The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) by Marina Finlayson Read Free Book Online Page B

…
    Oh, God. Zac would never kiss me now. Not with frogs coming out of my mouth every time I opened it.
    I made sure my feet were touching CJ.
    “Are you okay?”
    She lifted her head long enough to give me a withering look. “No, of course not. Are you ? I have the world’s worst headache, my mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage, my ankle hurts—oh, and I have diamonds falling out of my mouth every time I speak.”
    “Could be worse,” I said, stung. “You could have frogs coming out instead.”
    She looked at me for a long moment, apology in her eyes. “True. Why is this happening, Vi?”
    Her voice trembled like a frightened child’s.
    “I don’t know. It’s not possible, is it? It’s like … it’s like magic.”
    I felt like an idiot for saying it, but CJ didn’t laugh. How else could we explain this?
    “If magic is real, why can’t we have three wishes or find a pot of gold or something? This is the suckiest magic in the whole history of suck! Although …” she stopped, struck by a sudden thought. “We do have diamonds …”
    I looked at the sparkling stone as she held it up to the light. “Do you think it’s real?”
    “How should I know? Do I look like a diamond expert? But the frogs seem pretty real.”
    I had to agree with that.
    “Do you think it was the absinthe?” she asked.
    “The absinthe ? Don’t be ridiculous. It may be freaky bad alcohol, but it doesn’t work magic. Besides, I didn’t have any, remember?”
    “Well, I wasn’t sure.” She looked defensive. “I don’t remember that clearly.”
    I snorted. “I’m not surprised. You were wasted. That reminds me—you’d better hose out the gutter before Mum and Dad get home and find your lovely pile of vomit from last night.”
    “They won’t know it was me.”
    “One look at you and I think they’ll be able to put two and two together.”
    “You didn’t send Mum that photo, did you?”
    “Oh, you remember that part, do you?” Funny, my sister getting drunk had seemed like such a big deal last night. Now we had much bigger problems. “No, of course not.”
    “You’d better delete it.”
    “Why? I thought I might put it on Facebook.”
    “Don’t you dare .”
    She hit me with a cushion, and I scrambled away, laughing almost hysterically, though nothing about this morning was funny. The minute I lost contact with CJ I felt the tingle again, and two more frogs bounded away across the carpet. My laugh finished up more like a sob, and CJ slid her foot over to touch my leg. We gazed at each other, panic barely suppressed.
    “What are we going to do? We can’t go round like Siamese twins for the rest of our lives!”
    What a horrific thought. I loved my sister, but there were limits.
    “Never mind the rest of our lives. What about school tomorrow?”
    Oh, God. We only had two classes together, Maths and English, and we weren’t even allowed to choose our own seats in English. What about the rest of the day? And what the hell was I going to say to Zac?
    “I’m going to Google it,” CJ said. “Maybe there’ll be something.”
    Oh, sure. Even Doctor Google wouldn’t have an answer for this one.
    “You get the rest of these things outside,” she ordered, disappearing upstairs to find her laptop.
    Funny. I’d never realised my sister was so squeamish. Frogs didn’t bother me at all. Apart from the fact that they were falling out of my own mouth, that is. That sure as hell wasn’t right. I was still shaking. Now, if it had been spiders —well, that would have been a different story.
    These little guys were cute, with their big orange eyes and delicate splayed toes. The yellow spots on their backs looked liked someone had dotted them with the world’s tiniest paintbrush. They were so small, not much bigger than a decent-sized cherry, but they could fit a lot of hop in those little legs. Catching them was quite the challenge. It took a good twenty minutes before I had them all settled among the