BloodMoon by David VanDyke, Drew VanDyke Read Free Book Online

anxiety wash out of me.
    “Not like you can,” she sighed, “but when you’ve got the twin bond open, I catch echoes of his voice in your head and no, it doesn’t work with Mom or I’d have let you off the hook by now.”
    She has to find and cast the spell, Siegfried said. It’s one of the first assignments for an apprentice witch. No shortcuts allowed.
    “I caught that,” Amber said, and went inside to get her laptop.
    “What spell?” I asked the dog.
    Familiar communication spell, he replied.
    “Isn’t that, like, cheating? You just gave her a huge hint.”
    I’m using what I have, he said and placed his head on my leg. Besides, having you for a sister, I’m thinking we need to fastrack, the b-, I mean, witch.
    I played with Siegfried’s white curly mop that pouffed like Princess Leia’s buns and scratched behind his ears until he started to lick my hand. I grabbed his muzzle and held it shut until he whined and when I let him go, he took my hand in his puppy sharp teeth, showing his unhappiness but not breaking the skin.
    “Siegfried, no,” Elle admonished him, coming out onto the porch with her own glass of iced tea and the sports section tucked under her arm. “Don’t bite.” She put the beverage down and gave him a whack on the nose with the paper.
    How humiliating, his voice resounded in my head as he turned his attention to his “owner.” I was just marking you.
    Ew, I thought. How about I hold you down while I pee on you? Now that’s marking.
    “Refill?” Elle asked somewhere in the midst of this hard-to-follow three-way conversation.
    It’s not that kind of marking. You know, you’re pretty snarky for a girl human.
    “Refill?” Elle asked again and I shut Siegfried out so I could concentrate. And to be honest, I was feeling so good, I didn’t want to say no, so I pushed my glass forward. “Shouldn’t you be getting out of your PJs by now?” It didn’t sound like a suggestion. This was the downside of an in-law old enough to be my mother. Well, if she’d had me at thirteen.
    “Probably,” I said, but that’s as far as it got. My twin sister was a witch. Hope Dad never found out.
     
    “You’re what?” The sound of Elle’s voice echoed through the main house from the garage where Elle and Amber had their workout equipment and held their “family” conversations.
    I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I didn’t have anything in my refrigerator and well, the grocery store was four blocks away, and I didn’t have a car and I was raiding Amber’s fridge for…well, for something I didn’t have.
    Yeah, right. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
    “Are they at it again?” John Robert poked his head out of his bedroom.
    “Hey sport. Yeah, but don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing.” Hey, he had to live with my sister. I didn’t. Poor kid. “Want a snack?”
    “Lucky Charms,” he said, bouncing onto the comfy davenport and turning on the television to drown out his parents while I made us snacks in the kitchen.
    I could still hear them, though. Go lupines! Sometimes the hearing was a curse.
    “You’re the one who told me about the witches in the first place,” my sister’s voice echoed in my twitching ear.
    “Yes, but I didn’t expect you to become one!” Elle’s voice resounded in the other one.
    “And you’re the one who wanted me to work the Street Witches Convention for the department over Halloween,” Amber continued.
    “That’s because I think you’re a shoe-in to take over Convention Services. If you want it.”
    “Of course I want it, eventually. Maybe when JR’s a bit older.”
    “Why do you want to learn witchcraft, anyway?” Elle asked. “I thought we were doing fine with Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer.”
    “I don’t know, Elle. I guess it’s because I need more than the power of positive thinking, something different from just a bearded old man in the sky who doles out miracles capriciously that tells me if things don’t go my