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had become friendly with members of the coven. A couple of them had claimed to do good with their magic, but most of the witches bragged about the bad luck they’d brought to their enemies. One had caused her boss’s basement to flood. Another had made her landlord lose his winning lottery ticket. A third specialized in flat tires and suddenly empty gas tanks. All of these “spells” could be just coincidences, the reporter pointed out. There was no way to be sure. But the witches were confident that they could bring “bad luck” to whomever they wished.
    The last clipping was the most startling. Under the headline SUBURBAN WITCH ACCUSED BY NEIGHBORS was a detailed story about a single member of the coven. The reporter had interviewed this woman’s neighbors and had discovered they were all afraid of her. She’d disagreed with the man next door about a fence he was putting up, and the next day the roof of his house collapsed. Another neighbor lost her wallet, her car keys, and her boyfriend on the very day she and the witch had an argument.
    â€œI can do just about anything I want to do,” the witch boasted. She admitted to the reporter that she’d just been fired from her job at Park Valley Hospital because she’d threatened to put a spell on one of her fellow workers. “But I wanted to leave, anyway,” she said. “I’m going to move back East and start a whole new life. I’ll be more powerful than ever, because no one will know who I am and what I can do!”
    The reporter had been impressed. “She’s probably an ordinary person like the rest of us,” she wrote, “but she clearly believes in her own powers. I won’t forget the look in her eyes.…”
    Jeff shuddered. The witch wasn’t named, but there was a fuzzy snapshot of a woman with long black hair. The eyes were unmistakable.
    He dropped back on the grass. Now he knew what the evidence was that Ernie had mentioned in his list of Jeff’s “assignments” for the Top Secret Project. He knew, too, which member of the Muggin family Ernie had intended to blackmail. Ernie must have seen the articles when he lived in Los Angeles, and he’d saved them because he was interested in black magic himself. Hadn’t his mother said he always wanted to be a wizard or a magician at Halloween? He must have brought the clippings with him to Treverton, and later, when Margo Muggin came to town, he’d recognized her.
    Ernie had been planning to bully Margo Muggin into doing what he wanted. That was his Top Secret Project. If she refused, he’d tell everyone she was a witch, and her new life in Treverton would be spoiled. Maybe he’d wanted her to teach him black magic, so he could cast spells himself. The thought of Ernie Barber with the power to perform black magic made Jeff roll over and bury his face in his arms.
    Now that he’d discovered what the Top Secret Project was, there were still other questions to be answered. Why did Ernie’s ghost want to continue the T S P? It was too late for Ernie to learn black magic now. And why did Ernie need Jeff’s help? Well, a ghost could scare people. He could plant suggestions in their minds and try to influence them. He could make clippings move short distances—from a bag to a jeans pocket, for example. But there must be limits to what he could do by himself. He must need help from a real person to carry out a Top Secret Project. Jeff sighed, sat up, and stuffed the clippings back into their envelope.
    If I burn this stuff, maybe that’ll end it , he thought. Then he remembered the lightning bolts that had come crashing down the day of Ernie’s funeral. He didn’t dare burn the clippings. An angry ghost was a nasty ghost.
    There was one other possibility. Jeff’s first assignment was to “hide the evidence.” I can do that , he thought. I’ll hide the clippings in a place