By Familiar Means Read Online Free PDF Page A

kind of door that locked automatically behind you. But there was that bell hanging on the ornamental arm overhead. We definitely had not heard that ring.
    I rubbed my arms. Was it just me, or had it suddenly gotten a lot colder in here?
    Then I saw my latte cup on the bar. I walked slowly over and picked it up. There were two immediate problems here. One was that I was pretty sure I had left my cup at the
other
end of the bar. The other was that somebody had drunk the last of my perfectly brewed, perfectly sweetened, perfectly foamed latte.
    I set the cup down and folded my arms. “All right. Jake, Miranda, what’s going on?”
    â€œNothing,” said Miranda immediately. “Well, nothing much. Jake and I are just having a little disagreement about the building. I think it’s perfect.”
    â€œAnd I,” said Jake, “think it’s haunted.”

4
    â€œHaunted?” I repeated. Not possible. Okay, I believed in magic, with and without cats, and I believed in my Vibe. I believed my grandmother was a witch, that upright, uptight Julia Parris had once run a nightclub, and that the Red Sox were going to win the World Series again this year.
    But I did not believe in ghosts. No. Uh-uh. Not now, not ever. Not that I was scared or anything, but it was a bridge too far. A great big spooky covered bridge in autumn with the bare trees rattling and crows sitting on the roof too far. I’d just misremembered where I’d put that take-out cup. And of course I hadn’t actually left any latte sitting around. I’d finished it on my own; I just hadn’t been paying attention. And those hadn’t really been footsteps we heard upstairs. Or downstairs.
    Right? Right.
    Jake, however, was not getting with the program. “First day we came in here, there was a rumble in the floor—”
    â€œWhich just happened to be when a dump truck was going by outside,” Miranda said.
    â€œAnd there have been sudden drops in temperature, and it’s got cold spots.”
    â€œBecause it’s fall in New Hampshire, and the insulation is older than we are.”
    â€œTools have been disappearing and reappearing—”
    â€œSay the contractors, but I haven’t—”
    â€œWe even put in a security camera. It didn’t catch anything.”
    â€œOne camera,” said Miranda stubbornly. “For the entire building.”
    â€œYou agreed, Starbabe,” Jake reminded her. “We have been over every square inch and we’ve still got these . . . phenomena.”
    Miranda closed her mouth, but she also folded her arms and looked up at him with her chin stuck out.
    Jake faced me. “I need to apologize, Anna. I haven’t been, like, totally straight with you.” A slow sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. “We heard about how you helped find out who killed Dorothy.” He paused again. “And we heard you might have had some . . . spiritual help.”
    â€œOr do you prefer the term ‘paranormal’?” asked Miranda anxiously. “We don’t want to speak disrespectfully about your practice.”
    What I preferred was not to talk about any of this. At all. But I wasn’t going to get that option.
    When I came to Portsmouth, I’d helped solve a genuine murder mystery involving a local witch named Dorothy Hawthorne, who used to own the house I was currently occupying. I’d used my wits and my new magic and had a healthy dose of help from Alistair and the guardian coven to do it, too. I hadn’t realized that word about that had somehow gotten out. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Most of the members of the coven were pretty open about their practice, but I had planned on staying in the broom closet for a while. At least until I was sure that the practice was really right for me.
    Okay, the cat and the house and the wand were pretty strong signals, but it was all