Free Back Door Magic by Phaedra Weldon Page A

seven-day candles."
    Brenda turned at the sound of her mother
behind her, and then she turned back to the stairwell and shined
the light back down again.
    The heels of her mother's boots clacked
noisily behind her as Jackie neared. "What're you doing? You see
something down there? Rats?"
    Brenda blinked. She thought she'd seen a man
in trouble.
    A man with beautiful blue eyes.
    Her mother sighed. "Never could figure out
why that door was there. Never made sense." She turned. "Let's get
some light in here. I think there are matches behind the cash
register."
    Brenda barely noticed her mother's retreat,
the clacking of the heels, the faint odor of White Shoulders
perfume drifting about the air like an errant ghost. Her mind, her
flashlight's beam, and her gaze focused again on the empty
stairwell. Five steps down. To a door that went—no where.
    She knew that. But Granny Pollsocks never
let her get too close to it—and even through these past six months
alone Brenda hadn't bothered to go down the stairs. Too dingy. Too
grungy.
    Too…weird.
    With a frown she turned and looked at the
register counter. Her mother had found the matches and had several
different candles lit—one of them warming candle of
red-and-orange-swirled wax. "Why did Granny keep that door?" Brenda
moved to the register, switched off the flashlight, and set it and
up on the table beside a frog-kissing stone, guaranteed to turn
black the moment a toad—disguised as a gorgeous man or
woman—delivered their pick-up line.
    Brenda hated them. They always stayed black
for her.
    Jackie lifted her gaze from the warming
candle and shrugged. Her red hair was streaked with white—mostly by
choice. She wore her usual boot-cut pants and tailored,
thigh-length coat jacket. And, as she'd been doing for several days
now, clutched at her left side. "For years I thought it was the
door to the basement. So I went down there and opened it."
    "You saw the wall."
    She nodded. "Brick wall. Granny laughed at
me." Jackie made a face as if she smelled something bad. "Come to
think of it, she called it her back door."
    Brenda glanced to her left at the front
glass with the words Back Door Magic painted backward on the
inside. "You mean like her shop name?"
    But her mother didn't know, and didn't care.
"Nonsense. All of this place. Now—you got those papers signed? You
know I have to give you marks for trying to keep this place afloat,
Brennie. But to think you could do magic like Granny?" She gave a
snort. "Disappointing. You just don't have it, girl. Neither did I.
I'm afraid the magic died with Granny."
    With lowered shoulders, Brenda shook her
head. "She didn't want to believe the words her mother spoke—and
yet each letter, each syllable burned a mark into her skin and dug
deeper into her subconscious, weakening her own belief that
maybe—just maybe—she was a magical creature after all. "No—I have
till Friday, Mom. And I'd rather just hang on to things until
then."
    "You're just prolonging the inevitable,
Brenda." Jackie's hands rested on her hips, and the flickering
candles lined up along the counter beside the register cast shadows
that only enhanced the no-nonsense look on her face. "The shop's
going ot be sold. And then you can go back to college. You're not
too old to be taught some sort of trade or skill. We might even
make enough money to where you won't have to work—just find a rich
man and marry him."
    That didn't feel right. It
never felt right when her mom mentioned selling the shop. But
Brenda wasn't sure if it was the selling part, or the money part.
She suspected if she jumped the broomstick now and sold before the
deadline that she's somehow be missing— something .
    But what?
    She glanced back at the door. Where had that
man gone? And had she really seen him?
    "Well, I'm off, then. Got a date tonight—a
nice Irish man. Sexy accent. Dark hair and blue eyes." She moved
from behind the counter, and Brenda was sure if the register
actually had money in