Free Sorcery and the Single Girl by Mindy Klasky

paycheck. I told him about finding a secret stash of witchcraft books in the basement—volumes that had been hidden away by a Washington witch named Hannah Osgood, decades before. I told him about finding a statue of a cat and reading a spell and awakening my familiar, Neko, entirely by accident. And I told him about how I had used my newfound witchcraft the year before, how I had poured my magical strength into crystals to help my grandmother recover from a nasty case of pneumonia.
    I even told him about my crazy mother and her abilities with runes, her New Age insanity that had brought her hurtling from the so-called Vortex in Sedona, back into my life, even though I’d believed for years that she had died in a car crash when I was a child. (There hadn’t been a car crash, I told him. Just a need to escape responsibility. I managed not to sound bitter when I said it. Or maybe that was the Baileys, coating the sounds of my words in my own ears.) I told him everything that I had learned about magic during the past ten months.
    He was a wonderful listener. He asked enough questions to keep me going, enough to show that he was truly interested, but he never tried to change the topic of conversation. He never tried to steer me away from the odder bits of my story, the stranger aspects of my powers—crystals and runes and the specific spells that I had worked.
    It felt wonderful to tell someone all of this, fantastic to share. I was grateful when Graeme caught the waiter’s attention, when he signaled that we’d both have more coffee. When we’d finished that brew, along with additional supporting liqueurs, I finally looked at my watch.
    “One o’clock!” I said. “I had no idea it was so late!”
    “The restaurant stays open till four.”
    “I have to go, though! I have to work tomorrow. I mean, today!”
    He smiled at my confusion, letting his grin grow into a laugh when I barely managed to fight off a yawn. “Yes, well. There is that.” He got the waiter’s attention and asked for the check before pulling out his money clip.
    “But wait!” I said, pleasantly surprised again by that clip, by the very Britishness of it. “I never got to hear about the strange things you’ve seen.”
    “They’ll keep. That is, if I may see you again?”
    “Yes!” I could hardly believe that he thought he had to ask.
    “Are you free Friday night?”
    “Of course,” I said, scarcely wasting a heartbeat to think that I should not admit to being available on a Friday, to having no pressing social plans.
    Then I remembered. I was busy on Friday. Teresa Alison Sidney. “Oh. No.” I hadn’t gone so far as to tell him about my meeting with the Coven, and now I was overcome with self-consciousness. “I’m sorry. I do have other plans. Plans that I can’t break.”
    He shrugged easily. “I’m afraid I have one of those business trips I mentioned coming up. I leave on Saturday for England, and I’ll be gone for the entire week.” I must have looked as crestfallen as I felt, because he grinned and said, “But perhaps the Saturday following?”
    “Won’t you have jet lag?”
    “We seasoned travelers learn to cope.”
    “I’d love to see you, then.”
    “I’ll ring you up that morning, and we can make plans.”
    And then he was helping me out of the booth. He was holding the door to the restaurant. He was stepping to the curb and raising a hand, summoning one of D.C.’s ubiquitous cabs. He was handing money to the driver, telling him to take me wherever I requested.
    And then, just before he handed me into the car, he pulled me close. He tangled his fingers in my hair and set his lips on mine. His kiss was soft, gentle, tingling with potential. Before I could say anything, before I could respond, before I could rethink my need to be at work in a few short hours, he pulled away, helped me into the cab, closed the door and let me drive away.
    I lay awake until dawn, watching my clock tick away seconds, minutes,