Page 33 of Practically Magic

Colton wears lifts?

“Well, thank you for all this. We should really be going.” I grab Laney’s arm and head toward the door. I need to get home and get rid of these ghosts before Colton and his dad decide to get out of town to somewhere much less haunted.

The younger ghost waves. “You’re welcome to return later. We have many more embarrassing stories about our heir. Why, the other morning, he spent nearly an hour crafting his hair—”

I pull the door closed behind us. On the street, I see the strange pale women from earlier. They huddle close together and are whispering. Something is definitely going on.

“Now what?” Laney asks. “You’ve got to find Colton and talk to him about the party before it’s too late. We definitely need that ritual done, like, yesterday.”

“I know.” I pull a small slip of paper out of my pocket and the matches I took this morning from the house. I look at the words I’ve written as an intention. Let me host Colton’s party. I light the match and let the words burn.

The wind whistles through the trees and I look around, hoping to see some sign the spell worked. Like Colton appearing, but there’s nothing. I sigh.

Then my phone begins to buzz. It’s not Colton. “It’s my aunts.” I feel slightly ill. If they’re calling from the ship, this is bad. They know I used magic. They know about the ghosts. And possible vampires. I let it ring. Seconds later, a voicemail appears on my phone. I press Play.

“Kat, is something going on that we should know about?” Aunt Viv’s voice is clear.

“Tell her we know!” Aunt Diane whispers.

Aunt Viv shushes her. “Did you use magic to get us these tickets? Because this boat isn’t going to the Bahamas. It’s headed to Bermuda. We know something is wrong. And they say we have phone service now, but once we reach the triangle, they expect—” Click.

I need to get the family spell book and fix this.

13

Mystic Hollow Community Page

New post from Anonymous: Is it me or are the tourists getting weirder? What’s with the three women wandering around town asking about the grave site of the Headless Horseman?

When I get home, I hear Harry screaming.

As mad as I am at her, my sisterly reflex kicks in. “Harry!” I run toward the sound of her voice and find her in the dining room standing in front of a wall with a huge fissure. Harry’s got a broken bottle of glue in her hand and is watching wallpaper all around the room peel off the walls.

“What did you do?” I cry, rushing over to a wall and trying to stop the damage. My mom loves this wallpaper. The burgundy floral design is over a hundred years old, and now it’s disintegrating in front of our eyes, peeling like an apple.

“I did a mending spell,” Harry says, dropping to the floor to try to gather all the wallpaper slivers. “I do them all the time! It’s what I use on my hair, but something is wrong. Instead of fixing the walls, it’s destroying them even more. What are we going to do? This spell always works!” She sounds really upset, and I’m about to make her more so.

“You use it on your hair, and it always works?” I ask, biting back a laugh. Her normally sleek hair is a big ball of frizz, the edges fried. She has split ends aplenty.

Harry grabs her head and starts patting it. “What? No! Is it a mess?” She jumps up, dropping the wallpaper pieces and rushing to the dining room mirror. She screams even louder. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“I don’t know,” I ask, fascinated by this turn of events. The perfect Harriet Hadley has bad hair! My heart practically sings for a moment, and I can hear my father tsking me from hundreds of miles away (“You’re sisters! You should support each other.”) “Did you do a spell?” I ask innocently. Of course she did. She’s done spells on her hair for years and never revealed what they were.

Harry ignores me and shrieks again in frustration. “Why is the enchantment failing?”

“Do you want me to try your enchantment to try to fix your hair?” I offer, tucking a strand of my healthy red hair behind my ear.

Harry’s head whips around so fast, I think it’s spinning. “You can’t fix this. You can barely handle your own spells.” Her expression falters. “No. Kat. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Maybe,” I cut her off, my anger returning, “you’re the one who can’t handle your spells. Look what’s happened to the dining room!” I say, looking around at the fallen wallpaper. “And the cracks in the walls! You did something to cause this!” The house, if I’m not imagining it, seems to settle with a heavy creak.

“Me?” Her eyes narrow. “How do you know this isn’t because you did a spell wrong! Did you try to resend your party evite? Maybe that’s what caused the house to go haywire.”

She marches out of the dining room into the hall. I follow her. Then I hear a sniff and look up. Great-Aunt Aida’s portrait expression has changed again. Now it looks like she’s crying.

“Well, thanks to you, Colton is now the one having a party!”

“Good!” Harry yells. “We don’t need people coming over here. We’ve got enough problems right now.”