Some Practical Magic Read online

  Other Books by Laurie Kuna from ImaJinn Books

  That Old Black Magic

  Writing as Laurie Carroll

  Fate’s Fortune

  A War of Hearts

  Some Practical Magic

  by

  Laurie C. Kuna

  ImaJinn Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  ImaJinn Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61026-042-8

  Print ISBN: 978-1-893896-37-6

  ImaJinn Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2004 by Laurie C. Kuna

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  ImaJinn Books was founded by Linda Kichline.

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  Cover design: Deborah Smith

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Magic Sparkles © Khalid Zia | Dreamstime.com

  Reading peacefully © Philcold | Dreamstime.com

  Books © Waxart | Dreamstime.com

  Table card © Montego6 | Dreamstime.com

  Open book magic on black © Kydriashka | Dreamstime.com

  :Epsm:01:

  Dedication

  To Linda K. for hanging in there with me.

  Prologue

  Southeastern Michigan, the present

  SINCE HE HAD a mild case of writer’s block, Mirek “Mick” Sandor decided to go jogging that cold January day. He really didn’t mind that the thermometer read zero degrees Fahrenheit. No wind blew, no snow fell, and no cloud marred the endless blue sky. There was nothing like a snowy Michigan landscape when the sun shone down out of a cloudless sky.

  After a quick stretch, he set out from the back porch of his log cabin retreat, toward the barn and the groomed cross-country ski trails in the ten-acre woods behind his house. As long as he kept a moderate pace out of deference to several old athletic injuries, he knew he’d return to his computer with a clear head, ready to tackle the next chapter.

  He arrived back at the house an hour and eight miles later. On the back porch, he knocked the snow off his running shoes and tights, then stepped into the mud room and went straight to the microwave. As he nuked a cup of tea, the doorbell rang.

  “Shit.” He looked like hell, all wet, sweaty and red-cheeked. But he lived alone, so if the door was going to be answered, he was the man for the job. Using a dish towel, he mopped the sweat from his face as he walked across the cabin’s great room to the front door. A quick glance out the picture window showed a plain, dark blue sedan sitting in his driveway.

  And two men in trench coats on his front porch.

  He opened the door just enough to ask them their business.

  “Are you M. S. Kazimer?” the taller of the two coats asked.

  These guys didn’t strike Mick as crazed fans, but there were the trench coats and unremarkable sedan to consider. They worried him a bit. On the other hand, if this was about his books, it probably wasn’t anything catastrophic. “Actually, that’s my pen name.”

  “Is your real name Mirek Sandor?” the shorter, younger coat asked.

  The question made Mick’s skin prickle. “Yes, and just who are you?”

  Both men produced wallets with picture I.D. “We’re FBI,” the taller one said.

  Man, these guys take that no-carrying-fruit-across-the-California-border law seriously, Mick thought. I’m probably going to get a huge fine. For two measly apples. Well, they were Michigan apples . . . “What’s this all about?”

  “Mr. Kazimer,” the younger agent said gravely, “the Bureau desperately needs your help.”

  This definitely doesn’t sound like a contraband fruit issue, Mick concluded.

  One

  “CASSANDRA, WHY AREN’T you married?”

  Stifling a groan, Cassie Hathorne grabbed a shock of her hair in a fist and barely restrained herself from giving it a frustrated yank. She briefly considered putting the phone on speaker, the better to pull at her short tresses two-fisted while her mother ranted. But doing that wouldn’t make her feel good. Or less trapped.

  “Good morning to you, too, Mom.” Cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear, she moved to the dishwasher. Might as well get some constructive work done during Mom’s recurring rampage.

  Just then, her huge, smoke-gray cat ambled into the kitchen.

  “Endora, a little help here, please,” Cassie whispered, indicating with a quirk of her eyebrow the now open dishwasher.

  Endora leapt up onto the counter and sat down, a Cheshire grin on her intelligent gray face. She fastidiously licked first one forepaw then the other, then stared at Cassie with a smug feline smirk.

  “Thanks for nothing, pal,” Cassie grumbled before saying into the phone, “Any particular reason why you called, Mom?” Except to badger me about my lack of a significant other?

  “I thought that was obvious,” came her mother’s clipped retort. “You’re getting on in years, and it’s time you found a husband and settled down. Why, you’re practically middle-aged.”

  Cassie bristled, bending to remove silverware from the dishwasher and glaring at Endora as she did. “I turn ninety this year, Mom. That hardly makes me eligible for a mid-life crisis!”

  “Dear,” her mother said with obviously strained patience, “witches don’t live much past two hundred and twenty. Do the math. Ninety goes into two twenty—”

  “Okay!” Cassie snapped. “I’m almost middle-aged. What’s wrong with being single right now? I’m contemplating at least another century of life, so why rush?”

  “I just want you to be happy,” Medusa Morlock told her only child. “You don’t have to be so defensive. I don’t like to see you all alone.” Her voice trailed off.

