The Wishing Thread by Lisa Van Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

had been published just this morning—probably Ruth would have been horrified to think of herself as intruding if she’d known Mariah had died. It would only take a word to send her away.
    But then, Aubrey heard Bitty in the kitchen, rattling around in the cabinets to scrounge up lunch for her kids, asking what kind of house didn’t even have ketchup, and she knew it wouldn’t hurt if there was a little extra money on hand.
    “I’ll do it,” Aubrey said. “What have you got for me?”
    “What have I
got
?”
    “What can you give me in exchange for the spell?”
    Ruth laughed. “You mean there’s not some pricing chart you can pull up?”
    “Afraid not.”
    “What’s customary for something like this?” Ruth asked.
    “It’s
customary
for you to make an offer.”
    “You do make this difficult, don’t you?” Ruth adjusted her purse on her arm. “Two hundred. Cash.”
    Aubrey laughed. “You’re better off trying to bribe Mr. Scott.”
    Ruth bit her lips, chagrined, and Aubrey resisted the feeling of guilt that flooded her. She’d never liked this part—the bargaining. The push and pull. For as much as Aubrey excelled at the knitting, she’d never been good at playing the role of negotiator. It was a hard role that cast her in a bad light. A little pushiness was always necessary for the success of a spell, and Aubrey had never been good at “pushy.” Not like Mariah had been.
    “Two hundred dollars,” Aubrey said. “If you like. What else?”
    “Two hundred dollars is a lot of money.”
    “Forgive me, but I suspect it’s not a lot of money to
you
,” Aubrey said, because she knew Ruth Ten Eckye had been squirreling away her family’s fortune since the day she was born into it. “What else?”
    Ruth blanched. “Five hundred?”
    Yes please
, Aubrey thought. With five hundred dollars, she could take everyone to dinner at the Tarrytown House. She could pay for the kids to take iPad-guided tours of the Old Dutch churchyard. She could restock the liquor cabinet. But for two hundred or even five hundred bucks, what she couldn’t do was guarantee that Todd Ten Eckye would be strutting around Sleepy Hollow come this Halloween in knickers and a tricorn hat. She would need something more important than Ruth’s money to ensure the spell would work.
    People need to give up something they really and truly care about
, Mariah liked to say.
They won’t think magic is worth anything if they don’t suffer a little for it. And if they don’t think it’s worth anything, they won’t believe, and if they don’t believe, the magic will just fester away
.
    Aubrey looked over her client—Ruth’s beauty-parlor curls, her gold glasses chain, her tiny pearl earrings—all very expensive and yet dated, as if she’d stepped out of 1952. On her long coat was a tin brooch in the shape of a jack-o’-lantern with a twisted grin. Aubrey pointed. “What’s that?”
    Ruth touched it. “What? This silly thing?”
    Aubrey leaned forward. The pin was cheap, a stark contrast with Ruth’s expensive pearls and pavé diamond rings. Ruth wouldn’t wear such a tawdry thing unless it had some personal meaning. “Where did you get it?”
    Ruth’s gaze softened, the drooping white skin of her eyelids drooping farther still. “It was a gift from my late husband. He bought it for me at a street fair the week before he died. Ayear ago on All Saints’ Eve.” Ruth’s eyes clouded over, and for a moment she was no longer in the yarn shop—Aubrey could tell. She was standing on a warm sidewalk in October, her husband still with her, still alive, handing his dollars to the man behind the card table, smiling, fastening a pin on Ruth’s lapel.
    The rules about sacrifices, about what could be sacrificed and what could not, were a bit perplexing in some ways. Keepsakes had emotional value, and it was generally accepted that meaningful objects were
real
sacrifices; they would stay in the Stitchery tower for as long as the