Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley (speed reading book TXT) 📗

beneath Tamsin’s head. The witch sighed deeply and rolled from her back onto her side, so that she faced Wren. Her eyes were still closed, her face relaxed in sleep. Tamsin was undeniably beautiful, always, but without the ever-present tension and anger she held in consciousness, she looked different. Younger. They could hardly have a year’s difference between them, but the load Tamsin carried aged her. Wren could help, if only Tamsin would trust her. But of course it wasn’t that simple.

Wren wanted to cry at the irony of having fallen for a girl with a useless heart.

Carefully, so slowly she thought she might pull a muscle, Wren climbed over Tamsin’s sleeping form. She didn’t want the witch to wake, didn’t want to have the necessary yet awkward conversation about sharing a sleeping space and how it meant nothing at all.

Nothing, Wren knew, could still mean so much.

She stepped across the shack and pulled on her father’s boots. There was a pang in her chest as she thought of him, tossing and turning in their tiny cottage. She tried to picture his face but to her horror found that the image was fading. She had already lost the color of his eyes to Tamsin. When her father’s face was meaningless to her heart, she would have no reason to hold on to the rest. He would slip soundlessly from the forefront of her memory, just another person she had passed in this great, wide world.

Perhaps that was for the best. Surely, it would be easier not to remember what she had lost.

Wasn’t that the reason Tamsin seemed so defeated? Every day she had held the memory of her sister. Of the classmate who had died because of her. No wonder the witch was so closed off and cold. There was no room within her for anything but guilt and resentment and fear. Her entire life was a reminder of her failure. Of the rash mistake of a child.

That should not be enough to define her. She needed the chance to forgive herself. To make things right. But to do that, they had to find Marlena. Wren glanced at Tamsin, who was still snoring lightly. She pulled the witch’s green cloak from the foot of the bed and pushed the door open slowly so it wouldn’t creak. She made her way through the darkness to the inn, hoping to warm her cold hands with a cup of tea. Tea always had a way of helping Wren think.

This inn was not nearly as nice as the other, but the one thing both places had in common was that they were littered with witches. Keeping her head down, Wren slipped into a chair at the head of a mostly empty table. Tea poured itself into a metal tankard, hints of bergamot and cardamom tickling her nose. Wren took a long sip. The tea went down easily, hot enough to soothe her but not so hot that she burned her tongue.

She set to work sifting methodically through the pockets of Tamsin’s cloak. She found string and buttons in one, in another a rind of cheese so hard it might have been stone. A third held a small brown pouch of dried herbs; another housed a round, pink crystal. None of the items glowed warm in her hand. None of them were magic. The pile of trinkets kept growing, new pockets appearing as soon as she thought she’d found them all. But none held Marlena’s diary.

Wren paused, frustrated. Took a sip of tea. She had wanted to do something, to take action herself. Tamsin was so cagey when it came to Marlena’s diary, as though it had secrets that might reveal themselves to Wren, secrets Tamsin didn’t want shared. She never would have given it to Wren voluntarily. But if they were going to find Marlena, they needed a place to start.

Wren wanted to do that for them. She wanted to contribute, to do more than offer up magic when they needed to eat. She wanted to prove to Tamsin that they were a team, that the witch needed her as much as Wren needed Tamsin.

But to do that, she first had to find the diary within the depths of Tamsin’s cloak. Not to read it, for that would be a violation of a perfect stranger, and if Marlena was anything like her sister, Wren knew better than to invite her wrath.

Rather, she hoped to get a sense of Marlena and her magic. If she knew the scent, the feel of Marlena’s power, perhaps she could follow that trail to the real person.

Wren took another sip of tea. She was searching like an ordinary person. She wasn’t searching like a source. She put the tankard down and spread the cloak out on the table. She closed her eyes, hands roving slowly over the thick fabric. She paid attention to the sensation, waiting for warmth, waiting for a hint that something enchanted was near. Her mind was so busy worrying about what to expect that she almost didn’t notice the taste of honey on her tongue. She stopped, her hands hovering over a fold on the left side of the cloak. She lowered her fingers and felt the ghost of a pinprick. There.

Wren pulled the thin volume from its pocket, the leather cover soft and worn, the paper’s edges stained and torn. At first she was unable to pry the cover open. Then, when the book finally fell open in her hand, she was met with blank page after blank page.

“All right,” Wren muttered. “You don’t want to reveal yourself to me. That’s fine. You don’t know me.” She felt rather silly talking to a book.

A summoning spell whizzed past her right ear. Wren startled, glancing around the room at the witches immersed in their craft. One witch chanted softly over a book filled with scribbled runes; another stirred herbs into her teacup. A group of boys no older than twelve were summoning things from across