Witch Twins Read Free Page B

ease.
    After an early dinner served at the long cherrywood table in Grandy’s dining room, the witches got down to business. They decided that, in order to save the Nature Preserve from developers, they would invoke a five-star spell. To Claire and Luna, the spell sounded complicated—all about hexing the topsoil so that it would be too rocky to break ground. There was lots of talk about soil components that was very boring for the twins.
    With so much excited conversation, the girls were forgotten. Claire nibbled a crescent cookie that tasted too perfect. Secretly, she preferred her father’s cooking, burns, spills, and all. Last weekend, he had made buckwheat pancakes with huckleberry syrup. And every time he flipped the pan, he said “ Voilà! ”
    Soon he would be making pancakes in Texas. Saying “ Voilà! ” for Fluffy and Houston, his new family. Claire’s eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away quickly, because the other witches could be nosy about why you were crying, and they always hoped it was about boys so they could get you to try out their latest love potions.
    After dinner, she and Luna cleared the table and, because they were at Grandy’s, they were allowed to perform a joint kitchen cleanup spell. Cleaning spells were almost as easy as repair spells. For this one, they held their hands crossed over the sink and chanted,
    Everything dirty
    And all that went stray —
    Be washed, be dried,
    And put away.
    Dishes floated through the air and stacked themselves in the dishwasher. Counters were wiped; leftovers wrapped up and slid into the refrigerator as if by invisible hands. But that still left the jobs of sweeping the floor, which is actually a very hard spell, and sorting out the recycling, a modern spell still being test run up in Maine.
    From the dining room came shouts and laughter.
    “I don’t think now is the time to bother Grandy with our Fluffy problem,” said Claire as she put away the broom and dustpan.
    “It’s only seven o’clock. Maybe in an hour,” agreed Luna.
    So they went upstairs to Grandy’s library and looked through her Big Book of Shadows. To get into the right mood, they dressed up in Grampy’s velvet smoking jackets and hats, which were kept on hooks on the back of the library door. The girls had never known their Grampy, who had been a nightclub singer and had disappeared mysteriously ten years ago. But Grandy and their mother missed him horribly.
    “I think we would have liked him,” said Luna. “At least, his clothes are very stylish.”
    When the clock struck eight, the coven was still downstairs, hooting and hollering, eating bonbons, and talking all about Old School. They were telling Miss Buzzard stories. Miss Buzzard had been their Old School Head. “Twice as charming as a werewolf, and half as attractive,” Grandy liked to say about her.
    The twins leaned over the banister and listened.
    “Not now,” said Claire.
    “Maybe in an hour,” agreed Luna.
    When the girls crept downstairs at nine o’clock, Grandy was banging on the piano while Demeter, Isis, and Mikki sang three-part harmony to their favorite old show tunes.
    “I’ve heard better voices from the seals at Seaworld!” Luna covered her ears.
    “Daggers and druids, somebody stop them!” Claire covered her ears, too. “Let’s check back in an hour.”
    But by ten o’ clock, the coven had gathered in the kitchen to play poker.
    “Aces are wild, and bedtime for twins!” Grandy yelled up the stairs.
    “She’s not even going to come up and tuck us in,” said Claire as they folded Grampy’s clothes and changed into their pajamas.
    “What did I tell you?” Luna scoffed: “This was a bad time for us to visit. It’s mid month, and we weren’t invited.”
    “We weren’t not invited,” answered Claire indignantly.
    “Yes, but we weren’t especially invited,” said Luna.
    “I don’t see the difference,” said Claire, who did, but hated to admit when she was wrong. “Anyway,