Girl's Guide to Witchcraft Read Online Free

windows were so flyspecked that they looked like some rotten form of stained glass. A braided rug was rolled up against the far wall, and the hardwood floor looked dull and diseased. By craning my neck, I could just make out the appliances in the kitchen, and I thought they might once have been white.
    “I don’t even know where to start,” Melissa said, even her spirit daunted.
    “Might as well tackle the worst bits first,” I said grimly. “Do you want the kitchen or the bathroom?”
    “I spend enough time in a kitchen at work. I’ll take the bathroom. Besides, it’s smaller.” She grinned.
    We split up the cleaning supplies and activated our divide-and-conquer strategy. I asked myself, how bad one kitchen could be when it hadn’t even been used for decades?
    The answer: bad.
    I started by sweeping, figuring that it made sense to get rid of the dry dirt before I tackled the wet. I disturbed enough spiders to repopulate every farm this side of Charlotte’s web. I discovered that my new home had mice—or at least it had hosted them in the past, when there was some semblance of food around. I learned that contact paper detached from shelves when the glue was old enough. And it left behind a gold-colored dust that made me sneeze if I peered at it too closely.
    Even as I swept, though—and scrubbed and scoured and mopped—I couldn’t help but be pleased. This was my home that we were cleaning. This was my pied-à-terre; my escape from the hustle and bustle of the workaday world. With every squeeze of a spray bottle, I was beating back the cottage’s chilly atmosphere. I was subduing that Twilight Zone specter, pushing away my whispering fears.
    Some time well after noon, I glanced out the kitchen window (newly glinting from a liberal application of Windex). I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The cottage lined up at the end of a garden path. While the yellow cowslips and deep pink candytuft had died back at the peak of the summer’s heat, I could still make out the bright white stars of foamflower stalks.
    Endless volumes of colonial horticulture had not been wasted on this librarian.
    And Gran’s housekeeping lessons weren’t wasted, either. When Melissa and I folded back the dustcovers on the furniture in the living room, we were pleasantly surprised to find a pair of deep, overstuffed couches covered with hunter-green fabric that looked untouched by time. In the bedroom, we discovered a four-poster with an actual feather mattress. My own clean sheets fit it perfectly.
    We rolled out the rug in the living room and admired its tightly braided pattern. Gran’s vacuum cleaner worked like a charm, sucking up the last stray evidence of the cottage’s abandonment. After I coiled up the vacuum’s power cord, we collapsed on the couches and surveyed our handiwork. “I don’t believe it,” I said.
    “Still feel your Ghost of Christmas Past haunting the place?”
    “Any ghost who was living here has been asphyxiated by ammonia.” I brandished the nearest spray bottle. “Fairies, begone, and be all ways away.”
    “Titania. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ”
    It was an old game that we played. Smiling to acknowledge Melissa’s Shakespeare skills, I glanced over her shoulder. “What’s that door?” I asked, gesturing toward the hallway.
    Melissa followed my gaze and shrugged. “The basement? I tried it and it’s locked.”
    Just as well, I thought. There was no telling what creepy crawlies lurked down there. I sighed and pulled myself to my feet. “So, are we going to reward ourselves with burgers?”
    “And fries. Your treat.”
    Neither of us could bring ourselves to shower in the sparkling new bathroom; we wanted the fruit of our labors to remain unblemished for just a while longer. I did take a moment to splash some water on my face at the kitchen sink, and I removed my grimy bandanna, allowing my hair to spring out around my ears. Taken together, Melissa and I looked like refugees from a