Free A Hint of Magic by Alaine Allister Page A

cover somewhere.  Then he apparently realized that it was no use, as she had already called him by name.
    “I’m not Zack!” he called back in a high-pitched voice that sounded different than his own.
    Clarissa rolled her eyes.  Did he really think that would fool her?  How stupid was he?
    She took a step forward.  “I know it’s you, Zack.” 
    He clumsily lumbered into the woods that surrounded Clarissa’s quaint, cottage-like house.  Then he stood behind a tree.  He apparently thought he was a lot thinner than he actually was, because the tree did very little to conceal his rotund frame. 
    It would have been comical had Clarissa not been so angry.  But she was livid.
    She wasn’t afraid of Zack Bishop.
    She charged toward him, broom in hand. 
    That was when she felt something weird.  The broom felt funny in her grasp, almost as though it was trying to get away and float upwards.  It was a strange sensation that was difficult to explain.  It was almost as though there was a giant magnet in the sky that was trying to pull the broom toward it.
    Clarissa stopped dead in her tracks.  She was vaguely aware of Zack not-so-quietly running away, but her attention was now focused on the broom.  She stared at it in disbelief, wondering how an inanimate object could possibly come to life.
    Then again, Clarissa had made small objects levitate on occasion.  She was still working on summoning sweet treats with her mind – it took a lot of concentration to keep them from falling.  But she was getting there.  If that could happen, then it wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility that a broom could come to life, right?
    The broom was really trying to pull away from her now.  It was as though it was determined to fly up to the moon.  The whole thing was pretty spooky.  Clarissa let go of the broom, fully expecting it to shoot straight up into the air.
    Instead it fell to the ground, a slave to gravity after all.
    “Am I going crazy?” Clarissa asked herself.  “Hmm, well I am talking to myself,” she reasoned.  That probably wasn’t a good sign.  She was even answering herself.  That definitely wasn’t a good sign!
    She left the broom where it was.  Then she hurried back to the house, pausing only momentarily to shake her head at the mess Zack had made.  She knew what she would be doing in the morning:  scraping eggs off the side of her house.
    Suddenly a thought occurred to Clarissa. 
    She raced inside and grabbed her potion book. 
    It was essentially a recipe book for witches, gifted to her by her aunt.  The downside was that Clarissa didn’t cook and wasn’t particularly good at following instructions.  But she had messed around with the particular spell she had in mind before.  She knew it wasn’t too hard.
    She quickly mixed up the ingredients she needed – salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander.  She made a huge batch.  Then she grabbed a fistful and threw it at the clock in her kitchen.  She grabbed another fistful and did the same thing.  She continued doing it until she ran out of the fragrant concoction. 
    To an outsider, she must have looked completely crazy.  There she was throwing spices at the wall!  Her kitchen floor was a mess and she seemed like she had totally lost it.  But there was a good explanation for her behavior.
    Each fistful of the “potion” that was thrown at the clock turned it back sixty seconds.  Clarissa had effectively managed to turn time back.  She was proud of herself for remembering the spell. With any luck it meant she wouldn’t need to clean splattered egg off the side of her house in the morning.  She just hoped she had measured the proportions correctly.
    She walked outside to check and was pleased to find her house devoid of egg.
    Zack drove up in his pickup truck while she was out there, his headlights off.
    He got out, eggs in one hand and an open beer in the other.
    Clarissa turned on her porch light and stared him