Magic Can Be Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

in any case did not seem apt to, nor the blackberry farmer from Low Beck.
    The blackberry farmer from Low Beck.
    Standing in the middle of the street as they looked for a good place to spend the night, Nola thought for the first time of the bucket in the silversmith's root cellar, the bucket bespelled with a strand of che blackberry man's hair in it, and everything che blackberry man did acting out in the water there.
    Oh no,
she thought.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
    "What?" her mother asked, for Nola had stopped so suddenly that her mother had to come back to fetch her.
    "Nothing," Nola managed to breathe out.
    "Oooo," her mother said. "If that's nothing, I'd hate to see your face when somebody walks over your grave."
    This was not a settling thought, no matter how you looked at it.
    Calm down,
Nola urged herself.
No need to panic.
Nobody was likely to see the bucket set up where it was, or hear the sounds that came from it.
    Not overnight,
Nola berated herself.
Not for a few hours. Not for a day.
    But eventually.
    Eventually.
    How long before someone stumbled across it? The silversmith's new bride, perhaps, exploring every little corner of her new home?
    Unlikely,
Nola tried to convince herself. Innis's bride was starting a new life. There would be so much else to see, so many other demands on her time.
    And time—Nola tried to reassure herself—might as easily be an ally as an enemy. There hadn't been that much water in the bucket. And—in one of those everyday kinds of magic no one could explain—water left out eventually went dry. How long would it take for this particular water to go away, taking the dancing shadowforms with it? A week? Two? Three? Four? The bride—Sulis was her name, Nola remembered—Sulis wouldn't even arrive for almost a week. And surely Brinna and Alan would be coo busy with wedding preparations to notice a bucket with a bit of water in it beneath a rag under the stairs of the root cellar.
    You're a fool,
Nola told herself,
a fool And you deserve whatever happens to you for being such a fool.
    But she didn't really believe chat.
    She became aware that her mother had put her arms around her. Her mother was rocking Nola, humming the same calming lullaby that she used for the baby in her forefinger. People were watching them with various expressions, the most friendly of which was wryly amused.
    "I'm fine," Nola assured her. But of course she was lying.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T AVERNS WERE LIKELY places to find work. On busy nights a tavern keeper was often happy to trade meals and a bed for help in preparing or serving food and drink, or for cleaning up. Even on slow nights many tavern keepers could be convinced to let someone eat what food was left over and sleep in the stable.
    Of course, Nola knew from experience that tavern keepers were more eager to hire serving girls her own age than her mother's. And she told herself she was not in the least bitter that they were most eager of all to hire a serving girl if she had—for example—hair the color of ripening wheat, as Brinna did, rather than hair more the color of dried grass, the way certain other people did. Such a girl was likely to be popular among the men being served. With such a serving girl the men might stay longer and order more drinks, which would make the tavern keeper happy and more inclined to keep the girl on, and perhaps her odd mother, too. And men might give rips to such a girl, which she and her mother might save for leaner days.
    But it also meant fighting—without looking as though you were fighting—to keep men's hands off you, and all in all Nola preferred not to put on a glamour of soft golden hair anc a magically enhanced figure. Better to look like her own drab self—though her mother, of course, insisted she wasn't drab. But everyone knows mothers can't see straight when it comes to their daughters.
    Nola and her mother stopped at a tavern with the unlikely—and, Nola thought, unlucky—name of the Witch's Stew. Still, it was