Magic and the Modern Girl Read Online Free PDF

in me . Frustration seeped into my words. “Then why didn’t they all just crumble to dust two years ago? Why didn’t the books erase themselves when we were working together last year?”
    “That’s just it. We were working.”
    David sounded utterly uncaring, as if he had no interest in the endless hours we’d spent together, in the countless magical details that he’d taught me. The dispassion in his voice made my heart beat faster. My cheeks flushed, and I wanted to tell him that he should speak more respectfully, that he should sound as if he meant what he was saying.
    But that was stupid. He was just telling the truth. Cold, historic facts. We had been working together. Intensely. For over a year. And then we hadn’t been.
    “I don’t get it,” I said, and I was surprised by just how miserable I sounded. Even Neko cocked his head to one side, as if he recognized a hidden story beneath my words.
    “You’re not trying, Jane.” There. That was my old warder talking—remonstrating with me when all I wanted was a sympathetic ally. I started to protest, but David raised a hand, palm outward. The gesture might have connoted peacemaking in another context, but now it felt combative. Absolute. Controlling. “You don’t want to understand what I’m saying.”
    He reached for the crumbled runes and tossed the silk bag up and down, like a tennis player reminding himself of the weight of a ball before an important serve. “When we worked together, your magic kept the goods charged. The power within you spread to everything in the basement, kept it…fresh. Active. Once you decided to abandon your witchcraft, the tools deteriorated. The destruction was expedited because of how much power you had, how strong the charge was that jolted them out of quiescence. Your magic was strong, and Hannah’s items immediately became accustomed to a very high base level of power around them.”
    “But I haven’t abandoned my magic!” I protested.
    David looked at Neko, and his silent glance wrote volumes. What sort of witch let her familiar move out of the house? The only words David said, though, were, “You haven’t seemed to need me very much lately.”
    “I thought you’d be pleased by that,” I groused. “Have a little time away.”
    His eyes flashed like quicksilver as he stared me down. For the first time in ages, I remembered that he was a warrior. A fighter. A man trained to get what he wanted by whatever means necessary.
    But in the past, he’d always wanted to protect me. I had a sudden, sickening feeling that everything had changed. When he spoke, his voice was so low that I had to lean forward to tease apart his words. “I was your warder. I never asked for time away.”
    Was. I heard the warning in that word, in that tense. Something had gone wrong. Very, very wrong. Still, I stumbled ahead. “You may not have asked for it, but I’m sure you managed to use it, all the same.”
    Neko winced. He’d never become accustomed to the sparring that seemed normal to me where David was concerned. At David’s impassive stare, I felt forced to add, “What have you been doing, anyway? Taking the Arcane Grand Tour? Whiling away the hours on the Witchy Riviera?”
    Even as I needled him, I thought back to when we had first met, when David had first commandeered my sanity and my rogue witch powers. Then, he had told me about his life when he wasn’t serving as my warder, when he was working to redeem himself for past sins before the sisterhood of witches. “The Court of Hecate,” I said, and I could read the truth in the iron line that stiffened his jaw. “They busted you back to a file clerk!”
    “I was never a file clerk!” he protested.
    But he had been. He’d been responsible for organizing papers. Or scrolls. Or whatever. And he’d hated it.
    “Why didn’t you come here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come get me?”
    “What was I going to do, Jane? Beg you to use your powers? Plead to serve as your