Girl's Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky Page A

head. Besides, I probably looked pretty dazed myself.
    Neko, though, was bouncing up and down on the couch. He looked like a little boy who had just been told that he was going to celebrate his birthday, the Fourth of July and Christmas, all in one day. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “We are going to have so much fun!”
    “What?” Melissa asked. “What’s going on?”
    David looked at her, then at me. “Are you going to tell her, or shall I?”
    I swallowed, surprised to find my throat so dry. “I’m going to learn about this.” I ran the next sentence through my head before I said it aloud. “I’m going to learn how to be a witch.”
    David nodded, and I watched Melissa swallow a dozen questions. “First things first,” he said. “No more alcohol.”
    “For tonight?”
    “For good.”
    Melissa laughed and said, “Well that’s not going to happen.”
    I glared at her. After all, I wasn’t exactly a lush. I always knew exactly how much I was drinking, and I made a decision for every separate glass. I looked over Melissa’s shoulder into the kitchen. Toward the empty bottle of rum. Toward the wand sitting on the counter. Well, I usually make a decision. When my familiar isn’t pouring with a heavy hand.
    “It will,” David said evenly. “If she wants to learn more.”
    All of a sudden, it seemed important for me to stake a claim here. I mean, I’d spent eight years with Scott, with him telling me what to do and when to do it. I wasn’t about to let some new man, some stranger, take charge of my life without putting up a fight. Even if he did know more about witchcraft than I did.
    “I won’t drink when I’m working with you. I won’t drink when I’m being a witch.”
    Neko’s guffaw sounded like it was from a sitcom laugh track. “As if you’re the one setting the rules!”
    I scowled at him and turned to David. “I’m serious,” I said. “It’s not like Melissa and I get drunk every night. But I can’t let this witchcraft thing take over my entire life.”
    “This witchcraft thing,” David repeated, and he shook his head. “You don’t understand—”
    “And I’m not going to, if you set rules that change who I am.” I was arguing with him like a Shakespeare comic heroine, hoping to match my Beatrice wit to his Benedick scorn. “I won’t let you lock me up in a convent.”
    A convent? Where did that come from. No one had said anything about a convent, about sex, about any other restrictions. We were talking about a few drinks. My face reddened as I continued to stare at David.
    I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was my struggle to cool my burning cheeks. Maybe it was my sudden determination. Maybe it was just that the hour was getting late, and David was ready to go back home, or wherever it was that he stayed when he wasn’t waiting for me to work some errant spell. But he nodded and said, “Very well.”
    “Very well?” Neko squeaked, which was a good thing, because I wasn’t certain what David had just agreed to.
    “Very well. You may have a drink, or two. But not when you’re working magic. And not when we work together.”
    I extended my hand, as if we had just negotiated some major business deal. My lips curled into a wide smile, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the mojitos talking, but I thought that it was something more. I thought that I was proud of myself, proud that I’d said what I wanted and stuck to my guns until I got it.
    David took my hand and pumped it three times in a classic business handshake. I couldn’t help but look down at our fingers, and when I tried to glance back at his face, I couldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ll start tomorrow, then,” he said. “After dinner.”
    “After dinner.” I sounded as if I accepted invitations for witchcraft training all the time.
    David nodded and stood up. He had almost opened the front door—his hand was on the latch—but then he turned back. He moved quickly, like a shepherd dog closing in on a