The Sword of Straw Read Online Free Page A

for what felt like an age, racked with the pain of impossible longing, with anger at the hopelessness of it all, with shame because she would never be pretty enough to fascinate him in return. Her girlfriends all expected her to be in love with Nathan—Nathan with his dark alien beauty, his lithe athletic body, his indefinable uniqueness, charms she had known all her life and regarded with the indifference of familiarity—but she would only shrug at the suggestion, and smile, and hug the secret of her true affection to herself. She liked to be contrary, to keep Nathan as a friend—only a friend—and give her heart to someone nobody would suspect. Until the moment she dreamed of—the distant, elusive moment when they came together at last. The moment that would never happen…
    Presently she dived underneath the bed, groping behind the schoolbooks and sweaters and CD cases, and pulled out a carrier bag that chinked as it moved. The bag of things that had belonged to her great-grandmother Effie Carlow, who was supposed to be a witch—the bag she had always meant to throw away, only somehow she hadn’t gotten around to it. Hazel hadn’t wanted to believe in witchcraft but she had seen too much of Effie not to know what she could do—at least, until she drowned.
You, too, have the power,
the old woman had told her.
It’s in your blood.
The Carlows were offshoots of the Thorn family on the wrong side of the blanket: there was said to be a strain of the Gift in their genes, dating back to Josevius Grimthorn, a magister of the Dark Ages who had reputedly sold his soul to the Devil. When Effie spoke of such things Hazel was frightened—frightened and skeptical both at once. (Skepticism was her protection from the fear, though it didn’t work.) She had no intention of taking up her great-grandmother’s legacy, of dabbling in spells and charms and other stupidities. But now there was Jonas Tyler, who wouldn’t look at her, and the moment that would never happen, and maybe…maybe…among the sealed bottles with their handwritten labels was a love-philter, or in Effie’s notebook there was an incantation, something to make her irresistible, just to him.
    One by one she took the bottles out of the bag and peered at the faded writing, trying to make it out.
     
    B ACK AT the bookshop, Nathan sat down to supper with his mother. In the summer months she tended to favor salads, but the weather was still vacillating and he noted with satisfaction that it was cauliflower cheese. “You should have brought Hazel back,” Annie said. “There’s plenty.”
    “I wasn’t sure,” he explained. “Have you met her mum’s new boyfriend?”
    “Yes.”
    “She says he’s nice, but boring.”
    “He seems very nice, certainly,” Annie said. “I don’t know about boring. I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to him.”
    There was a brief interlude of cauliflower cheese, then Nathan resumed: “Has Uncle Barty said any more about the burglary?”
    “Apparently he called the inspector. You remember: the one from last year.”
    “The one with the funny name?” Nathan said, with his mouth full.
    “Pobjoy.” There was a shade of constraint in her manner. She hadn’t completely forgiven the absent policeman for his suspicions.
    But Nathan had forgotten them. “He was clever,” he said judiciously, “even if he did get lots of things wrong. I bet he guessed those burglars were after the Grail.”
    “We don’t know that. Anyway, Rowena Thorn has it, not your uncle.”
    “She gave it to Uncle Barty to look after. The traditional hiding place is at Thornyhill: they once discussed it in front of me.”
    “How do you know she—”
    “I just know.”
    Annie didn’t argue anymore. Even after fourteen years there were times when she found her son’s alert intelligence disconcerting.
    “The thing is,” he went on, “they were just ordinary burglars, right? Not like the dwarf last time.”
    “Mm.”
    “So they wouldn’t