Unruly Magic by Camilla Chafer Read Free Book Online Page A

I finally threw my hands in the air and pulled a face in the mirror. Why was I getting so wound up about it? It wouldn’t take more than a few hours out of my life and then things could get back to normal with us waving hello whenever we saw each other and otherwise getting on with our lives. It was nothing to get stressed about and with that I pulled out figure-hugging black jeans, a slouchy silk top in a punchy orange to hang over my closet door until it was time to dress. With heeled boots picked out, I put an end to the clothing dilemma. Considering I didn’t know what Gage had planned, it seemed like a good idea to try and find an outfit that covered every kind of venue or activity. This would have to suffice.
    I wondered what we would talk about. Now that I’d gathered from Annalise that they’d grown up here and were siblings, I had that angle covered. She worked from home, Gage worked in a nearby town. I wasn’t even up to temping at the moment. Well that was careers out, unless he wanted to tell me about his. And we didn’t have any shared history of the town or people we knew, because everyone I knew here, already knew him.
    The rest of the afternoon I spent cleaning the house and rearranging the furniture. For the first month I had left it entirely alone, in the way that you do when you first move in somewhere and don’t like to touch what isn’t yours, then I had finally accepted that the house was mine and there was no one to stop me doing anything I wanted in it. So my new game – and sort of workout routine – was experimenting with the positioning of the furniture. The latest layout wasn’t working for me so now I tugged the sofa into its new place so it was pulled away from the hallway wall, allowing myself a short burst of magic to help ease it into position without straining myself. It was easy to push the coffee table and the rug underneath to their new angles, firmly in cup reaching distance, but I left the other sofa where it was in front of the window and the armchair with its back to the shelves. It was far too much seating for one or two people so I wondered if my parents had frequent guests over when they used the house.
    Over the months, I’d been slowly filling the shelves up with books that I’d picked up and the odd ornament that I’d founded tucked away. It felt odd, and slightly exhilarating, to be adding my things to so much space. I was even considering painting the room white instead of the slightly dreary off-yellow. Maybe I’d hang new curtains too, something with less of an obnoxious print. Who knew that I would be so house proud.
    Finally I went into the garden to cut some greenery. My neighbour’s house was quiet though I could see the truck and car and Gage’s motorbike so I guessed they were both in. Back inside I tried arranging the green branches in some artful way in a vase to add some fresh colour to the room and when I was finally happy with the cluster, I set it on the low corner table where a potted plant used to sit.
    The first day I had arrived here there had been plants dotted around. I’d slept on the sofa overnight, not quite comfortable with climbing into one of the beds, and when I woke in the morning, the plants had all crumbled to dust. It had taken me some time to surmise that while things could exist in stasis, if they were brought out of it after too long, those things would wither and die, their life process sped up. Unfortunately my house was only proving that that initial guess was correct. Though nothing crumbled quite as actively and decisively as the plants had, plenty of things were breaking – a chair leg here, a handle there. I guessed if my parents returned frequently they simply deactivated the spells and time caught up. Unfortunately now twenty years of time was catching up in just a matter of months. Still, it was nothing that I could deal with today. At least the main furniture was holding up for now though I could swear another