Read No Shoes, No Shirt, No Spells (Mystic Cafe Series) for Free Online Page B

customers approached. After ringing up the inquisitive women and waiting for their departure, I continued the conversation with Mary Jane. “Why don’t you finish telling me how the heck you found out about the magic in the first place?”
     
    She shrugged her shoulders. “One night I’d had a little too much…” She mimicked drinking with her right hand. “Anyway, I walked in on one of your grandmother’s spell-casting sessions. She could have led me to believe I’d imagined it, but she didn’t. The next morning she told me the truth and cast a spell to cure my hangover.”
     
    “ I still don’t understand why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” I sat on a stool next to the register.
     
    “ It’s some kind of magical oath. You know?”
     
    “ Right.” Silly me. How could I forget about the oath?
     
    “ I had my suspicions before that. Once she had a picnic over by Mystic Hollow Baptist Church. I saw sparks next to her and a tub of potato salad. Little Willie McDaniel thought it was fireworks. You know, sometimes I think she wanted me to know, that’s why she let me see it.”
     
    “ Why do I miss all the excitement? Who’d have thought a church picnic could be so much fun?” I rearranged the sugar packets.
     
    “ All good questions, but I’ll never understand the mystery that is your Grandma Imelda. She’s an enigma.” She laughed.
     
    I shook my head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this new talent.”
     
    “ It’s only been a day, it’ll grow on you.”
     
    “ That’s what I’m afraid of.” I chuckled.
     
    Since I’d gotten back to town, Mary Jane and I hadn’t had a chance to catch up and spend time eating chocolate and watching silly movies like we used to; I missed that.
     
    “ So, you still haven’t heard from Steve?” I asked.
     
    “ Not a word. Next week it’ll be two years since our divorce.” Mary Jane stared straight-ahead, as if she was watching the bad memory play out in her head. “It’s as if he fell off the face of the earth, which is fine by me. Last I heard he was in Louisiana.”
     
    “ What about the guy you were seeing? What was his name? Frank?
     
    “ Yeah, I should have known he was a loser when he said he could tell I was good in bed because my hair was wild, as if I’d just woken up. Too bad he was terrible in bed. If his theory were correct, then I should have known his bedroom prowess was less-than-stellar by his lack of hair. I mean, really, what twenty-five-year-old has a comb-over? Just shave it bald for heaven’s sake, and be done with it, that’s much sexier.”
     
    My lips curved down into a grimace. “He said you’d be good in bed based on your ‘wild hair’?”
     
    “ Word for word.” She held up her right hand. “Cross my heart.”
     
    “ Listen, I want to apologize for not having much time to chat over the past few weeks and since I got back to Mystic Hollow. I’ll be the first to admit I was wallowing in self-pity for quite a while.”
     
    “ I know what you were doing, and I was about to come to New York and drag you out of your hole of self-despair when your grandma saved the day. Speaking of despair, you hear from Ray since you left New York?” Mary Jane asked, while twisting her ponytail with one hand. She always had to move her hands. Sometimes she got that ponytail moving so fast I thought it would spin on its own like a propeller.
     
    “ He left a voice mail on my cell phone and threatened to come back for the Mustang. I told him he could have it over my dead body. I’d rather torch the thing. I own it now. Oh, I also told him I drove it through one of those automatic car washes. I thought he might cry.”
     
    “ It serves him right. Good riddance. You’re better off without him. Anyone who’d cheat on you is nothing but a dirty rotten, scum-sucking pig. He’ll soon realize that floozy is nothing but a gold digger. When she gets tired of his tiny weenie, she’ll dump