Free The Magician's Mistake (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 1) by Katherine Sparrow Page A

bouquets of dahlias that smelled like spring and fresh-cut grass.
    “Please. He takes you out on slickster dates to the Space Needle and the Opera. He brings you flowers and your favorite chocolates. He’s so into you, how could he not be? You’ve seen you, right? Immortal foxy witch Morgan le for reals Fay? Hello. He’s bananas for you. He—”
    “He knows our entire history, from start to finish.” I bit my lip. “He knows the reason why I put a forgetting spell on myself that made me forget his existence. I do not. Perhaps I did something so horrible that the idea of touching me disgusts him. Perhaps he did something so wretched that he knows I will flay him when I finally remember the full truth.” I glanced at my arm, where the forgetting spell, a pale blue band, leaked light. It was breaking slowly, and with it my own past was coming back to haunt me. Every day, multiple times a day, I considered breaking it completely so that I might know the entirety of my own damn history and whatever mystery lay between Merlin and me once and for all. But the spell breakage already gave me blackouts, headaches, and nose bleeds. I did not want to risk turning myself into a vegetable, or worse, a deranged and powerful witch.
    “Geez, Morgan. Who knows, you know? It could be all doom and gloom, for sure,” Lila said. “But it might not be. It could be all rom-commy and cute, maybe.” We turned toward a concrete staircase and took them slowly down. Even though it had been two months since Lila had been attacked, she was still weak.
    “Enough speculation,” I said. “Do you have any questions about your reading?”
    She shrugged. “I sort of, um, have been spending all my free time with Adam.”
    I sighed. “And how are things with the dog?” I wasn’t being entirely rude about Merlin’s companion and Lila’s current boyfriend: Adam was a werewolf.
    “Awesome. So hot. He made me promise not to tell, but he howls when he — uh oh.” Lila pointed at three women standing before the door to my Wiccan store.
    They had the look. I glared at them as they spotted me and grinned.
    Damnit, no matter how many confusion spells I set, some of them always seemed to find me.
    “Is that her?” a woman asked. She wore a Child of the Moon t-shirt.
    “Hey. Are you, you know?” The second woman wore all black, including lipstick and eye shadow.
    “That is her. Wow,” said the third. She wore an inane assortment of jewelry: ankh earring, a labrys ring, and a pentagram necklace. She held up her phone and took my picture. The other two pulled out their cameras and did the same.
    “No,” I said.
    “Now for a picture of us all together?” the one in black said. “Our friends back home won’t believe that we actually met Morgan le Fay, and also do you have any magic for us?”
    The Child of the Moon nodded vigorously. “Or maybe some wise advice you could give to some young witches just starting? Wow, I can’t believe we are actually meeting you.”
    “Yeah,” said the third. “You’re way more wicked looking in person. We had so much fun figuring out where you were — good job with all the confusing clues and misdirection. Such a fun witch hunt.”
    A witch hunt, she said, as though she had no knowledge of the terrible history those words contained, and yet she claimed herself a witch.
    They came at me and flanked Lila and I, holding up their phones.
    “Smile.”
    I did not. I grabbed each of their phones, plucked a spelled penny from my pocket, and uttered, “Dileu.”
    The three phones shattered.
    “What the hell?” one of them said.
    “You asked me for magic, and so I gave you a breaking spell. And wise advice? If you tell any of your friends back home that you found me and that I exist, if you so much as utter my name anywhere that you go, I will send my hellhounds after you and they will destroy everything that you love before attacking you and dragging you down to the lowest level of Hades.”
    I leveled my