement.

A baseball bat.

Janet jumped down from the chair and up onto the porch railing in a fluid motion. She gathered herself up into a tight perched position. Cassie considered throwing her granny square afghan over her head, but it was too late. The woman had already spotted her. "Hey you!" she shouted as though it wasn't the middle of the night. "Just the person I wanted to see!"

Eliza, Cassie's sister and in most ways her first child, was stunning. Her hair was long, black, and straight-as opposed to Cassie's sandy waves that lived in a messy bun-and her eyes were large and dramatically dark. That being said, she looked a little rough tonight. The black tank dress wasn't too bad-it showed off her sister's slender arms and the bangles clustered at her wrists-but the work boots on her feet and the flannel shirt tied around her waist looked wrong. So did the scraped knee glaring angrily through her torn black tights.

"Go away," Cassie said tiredly. "I don't want what you're selling."

"Is that any way to welcome your sister home?"

Cassie pointed down the street. "You live that way."

Eliza ambled halfway up the lawn before suddenly pitching forward in giant, awkward steps. When she caught herself, she frowned at the football lying innocently in the grass, then kicked it over to the property next door. One of her oversized boots tumbled after it.

"No. Go get that. Mrs. MacDonald is going to flip out." Cassie didn't talk to her neighbor all that much, but when they did speak, it was almost always about property lines. Mrs. MacDonald was big on property lines. She probably didn't want the chaos of Cassie's life spilling into hers.

"No time for that," Eliza said. "You're going to want to hear about what I've been up to. I promise it has a happy ending."

Cassie did want to hear about what her sister had been up to-in the way she wanted to know about an outbreak of lice in the boys' classroom-but she also didn't want to encourage whatever this was. Besides, she didn't need to ask Eliza where she had been. She knew the answer to that. And she didn't have to ask her who she was with. Cassie knew that too. She certainly wasn't going to ask her sister how much she'd had to drink. She didn't want to know the answer to that. And she definitely wasn't going to ask her-

"Why do you have a bat?" Frick.

"Great question. Wait. Why are you out here at-" Eliza looked at her wrist, making her bracelets jangle. She didn't wear a watch. "Why are you out here?"

"Couldn't sleep." Cassie looked pointedly at the bat. "Now you."

Her sister groaned. "It's a long story."

"One you seemed eager to tell me a moment ago."

"Yeah." Eliza sighed. "But now that I've had time to think it over, I've realized I don't come out particularly well in it." She trailed off, distracted by the cat pinning her with a judgmental gaze. "You know what, Janet?" She challenged the cat with a glare, but couldn't finish the thought.

"Eliza. Focus."

"It was self-defense."

"Against?"

"A two-thousand and nine Ford F-150."

Cassie pressed her fingers against her eyelids. "No. Absolutely not. I want no part of this." Destruction of property was not on her calendar. "Wait, was it parked or moving?" What was wrong with her? Why was she still asking questions?

"Parked. Definitely parked. But . . ." Eliza trailed off again, her eyes tracking a late moth fluttering up to the streetlamp.

Cassie snapped her fingers in the air. "Okay, start from the beginning." She suspected she already knew the end.

"You want me to start from the beginning? I can tell you the whole story with one word." She struggled to untie the flannel shirt fixed around her waist, then threw it to the ground. "It was Tommy. The asshat."

"Hey!" Cassie shot a look up in the direction of her boys' window.

"Oh shit." Eliza slapped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry."

"You know what? Don't start from the beginning. Just tell me one thing. Tell me you did not commit a Carrie Underwood on his truck."

Eliza opened her mouth then shut it again before squinting and chewing her thumbnail. Cassie imagined she was mulling her strategy. A moment passed and Eliza flung her hand away. "Of course I committed a Carrie Underwood on his truck! Well, half an Underwood. Have you ever tried to beat up a truck? It's harder than it looks. I may have dislocated my shoulder."

Thoughts of damage, insurance, and possible legal action swirled through Cassie's mind.