Warning! Spells cannot be used to enslave another being! To hold someone against their will is wrong! If you are guilty of using one of these powerful spells to entice love that is not meant to be, the spell will only be temporary, and may cause more heartache than good!
She lifted her head, blinked down at the page. How in the hell had she missed that warning? It seemed pretty important, and really, having spent the last several weeks honing her spell-casting abilities, one would think she might have noticed an important disclaimer like that. No wonder Flynn hadn’t called!
She had used her goddess powers to entice someone who didn’t want to be enticed, and in return, she’d gotten majorly worked up over a kiss that was going nowhere. “How stupid am I?” she demanded of herself, and slapped the spell book shut, slammed it down on the hutch, and glared at it, furious.
Oh yeah, she was furious, all right. Furious that she’d made a fool of herself over some stranger, had believed it was kismet, had even made the fatal mistake of mentioning it to her sisters. And she was furious for being so na?ve and stupid and trusting of a woman she knew better than to trust! She was furious with Dagne, too, and held her totally responsible for this mess, because she was the one who had forced Rachel into this ridiculous witchcraft business to begin with. But then again, who was the idiot who had been dumb enough to believe anything Dagne Delaney had to say, and worse, had actually cast all those ridiculous spells?
“Her name is Rachel,” she said disgustedly. “And don’t forget the spells with the actual dancing, you dolt. I am so through with this crap,” she said angrily, and turned around to find a box to put all the witchcraft junk in, because that was definitely the one box she would toss out to the street—
But her sleeve caught the hutch and the spell book and sent it flying across the dining room. It sailed wide of the hutch and landed, spine up, pages down, beneath the arch that separated the dining room from the living room.
Only . . . the funny thing was, Rachel didn’t remember hitting it, exactly. In fact, she was pretty certain she hadn’t touched the book. A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she slowly turned and looked at the hutch. Nothing else was disturbed. She glanced at the spell book again, wondered how it had defied physics to land spine up again, its pages bunched and folded beneath the heavy cardboard covers.
“This isn’t creepy,” she scoffed aloud, hugging herself. “Because this stuff isn’t real. It’s bullshit, like everything else Dagne does.”
So why, then, did she hear a tiny little voice in her head that sounded exactly like Dagne telling her if she believed, it was real?
“No. This is so ridiculous.” She took a hesitant step toward the spell book. And another. Was she imagining things, or had it grown unusually cold in here? And another step, and another, until she was suddenly running in little-girl steps to the book, which she snatched up quickly and held to her chest as she ran into the living room and threw herself on the couch, burying her face in the pillows.
But after a moment, when she realized she really couldn’t breathe, she slowly pushed herself up, peeled the spell book from her chest, and looked down at the pages to where it had fallen open. It was a spell of personal growth and prosperity.
Physical and emotional prosperity will come when you are ready to receive it. To prepare yourself, you will need . . .
Now that was a classic example of serendipity if ever she’d seen one, and she was not so practical as to turn her back on it. So Rachel pushed herself up, shoved her hair behind her ears, and began to read how to prepare herself for physical and emotional prosperity.
Chapter Sixteen
The address for the Saturday soiree was near Blackstone Avenue, a swank area of town full of mansions and old money and old people with enough history in town to throw massive parties where hundreds might attend. This one was set in an old colonial mansion, which was painted yellow and sat back from the street on a grassy hill behind a tall wrought iron fence.
Rachel motored up the long, circular drive, and was immediately met out front of the large portico by a man dressed in an old-style footman’s uniform, complete with white-haired wig and queue. “Yes?” he asked tersely when Rachel rolled down her window.
“I’m supposed to meet the caterer.”
“The caterer was told to have all staff park on the street,” he said, pointing with his big, white, cartoonish gloved hands toward the gate. “Once you’ve done so, you may find your crew just up the drive there,” he said, and pointed toward the service drive.