“That’s right,” Nora suddenly said. “Spiders were one of his fears. Hence the, uh, webbing.”

Izzy ran her hand over Nora’s shoulders. “How did you hide this from me?” she asked in a much gentler voice. “Have you been using a glamor spell?”

She shrugged.

Izzy carefully pulled Nora’s shirt back down and then cradled her head. “My dear, dear, sweet, foolish sister.”

A strange honking noise came from the register. Was that Gideon blowing his nose? Not that I was judging. My own eyes were stinging.

“Again, it was a long time ago,” Nora said, patting Izzy’s arm. “I’m fine now. I survived. And Mary and her daughter were free from danger.” She looked over at me. “But just so we’re clear, it’s not something I would recommend.” She then pulled away from Izzy’s embrace to look up at her. “And if I had to do it again, I would come to you.”

“I should hope so.”

“It’s about time you started pulling your own weight.” She shot me a wink.

I smiled. Nora and I had been fighting so much lately. It felt good for us all to be on the same side again.

“Stop that, you two,” Izzy snapped.

Or not.

“I’m still mad.”

Nora groaned. “But it was forever ago.”

“I’m not mad at what you did then. I’m mad about now. Don’t you think it would have been a good idea to share all this with us?”

“No, no, let’s not go there. I’ve had a very trying evening. I liked where we were a second ago.” She waved her sister in to come cradle her head again, but Izzy folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, I’m not the only one who needs to explain herself. Let’s talk about Brynn, shall we?”

Chapter 32

Thanks a lot,” I grumbled.

Nora smiled at me prettily.

The fire crackled and spit in the hearth as my aunts studied me. Suddenly I felt like I was eight years old again.

“She’s right,” Izzy said. “Your actions tonight were beyond reckless. And now we have quite the mess to clean up, don’t we?”

Nora waved a hand in the air. “I was thinking we could use a memory spell to erase the last part of the evening from people’s minds.” She dropped the hand to cover her face. “Or why don’t we just erase the entire thing. I don’t think we accomplished much by way of making me a paragon of citizenry.”

“Spell everyone in attendance? Are you mad?” Izzy clutched her forehead. “That’s far too complicated. The loose ends would be horrific. No, I was thinking we could send in a news alert to the town paper stating the tremor was real, but there’s no danger. The alerts must all be electronic these days, but there has to be a spell for that.”

“Oh! Or we could just cause a real earthquake to cover up for Brynn’s little shake-up,” Nora said. “That could be fun.”

“Are you even trying to help right now?”