Witches 101 Read Online Free Page A

Over the years they had each learned to live with the restraint in their own way. Freya burned through her energy through her manic partying, while Ingrid had adopted a severe personality in order to better suppress the magic that threatened to well up from inside.
    Since there was nothing she could do to change it, Ingrid found she could not quite resent their present reduced circumstances. Resenting and regretting only made things worse. Why hope for what could not be? For hundreds of years she had learned to live like a quiet mouse, tiny and insignificant, and had almost convinced herself that it was better that way.
    Ingrid patted the bun at the back of her head and put the cart back against the wall. On the way to the back office, she saw Blake Aland perusing the new releases. Blake was a successful developer who had given the mayor the idea of selling the library in the first place, offering a handsome bid if the city ever decided to take it on the market. A month ago he had dropped off his firm’s documents and Ingrid had had the delicate task of telling him their work was not aesthetically important enough to keep in their archive. Blake had taken it well, but he had not taken her rejection of his invitation to dinner quite as graciously. He had continued to persist until she had finally agreed to dine with him last week, on an evening that had gone disastrously, with hands fending off hands in the front seat of the car and hurt feelings all around. It was him she had to thank for giving her the odious nickname “Frigid Ingrid.” How unfortunate that in addition to being despicable he was also clever.
    She hurried away before he spotted her. She had no desire to wrestle with Octopus hands any time soon. Freya was so lucky to have found Bran, but then again, Ingrid had known for a long time that one day Freya would meet him. She’d seen it in her sister’s lifeline centuries ago.
    Ingrid had never felt that way about anyone. Besides, love wasn’t a solution to everything, she thought, patting a cache of letters that she kept folded in her pocket.
    In the back office, she checked on her blueprint: almost all the creases were out. Good. She would put it in its flat box and then put the next drawing under the steam. She made a note on an index card, writing down the architect’s name and the project, an experimental museum that had never been built.
    When she returned to her cubicle there was a sniffing noise from the next desk, and when Ingrid looked up, she noticed Tabitha was wiping her eyes and setting down her mobile phone. “What happened?” Ingrid asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. There was only one thing Tabitha wanted even more than getting Judy Blume to visit their library.
    â€œI’m not pregnant.”
    â€œOh, Tab,” Ingrid said. She walked over and embraced her friend. “I’m so sorry.” For the past several weeks Tabitha had been resolutely optimistic following yet another in-vitro procedure, expressing a manic certainty that it had worked mostly because it was their final attempt at parenthood. “Surely there’s something else you can do?”
    â€œNo. This was our last shot. We can’t afford it anymore. We’re already in debt up to our ears for the last one. This was it. It’s not going to happen.”
    â€œWhat happened to the adoption process?”
    Tabitha wiped her eyes. “Because of Chad’s disability, we got passed over again. Might as well be a dead end. And I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish, but is it so wrong to want one of our own? Just one?”
    Ingrid had been there since the beginning of Chad and Tabitha’s journey: she knew all about the turkey basters (the IUI treatment), the hormone pills, the infertility cocktail (Clomid, Lupron); she had helped push syringes as big as horse needles into Tabitha’s left hip at the designated hours. She knew how much they wanted a