Conjure Wife Read Online Free PDF

tonight, it was inevitable.
    Still, the worst was over.
    He reached down to stroke Totem. who did not look away from the hypnotic embers.
    “Time we got to bed, old cat. Must be about twelve. No — quarter past one.”
    As he slipped the watch back into his pocket, the fingers of his left hand went to the locket at the other end of the chain.
    He weighed in his palm the small golden heart, a gift from Tansy. Was it perhaps a trifle heavier than its metal shell could account for? He snapped up the cover with his thumbnail. There was no regular way of getting at the space behind Tansy’s picture, so after a moment’s hesitation, he carefully edged out the tiny photograph with a pencil point.
    Behind the photograph was a tiny packet wrapped in the finest flannel.
    Just like a woman — that thought came with vicious swiftness — to seem to give in completely, but to hold out on something.
    Perhaps she had forgotten.
    Angrily he tossed the packet into the fireplace. The photograph fluttered along with it, lighted on the bed of embers, and flared before he could snatch it out. He had a glimpse of Tansy’s face curling and blackening.
    The packet took longer. A yellow glow crept across its surface, as the nap singed. Then a wavering four-inch flame shot up.
    Simultaneously a chill went through him, though he still felt the heat from the embers. The room seemed to darken. There was a faint, mighty roaring in his ears, as of motors far underground. He had the sense of standing suddenly naked and unarmed before something menacingly alien.
    Totem had turned around and was peering intently at the shadows in the far corner. With a spitting hiss she sprang sideways and darted from the room.
    Norman realized he was trembling. Nervous reaction, he told himself. Might have known it was overdue.
    The flame died, and once again there was only the frostily tinkling bed of embers.
    Explosively, the phone began to jangle.
    “Professor Saylor? I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d hear from me again, did you? Well, the reason I’m calling you is that I always believe in letting people — no matter who — know where I stand, which is a lot more than can be said for some people.”
    Norman held the receiver away from his ear. The words, though jumbled, sounded like the beginning of a call, but the tone in which they were uttered didn’t. Surely it would take half an hour of ranting before anyone could reach such a pitch of whining and — yes, the word was applicable — insane anger.
    “What I want to tell you, Saylor, is this: I’m not going to take what’s been done to me lying down. I’m not going to let myself stay flunked out of Hempnell. I’m going to demand to have my grades changed and you know why!”
    Norman recognized the voice. There sprang into his mind the image of a pale, abnormally narrow face with pouting lips and protuberant eyes, crowned by a great shock of red hair. He cut in.
    “Now listen Jennings, if you thought you were being treated unfairly, why didn’t you present your grievances two months ago, when you got your grades?”
    “Why? Because I let you pull the wool over my eyes. The openminded Professor Saylor! It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized how you hadn’t given me the proper attention, how I’d been slighted or bamboozled at conferences, how you didn’t tell me I might flunk until it was too late, how you based your tests on trick questions from lectures I’d missed, how you discriminated against me because of my father’s politics and because I wasn’t the student type like that Bronstein. It wasn’t until then —”
    “Jennings, be reasonable. You flunked two courses besides mine last semester.”
    “Yes, because you passed the word around, influenced others against me, made them see me as you pretended to see me, made everyone —”
    “And you mean to tell me you only now realized all this?”
    “Yes I do. It just came to me in a flash as I was thinking here. Oh you