Reluctantly Charmed Read Online Free

had spilled its load into my head. My ears filled with a white noise. I’d never heard anything so utterly crazy in my whole life. Fairies? I had been fairy-struck? I was the real witch?
    “I don’t get it.” My voice broke the heavy silence.
    “It is a little unusual.” The understatement of the year fell out of Seamus MacMurphy’s mouth.
    Red Hag, fairy-struck, good people. I looked over at my parents, confused.
    “I’m dumbfounded,” my always-vocal dad said, his tongue clicking in his mouth.
    Mam threw Dad a disapproving look. “I always knew your side of the family were mad.”
    “God love her, she was away with them, wasn’t she?” Dad said, with all the moroseness of a eulogy.
    I eyed him in disbelief. How could he have adopted such a serious tone? I felt a spasm in my stomach and a nervous tremor itch through me. I was going to laugh. I bit my lip to stop myself. I held my breath and felt my cheeks fill up with air. My chest jumped. It wasn’t appropriate. I knew it wasn’t appropriate. I shut my eyes to stop them from watering. My head rolled into my chest and my hands raced to my mouth as I released a low giggle and a gush of air. Stop it, stop it, stop it! I thought.
    “Ah, Kate,” Dad said, but I could hear the laughter in his voice. I looked up, and a crooked smile crept over his face. His eyes were giddy. I didn’t need the encouragement.
    “She was nuts,” I said, slapping my thigh. “Nuts. Dad, you had a nutter in your family.”
    “It’s your family, too.” His eyes were filling up.
    “Loop the loop.” Mam tapped her temple, breathing through her nose.
    Seamus MacMurphy was flushed and cleared his throat repeatedly in an effort to settle us.
    “Sorry, sorry!” Dad shouted too loudly, half laughing. “It’s a bit of a shock.”
    “What a load of nonsense,” Mam added. “But, tell me this.” She leaned forward and put her hand on her chin, serious now. “What’s the estate?”
    Biting on his bottom lip, Seamus MacMurphy puffed out his cheeks. His head quivered from side to side. “I can’t tell you, I’mafraid,” he said somewhat uncomfortably. “One of the stipulations of the will is that the estate is only revealed when the Seven Steps and the letter have been published.”
    Crazy , I thought. This is crazy. But funny, crazy .
    “What do you mean published?” I said aloud.
    “Published.”
    “Like in a newspaper?”
    “It doesn’t stipulate the medium. It just says ‘published,’ so newspaper, book, magazine, Internet. Published in a mass medium and on the same day every week from the day you start.”
    “She doesn’t ask for much,” Dad snuffled out of the corner of his mouth.
    “Okay, so what do these things say?” I asked.
    “Well, you have to agree to do this before I can show you.”
    “Okay . . .” I looked over at Mam and Dad. “Yeah, I’ll do it. I want to know what they say. Come on, you must be curious?”
    “What if you’re getting into something you can’t control?” Mam was always practical.
    “Hardly,” I laughed, thinking how I had no control over anything in my life, anyway—a career in freefall, a nonexistent love life, warring parents—so what harm would it be to add one more thing to that growing list? And with that one throwaway comment, I pushed Play, and the wheels started to turn.
    “If you agree to one, you agree to them all. And you have to publish that first letter, the one addressed to you, from the other Kate McDaid.” I nodded at the lawyer, and he slid an inky scrawled envelope across his desk. There was a wax seal on it. It felt very Dangerous Liaisons . “This is the first. It must be published word for word.”
    Smiling, I picked it up with the kind of excited feeling you get before you go on the dodgems at a carnival. Giddy.
    I broke the seal and pulled out the single page that was insidethe envelope. I tried to focus in on the handwriting. It was shaky and old.
    “Well, read it out, for crying out