The Witch Collector Part I Read Online Free PDF

sandwich, I moved quickly to where the low stone wall lining the back of the garden met the corner of the building next to it. With my body shielded from view, I tucked my head around the edge of the brick and had a look.
    There were three kids there. A few years older than me, scruffy, and . . . witches. It wasn’t the voice I’d recognized, but the magic. My body hummed with it, the pleasant jolts of electricity skipping through my veins, like it always had since I was a girl.
    Some might call our ability to recognize other witches a sixth sense, but that would imply a certain degree of uncertainty. And we were never uncertain.
    Gavin said this proved we weren’t human. Witches had long debated exactly where we fit in biologically. If we weren’t human, we were pretty close. We ate and slept and cried and laughed. We fell in love and had babies and grew old. We looked the same. We died the same.
    But inside, there was no denying things were very different. Where a human interacted with the natural world, we had it residing within us, producing gifts regular people could only fantasize about. And therein lay the danger. When we accidentally revealed these gifts, humans couldn’t explain them away with logic, so they called them crimes. The days of burning a witch at the stake may belong to history, but there were other ways of killing a witch. Locking someone up in jail or a mental-health facility, far from the sun and moon and Earth, was just as effective. That was part of the reason why my parents had always told me they’d left their coven to join Gavin’s coven in rural Oregon—to keep us safe.
    But these witches seemed to have no fear of discovery. The girl had a small ball of fire rolling on the ground, one hand resting lightly on the pendant circling her neck. Her hair, a mess of honey-colored curls, gleamed under the harsh glare of the streetlight. Her face resembled something from Greek mythology—hooded eyes, a strong nose, and a thin, turned-up mouth, like a cat’s. She kept the fireball moving, faster and faster in a tight circle until it was a blur of orange and red.
    â€œIt should be bigger,” said the guy whose voice I heard earlier. His back was to me, yet the playfulness in his tone made me think he must be grinning.
    â€œI’ve been saying that about you for years,” the girl countered, a smile playing at her lips. The fireball shot into the air, dripping sparks on a hulking blond guy sitting against a garage door. His face looked ruddy in the harsh light, and the whitish-yellow hair spiking off his head was thin.
    â€œCut it out, Shelley,” he said. His focus on a block of cement lying between his outstretched legs was like a laser. He touched the stone hanging from a leather cord around his thick neck, and the cement block cracked in two.
    â€œStop being so grouchy,” the girl said. Her fireball disintegrated, leaving a faint smokiness in the air. She released her talisman, brought her hands to her hips, and turned to the standing boy. “Let’s go, Miro. If my mom catches us out here, I’ll be on dish duty for a week.”
    â€œI would, but there’s a problem,” he replied, taking a step backward. His voice held the outline of an accent, like he was born here, but inherited it anyway.
    â€œWhat is it now?” the blond guy asked with a groan.
    â€œWe . . . have . . . a . . . spy!” Miro whipped around and I shrieked, dropping the menu on the stone wall. The sandwich fell over the side, landing on the concrete with a thud. The rats would get their dinner tonight.
    He looked at me through half-lowered lids, his chin jutting forth, challenging me to do . . . what? Magic?
    So I did nothing but stare. Miro wasn’t beautiful like Brandon was, but interesting, as if each of his features held secrets only the very lucky got to hear. His dark brown hair was long, curling over the