Vacations From Hell Read Online Free PDF

Christ’s sake.” Dad started down the hall. “All we need is for the Department of Homeland Security todetain us because of the hamster.”
    As soon as her father was out of earshot, her mother muttered, “Do we have to have this talk again?”
    “I’m really sorry I endangered all our lives.” Cecily tossed her hair melodramatically, clutching her hands in front of her chest like a silent-movie heroine. “What if Dad tries to have us burned at the stake? Whatever shall we do?”
    “Load your bag in the car, all right? And don’t even think about pulling a stunt like that once we get to North Carolina. The others aren’t going to cut you as much slack as I do.”
    Her mother hurried off, unbothered by the latest in their many tiffs on this subject. But Cecily felt angry with herself for making a joke of it instead of trying to talk this through.
    Usually she tried hard to respect the rules of the Craft, rules Cecily had memorized before she’d turned eight years old. Most of the rules were sensible—the necessary reins on the incredible powers that they worked with. The fact that she knew those rules backward and forward was one reason that she was already a fine witch.
    In Cecily’s opinion there was another reason. She didn’t only memorize the rules; she pushed herself to understand the reasons behind them. For instance, it was one thing to know that the Craft forbade witchesto use their powers to undermine the wills of others; it was another to understand why that was wrong and how misusing the powers that way would corrode both your ability and your soul.
    Yet there was one rule Cecily could never understand, the oldest of them all: No man may know the truth behind the Craft.
    Dad—who knew nothing about the single most important thing in the lives of his wife and his daughter—called, “We’ve got to drop Pudge off at the O’Farrells and get to the airport within one hour. Unless nobody wants to go to the beach house this year!”
    Cecily shook off her melancholy and zipped her suitcase shut. Time to go meet the coven.
     
    Of course, none of the men involved knew the annual Outer Banks trips had anything to do with witchcraft. They all believed that this was a reunion of “college friends”: six women who remained very close and wanted their families to know one another. So each year they rented a couple of North Carolina beach houses within walking distance of one another and split them between the families. The trips had begun before Cecily was born, so by now the six husbands were good friends too, and they liked to say that their kids were “growing up together.” Cecily could happily have skipped the experience of growing up with Kathleen Pruitt.
    “We have a coven at home,” Cecily had complained last month when she’d asked to skip the Outer Banks for one summer. “Why can’t we just spend extra time with them instead of hanging with the witches you practiced with in college? I learn more that way.”
    But her mother wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that some covens had a special energy that made it worthwhile to keep in touch and someday Cecily would understand. When Cecily tried to explain that a week with Kathleen Pruitt was like six months in hell, Mom had said she was being dramatic. (Mom might have understood if Cecily had told her about that stunt the year before, when Kathleen had loudly claimed on the beach that Cecily’s tampon string was hanging from her swimsuit, which it so was not . But Cecily could never bring herself to speak of it.) So the Outer Banks. Again.
    At least they were at the beach. Cecily, who loved swimming in the sunshine, thought that was every summer’s silver lining.
    Except, of course, if it was raining.
    “The weather report swore this front would stay south of here,” Dad said, turning up the windshield wipers of the rental car to top speed.
    Theo kicked impatiently at the back of their mother’s seat. “You said I could swim as soon as I