Casting Spells Read Online Free PDF Page A

vodka tonics and not a dangerously lonely knit shop owner with too many cats.
    Talk about a YouTube moment.
    “Chloe?” A familiar voice sounded above me. It just kept getting better and better.
    Gunnar, my best friend and occasional movie date, was bending over me. The shimmer of Transition still clung to him like a fine web of silver-blue stars. Even though I had known him my entire life, there were still times when his Fae beauty shocked me into reverent silence.
    This, however, wasn’t one of them.
    I took his outstretched hand and rose to my feet, shaking off the snow like a dog spraying water after a bath. “If you say one word about this, so help me, I’ll tell everyone about that time down near the lake when you—”
    He gave me that smile of his, the one I wished made my toes curl. He knew his secrets were safe with me. “You want to tell me why you were spying on Renate?”
    “You’re here too,” I pointed out. “Who were you spying on?”
    “They had a full house tonight. I helped in the kitchen.”
    I shook my head in bemusement. “I never understood why Samantha let Darrin talk her out of witchcraft, and I don’t understand why Renate doesn’t just conjure up those delicious meals of hers.” She was Fae. Her whole family was. They had powers and magick I couldn’t even imagine. “If I had even half Renate’s powers, I’d never block another shawl.” A twitch of the nose, a blink of the eye, and voilà! Perfection.
    “Magick isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he said, brushing glitter from his golden blond hair. “Sometimes I envy you.”
    “Sure you do,” I said with a grin. “Tell me that next time you magick yourself out of paying for bagels at Fully Caffeinated.”
    “So why are you spying on Renate?” he asked again. For a nice guy, Gunnar could be remarkably determined.
    “I wasn’t spying on Renate.” I brushed snow off the front of my coat. “I was spying on someone else.”
    He glanced toward the window and grimaced. “Not the guy in the brown suit.”
    “Give me a little credit.” The whole thing sounded so foolish I couldn’t wrap my words around it. “A customer locked herself out of her car while she was waiting for the Inn to open. I wanted to see if she found her keys.”
    “You can do better than that.”
    “I wanted to get a look at her boyfriend, okay?” I kicked a fine flurry of snow in his direction.
    I told him about the naked dress and the Orenburg and the way she lit up the room the moment she stepped into the shop. “And it’s not just that she was drop-dead gorgeous or that she had magick like Simone or your mother. I’m telling you, Gunnar, when she was in the room, you couldn’t take your eyes off her.”
    “It’s called star power,” Gunnar said. “Dane has it too.”
    I managed to keep my grimace to myself. Gunnar and Dane were twins, but believe me, the likeness was purely physical. They shared astonishing good looks and one set of full Fae powers that were unequally divided between them. As beautiful as Gunnar was, his brother was even more so. But fate hadn’t been entirely unfair because Gunnar had claimed the lion’s share of powers, a fact in which I took wicked pleasure.
    The town matchmakers had done their best to turn our friendship into a love match, but finally even the most hopeful of the lot realized we were fatally platonic and tried to hook me up with his brother. I’m not proud of myself but Dane knew how to work that whole faerie/beauty/sex thing, and one long-ago night I had come close to taking a walk on the wild side. (Believe me, you don’t know what seduction is until a faerie turns up the wattage.) Fortunately I came to my senses before I had to disinfect my entire body with Lysol. Call me strange but I like my men a tad less sociopathic.
    Still there was something to be said for the chase. Being pursued had its charms. If Gunnar had been able to channel his energies the way his brother could, we would