Free Sweet Nothings: A Karma Café Novella by Tawny Weber

her mother would be busy for a while.
    “Shouldn’t you be upstairs still?”
    Anja glanced over at the tiny fairy of a woman rolling pie dough across the marble counter and cringed. Not at the question, since she did make a point to take a break after the lunch crowd dispersed. But at the idea of being upstairs.
    Now.
    While Bianca was getting her courage on.
    Anja glanced at the wide moon-faced clock on the wall and grimaced.
    And on. And, probably on again.
    The tension that’d just eased swooped back in, knotting tight in Anja’s shoulders. She tried to breathe it away, but it wasn’t budging. Guilt was like that. It had a way of taking hold and gnawing at a person.
    “I thought I’d stick around and help today,” she told her grandmother truthfully.
    “Help, hmm?” Odette Karminski eyed her granddaughter, her rich dark eyes taking in everything before she tilted her head to one side so that her waist-length pewter braid swayed down her back. “You can help by preparing the fruit pie filling.”
    Right. Pie filling.
    Not only would it be a good use of her time, it’d give her a handy excuse in case her mother came in. Who would question a loving granddaughter helping her grandmamma bake pies? Anja smirked a little, proud of herself for falling into such a perfect excuse to avoid upstairs.
    “What’d you do?” Odette asked, her words coming in the same quiet, smooth rhythm as her rolling pin. So smooth and quiet that it took Anja a second to realize she was busted.
    “What makes you think I did something wrong?” she defended, giving her grandmother a wide-eyed look of injured innocence.
    Odette’s arched brow told her the attempt hadn’t worked any better now than any other time Anja had attempted it.
    “Who said you did anything wrong? I just asked what you did,” her grandmother murmured, sparing a telling look as she pinched piecrusts.
    Anja huffed.
    “I didn’t do anything uninvited, nor did I break any rules,” she defended with a jut of her chin. She was a careful witch, one raised to respect the craft and the weight of that power. She knew that her roots were steeped as much in the religion as the magic. And both had rules.
    Rules, she thought as she bit her lip, that she followed meticulously. And if she did tiptoe dangerously close to the line of them every once in a while, she never actually crossed it. Did she?
    “If you weren’t worried, you wouldn’t be down here washing peaches.” Odette looked up from her crusts, the wicked smile on her lips highlighting a face whose stunning beauty had settled into gentle age.
    “Maybe I just wanted to spend time with you,” Anja said, offering a teasing smile in return.
    “And maybe you just wanted to confide your worries and seek some words of wisdom.”
    “Have any for me?” Anja asked.
    “Darling, I’m wise in many areas. Why don’t you narrow it down a little.”
    Setting the colander full of washed fruit on the butcher block, Anja bit her lip. She knew she was on the right side of the line. And she didn’t mind smudging it now and then, but not if someone else—especially an innocent like Bianca—might pay the price, too.
    “If someone asks for a spell, and I’ve made clear that there is a price before casting it, why should I feel so conflicted? As if I should have talked her out of it instead of helping,” she asked quietly.
    “To cast or not is your choice, darling. But to act or not is your friend’s.”
    “I could have refused.”
    “And if you’d refused, perhaps the issue would fade away, like smoke. Or perhaps your friend would have asked elsewhere, or acted without the spell.”
    “I could have,” should have, “cast a shield spell instead.”
    “No.” Odette smacked the rolling pin down with enough strength in those slender arms to make the marble groan. “Free will is vital, Anja. Choices are often all we have.”
    “Then why does mother keep trying to mess with mine? First Paul, now Jacob in the