Gone With the Witch Read Online Free PDF Page B

wishes. Starla was the opposite.
    It was Evan who was in charge of the booth all day, as Starla, a photographer who owned Hocus Pocus Photography, was freelancing for the
Toil and Trouble
newspaper today, taking photos of the show for next week’s edition. Everyone was busy trying to get everything
justright
before the doors opened to the public in little less than half an hour, and the judges started making rounds.
    I glanced over my shoulder at the booth across from mine. A long table had been draped in several ruby-colored cloths that had coinlike tassels dangling from the edging, so Natasha Norcliffe had been here at some point. But she and the lovely Titania were currently nowhere to be seen, and I had to admit to being relieved. It was a welcome reprieve.
    â€œThat’s why your booth works,” Harper said, twining a piece of orange ribbon around her long fingers. “It’s unusual. Unique. Like you.”
    I slid her a sideways glance. “Uh, thanks?”
    Happiness glinted in her eyes as she laughed. “Unique is good. These are amazing paintings.”
    It did my heart good to see her so content. A year ago, she’d been rather lost. We both had been. This village had anchored us, giving us roots to grow.
    Although Harper still wasn’t all that keen on using her Craft abilities, she’d embraced this village wholeheartedly. She’d bought Spellbound almost immediately after we moved here, and the bookshop was now thriving under her care. She had also fallen in love, not that she’d say so. Her stubbornness was legendary, and she’d probably rather suffer a vicious stomach bug than admit she might have been wrong about love and marriage.
    Harper hated being wrong about
anything
.
    Most of her life, she’d disavowed traditional relationship parameters. She ridiculed the idea of marriage. Called it imprisonment. But now that Lawcrafter Marcus Debrowski was in her life, Harper had begun to have an attitude adjustment.
    If she still believed marriage was imprisonment, then she was well on her way to inviting Marcus to share her one-bedroom, one-bath cell, with cat hair included in the deal.
    It was Marcus who was manning her bookshop today, as she was here at the Extravaganza and so were her usual part-time employees, Mimi Sawyer and Angela Curtis. I was surprised Harper hadn’t yet called him eight times to check on the shop.
    She was a bit of a micromanager.
    The fact that she hadn’t called just proved to me how much she trusted him, and I hoped he never took that for granted. Harper didn’t trust easily.
    My sister’s praise of my artwork made me smile with pride. I had to admit, I was pleased with the way my display had turned out, but if you asked me, around here at the Extravaganza
unique
was not the preferred method of decor, and I rather wished I had been able to round up a bottle of glitter glue or
something
to make my display pop just a little bit more.
    Critically, I once again studied my artwork, wondering if I could add something from Harper’s table to the vignette. Some garland. Ribbon. Anything. Why hadn’t I barged into Bewitching Boutique yesterday to beg Godfrey and Pepe for satin and sequins?
    Because Godfrey was one of the judges for this contest, that’s why. I hadn’t wanted any link between my booth and his shop, so no one could accuse him of playing favorites. He knew I was working undercover, but we needed to keep up pretenses that I was just another contestant.
    I’d been up most of the night hand-painting quotes about eyes onto eight canvases of varying sizes. I’d taken all of them over to Nick’s wood workshop earlier this morning for his help in bracketing the canvases together to form one big collage that he’d mounted on a wooden stand. It was a freestanding piece, about six feet tall and four feet across.
    Among many other quotes, I had used Henry David Thoreau’s “It’s not what