Slightly Spellbound by Kimberly Frost Read Free Book Online

over his hair. “What makes you ask about her?”
    “We met. We’re kind of friends.”
    “Since when?”
    “Since about seven thirty a.m. when she said my Black Chambord dessert was the best thing she’s ever tasted and that she’s been on a mission to meet me ever since I left Lampis. And since she asked to be my close friend. It’s hard to say no to friendship. Who am I? The Grinch?”
    “You’re allowed to be selective when it comes to friends. You have reason to be cautious.”
    “Yeah, but Vangie’s not too sure of herself. I know how that feels. I was shy when I was little. And though I kick butt in the kitchen and can hold my own in a gunfight, I’m not exactly the poster girl for spell-casting competency, so I guess I think she and I have a little bit in common. Plus, she seemed so sure that I was just the kind of friend she needed. I thought she might be right.”
    “Tamara Josephine Trask, defender of the weak and champion of lost causes.”
    “Well, who am I gonna defend? The strong? They can take care of themselves, and as for lost causes, there’s no such thing.”
    He smiled, catching a lock of my hair and rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger absently. “That attitude is what gets you into trouble.” He curled the hair around his finger and tugged me forward with it. “And what makes you irresistible.”
    I put out a hand, my palm against his chest to prevent myself from colliding with his body. A really good way to forget about everything was to start kissing Bryn. “So what about her?”
    “She comes from a prominent and wealthy family. Her father was a wizard with a special talent for intelligence-gathering. He cast spells that allowed him to eavesdrop from great distances. WAM wanted to recruit him, but his temperament was wrong for fieldwork. He was too nervous. He restricted his data-gathering to the secrets of subjects who wouldn’t kill him. Businessmen mostly. Magical insider trading made him rich.
    “Vangie’s mother drowned in a boating accident. Her father remarried about three years ago, and her stepmother and stepbrother moved in. The stepmother, Oatha Theroux, comes from a line of water witches. She’s not particularly powerful in terms of magic, but I don’t think he was interested in her for her spell-casting.”
    “She’s pretty?”
    “She’s voluptuous.”
    “Ah.”
    “They were pretty passionate about each other,” Bryn said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
    “They were? They got divorced?”
    “No, he died.”
    “Oh!”
    “He died of a heart attack while his wife and stepson were out of town. There’d been trouble between him and Oatha the week before he died, and Evangeline claimed her father threatened to divorce Oatha. Evangeline accused the wife of killing him.”
    “Did someone investigate?”
    “The police and coroner didn’t find evidence of foul play, and Evangeline wasn’t the most reliable source.”
    “How come?”
    “She has a history of mental illness. She’d already been hospitalized twice for nervous breakdowns. Her bouts of paranoia didn’t encourage authorities to take her seriously. And when she appealed to the local coven, she arrived disheveled and dressed in her great-grandmother’s moth-eaten clothes. She was hysterical.”
    “What happened?”
    “She was hospitalized again. Several of us did speak to the stepmother, though, and warned her that if anything happened to Evangeline, we would investigate with the kind of intensity that wouldn’t allow anything to be overlooked. Evangeline turned eighteen in the hospital and signed herself out. A lot of people offered to house her, but she bought a condo and disappeared into herself, living like a recluse most of the time. The stepmother and stepbrother still have contact with her through the money and the magic. Evangeline uses her father’s library, but Oatha won’t let her remove anything from the house. And Oatha insists on seeing Vangie frequently, claiming