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

clever about it. She worded the spell so that the binding prevented me from “doing harm,” meaning I could still heal and diagnose, but I couldn’t, say, stir the air or manipulate water or any of the sorts of things that might do harm to my relationship.
    I should have known better than to trust Penny. Iloved her dearly. She was my closest friend, the youngest daughter of Nana’s youngest sibling. At thirty-six, she was a few years older than I, so it was a bit like having a cool older sister. But her magic had always been, well, spotty. Sometimes she could perform beautiful spells that made gardens flourish or wounds heal without any sign of a scar. And then there was the eviscerated sofa and the inexplicable loss of Mrs. McClaren’s eyebrows.
    I ended up with the magical equivalent of Mrs. McClaren’s eyebrows. Penny had left me for the most part completely unaffected, but then there were seemingly random times when I had no magic whatsoever, for days at a time, and then, as a result of the “bottling effect” of those lulling intervals, there were terrifying moments in which every bit of power I owned poured forth in torrents of energy that shattered lightbulbs, crockery, and any nearby windows. And unfortunately for me, the most recent of these explosive moments had occurred while I was at dinner with Stephen at a rather posh Italian restaurant. Since I was the only person standing nearby, I ended up paying to replace several Murano glass light fixtures and a rather heavy antique gilt mirror.
    Penny had to go in halvsies with me, the twit.
    It was as if I had a state-of-the-art, wall-shaking stereo but couldn’t control the volume. The only time I felt remotely in control of myself was when I felt “tugged” by the pain in people around me. Penny theorized that particular grace was only granted because I had no choice in the matter. I couldn’t stop feeling those tugs any more than I could choose to stop blinking or breathing. Andfortunately, I had enough nursing training to heal people through conventional means.
    We couldn’t seem to undo the spell, no matter how many different approaches we took—countering spells, rituals, prayers, and anointments. Nothing worked. There was no magical “control Z.”
    When Nana began my instruction, I’d been disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to make rooms tidy themselves like Mary Poppins or fly on a broom. I’d eventually adjusted my expectations and learned to enjoy manipulating the energy of the natural world. But now I couldn’t even perform the most basic of “fun” magic: no more minor glamours to cover the occasional spot, no more “quick-start” fires on the hearth, no more kitchen magic to cover for my abysmal cooking. Thanks to this colossal blunder of judgment and execution, which we were endeavoring to hide from the rest of the family to prevent panic, I learned that having magic was like having an automatic dishwasher. Once you were used to having some machine do the washing up for you, even unloading the damn thing seemed like a chore. I could see that now, having become accustomed to some other force taking care of life’s little details. I had, to an embarrassing degree, stopped living my own life. So I tried to do as much as I could independently of magic, even when I did have a “witchy” solution.
    Nana, who took a dim view of my timidity toward practicing the craft, had told me often that there was no such thing as a “halfway” witch, particularly given my extra ability, and that dabbling would catch up and bite me one day.
    I had a feeling that day was coming soon.
    I flexed my fingers and toes, feeling my body coming back into balance. I blew out a long breath and gave Miranda my best smile.
    “Would you mind terribly if we drove by Paxton Avenue on the way home?” I asked as we rolled through the neon-lit streets of the Hollow’s “mall district.” As we moved farther and farther away from Walmart, the streets grew darker