Magic and the Modern Girl Read Online Free Page A

distaste.
    “What?” I asked, and this time some of my fear came out as anger. “What is it? Is the Coven back? Are they ruining my collection because I wouldn’t share it with them?”
    David shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Nothing quite that simple.”
    Simple! I wanted to shout. There was nothing simple about this! Someone had bespelled my cottage, my collection. Someone was attacking me, and I didn’t have the first idea who. Or why. Or how. I didn’t know anything at all.
    “What, then?” I asked. “If it isn’t the Coven, what is it?” I heard the panic rising in my voice. I’d had a difficult enough time holding my own against my fellow witches last year. If David had the nerve to say now that that confrontation had been simple …. I was afraid I wouldn’t have the fortitude to face whatever he said next.
    But David didn’t answer. My faithful warder didn’t give me a simple response, easy words that would still the pounding of my heart, that would make the metallic taste fade away at the back of my throat.
    Instead, he shook his head and sat down at my kitchen table. The scrape of the metal-legged chair against my linoleum floor echoed the irritation in my brain. What was it? What was he not telling me? This must be something truly terrible, if he had to sit to tell me the news. I searched for a sign on his face, for any hint of meaning, but I could read nothing there. His smooth features formed a mask, like the blue cotton a surgeon hides behind before he tells exhausted, anxious loved ones that the worst has happened in the operating room.
    That was it. David was going to say that my magic was killing me. He was going to tell me that I must stop practicing, that I had to give up all the arcane goods in my basement. He was going to explain that the collection was dangerous to me, that there was nothing to do but cut it out, destroy it, make one final brave effort to save my tragically shortened life.
    “Do you have another glass?” he asked, looking meaningfully at the pitcher by Melissa’s hand.
    Okay. Maybe he wasn’t going to give me dire medical-magical news.
    Melissa, clearly unaware that I was halfway down the road to writing my last—and first—will and testament, shook herself back to life and poured, both for David and for Neko. My familiar, apparently taking his cue from David’s bemused approach, busied himself with excavating the darkest reaches of my refrigerator. So much for the bare-larder advantages of having Neko move out.
    As if he could sense my blossoming disapproval, he moved quickly, pouncing on a brick of cheddar cheese and half a wheel of Gouda that I had hidden behind some ancient whole-wheat tortillas. “What?” he asked, when he caught my accusing glance. “You’re going to hold back food at a time like this?”
    “A time like this?” I repeated dryly. “I don’t have the faintest idea what this time is like.” Of course, Neko refused to recognize the warning in my glare. Instead, he actually whistled as he placed the cheese on a plate, and then he began to ransack my cupboards for Triscuits and water biscuits.
    “David!” I exclaimed, as my warder cut a substantial slice of cheddar and covered two crackers. “Stop!”
    “What?” He shrugged. “You know that he’ll eat all of it, if we don’t help ourselves.”
    “I’m not talking about cheese!” I looked at Melissa, waiting for her to back me up. She didn’t throw herself into my corner, though. Instead, she cocked her head to one side, studied the snacks arrayed before her, and helped herself to a handful of crackers. When I harrumphed my disbelief, she merely quirked one eyebrow, in that annoying way that she could, as if to say, “What do you want from me? ”
    I pounded the table hard enough that a dollop of mojito sloshed out of my glass. “What is happening to me, David? What’s going on in that basement?”
    “Nothing,” he said, and then he crunched away.
    I barely