Hexes and Hemlines Read Online Free PDF Page B

powers more efficiently, as well as to overcome my frequent cluelessness when it came to other magical traditions.
    In the last week I’d made it through the “F” section: Faeries, Financial conspiracy, and Freemasonry. I then moved on to “G”: Ghosts, Glamoury, Gnosticism, Goddesses, Gods, Golden Dawn, Grace, and Grimoires. As I persevered in reading the tomes, my mind had started to feel numb and my eyesight blurred. But I was determined.
    Aidan chuckled. “I never suggested you should work through the shelves alphabetically.”
    “It seemed the most straightforward approach,” I said. “And as long as there’s no math involved, I’m a fast reader, so it moves along pretty quickly. Especially the healing and botanical writings—though I wrote down a few instances where the books got it wrong.”
    I handed Aidan my notes. He looked down at them with a quizzical expression.
    “You’re correcting my sourcebooks now?”
    “As you know, botanicals are my strong suit, so as I read I compared the books with the notes and recipes in the Book of Shadows I inherited from Graciela.” Aidan kept studying the papers in his hand, making me nervous. “Just a few changes,” I hastened to add. “Mostly minor.”
    He acknowledged me with a little lift of his chin. “All right, I’ll have to take your word on all this.
    “So.” He set his cat on the desk and rubbed his hands together in the way of someone getting down to business. “What’s on the agenda today? How about taking another shot at scrying?”
    I groaned. Scrying was hard.
    “I know you must hate to be separated from me,” Aidan continued, “but you’re supposed to stay in the cloister until you see something. Last time you lasted all of five minutes.”
    The “cloister” was a windowless five-sided room off the main office, not much bigger than a closet. It was used for the sole purpose of meditation and scrying—or “seeing” with the mind’s eye, as in gazing into crystal balls or black mirrors. The cloister was constructed as a magical portal, with a variety of charged stones, mirrors, and charms set up to create magnetic fields sympathetic to the needs of the supernatural.
    “I always feel as though I should be doing something instead of just sitting there.”
    “What you’re supposed to be doing is opening the portals so that you can communicate directly with your helping spirit. You don’t even know who, or what, it is. I’ve never heard of such a thing. No wonder you aren’t in control of the magic you’re stirring up.”
    “My spirit comes to me when I brew, not when I stare at black mirrors.”
    “And crystal balls . . . ?”
    “They’re even worse.” I thought of the beautiful jewel-encrusted crystal ball I had been given, years ago, by one of Graciela’s wealthier colleagues. It gathered dust on my bookshelf at home, exquisite and useless as a pampered, dim beauty queen.
    Doubt shone in Aidan’s too-blue eyes. I feared I wasn’t the stellar student he was hoping I would be. I had a lot of power, but it was locked up strangely.
    “My grandmother didn’t believe me, either.”
    “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Lily. It’s . . . unusual for such a powerful witch not to be able to read, that’s all. Come on, I’ll help guide you.”
    I followed him into the cloister, though I remained doubtful. I had been trying to unlock the secrets of algebra lately, with my friend Bronwyn’s help, and hadn’t made much progress. If I couldn’t master an eighth-grade skill like solving for the x , how was I going to learn the art of “seeing” what is not shown?
    Black mirrors hung on each of the five walls. A multitude of charms dangled from the ceiling—mostly silk bags hanging on braided cords—and symbols were drawn in a red, black, and ochre border at the top of the walls. Shallow shelves were adorned with stones. The room carried a powerful scent of sage.
    I’m no claustrophobe, but when Aidan shut the door