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—”