Free Sweet Nothings: A Karma Café Novella by Tawny Weber Page A

apartment across from mine. Last month, she tried to sign me up for an online dating program,” Anja said, her teeth tight at the memory. “If one of our most basic tenets is free will, why is she always messing with mine?”
    “Because she’s your mother, darling. And she’s afraid,” Odette said simply.
    Anja frowned in confusion.
    The words, quiet and commonplace, held all the more power because Natalia was the last woman to seem fearful. Within months of arriving in America, Anja’s father had walked out on his wife and infant daughter. He’d left behind five hundred dollars, Natalia—whose command of English included just about that many words—and Anja with a lifetime of trust issues with men.
    “Afraid, why?”
    “She thinks our power isn’t as strong as it was in the old country. Time, distance, belief. Or perhaps all those silly gadgets that suck up so much energy. Whatever the reason, your mother worries that we are weakening.” Odette shrugged, the move both fatalistic and dismissive.
    Probably because she’d spent forty-five of her sixty-three years struggling in Post Prussian Germany and could call up the wind, make fire dance from her fingertips and cooked like an angel. Gramma had it going on.
    And, of course, Odette had already fulfilled her Karmanski destiny. She was a powerful witch who’d given birth to a daughter, ensuring the continuation of the family legacy.
    “What’s to be scared of? Momma is a gifted seer, and she’s met her family obligation,” Anja muttered, lifting both hands to indicate herself, right there. Obligation fulfilled.
    “Our line is old, Anja. We, all of us, have responsibilities. To our heritage. To our power. You know that.”
    “Do you really believe our power is diminishing?” Anja asked quietly. She couldn’t imagine life without magic. But neither could she imagine being blackmailed into marrying a stranger.
    “Your mother believes,” Odette said with a shrug, as usual standing firmly on neutral ground.
    Pressure, generations of it, pressed down on Anja’s shoulders with knobby fingers. It wasn’t that Anja wanted to let her mother down. It was more that she didn’t really buy into the whole fading magic idea.
    The problem was, her mother did.
    “Fine. I understand her worries,” Anja muttered, starting to slice fruit to fill her grandmother’s crusts. Peaches, strawberries and plums made a pretty medley of glistening sweetness. A dollop of apricot preserves stirred in and a quick wish for a taste of sunshine, and you had Odette’s famous fruit pie. “Even so, she knows as well as I do the rules against manipulation. Even if it is her own daughter.”
    “Ah, but has she manipulated anything? Or has she simply made opportunities available?” Odette asked cleverly. “It isn’t as if she whipped up a magical potion and fed it to you. Or to any of those nice men.”
    Anja cringed.
    “Giving someone courage to face what they want isn’t averting free will, though,” Anja argued, irritated to hear the justification in her tone.
    “You honor your heritage, Anja. You know the rules, black and white. But you haven’t yet learned the subtleties of gray.”
    There was a gentle chiding in Odette’s arched brow, more effective on Anja than hours of Natalia’s lectures.
    Especially when that simple look was quickly followed by Odette turning her back on her granddaughter to cross to the stove.
    “Gray isn’t black,” Anja said with a stubborn jut of her chin, stirring the preserves into the fruit with enough aggression to send a few peach slices across the table. Grinding her teeth and glad her grandmother wasn’t looking, she scooped the pieces into the trash. “It might not be pure, but it’s not manipulation. It’s not a removal of choice.”
    “Would you want your mother giving you a magical push to find your own true love? You get to choose him, of course,” Odette offered, her tone absent as she checked the kettle of bean and barley