Who Needs Magic? by Kathy McCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

way closer, until we’re near enough to see the grumpy men and swearing women repeatedly pressing the Back button on the kiosks or inserting their credit cards for the twelfth time.
    I raise my lime stick and peer over the shoulder of a woman who’s squinting at the monitor through her reading glasses. She taps
Luckless in L.A
. but gets trapped in the backup loop when she keeps pressing the wrong time. I check the box-office display for the next show, but it’s playing on three screens.
    “Delaney.”
Ariella waves her grape stick and the ticket spits out for the woman.
    “I was about to do it,” I complain as an older couple, grandparent age, step up next. The man pouts at the screen while the woman tells him what to press, but they end up stuck anyway. I get them their tickets, but it takes a beat. Or two. I don’t know what the matter is. It usually doesn’t take me this long, although having Ariella watching over my shoulder doesn’t help. I try to ignore her, but my next wish feels just as slow. I shake the candy stick like a thermometer.
    “That’s not the way it works, Delaney. You can’t shake the energy down to one end.”
    “I know that.” Although it’s what I was trying to do. “I need to use my own wand.” I hand her the candy stick and retrieve my chopstick from its holster in my boot. I headdown to the other end of the kiosk row, getting Ariella out of my sight line. She seems to understand and hangs back, giving me some space.
    I try to concentrate, but I’m finding it hard to care whether these people see the generic action movie or the generic slasher film. Doing a zillion wishes every thirty seconds may shake up the molecules or whatever, but it feels pointless—and I’m not saying that just because my magic seems slow-motion compared to that of Ariella P., super f.g.
    Ariella catches up with me. “Hmm.” She taps her grape stick against her teeth. “Let’s get something to eat,” she says finally. “Maybe your blood sugar is low.”

    “You missed another one.” Ariella waves her grape stick toward the front of the line, granting a wish I didn’t catch because the second we entered the food court, starvation kicked in from all the hunger-inducing smells—curried rice and spicy pizza sauce and sizzling stir-fries—reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since the Pop-Tart. My blood sugar probably
was
low. I couldn’t even decide what I wanted to eat, so I let Ariella lead me to some Japanese noodle place.
“Delaney.”
Ariella elbows me and points her chin toward two women exiting the line with their trays. Before I can even try to figure out which one has the wish and what it is, Ariella waves her candy stick over my head.
    “But that
is
brown rice,” one of the women says.
    “Oh, you’re right. I guess I didn’t forget to ask for it.”
    Ariella snaps off a piece of the grape stick with her teeth and regards me with concern. “Did you have any problems with your last big wish?” There’s a careful, suspicious tone in her voice, like she already knows the answer.
    “Sort of.”
    “What about before that?”
    I keep my eyes on the people in line. “I can’t focus if you’re going to distract me with questions.”
    “You need to be able to grant small wishes no matter what’s going on, without even thinking about it. I just did three more while I was talking to you.”
    “You wish.”
    Ariella folds her arms, miffed. “You wanted my help, Delaney.”
    I did, but her nonstop condescension is seriously bugging me. I look around, determined to grant at least one wish before we order, to get Ariella off my case.
    At the pickup area, a customer lifts his tray, causing his miso soup to spill. I point my chopstick and really concentrate and the spill vanishes. Thank God.
    But, unfortunately, Ariella remains on the case.
    “You didn’t answer me. Did you ever have any, you know,
glitches
before the last wish you granted?”
    “No.”
    We reach the counter.