A Broom With a View Read Online Free PDF Page A

player. She’d been too blind to see it, or else too scared to look into it properly.
    “Serves me right,” she spat.
    Her voice, stronger than she’d realized, echoed in the cavernous room. It was a little thrilling. “I spent all my free time helping others see their future. I was too dim-witted to look at my own present.”
    At least she had some money. Along with the house and property, when Nana Bud died she’d left both Liza and Bryar a tidy sum from her life insurance policy and stocks she’d purchased back in the 1970s. In total, Liza Jane’s part came to more than $125,000. (Which made her wonder what her grandmother had left Mabel. She’d never asked her mother.)
    At one time, it would’ve been a fortune. Now she was going to have to make it stretch a good while to cover her expenses for at least two years, until her own business hopefully (definitely, think positive ) took off.
    So far she’d used it to rent the apartment in Beverly, move to Kentucky, get the house up and running, pay the rent for her building four months in advance, purchase all the supplies she needed to get her business up and running (massage table, products, waiting room furniture, decorations, etc.), her recertification, and to get the utilities on for everything.
    And then there had been a few new outfits. Just because.
    She shuddered at the amount she’d already spent.
    “I will make this happen,” she promised herself, tossing her head back so that her hair shook in the shadowy light. “This is going to work for me.”
    The overhead lights flickered off and on, a strobe-light effect from the energy that flew from the snap of her fingers.
    She felt good, she felt positive.
    She was going to do this, do this well, and not use any magic at all.
    Oh, who was she kidding? She’d use as much as she could. A girl had to eat, after all.
     

***
     
    L iza knew whose voice she’d hear on the other end of the line before she was halfway across the room. Always a glutton for punishment, she continued towards the phone all the same. It was either now or later, after all.
    Mode’s voice carried that pleasant, cheery tone that had irritated her so much at the end and made her swoon in the beginning.
    “Hi Mode,” she said carefully, and then cringed. She’d promised herself to avoid that if she could.
    Nana Bud had believed that names had a tremendous amount of power attached to them, some of the greatest power that existed.
    “Don’t use someone’s name when you’re mad or flying off the handle,” she’d warned her when Liza was nine and first starting to recognize the fact that she could do things that others couldn’t. “If you use their name in anger, you’re trapping both of you in a web you’ll likely never get out of. And the same–don’t say it in love unless you’re real sure you mean it. That’s the thing that will bind you best of all.”  
    Still, as she spoke Mode’s name aloud she was reminded of the number of times her mother had made fun of it.
    “ Mode ,” she’d shuddered. “That’s ridiculous. It sounds too much like ‘ commode .’ He should at least go by a nickname. He shouldn’t tempt the fates like that.”
    “I’m assuming you’re settling in down there in little old Kudzu,” he said.
    Condescending prick , she said soundlessly and then watched as the book she’d left on the coffee table the night before shot up in the air and slammed back down, sending the TV remote clattering to the floor.
    She was really going to have to get a grip on her emotions. Now was as good a time as any to start trying.
    And maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, her goal was to live a peaceful life that was free of stress and unwanted excitement. She could start by being civil. Besides, she couldn’t be sure if he was truly being condescending or if it was his legitimate attempt at being cute/friendly and just sounded smarmy because she was currently pissed off at him for