Page 89 of The Magic We Made

“I highly doubt that,” I call after him, then turn to the DeLong boys, who are all standing there with hunched shoulders and concerned expressions.

“What’s up, boys?” I ask, when the sound of Richard’s footsteps on the side of the road has faded. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

Robby gives me a disgusted look. “Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s not even nine.”

“Ash is in trouble,” Eddie says.

I sigh and turn back toward my front door. I still have to call my therapist, feed the cat, check the kittens, and then get in bed, pull the covers up over my head, and never speak to anyone ever again.

“I know,” I say. “But he doesn’t want our help. He wants all of us to go inside and lock the door. So I suggest you do the same.”

“No.”

Something in Eddie’s voice causes me to pause before slipping my key into the lock. I turn my head to look down at him standing in the yard, the orange glow of the fire reflected on his worried, chubby face.

“He’s in danger,” Eddie says, and behind him, his little brothers nod. “He told us to go home, but we only pretended to. We stayed behind and watched. Those girls from Center Island came over in a boat and hit him.”

“What?” In spite of myself, I’m hurrying down off the porch. “What girls? And what do you mean, hit him?”

“I don’t know.” Eddie looks a little less sure of himself but no less worried. “It was a bunch of girls in white bathrobes. I couldn’t tell exactly what they did to him—”

“But they definitely tackled him,” Robby cries. “And knocked him out and tied him up and put him in their boat and went back to the island with him and sank every other boat on the lake so no one can follow them—”

Now I’m running. It’s hard to run in high-heeled boots, which is what I’m wearing because I spent the day doing social things like going to the farmers market and my mother’s house for dinner. My yard is still so muddy from the unexpected rainstorm the other day, my heels sink into it and make sloppy sucking noises every time I lift a foot.

But none of that matters. What matters is that, when I get down to Ash’s dock, I find all the lights on; every single boat, kayak, and Jet Ski scuttled; and Ash?

Ash is nowhere to be seen.

Frankie

The first thing I do is call 911.

The emergency dispatcher doesn’t sound very impressed at my description of a raging fire on Center Island, my neighbor’s boats all having been vandalized by a pack of white-robed girls, or my neighbor having been physically assaulted and possibly kidnapped by them.

“Yes, ma’am,” the dispatcher says in a bored voice. “We’ve already received numerous calls about it. Firefighters are on their way. Police, as well.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I have huge amounts of respect for emergency service workers. I know they do an amazing job putting themselves out there every day for very little pay.

But unfortunately, more than a few of them are my patients, so I also know way, way more than I want to about the day-to-day operations of the village of West Harbor.

“Just how do firefighters think they’re going to get to a fire on anisland in the middle of a lakewhen they don’t have a fireboat?” I hear myself screaming into the phone. “How are cops going to get out there to rescue my boyfr—neighbor,when they don’t have a police boat? Has anyone called Fish and Wildlife? What about the Coast Guard?”

What makes the situation worse is that the DeLong boys are still standing in my yard when I make this call and witness the whole thing. This is inexcusable. Yes, children are resilient—I’m walking proof. But that doesn’t mean they should be seeing any of this. I tell them to go home multiple times. The smoke from the fire on the island is only getting thicker. So is the fog. The temperature feels like it’s plunged another ten degrees, and there isn’t a sound to be heard—not a cricket, not a bird, not even a rutting deer, even though it’s mating season. The silence is as eerie as the silence that seems to fall just before any storm, an ironic warning of the chaos to come.

But Eddie remains where he is, one hand on Robby’s shoulder, and the other on Sammy’s, surrounded by smoke and fog.

“He’s our neighbor, too,” is all Eddie says in an unusually calm voice, but the anxiety on his face tells a different story.

I feel like I’m only sort of keeping it together. I send both Troy and Jackie the same text message. It’s possible I used too many exclamation points, but I wanted to convey to them the gravity of the situation.

Satan’s Seat is on fire, and according to reliable witnesses, some of those witches knocked Ash unconscious, tied him up, and took him back to Center Island. I need your help NOW!!!

But there’s no reply. And meanwhile, the only part of the lake I can see now are the flames over on Center Island, thanks to the thickness of the fog that has rolled in.

That’s when I give up on 911 and turn to the DeLong grandkids.