Free Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch 1) by Morgana Best Page A

us laugh. “But we all belong. In a way, I think this town attracts people like us, people who don’t fit in other places, even if they don’t know it. People who are special.”
    “I don’t think I’m special at all,” I said with a shrug. “Weird, perhaps.”
    “Of course you are,” Ruprecht said with a twinkle in his eye. “Special, not weird, I mean.”
    After everyone finished their coffee, they all said their goodbyes, and I was left alone once more. I thought about what Ruprecht had said. It was such a small, throwaway line, but the way he had said it made me feel something. I didn’t know what.
    I could feel something coming, something big, and it would change me. I had never felt like that before, but now I felt something. I did feel special, for the first time. I hadn’t felt special before, but now, in the new town and the new house, I did.
    I went to bed after I cleaned up the burger wrappers left in the dining room. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling as I drifted off to sleep, finally closing my eyes. I thought about what Ruprecht had said, until my dreams overtook me. I dreamed of doing things, things I had never done before, things I hadn’t been able to do. In one dream, I told off my ex-boyfriend, loudly, with anger. In another, I cooked a beautiful meal. And in the next dream, I was alone in a room. An angry shadow loomed over me and wanted to hurt me, but I wouldn’t let it. I held up a hand and light burst forth from my fingertips, and there were no more shadows. The dreams went on, and I slept well.
     

 
     
    Chapter 11
     
    I opened my eyes, and it took me a moment to place where I was. Actually, I couldn’t quite place where I was. I was lying on a couch instead of my bed. There were two windows along one wall. The flowing white curtains hung loosely and blocked a good amount of the sunshine that was trying to squeeze through the window, leaving nothing but long rectangles of yellow which fell across the floor and the far wall.
    I was in my new home. I knew this, but I wasn’t in my bedroom. In fact, as I sat up on the dusty couch and looked around, I was pretty sure I had never seen the room in which I had awoken at all.
    That didn’t make sense. There were no real hidden rooms in houses, were there? That was just in movies, and cartoons where an animated dog solved mysteries with his human friends.
    Apart from the couch, the room was mostly empty, except for a white wicker stand near the door. On the stand was a large bowl, something decorative, ceramic and white with blue lines. I moved from the couch and went to the bowl, expecting to find something in it, but I was disappointed. It was empty.
    I reached for the rounded handle of the door next to the wicker stand, and for one wild moment I was worried that it would be locked. I would be stuck in this strange room, a room in my home that I was pretty sure hadn’t been there when I had gone to sleep. But no, the door handle turned easily, and I pulled open the door to reveal the familiar hallway.
    My heart was pounding and my forehead was sweaty. I stepped into the hall. Yes, it was indeed my hall. What a relief! My bedroom was down at the end of the hall, the bathroom with the old fashioned bathtub with clawed feet to the left of that. I turned and looked into the room in which I had awoken. It was still there. I had thought that maybe I would turn and see nothing but the wall, with the white and yellow wallpaper with the roses that ran along the top border.
    But no, there it was, the couch along the far wall, the windows, the sunlight, the bowl on the wicker stand. I reached forward and pulled the door shut with a slam.
    I didn’t know what to think; I only knew that I was frightened. I hurried down the hallway into my bedroom. To my utter relief, this room was normal. The bed, my clothes, my cell phone on the nightstand next to where I had laid my head, all looked normal.
    I went back to the room in which I had woken up,