Read Online Wish Club by Kim Strickland - Free Book Online Page B

crystals, and the motion was so fluid it gave Claudia a chill to watch her do it, the little hairs on her scalp tingling every time the woman’s hands switched direction. She found the woman’s presence so calming. Claudia felt herself relaxing, turning the pages of her book more slowly, becoming completely intrigued with the woman standing next to her. Claudia watched her covertly until she bent down to reach for a book on the shelf in front of where Claudia was sitting, a book on the tarot.
    “Oh, I’m sorry.” Claudia hated to break the quiet. “Am I in your way?”
    “No, dear. You’re fine.” Even her voice was calming, ethereal, and the familiar way she had called Claudia “dear.” It gave Claudia the most pleasant goose bumps.
    “Don’t apologize, either,” she spoke again. “Women do way too much apologizing.” She smiled down at Claudia.
    Claudia had read something to that effect, a study that said women were apologizing too much—at least way more than men were—saying they were sorry for all sorts of little things, things that weren’t even their fault: “Sorry about the rain”; “I’m sorry traffic was so bad.” Right after she’d read it, Claudia had started noticing how often she did say “sorry.”
I’m sorry you had a bad day. I’m sorry I didn’t grade your paper. I’m sorry I irritated you by wanting to be a writer.
At the time she’d made a conscious effort to stop saying “sorry,” but somewhere along the line she’d forgotten all about it. She should try again. She was sorry she had stopped.
    “That’s a wonderful book,” the woman next to her said, gesturing to
The Sacredness of the Wiccan Way
in Claudia’s lap. “I read it many years ago. Excellent.”
    “Oh, this, I—” Claudia stammered. “I’m just browsing through it. I’m not…I guess…it looks okay.”
    The woman smiled back at her and then returned to her tarot book. Claudia was sorry the conversation was over.
Why am I always such a dork?
    The woman grabbed another book from the shelf and, without looking at it, stacked it on top of the tarot book and the astrology book she had chosen. She started to leave, then turned back around before she walked away. “I really don’t much care for cats. I think I might be allergic.” She smiled very kindly when she said this.
    Cats? I didn’t say anything about cats,
Claudia thought. What an odd thing to say. She sat there a moment, shaking her head.
There sure are a lot of nuts in this world.
    Then Claudia jolted up, remembering her thought about the house full of cats. Had she said it out loud? No. She was certain she hadn’t. Claudia walked out into the main aisle, expecting to see the back of the woman strolling slowly away, but she was nowhere in sight. She walked over to the railing and looked down at the empty escalators. She even crouched down and looked at the cash register line, but the woman was gone.
    How could she have heard her thought? Claudia asked herself, breathing hard as she walked back to where she had been sitting. Or was it just a lucky guess? Maybe when you hang around the New Age section looking as eccentric as she did, a lot of people assumed you had twenty cats at home. Maybe the woman was finally taking the offensive, boldly pronouncing her dislike of cats to anyone who would listen.
    The Sacredness of the Wiccan Way
still lay open on the floor, and Claudia’s huge purse, likewise wide open, was still sitting next to it.
Oh good grief. How could I have left my purse here?
She looked into its gaping top and took a quick inventory; everything was there. She sighed
. I need to quit the caffeine. I need to chill out. Maybe some form of New Age meditation
would
be in order.
She reached down to pick up her book and saw a small crystal that lay on the ground near where the woman had been standing.
    Claudia picked it up and turned it in her hand. A thin piece of quartz, icicle shaped, about two inches long. It must have belonged to the