Girl's Guide to Witchcraft Read Online Free PDF

window, keeping nighttime spooks from peering in at me. I filled my toothbrush cup with water and made myself swallow slowly, all the time looking in the mirror and telling myself how foolish I was being.
    When I set the cup back on the counter, I saw that one of the tiles was cobalt-blue, darker than all the others, as if it had been replaced some time in the past. I touched it, and to my surprise, it pivoted easily to reveal a cubbyhole. As I peered closer, I saw that there was a brass cup hook planted in the top of the space. And dangling from the hook was a key.
    It wasn’t a large key, no longer than the one that worked my new deadbolt. But it was the strangest key I’d ever seen. It was forged out of black iron. Instead of little jagged zigzags of teeth, it had a sturdy black rectangle with an intricate shape cut out of the middle. I slipped it from the hook, and it was heavier in my palm than it should have been.
    I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. Stop it, I said. There is nothing spooky or mysterious about this key. It must fit some door around the house. A lot of homes had hiding places, built before people trusted banks, before they poured their life savings into stocks and bonds.
    Nevertheless, I turned on every light as I walked out to the living room. The cottage must have blazed in the middle of the Peabridge gardens like a centenarian’s birthday cake. I didn’t waste my time in the kitchen. Surely, I would have found a secret door when I cleaned that morning. The bedroom walls were bare, too, and there was nothing suspicious in my tiny closet. The bathroom, the hallway, the living room—all straightforward lath-and-plaster walls.
    And then I saw it.
    The basement door. The basement, which I was going to let live in peace, with its spiders and its mice and whatever else had scurried down there for shelter.
    But there was the door, right off the living room. It had an iron lock. An iron lock that matched the key in my now-trembling hand. The clammy feeling washed over me again, nearly knocking me over with its force.
    I found my purse on the coffee table and dug out my cell phone. I punched in a nine and a one. The phone whined in my hand, as if I’d brought it too close to a computer screen. The noise grated on my nerves, making me even more aware of the potential danger that lurked below. My left thumb hovered over the one again as I set the key in the lock. Filling my lungs and biting down on my lip, I turned the key and opened the door.

3
     
    I fumbled for the light switch in the place I expected it to be, at the top of the stairs, but there wasn’t one. Gripping my cell phone closer and feeling more than a little foolish, I swept my fingers in front of my face, swiping blindly into the darkness, hoping to find a cord or chain for an overhead light. Nothing.
    The phone glowed green, shedding just enough light from its picture panel that I could make out the stairs beneath my feet. When I moved to the next step, though, weird shadows ganged up on me, and I had to stifle a shout.
    Light. I needed more light.
    Swearing under my breath, I retreated to the kitchen. After I set the phone down on the counter, it only took a moment to pull my box of thunderstorm supplies from beneath the sink. During the spring and summer, Washington saw its share of major thunderstorms, and my old apartment had lost power at least once a month. I’d become an expert at arranging candles to maximize the reflection of light off a book (candles lasted longer than flashlight batteries), and I had invested in pure beeswax to reduce unsightly drips and splatters. I dug out a fat taper from beneath the cans of tuna (emergency dinner) and the water spray bottle (emergency air conditioner.) I found the Zippo lighter at the bottom of the box and returned to the basement stairs.
    I was so nervous that it took me three tries to get the Zippo to catch. When I finally had the candle burning, I tossed the extinguished lighter