Conjure Wife Read Online Free Page A

paused. “Now here’s an important thing. So long as only you knew what you were doing, you didn’t tend to criticize your entanglement with conjure magic any more than the average person criticizes his magic formula for going to sleep. There was no social conflict.”
    He started to pace, still eating the sandwich.
    “Good Lord, haven’t I devoted a good part of my life to investigating how and why men and women are superstitious? And shouldn’t I have been aware of the contagious effect of that study on you? And what is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I’d welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb.”
    Tansy had risen. Her eyes looked unnaturally large and bright.
    “Then,” she faltered, “you honestly don’t hate me, or think I’m going crazy?”
    He put his arms around her. “Hell, no!”
    She began to cry.
    9:33: They were sitting on the davenport again. Tansy had stopped crying, but her head still rested against his shoulder.
    For a while they were quiet. Then Norman spoke. He used the deceptively mild tones of a doctor telling a patient that another operation will be necessary.
    “Of course, you’ll have to quit doing it now.”
    Tansy sat up quickly. “Oh no, Norm, I couldn’t.”
    “Why not? You’ve just agreed it was all nonsense. You’ve just thanked me for opening your eyes.”
    “I know that, but still — don’t make me, Norm!”
    “Now be reasonable, Tansy,” he said. “You’ve taken this like a major so far. I’m proud of you. But don’t you see, you can’t stop half way. Once you’ve started to face this weakness of yours logically, you’ve got to keep on. You’ve got to get rid of all that stuff in your dressing room, all the charms you’ve hidden around, everything.”
    She shook her head. “Don’t make me, Norm,” she repeated. “Not all at once. I’d feel naked.”
    “No you won’t. You’ll feel stronger. Because you’ll find out that what you half thought might be magic, is really your own unaided ability.”
    “No, Norm. Why do I have to stop? What difference does it make? You said yourself it was just nonsense — a private ritual.”
    “But now that I know about it, it’s not private any more. And in any case,” he added, almost dangerously, “it’s a pretty unusual ritual.”
    “But couldn’t I just quit by degrees?” She pleaded, like a child. “You know, not lay any new charms, but leave the old ones?”
    He shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s like giving up drink — it has to be a clean break.”
    Her voice began to rise. “But, Norm, I can’t do it. I simply can’t!”
    He began to feel she was a child. “Tansy, you must.”
    “But there wasn’t ever anything bad about my magic.” The childishness was getting frightening. “I never used it to hurt anyone or to ask for unreasonable things, like making you president of Hempnell overnight. I only wanted to protect you.”
    “Tansy, what difference does that make!”
    Her breasts were heaving. “I tell you, Norm, I won’t be responsible for what happens to you if you make me take away those protections.”
    “Tansy, be reasonable. What on earth do I need with protections of that sort?”
    “Oh, so you think that everything you’ve won in life is just the result of your own unaided abilities? You don’t recognize the luck in it?”
    Norman remembered thinking the same thing himself this afternoon and that made him angrier. “Now Tansy —”
    “And you think that everyone loves you and wishes you well, don’t you? You think all those beasts over at Hempnell are just a lot of pussies with their claws clipped? You pass off their spites and jealousies as something trivial, beneath your notice. Well let me tell you —”
    “Tansy, stop screaming!”
    “—