Read Online Don't Expect Magic by Kathy McCullough - Free Book Online

balconies strung with twinkling lights.
    “I’ll give you a wish. Turn my boots into glass slippers.”
    “It doesn’t work that way, Delaney. It can’t be a random demand. It has to be a genuine internal desire.”
    We wind around outdoor vendors selling jewelry made from crystals, lotion scented with jasmine—like I need any more of
that
scent clogging up my brain—and flip-flops in every color in the universe. It’s the street of endless shopping. Everything you didn’t know you wanted, nothing you need.
    Hank pauses in front of a fountain where curved arcs of water sway to some old jazz song. I wish I’d brought my iPod with me. At least I’d have
some
connection to reality.
    “Get me my iPod from the house,” I say.
    “I
told
you—”
    “It’s a genuine wish! I just wished it. I
swear.
”
    Hank ignores me and studies a little boy standing a few feet away, holding a cup of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream and pouting. “Aha,” Hank murmurs. He pulls out his pen.
    “They were out of plain vanilla, sweetie,” the boy’s mother says. “Just eat around the chocolate.”
    “But I don’t
want
to.” The boy’s voice is choked with despair at the grand unfairness of life. Welcome to the club, kid.
    Then, suddenly, the boy’s misery vanishes, replaced by elation. “Mommy!” He holds up the cup and I can see that the fudge ribbons are gone. It’s all vanilla.
    Hank turns to me, half smug, half expectant.
    Is he kidding? “You’re telling me
you
did that?” Impossible. The ice cream scoop shifted to hide the chocolate, that’s all. I watch the boy as he follows his mother around to the other side of the fountain and wait for him to discover the awful truth, but the little vanilla lover keeps happily eating, as if the chocolate really did disappear.
    If …
    There can’t be any “if,” because “if” suggests that it’s possible.
    “Enough time has passed for your belief system to acclimate, Delaney. It’s only your intellect that’s resisting.”
    “Doesn’t ‘intellect’ mean the
smart
part of my brain?”
    Hank repeats his sigh from the car. “Fine. If you’re going to be that way.”
    He proceeds to “show me,” again and again. And again. Leading me in and out of stores, waving his pen, granting more wishes. A size 10 skirt appears on a rack where there had only been size 2s, and the size 10 shopper who had been combing through them smiles in delight. A woman is told by a clerk that the handbag she holds doesn’t come in green, only to have it turn to a bright lemon-lime while neither is looking. A man drops his camera in the fountain, and it reappears in his hand. A toddler flings a yellow ball from his stroller, and it’s back in his lap before his parents notice, before the toddler has a chance to let out a cry. Left and right, things are fixed, problems solved. In the blink of an eye.
    I watch these little miracles happen, and with each one, some tiny piece of the logical part of my thinking is chipped away. I can’t believe
it
, but I’m starting to believe him.
    The pen stays the pen, though, through it all. “Why isn’t the pen doing that glowy thing?”
    “That doesn’t happen with small wishes, only with the big ones. The ones for your clients.” He actually calls them clients. I don’t remember
that
from the fairy tale.
    “Let me see.” I take the pen and study it. I shake it. “How does it work?”
    “It’s not the pen. You can use any pointed object. That’s how you focus your intention and direct the energy. With small wishes, it’s only directed one way, from you to the recipient. But with your clients, there’s a connection between you, like an electrical current. You’re linked to their wishes. The energy this creates charges the pen, or whatever you’re using, and the pen becomes—”
    “A magic wand.”
    “ ‘Magic’ is a word people use when they don’t know how to explain something,” Hank says. “That makes it sound