Free Murder Most Witchy (Wendy Lightower Mystery) by Emily Rylands Page B

niece, perhaps even better than she knew herself.
    “Will she help?” the tall young man that Gerry had introduced the day before as Ian stepped out from the kitchen where he had been enjoying his own breakfast along with a spot of eavesdropping.
    Gerry chuckled. “She already has.”
    “But what happens next?” Ian, though he had only known Gerry Lightower short time, was worried about the older man. He wasn't just tired, and Ian knew how important it was to him to see Wendy become part of the business again. He knew how far Gerry would go to see that happen.
    “My dear man,” Gerry said, slowly pulling his bulk out of the chair, “before today, she hadn't done magic in a very, very long time. She won't be able to resist the pull to do it again.”
    “What will that accomplish? She can still do magic and be a librarian, can't she?”
    “No,” Gerry shook his head, and Ian thought he detected a note of regret, “she can't. And she knows that better than anyone. ”
     

Five
     
    Wendy drove home without realizing what she was doing. It was with surprise that she looked up to find that she had parked outside her little cottage because she had no recollection of how she had arrived there. Her keys jingled in her hands as she walked up the pathway and let herself into the safety of her own home.
    The door swung open to reveal a pair of unblinking yellow eyes staring directly at her.
    “So you're back. Forgiven me yet?” she asked, recalling his presence at her spell the night before. Without Charlie's bulk to pull her back to reality, she wasn't certain the spell would have succeeded, but that was supposed to be his job. Since the day she'd found him, he had seemed more lazy than helpful, even before she gave up magic, but she had to admit that he had saved her last night.
    Charlie, with the deliberation that only cats can achieve, turned his back on her and stalked away. On his way out, he stopped at the locked closet and gave it a nudge with his head. Without another backward glance, he sauntered away, off to that unknown place that cats disappear to when they don't want to be found.
    Wendy shouted at his retreating form, “I won't be pressured! Especially not by my own familiar!”
    A twitch of the tail was the only response from Charlie as though he couldn’t be bothered with irrational human outbursts.
    “Great,” Wendy mumbled to herself as she dropped her bag on the table by the door. “I am now yelling at my cat. Aren't witches supposed to be able to control their familiars? And now I'm talking to myself,” she added. “Very healthy.”
    After only a quick glance at the closet door, Wendy went directly into her bedroom. Once there, she pulled down an old, battered photo album from the shelves along the wall. The cover, which had once been leather, was shiny and cracked from excessive handling and the corners of the pages were creased and lifted in both directions. When she sat on the bed with the album on her lap, it fell open on its own to a page near the middle with a photograph of a smiling young woman in the center.
    She had Wendy's golden brown eyes and her blond hair, only this woman's fell freely around her shoulders in soft waves of pure sunshine. The image was brought to life by her shy smile and laughing eyes. Whenever Wendy looked at it, she imagined she could smell the scent of jasmine on the air. Her mother had always worn jasmine perfume.
    Usually this particular image conjured a combination of sadness and anger inside her. Sadness that her mother was gone and anger at how Wendy had lost her. Through magic.
    If it hadn't been for Lightower Investigations, her mother would still be alive today.
    And yet, when she looked at the picture that day, she felt something else. The sadness was still there, of course, but the anger had been replaced by a different sensation entirely.
    Understanding.
    For years after her mother's death, she couldn't reconcile why her mother would choose such a