A Hidden Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 2) by Debora Geary Read Free Book Online

pendants for the girls, since they were so
enamored with mine when I visited in March.”
    “They’re pretty magical for young girls. I’ve
seen it here, too. Lizzie would happily have a different necklace
for every day of the week.”
    Aaron held out his last meatball. All of hers
had magically disappeared. Maybe her super-secret hidden witch
talent only worked on meatballs.
    He tugged her hair, as if following her jumbled
thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you about all that.”
She’d spent a decent chunk of their night away in tears.
    “It wasn’t you, it was the meatballs.” Her
husband, long used to her conversational tangents, waited patiently
for her to start making sense. Rather than explain the meatballs,
she just told him what he really wanted to know.
    “I’ve already wasted far too much of my life
hoping to turn into a witch. I’ve held on to that dream for so
long, what happened with the computer scan was bound to affect me
some. But I have a good life, and a really important opportunity
coming up, and I don’t plan to blow it by worrying about stealth
magical powers.”
    He just smiled. Aaron was always good for a
sanity check, and when your world was full of witches and spells,
that was a very good thing.
    Getting away for their anniversary had helped.
Her adult life had always had two important gravitational pulls.
Her work for and with the witching community was one, and her life
with Aaron and her sea glass was the other. A little time away had
helped her find steady footing again, on entirely non-magical
ground.
    She reached for his hands. “When I get back,
maybe we can get started on adding a little Shaw around here.”
    Aaron scooped her up. He moved fast for an
innkeeper. “What’s wrong with now?”
    That pretty much ended dinner.
    ~ ~ ~
    Jamie scowled at the melted computer parts on
the table. Marcus had quietly overnighted him the innards of
Moira’s cooked computer, but there wasn’t much to see besides a
mess of mangled metal.
    Not that he could see very well with three curly
heads all leaning over the table too.
    “What do you think?” Ginia asked.
    “There’s not a lot to work with, girls. I was
hoping Elorie had just shorted something out and we could get a
read on some of the data, but…”
    Mia giggled. “I don’t think there’s any data
left alive in there. She totally fried it.”
    Jamie nudged Shay, usually the most
contemplative of the three. “What do you think?”
    Shay tilted her head. “Are we sure Elorie did
this?”
    Quiet didn’t mean slow, Jamie thought. Shay was
by far the best debugger of the three because she never skipped any
steps, even when the answers seemed obvious.
    Mia shrugged. “What else could have done it?
Uncle Jamie, have you ever seen anything like this?”
    He shook his head. “No, but Shay asked a great
question. I suspect Elorie’s the culprit, but good coders rule out
weird possibilities, too. Elorie wasn’t the only person in the room
when this happened.”
    Mia considered the melted mess. “I bet Aervyn
could melt a hard drive if he wanted to, and he might not even have
to be in the same room.”
    Three sets of eyes looked up in sudden
fascination. Uh, oh. This was the kind of stuff where he was
supposed to be the adult. His internal debate didn’t last long. He
wasn’t a father yet, and trying to zap hard drives with magic
sounded like serious fun.
    Mia grinned and jumped up. “I’ll go get
Aervyn.”
    Shay looked at Jamie. “I bet you could do it
too, couldn’t you?”
    Jamie started digging in boxes, looking for old
hard drives. They were about to find out.
    Aervyn bounced into the room with glee written
all over his face. “I get to melt computers, Uncle Jamie? Can I
blast ’em, just like Cyclops?”
    Jamie jumped in front of his brand-new laptop.
“Hold on a minute, hot stuff. Not this computer. And, think
Superman, not Cyclops—focused magic. Your mom will be mad at me if
we start a big fire in the