Magical Influence Book One Read Free

cupboard, and stacked
themselves back on the table, I didn't know, and I didn't want to
ask. Probably some ridiculous spell my grandmother had
attempted.
    “Unfortunately not, my dear, but my new
herbs arrive tomorrow, and I'm very excited about it. I imagine the
love potions I'll be able to make from these, and the special
healing tonics, will be quite fantastic.”
    I listened to my grandmother with half
an ear as I stacked the dishes and took them over to the
dishwasher, making sure to frown their way, as if that would
help.
    “You have signed your custom papers this
time, right?” I turned over my shoulder to face her.
    “Of course I have.”
    I nodded my head. At least one
thing was going right. Because I really didn't need a knock on the
door from the police ready to drag my grandmother away for
importing God knows what into the country. She did so love her
herbs, and I understood how important they were to magic, but in
modern times a lot of the substances she wanted for her spells
were ... to
put it mildly... absolutely freaking illegal. We’re not just
talking dried lizards that could bring in various bacteria and
viruses, we’re talking freaking narcotics. The kind of thing that
would get you in a great deal of trouble, and the kind of thing I
really didn't need to deal with on top of all of the other hassles
that were already assailing my life.
    Last time my grandmother had tried to
import her latest bunch of new herbs, I'd spent almost two hours
down at the customs office, trying to get them to understand that
she was old, and she didn't really understand it was illegal to
import sleeping pills en masse from South America.
    To my grandmother, they contained a
substance that was absolutely necessary for various nocturnal
enchantments; to the police it looked like she was trying to set up
her own illegal pharmacy.
    Pressing my fingers into my brow, I
soon finished stacking the dishwasher. Loading in the soap and
turning it on, I patted it several times as if in warning. I really
didn't need the dishes to unstack themselves and wind up on the
table again.
    “Patting it won't do any good, but a chain
would,” my grandmother commented. “I think there's a lock somewhere
out in the shed, and you remember that old ship’s anchor we dredged
up one day from the bay? You could put it on top, I'm sure it would
get the impression then,” Mary pointed through the window towards
the shed.
    Chaining up a dishwasher, locking it
up, and popping a ship’s anchor on top to weigh it down so it
didn't unstack itself was not something that ordinary people had to
deal with.
    Well welcome to the extraordinary.
Yes, it's full of magic, but I can't exactly claim it's full of
fun.
    “I'm going upstairs to have a shower.
Please do me a favor and hop in the downstairs bath?”
    Granny appeared to consider my
words for a moment, then she clearly got distracted as she watched
a flock of birds fly past the window above the kitchen
sink . “My oh
my, they're practicing weather magic. Rain is on the way,” she
brought up a hand and waved at them.
    Birds practicing weather magic. If we
weren’t both witches, such a statement would lead me to conclude
that my grandmother's slip into dementia had turned into a
landslide. But I understood, I understood perfectly.
    We looked at the world in a
different way. Magic made you do that. If you practiced it, it completely
changed your perspective. It wasn't just witches and wizards that
could do potions, spells, and enchantments; anybody and anything
that followed the correct steps practiced magic as well.
    The squirrel that hoarded nuts,
dug them into the ground, and left them there for the winter,
practiced a type of growth magic. The butterfly that flapped its
wings over the Amazon, was practicing a kind of chaos magic. The giant blue
whale that swum through the ocean, breaching to the surface only to
swim back down again was practicing a type of wave
magic.
    Everywhere, everything was