Slightly Spellbound Read Online Free PDF Page B

later.”
    “Promise?” he asked, staring into my eyes.
    “Yep,” I said.
    He brushed his lips over mine, making them tingle. He glanced out the window. “If there’s a spell affecting the ghosts in town, we’ll need to investigate who cast it. I don’t want to be blindsided by an interloper.”
    “Speaking of getting surprised by an outsider, I almost forgot to tell you about the skeleton guy from the tree.”
    “The what?” Bryn asked, his brows rising.
    “Yeah,” I said. “He was scary-looking, but he only seemed to be spying. He didn’t attack us. So just medium trouble, I suppose.”
    The corners of Bryn’s mouth crooked up momentarily at the expression medium trouble , but his smile was gone by the time I filled him in on my treetop visitor.
    When I finished, Bryn and I went out to the yard, and he searched for traces of magic.
    “There’s a lot of your family’s magic here. I can’t find residual magic from anyone else,” Bryn said.
    “There’s one more possibility. Maybe it wasn’t a zombie or a ghost or anything that used to be human. Maybe it was Unseelie fae. They can be kind of monstrous,” I said, thinking back to the horde of creatures that had tried to get into our world on Samhain. Duvall was smack-dab in the middle of Unseelie fae territory.
    Bryn nodded. “Maybe. It’s possible that the seal on the doors between our worlds is failing. Or perhaps a member of the Unseelie came through on Samhain and got away from the battle. He could’ve been hiding in the woods all this time until he was drawn to your fae magic and came to investigate.”
    “Well, whatever he is, I guess if he’s not hurting anyone, we don’t have to try to force him back to wherever he comes from.”
    Bryn rubbed his thumb over his lower lip. “We’ll see. Magical creatures in our midst rarely turn out to be peaceable.”
    “I know it. But it’s Christmastime; we really should all try to get along.”
    Bryn grinned and gave me a kiss on the forehead before he left.
     • • • 
    A FEW MINUTES after Bryn left, I stood on the side of the house, inspecting the bushes, when a female voice said, “Hello.”
    I jerked around, fists raised and ready. When it comes to threats, like Mercutio, I come down on the fight side of the “fight or flight” response. But the “threat” wasn’t one at all, I decided as soon as I looked at the woman who’d spoke.
    She was probably a couple of inches taller than me, but it was hard to tell since her shoulders hunched forward like she wanted to curl up like a pill bug. Her dark brown hair was the color of autumn leaves and a little frizzy. She didn’t seem to be wearing a dot of makeup, but her pretty brown eyes reminded me of a doe’s.
    “Hi,” I said, offering her a smile. There was something familiar about her—her perfume, I realized. It made me feel like dancing.
    “Are you Tammy Jo Trask?” she asked softly.
    “Yes,” I said, leaning toward her. Her shy posture and voice might have been an act; over the past few months, we’d come across plenty of fakes and phonies, most of whom had tried to kill Merc and me. But this girl I instinctively wanted to protect. The toughest part about meeting her was keeping myself from telling her to stand up straight.
    “I thought it was you. I’ve seen your picture in WitchWeek and recognized your name from your time at Lampis. You did work there, didn’t you?”
    I blinked. “Yes, for about six months.”
    “There was a dessert on the menu, the Black Chambord. The one with layers of very dark chocolate cake soaked in raspberry liquor. And milk chocolate frosting dusted with ground hazelnuts. Delicious! Didn’t you create it?”
    I blushed, flabbergasted. “I did.”
    “They renamed it, you know. It’s called The Tammy. No one makes it as well as you did, but it’s still the most amazing dessert anyone in my family’s ever had. It’s the one thing my stepmother and stepbrother and I can agree on,” she