A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses Read Online Free PDF

Believe me, I tried. I couldn’t always control it. And there was nothing I could do, take, or try to make my ability easier to use. Sometimes it was particularly embarrassing, trying to broach the topic of sensitive medical problems with people who didn’t want to discuss such things with complete strangers. But Miranda seemed happy with the outcome of our conversation, and I don’t think I’d heard a story more embarrassing than hers.
    In some cases, it would have been easier to use magic to heal my patients. But I’d learned that illness had a purpose. Bodies have to go through the pain to get to the good part, the healing. It’s the payment portion of the process and shouldn’t be skipped over.
    My relationship with magic was complicated. At one time, I had been Nana Fee’s prize student. Like most witches, I had a smattering of talent in most magical areas but excelled in a particular skill. In my case, I was a gifted healer. My instruction started at a later age than that of most of my cousins, but I had taken to it like a duck to water. The problem was that I had a little toomuch “oomph,” an erratic excess energy. When I tried a simple exercise intended to restore a withered mint plant to its former glory, I overdid it on the roots, which grew so spectacularly that they burst the pot and peppered the walls with shattered clay and potting soil. And then there were the fires. After that, I limited myself to harmless glamours and spells that made everyday life a little easier. I was too timid to try advanced spells, because I could pose a threat to myself or others.
    I tended to limit friendships to members of my family or the village, because I could never quite trust outsiders with “everything.” Either they’d think I was bonkers and drop me, or they’d want to use me to their own ends—quick fixes to money problems or love spells, which frankly never worked the way people hoped. I lost more boyfriends than I cared to admit over the years, because my abilities drove them away. If I lost my temper, things tended to explode. And then there was the boyfriend who was stupid enough to contract an infection when he cheated and then got indignant at me for “spying” on him using my empathy. Not to mention that shared psychic itching was just disgusting. Even the men who had no problem with my family’s history became suspicious of whether I was using spells on them. Were their feelings for me real, they wondered, or the result of a potion? Eventually, they got tired of wondering and left.
    Magic always muddied the waters. There was only so much “weird” that men could take, even the ones who claimed to be open-minded. And so when I’d met Stephenmonths before, and he turned out to be someone I thought could be “ the one,” I’d decided against using magic anywhere near him. I saw Stephen as my chance at a seminormal life. He was a straight, single, employed, functional adult who was also sweet, considerate, smart, and funny. He had treated me with nothing but kindness since meeting me at a nursing conference in Dublin the previous year. (His brokerage firm was holding a summit at the same hotel.) He remembered my birthday and sent me a huge bouquet of roses for Saint Valentine’s. Coming from a family where sensible was in short supply, that was incredibly attractive. We’d heard that men like him existed, but actually laying eyes on one in person was a once-in-a-lifetime event. He was the Sasquatch of boyfriends.
    Stephen always said he knew what he wanted and how to get it. I was just grateful that he wanted me. Stephen said he wanted to marry me, to raise a family with me. And the way he described our life together in a sweet suburban house with a play set in the back garden, it seemed to be everything I wanted.
    So three months before I came to the Hollow, when Stephen began talking about moving in together, I asked Penny for a favor. I asked her to place a binding on me. We tried to be