Read Online Bones of a Witch by Dana Donovan - Free Book Online

Tony was
fired up like a Cummins Diesel. I jumped his bones and dragged him
off into the bedroom before he knew what hit him. The next morning
we had cold Szechuan and hot coffee, but not before I fired up that
old diesel one more time.
    Vroom—Vroom. Oh yeah.
     
     
     
    Tony Marcella:
     
    You know, I really don’t understand what’s got
into Lilith. First, I think she’s feeling vulnerable about this
witch hunter thing, and so I go to her and offer her a little
comfort, but she pushes me away. Then when the guy calls and
threatens her life, she jumps my bones and wants to make love all
night. It’s got to be a witch thing, I don’t know. She keeps
telling me that I’m a witch, I should understand, but I don’t get
it…well, I mean I’m getting it, but I don’t comprehend.
    The following morning Lilith awoke acting like
the phone call from Lemas never happened. I found her in the
kitchen eating cold Szechuan with a cup of coffee. I told her we
needed to go downtown to the justice center and get with Carlos and
Dominic to figure out our next move, but all she wanted to do was
drive out to Gloucester to collect some damn sand for her silly
scrying sessions.
    “You’ve got two full jars of sand in your
closet,” I told her. “Why on earth do you need more?”
    “That’s river sand,” she argued. “You don’t
scry with river sand.”
    “Why not?”
    “You just don’t. If you want to scry accurately
you need beach sand, and everyone knows there’s none finer for
scrying than sand from Cape Ann, specifically Gloucester Beach. If
you took the witch’s coven seriously you would understand
that.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You know what it means.”
    “Is that a dig? Are you making fun of me
because I can’t do all the cool magic tricks that you
do?”
    “Tricks?” She marched up to me, inflating her
chest like a bellows. “You consider my witchcraft mere
trickery?”
    I backed away in measured steps. “No. I’m not
saying that, exactly.”
    “Then what are you saying—exactly?”
    “Nothing, it’s just that….”
    “What?”
    “You keep pushing me with this witchcraft
thing. I mean, come on, what do you want? It’s not like witchcraft
comes with a handbook.”
    “Yes it does.”
    “Huh?”
    “You have the grimoire. You can look up
anything you want regarding witchcraft.”
    I blinked a doltish response. “I thought you
lost that book when your house blew away.”
    “No.” She crossed the room and stopped at the
bookcase by the window. There on the bottom shelf, disguised as a
dictionary, was the grimoire. She took it out and brought it to me.
“See? It’s been here all the time.”
    I took the book and opened it up. It was all
there, every tattered yellowed page with their cryptic writings and
mysterious-looking symbols. Though virtually all the original
script was in some obscured pagan text, Lilith had made
interpretive notes and pasted them between the pages on sticky
notepaper. I glanced up at her and asked, “How did you get it
back?”
    She rolled her eyes as if the question had
embarrassed her. “The grimoire always finds its way back,” she
explained. “It’s endowed with a rebound spell.”
    Again my fluttering eyes and slacked jaw
conveyed to her my utter ignorance to such things. She snatched the
book away and returned it to the bookcase. “A rebound spell
provides for the object under its charm a way and means back to its
rightful owner in the event it is lost, stolen or otherwise
separated from its possessor.”
    Intrigued, I had to ask. “What if someone puts
that spell on you and then—”
    “Impossible.”
    “Why?”
    “A rebound spell applies only to possessions,
and since one cannot possess another, it means that it will not
work on people.”
    “Okay, fine.” I turned and headed for the
kitchen to fix myself a cup of coffee. “But I don’t understand, if
you wanted me to practice witchcraft so much, why haven’t you told
me about