  “Mom, you’re alone.”

  “That’s different. Your father . . .”

  Cassie leaned back against the rustic kitchen table and stifled a sigh. “I know, Mom. I know. It’s just that . . . well . . .”

  “A good witch is hard to find?” Medusa supplied dryly.

  “Something like that.”

  “What about that young fellow I introduced you to a decade or so back. Mort Morula. What about him?”

  “Mort is his nickname. His first name is Mortician.” Cassie heard the shudder in her own voice.

  “Well, as Thae Bard said, ‘What’s in a name?’”

  “Shakespeare obviously never knew Mort. He’s so creepy, his name actually fits him.” Goose bumps rose on her arms. She rubbed her hands briskly up and down from elbows to shoulders to dissipate them. “He’s way too old for dressing Goth, but that doesn’t stop him. Always wears black. No color at all. Paints his face white . . . Yuk.”

  “So he enjoys sticking out in a crowd. He’s your age, dear.”

  “He’s a hundred and fifty if he’s a day,” Cassie shot ba
ck. “Plastic surgery makes him look like he’s in his nineties. And I can’t stand people who lie about their age.”

  The pause on the end of the line lengthened to half a minute.

  “Except for you, Mom.”

  “All right, maybe Mort isn’t your cup of hemlock. But there has to be a nice young male witch out there just waiting to sweep you off your feet.”

  At Endora’s loud meow, Cassie glanced at the coffee mug the cat was batting back and forth between her forepaws. The logo sported the Wicked Witch of the West skywriting “Surrender Dorothy” with her broom. Cassie rolled her eyes, then said to Medusa, “Listen, Mom, can this matchmaking craze you’re on wait until I get back from my book tour? I’m leaving in half an hour.”

  “You’re touring on the Ides of March? Beware.”

  “Today’s the sixteenth,” Cassie stated with waning patience. “And most likely the tour organizers just think of March fifteenth as two days before Saint Patrick’s Day anyway.”

  “Most likely.” Medusa gave an audible sniff. “Honestly, Cassandra, I can’t see why you waste your time on such tawdry pursuits for the benefit of humans.”

  At that moment, hitting her head repeatedly against the cabinet sounded more enjoyable than further engaging in the conversation. But of course, Medusa would hear the banging, and Cassie would have to explain that her own mother was the trigger for her maniacal self-abuse.

  “Mother, please. You know I need to keep busy. What’s wrong with what I do?”

  “What you do is write a newspaper column.”

  “And your point is?”

  “It’s to help humankind!”

  Even though this was an old argument, Cassie felt her temper rising and consciously flattened her tone. “I’m a journalist, Mom. No coven I know of has a newspaper.”

  “But human beings!” Indignation crackled down the phone line. “They’ve persecuted us for eons. They’re smelly, petty, and stupid. And they’re so . . . so common.”

  Cassie gave up trying to accomplish anything and sat down at her kitchen table. Tracing the rich oak grain pattern with a fingertip, she said quietly, “Actually, I find them fascinating. Not common at all.”

  “Well, I suppose if you look at them in a strictly clinical manner, you could argue that they’re a diverse, although vastly inferior, species.”

  “That’s the spirit, Mom.” Cassie smiled despite Medusa’s grudging agreement. “No pun intended.”

  Suddenly, Medusa’s voice tightened. “I can see there’s just no reasoning with you today, Cassandra. So I’ll say my good-byes. Call me when you return from your book tour.”

  “I will.” Cassie hung up the phone and with an exasperated sigh turned to the dishwasher.

  “Your mother just doesn’t quit, does she?” Endora asked. She’d stopped batting the mug around and had trained her green eyes on her mistress.

  Shaking her head, Cassie pulled out the top drawer of clean dishes. “You can say that again. She wants to see me in a permanent relationship.”

  “With Mortician Morula?” Endora snorted. “I’d rather date a troll.”

  “And you have, if I recall correctly.”

  “Huh.” Endora stood and stretched. “Don’t bother with those. I’ll get them.”

  With a sweep of her long gray tail, she sent the plates, saucers and utensils flying through the air, heading for cupboards and drawers suddenly standing open and ready to receive them. All the cookware and table settings were quickly back in their proper places.

  “Martha Stewart, eat your heart out,” the cat purred.

  At that, Cassie laughed aloud. Although she considered her something of a rival, she liked Martha and hoped all of the domestic diva’s recent troubles would resolve themselves. Both Martha and Cassie had lots of positive things to offer, and it made Cassie sad to think other factors were clouding Martha’s gifts. The difference between them, of course, was that while Martha actually had to work at making her projects look like effortless magic, Cassie just had to snap her fingers. Naturally, La Belle Stewart didn’t know that, and Cassie wasn’t about to enlighten her.

