Accidental Magic Read Free

something…anything…write what you know.…”
     
    What the hell did she know? She knew she was sick of teaching the Fighting Fairies and she knew she would never get married again. Well, she certainly didn’t want to write about high school, which left…
     
    “What the hell. At least it’ll get me writing.”
     
    She drew a deep breath and let her pencil begin moving across the blank page.
     
    Keep your Errol Flynns, Paul Newmans, Mel Gibsons
     
    all puppets—empty masquerades.
     
     
    She blinked and reread the first two lines. Not Shakespeare, but it did have a certain ring to it. Candice grinned and continued.
     
    Tom, Dick, and Harry, too
     
    the boy next door
     
    I want no more.
     
     
    Wasn’t that the truth! Her pencil, with a mind of its own, kept moving.
     
    You ask, what now?
     
    Well,
     
     
    And the self-propelled pencil stubbornly stopped. What now? What now? What now? She jumped as the clock in her study chimed seven times. Seven o’clock already? How long had she been on the phone with Godiva? Now she’d have to hurry to get in her five-mile jog, complete with graveyard detour, before the sun set. Crap! She absolutely didn’t want to be outside alone after dusk. Weird things had been going on around town lately—and it took some doing for anything to be classified as “weird” by aMysteria native. Candice put down her pencil and began pulling on her running shoes.
     
    The beat of her shoes against the blacktop road was a seductive lure. The sound beckoned to him. He’d heard it while he was still deep in the woods. It had called him away from the young thing he was still licking. She snarled after him, disgruntled and unsatisfied at his premature departure. He called a hasty apology and promised to meet her and her twin sister later. Right now he had to follow the beat of her running feet, even though it was unlike him to leave such a delicious tidbit. He prided himself on his ability to satisfy. Like a modern Don Juan, his lovers could count on him for romancing as well as consistent orgasming, but the steady slapping sound seemed to somehow have gotten into his body. It pulled him away from his lover with an incredibly powerful singularity in thought.
    You (beat) need (beat) her (beat). You (beat) can’t (beat) stay (beat) away (beat)
.
     
    The rhythmic lure thrummed with his pulse…his heartbeat…it pounded through his loins, making them feel hot and heavy. He scented the warm evening breeze. Woman…hot, sweaty, and ripe. And not far ahead of him. He wanted her with a single-minded intensity that he hadn’t felt for anything or anyone in years. Growling deep in his throat, he hurried to catch her.
     

     
    Jeesh, gross. Candice kept glancing nervously from side to side as she sprinted through the graveyard, totally annoyed that she’d promised Godiva she’d look for her broom. Not slowing down, she gritted her teeth and peered into the creepy shadows that flitted past the edge of her vision. Nope. No broom. Also no walking corpses, trolls, goblins, or fairies (whom she disliked with an intensity she knew was unreasonable—they hadn’t asked to be made the school mascot and she shouldn’t hold it against them, but she did). Nothing untoward at all. Just lots of spooky graves and silence. Thank God. Sometimes it was damn disconcerting to be normal in a town filled with abnormals. She shivered and increased her pace, wanting to leave the graveyard and (hopefully) anything that wasn’t 100 percent human behind her.
    Lengthening her stride, Candice thought that the burn in her muscles actually felt good. Godiva had been right about one thing—she did have a killer body. Sure, she’d like to lose a few pounds. Who wouldn’t? But thanks to her lifelong love of jogging, her legs were long and strong. She also still had excellent boobs. No, they weren’t as perky as they had been a few years ago, but they were full and womanly, without boulder-hard, anatomically