Always a Witch Read Free

"All right. And I have a bottle I've been saving for just such an occasion."
    "What occasion?" I mutter, but no one answers.
    Gabriel kisses my cheek. "Later," he says against my ear, and leads Uncle Morris from the room.
    My mother sorts silverware in silence for a few seconds. "I didn't mean that," she says stiffly after a moment.
    I'm not sure what she's referring to, but I nod. "Okay."
    "I just thought you would be happy ... living here in Hedgerow with us ... after school finishes."
    "Come on, Mom. It's not like I'm the first person to go to college in this family." Then I pause. "Am I?"
    "No. Of course not. It's just that I thought you would want to—" She blinks rapidly and presses the back of one hand to her eyes.
    Wow. Planning this wedding must really be getting to her. I jerk open the refrigerator again and stare at the rows of cakes. "I don't know what I want, Mom. Half the time I forget that I even have a Talent and I think I'm just ... ordinary, and then the rest of the time I walk around school remembering I have this big secret. I just ... need to decide..."
    "Decide what?" a deep voice says from the doorway. My mother and I both turn to find my grandmother leaning against the wall. Her skin gleams almost translucent under the kitchen light, and the bones in her face seem to stand out sharper than ever. She's been ill for several months now and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.
    "Mother," my mother says immediately. "You should be resting. Let me—"
    My grandmother holds up one hand and my mother falls silent. Her dark eyes find mine and then some expression flickers across her face. Sadness? Unease? I can't tell. "Decide what, Tamsin?" she asks again, her voice clear and strong as ever despite her appearance.
    Decide who I really am.
    But I can't say that out loud, so I gaze at my grandmother helplessly. Her Talent is to read minds even though she apparently hasn't tried this on me for years, ever since she learned what my Talent was. But somehow she knows exactly what I'm not saying because she closes one eye in her trademark wink and says softly, "Ah."

Two
    " DOES THAT LOOK LIKE THE dress I put on hold?" Rowena asks the room out loud as I step across the threshold, holding the rose-colored dress that Agatha had pronounced so perfect for Rowena's wedding. "When I asked you to show me the dress that you're wearing for my wedding, I meant the dress that I picked out, the one on hold for you at Eidon. The one I instructed you to get. This one is rose colored. Rose. The one I picked out was silver."
    "Gray," I mutter.
    Rowena's eyes narrow and she steps off the pedestal that she's been standing on. Kicking her voluminous skirts aside, she marches toward me. "What?"
    I squirm a little and flap one sleeve through the air. "Can't I just wear this one? I mean, no one is going to be looking at me anyway," I say, striving to appeal to her vanity.
    "No, you cannot just wear this one," she says, her lip curling up as she glances at the wilted dress in my arms. "Where did you even get that thing? "
    I probably shouldn't mention that I got it at a thrift store. Rowena loathes thrift stores, and she's already regarding the dress as if it's infested with fleas. "And what happened to the dress I sent you to get?"
    "I didn't buy it," I say in a small voice, even though that should be completely obvious to her by now.
    "What do you mean you didn't buy it? " Rowena asks, holding her arms out. Aunt Linnie makes a clucking noise, maybe because of all the pins she has clamped between her lips, and exchanges a look with my white-faced mother, who hovers in the background.
    I shift from one foot to the other. "Um..."
    "I asked you to do one simple thing for me, Tamsin. One simple thing, and you couldn't do it, could you?" My sister's voice is rising. "This is my wedding. My wedding. My special day. And you had to mess it up for me. Because you're Tamsin Greene and you think you're above all the rules now."
    "That's