  For the last ten years, Cassandra had written a weekly column on household hints entitled “The Kitchen Witch” for the Salem Evening News of Salem, Massachusetts. She’d deliberately chosen her most recent surname, Hathorne, because Judge Hathorne had presided as the head magistrate at the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

  If nothing else, Cassie appreciated subtle irony.

  She gave it her best effort to fill her columns with it, and with a light sense of humor that made her wildly popular with readers everywhere. She couldn’t stand witches who lacked a sense of humor, having always felt more akin to the Good Witch of the North than to the rest of the witches in The Wizard of Oz. And even though the story was merely human fantasy, untold millions believed the stereotypes. Understanding this, Cassandra had kept a low profile throughout her near century of existence.

  Now, even though she guarded her secret very well, her “human” persona was about to become not just a well-known columnist in the newspaper, but a body to go with the publicity photo on her book jacket.

  She was due in Toledo that afternoon to begin a “down the Mississippi” promotional tour of her latest book, When Dust Bunnies Attack. A compilation of her best columns from five years of national syndication, it had already reached tenth on the nonfiction best-seller list. Her publisher hoped the tour would push those numbers even higher.

  Cassandra was unashamedly proud of her writing skills. Oh sure, she didn’t have to actually type or speak into special computer software like every other hack in the world. She just sat at her computer, let her thoughts organize on her topic, then teleported them onto the screen. Simple, efficient, and she never worried about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

  But thinking up the topics and developing the best approach and the best wording were still hard work. And there was always an editor to please. How did all those human writers do it?

  Endora’s leap from the counter to the table six feet away brought Cassie out of her reverie.

  “Packed for the trip yet?” the cat asked.

  Cassie glanced at the clock. “The cab won’t be here for another half hour, so there’s plenty of time. I’ve got lots of other things to do first.”

  “Like figure out how to keep Medusa from interfering in your love life. Or current lack thereof.”

  Cassie grimaced at her familiar’s stark comment. “Mom just doesn’t understand my fascination with human beings. Or how that affects my relationships with witches.” All extraneous interaction with “inferiors” was regarded as completely beneath every male witch Cassie knew. “The males of my species are so arrogant.”

  “Sort of like every Ivy-Leaguer you’ve ever dated,” Endora commented wryly.

  “Well, there is that.” Cassie opened the trip itinerary and her planner, but couldn’t study either. Her mother’s voice kept intruding in her mind. “I don’t know what to do about Mom.”

  “Ignore her.” Endora lapped from the creamer on the table.

  “Like that would work.”

  After licking remnants of leftover cream off her face, the cat settled down on the table top. “Look Cass, I know you don’t often see eye to eye—”

  “Like never.” Cassie closed her planner with a snap. “I don’t think we share a single common opinion.”

  “I know this. I’m your familiar.”

  “Well, as my familiar, it’s your job to listen to me complain.” She scratched behind Endora’s ears. “I’m on a roll here. Pretend to be sympathetic.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  A huge yawn spoiled Endora’s attempt at empathy.

  Cassie ignored her cat’s antics. “Take the fact that she despises human technology.”

  “W
hy does she call you on the phone, then?”

  “She thinks phones are quaint. And, she actually dated Alexander Graham Bell for a while.”

  “See, she’s got human friends.”

  “Acquaintances,” Cassie amended, “not friends. And she basically keeps them around to amuse herself. Her neighbor, Viv, is a church secretary, and one of her jobs is to contact parishioners if they’ve missed several consecutive weeks of services. You know, send Get Well cards and such. Mom suggested that Viv’s message should be, ‘Where the hell have you been?’”

  Endora’s eyes lit with humor. “That’s Medusa for you.”

  Cassie sighed and rested her chin in her hand. “Once Mom’s made up her mind, nothing stops her.”

  She sensed this marriage campaign her mother waged would not abate until Medusa had seen her only daughter “properly” attached to some macho witch. What had General Grant said during the Civil War? “I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer”? In Medusa’s case, Cassie could amend that to say, “if it takes the next century.”

  THE BOOK TOUR’S major player sat in the main-floor restaurant of Toledo’s convention center hotel eating lunch with his publicist. Sunny and airy, the establishment was not too crowded at midday, but the size of the crowd was of no import to at least one of the pair.

  “Mick, I can’t believe they’ve got you seated next to Cassandra Hathorne,” Jennifer Bodin sputtered in a volume just a bit below ear-piercing. “Why, she’s nothing more than a syndicated columnist!”

  Mirek Sandor—known to his legion of fans as M. S. Kazimer—horror/suspense writer extraordinaire—frowned. He set down his fork, which had just been poised to dive into what looked to be an incredible piece of cheesecake, and gave his former fiancee-still publicist his undivided attention. “Do you think you could say that again a bit louder, Jen? I don’t think the guys in the kitchen heard you.”

  “Stop being so sarcastic,” Jennifer snapped, but she lowered her voice significantly. “This is important.”