So as for the guy, it’s really nothing. I was just filling up the white space on the screen so I wouldn’t be accused of not giving enough info. Really, he’s not that spectacular or anything, and I’m not sure I’m interested. It’s too much trouble at this point, anyway. I mean, I have to get a job and finish school. I really don’t have time for a relationship right now. Speaking of jobs, I have to go. TTFN . . . Rachel
P.S. And it’s WHITE magic, although I am sure I will have to explain that, too. :)
When she finished answering nosey e-mails from her sisters, Rachel went to bed, where she lay, not sleeping, but staring at the ceiling for a long time.
The next day, she tackled the clutter of her house. Sort of. She was actually looking for the little gift book on tantric sex someone had given her so she could send it to the maniacs in Texas, but she couldn’t find it, which forced her to dig through the clutter and tidy up.
It was easy for her house to become cluttered; it was very small for one thing, and she had a bit of a pack-rat habit. There were lots of things she recognized she’d kept too long, but could not bring herself to throw away— like the ferns and ivies and herbal baskets that hung in several corners of her house. Most of them had lived past their prime, but Rachel refused to give up on living things and would diligently nurse them back to life after long winters. She did, however, rearrange them.
And there were the many hand-woven, thick wool rugs scattered about the wood floors, all from her weaving classes, and most of them projects abandoned by her less-industrious students that she had finished. There were so many of them that they almost formed a carpet.
She had a lot of furniture (and wind chimes), too, the result of one overly enthusiastic spending spree in search of feng shui. In her one living area were two overstuffed couches, an armchair, and a huge ottoman. There was also a large wood frame on which was her latest needlework project—a copy of a fourteenth-century French tapestry. Reduced in size, naturally. Which accounted for the sheets of paper and the calculator nearby as she figured proportions from the original.
And of course, on every conceivable surface, there were books. Stacks and stacks of them, some read, some intended to be read. School books, reference materials, old dusty-paged tomes of medieval history and ancient languages. There were stacks of fiction books, too, which Rachel knew she would never get around to reading as much as she would like to, but was loath to give away, just in case something catastrophic happened, like she had a horrible accident that required an extensive period of recuperation during which she’d be confined to bed and could do nothing but read. God forbid she should come up short on books if that happened. So she just kept moving the stacks around, dusting over them and around them and adding to them every time she came within a five-mile radius of anyplace that sold books.
There were also the odds and ends that kept ending up in her house. Some were her own doing—every time she went to England, she’d come back with a bagful of trinkets, most of which she could never remember why she bought.
She found four hand-painted teacups and saucers, which she was certain had come from Myron, but couldn’t remember having received from him. And now, on the dining room hutch her mother had insisted she have, a new collection of little thick-glassed bottles and bowls, all thanks to her dabbling in Dagne’s witchcraft.
That was where she found the book on tantric sex for some odd reason, and as it was small enough to lose again, she stuck it in her bag so she wouldn’t forget to mail it. That was also where she found her horoscope chart, too, and checked to see if Mars was still in retrograde or what the hell the problem was. Her study of the chart, however, was not illuminating. Go figure.
And as she tossed that onto a new stack, she noticed the spell book Dagne had brought into her life. Wicked Good: A Witch’s Guide to Effective Spells for Women.
Rachel picked it up, intending to put it away, but the heavy book somehow slipped between her fingers and fell onto the hardwood floor with a thud. She picked it up by the spine, and the book started to slip again, so she caught it underneath with her other arm . . . and noticed that it had fallen on the page of Seduction Spells.
“Isn’t that rich,” she said with a frown, not happy at all to be reminded of Flynn, or He Who Had Not Called. She moved to close the book and put it away, but her eye caught tiny print on the bottom of a table of contents that guided the reader to enchanting spells of seduction and everlasting love. “That’s weird,” she muttered. It was something she had not heretofore noticed, and she’d damn sure looked at the page enough times. The print was so tiny and the daylight was fading so fast that Rachel had to lift the book to her face and squint to read it.