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

communicate telepathically with any other species of them. So I’d talk to Oey in English, she/he would talk to the Andanstans in Unity-speak, and we could light the bonfire on the beach. With luck, the rashes would leave when the Andanstans did.
    The problem, of course, other than I never seemed to have such luck, was that Oey’d gone missing. If the feathered fish didn’t come back, we were sunk. Literally. Unless someone else could speak the mental tongue.
    How many people on our Earth could translate a language that was half telepathic? Less than a handful, and I knew one of them. Talk about coincidences.
    Grant is the leading xenolinguist from the covert Royce Institute for Psionic Research, as opposed to the overt and respected Royce University, which he’d also attended and where his father was dean. He is also the man I’d almost married.
    Sometimes I felt guilty about breaking up and maybe breaking his heart. Sometimes I wondered what if . . .
    Most times, like now, I felt awkward calling him, not out of love and affection, but out of need.
    As they say, needs must when the devil drives, whatever that means. Someone had to talk to the Andanstans and get them to leave, without taking our sand with them. Someone else. I could not do this on my own.
    I had finally visualized the sand folk; now Grant had to translate. That’s what he did, when he wasn’t being a viscount chatting with the queen or a top DUE agent chasing rumors of ETs across the globe. Well, he could damn straight get his tight linguist butt over here and talk to the tiny thieves.
    I left a message, a bit more polite than what I was thinking. Then I took two Tylenols and the last of the Oreos while I waited for him to call back on what I knew to be a more secure, “Men in Black” line. Answering these kinds of calls was part of his job.
    He didn’t sound happy about it. In fact, he sounded annoyed, exhausted, and ill. Or maybe the satellite communication had interference.
    I asked where he was. He’d been at the space station last time I needed him.
    â€œIreland.”
    Oh, no. They had a million Irish tenors, and they raised racehorses, too. “What are you doing in Ireland?”
    â€œI
was
tracking a bogwilly.”
    â€œYou had to track a bog? Do they move? Aren’t there maps?”
    â€œNot a bog, Willy. A bogwilly, some supposedly hideous beast they use to frighten children into behaving. They should fear the shaggy local ponies instead. I fell off the blasted animal they swore couldn’t be spooked by any, ah, spook.”
    I knew there was a horse. My father’d said so. “Did it sing?”
    â€œThe pony? Bloody thing fainted! Keeled right over on top of me before I could jump off.”
    â€œNo, the bogwilly, with which, incidentally, I have no connection except a shared name. What is it?”
    â€œI still do not know.”
    â€œDoes it sing?”
    â€œNot that I heard. I didn’t pick up any psychic sendings, either, just the light. You know, that peculiar iridescence like a hundred prisms reflecting moonlight.”
    I knew it well. I’d been trying to capture it on paper for the professor’s book. “Did you find the, ah, willy?”
    â€œWith two broken legs and a cracked skull from the rock the deuced pony dumped me against?”
    Oh. “Are you all right now?”
    He wasn’t, and he wasn’t pleased about it. “Concussed, seeing double, with an inflammation of the lungs from lying in the blasted bog until they could get a rescue team in.”
    Suddenly the rash did not seem as urgent. I told him about it anyway, and asked if he had any idea when he could travel, by wheelchair if necessary. We needed him to get rid of the sand thieves.
    He cursed. I couldn’t tell if he hated the idea of the wheelchair, or the fact that I only called when I had trouble. Turned out that what he hated, which he expressed in many