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

Stitchery was around. Money, however, was a different story. Money was not, except in the rarest cases, considered a meaningful sacrifice; it could always be replaced. A guardian could never suggest to a client that he or she pay for a spell with money, but she could accept money if it was offered to her as a personal—non-magical—gift. This
Render unto Caesar
way of looking at sacrifices had first appeared in the Great Book back in the 1930s, when apparently the guardians needed a little green on hand for personal expenses, and they found that keeping their clients’ Jacksons and Lincolns didn’t damage their spells—as long as some
real
sacrifice had also been made.
    Aubrey steeled herself. “Okay. Two hundred dollars.”
    Ruth started to open her purse.
    “And I’ll … Oh gosh. I’ll also need the pin.”
    Ruth laughed in disbelief. She looked around as if she expected someone else might be watching. “What? Really?”
    Aubrey nodded.
    “You can’t be serious.”
    “I’m sorry. I am.”
    “But … but it was a gift. To me. From my husband. I think he might have paid twenty dollars for it at the most!”
    “Still,” Aubrey said. “If you want the spell to work …”
    Ruth frowned now, panic in her eyes. Her gloved fingers tightened around the strap of her leather handbag. “A thousand dollars. That’s as high as I go. And I keep the pin.”
    Aubrey wished she could have said yes. She needed the money more than she needed Ruth’s cheap pin. But she started to walk away.
    “Wait!”
    She stopped.
    For a moment Ruth held her eye, which must have been uncomfortable. Then, slowly, with trembling fingers, she removed the pin from her lapel. She held it far enough away to see it without the glasses that hung around her neck, and she rubbed the front of it with her gloved thumb. Aubrey could hear the questions turning in Ruth’s mind: Was her family’s place in the community worth it? Would her husband be mad if somehow, from beyond the grave, he knew? Could she stand to part with the little pin—probably the last gift he gave her before he died?
    Aubrey’s heart went out to her. She, too, knew the value and pain of tradition. Of a place in the community that trumped personal will.
    “I suppose if there’s no other way …” Gingerly, Ruth set the pin down on the counter. A moment later Aubrey was counting out fifty-dollar bills.
    “George would want me to do this,” Ruth said under her breath. “It’s a family tradition. Every family has its traditions.”
    “We sure do,” Meggie said.
    Aubrey jumped—shocked by the sense that she’d been caught doing something wrong. She looked up from the leafy stack of money. Her sister stood leaning one shoulder against the door frame, her short legs slung with bright teal pajama bottoms, her arms crossed and a shoulder raised. Aubrey had no idea how long Meggie had been watching.
    “Oh how nice,” Ruth said blandly. “Margaret.
You’re
back.”
    “Just like the good old days,” Meggie said.
    Aubrey touched Ruth’s arm. She needed to guide Ruth’s focus away from Meggie, who had once, many years ago, pressed her naked butt against the window of a downtown café when Ruth and her husband were inside. “Mrs. Ten Eckye—” Aubrey said loudly. “I think what you need is a nice set of fingerless gloves. A gift for Mr. Scott to wear on chilly fall nights. I have just the thing.”
    She walked over to an old flour barrel that had been filled with yarn. She plucked one ball off the top—a soft, blue-black skein of wool—and brushed off the dust. The color had bleached in the light over the years, turning a dull slate gray one on side. She held it up for Ruth to see.
    “Do
I
have to make them?” Ruth asked. “Because I can, you know.”
    “Drop by Wednesday morning. I’ll have the gloves done by then. And of course, you can’t tell anyone about this. If you do, it might break the spell.”
    Ruth nodded, and Aubrey tried to invoke the same