Ordinary Magic by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway Read Free Book Online Page A

when a grown-up is saying something without saying something. His friend looked at me. Really looked—up and down and all over—when neither of them had more than glanced in my direction before. But it wasn’t a personal kind of look; it was more the look you’d give a carpet you wanted to buy. It was a “you are nothing” kind of look. There wasn’t anything mean about it, which made it worse.
    Then she turned back to Barbarian Mike and shrugged. And Barbarian Mike smiled at us and said if that was their decision he’d have to live with it, and shook everybody’s hand, and left. His friend didn’t do any of that except for the leaving part, which we were fine with.
    Gil waited a minute and then slipped on an invisibility spell and followed after them. He was back within twenty minutes to confirm that the adventurers were out of town, heading north. That didn’t stop Mom from giving the cops a heads-up, or Olivia from burying an extra row of ward stones along the protection circle that surrounded our house.

CHAPTER
6
    The rest of the summer was pretty quiet—no more offers, no more adventurers. Lots of long, sunny mornings sitting in the window seat in Dad’s shop, lots of Gil muttering to himself at the kitchen table and jumping out at us when we least expected it, shouting, “Which do you like better—‘furious’ or ‘infuriated’?”
    The morning we left, it was rush-rush-rush and busy-busy-busy from the first second. Wake. Shower. Dress. (“Pants, Abby,” Mom called, a warning finger pointed at me.) Jeremy was in the middle of his annual “returning to school” panic attack, fretting over not having enough potion bottles and where had he packed his grimoire and why had he sent it on ahead instead of saving it to study on the flight? (Which was surprising because Jeremy usually has his spell book welded to his hands.) Olivia whipped up waffles for breakfast.
    It was as if I were a normal kid—a magic kid, that is, going to a magic school. And it’s not like I was truly saying good-bye;my family has a way of getting in each other’s business, no matter the odds or the distance, which is why I didn’t cry that much. Olivia—eyes fierce, voice breaking—grabbed me close until she was finally able to hiss, “I swear, Abby, if we don’t hear from you every week, I’ll drag you back home by your hair. I am so not kidding.”
    “Come on, O. It’s not like we’re never going to see her again,” Gil said, sweeping me up in a big spinning hug. “Speaking of, Abs, can I have your half of the bedroom?” Olivia smacked him. “Ow! What? It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of her memory. It’s about prioritizing my work space. I need a study.”
    “You want to share your study with Olivia?” I asked.
    “Oh no. I plan to buy her out.”
    “I’m not selling.” Olivia sniffed, swiping at her eyes.
    “And it’s not your house,” Dad reminded us.
    “You can have my room if I can have a cut,” I said.
    “What? Abby? I mean, I’d expect this from Olivia because she has a black, withered pit where her heart should be, but you?” Gil put a hand on his chest and did his best to look shocked. “My baby sister. Whom I convinced Mom and Dad to keep, purely out of the goodness of my heart. They wanted to get rid of you because you were funny looking.”
    “That’s not funny,” Olivia said.
    Gil ignored her. “You know, because of all the freckles. They wanted to call you Spot and donate you to the local animal shelter, but I said no. I said, let us not judge a child purely on the number of freckles—”
    I threw my arms around Gil and hugged him quiet.
    Dad shook out one of his oldest carpets on the front lawn, the green-and-gold one with knotted fringe that he wove back in college. It was just your straightforward, no-frills flying carpet, but it was the biggest one, which was important because we were doing a favor for Alexa.
    We climbed on, Mom putting me right between her and Dad,