Karma's Spell (Magical Midlife in Mystic Hollow Book 1), Lacey Andersen [best book club books .txt] 📗

version of Beth. Is that the problem? You wanted Beth but you like ‘em young?”

His face turned dark red and a fury that made me think he may be hiding an even darker side passed through his eyes. “Now hold on—”

“No, you hold on! Karma is going to get you. And you!” I pointed first at her ex then at the woman, girl, whatever. "I'd bet money you knew he was in a long-term, committed relationship, with a woman he’d been promising to marry for almost twenty years, when you started fooling around, didn't you? Didn't you? But you didn't give a crap about his partner and how she felt. You just wanted to get yours. Well, I've got news for you little girl: he's going to dump you faster than a hot potato when he gets bored. Look forward to that."

“No, he’s not, because I’m the woman he always needed. And I don’t look like her,” the woman suddenly sneered, as if the dummy had just now realized we were talking about her.

But she really did. “Yeah, you do. The same hair, the same eyes. Holy crap. Tiffany?”

Hell. Beth’s parents had accidentally gotten pregnant again when Beth was seventeen. Tiffany had been a toddler when I’d left. But there was no way. No way her sister could actually…

She tilted her head up, and I realized that she had a pig-shaped nose that she’d tried to sculpt with a pound of makeup to look more like Beth’s. “Yeah? So what?”

It felt like the floor dropped out from under me. I knew he’d been cheating on her with someone younger, but why hadn’t Beth told me? I knew the answer immediately. Because it would’ve killed her to even say the words aloud. Husbands cheating happened all too often, but leaving their wife for her younger sister? Disgusting.

“Beth practically raised you,” I said in disbelief.

It was one of the reasons Beth had decided to go to the local community college for her business degree instead of away with me. But then she’d had to drop out after her associate’s degree, because her parents started having serious health issues and needed her to help. Sometimes when we talked late at night, she’d sound so wistful when I talked about college. I’d try to change the topic, but she said she loved to live through me, since we’d both been business majors.

“I didn’t need her to raise me,” the woman said, tossing her blonde hair.

“Yeah, you did.” A cold feeling rushed through me. “And it’s heartbreaking that you could do this to her. But I want you to know something: Beth doesn’t need you, because we’re her family now.”

I was shaking, and that cold feeling inside of me kept growing. A person needed to have a frozen heart to steal a man from her own sister. Not that he was some prize to steal. But if Tiffany wasn’t a trash human being, she would’ve helped Beth realize that Roger was a bad guy, rather than take him for herself.

“You--” I struggled for the words to express just how angry I was at them.

“Emma,” Beth interrupted in an amused voice as she got out of the car. Her door slammed shut behind her as she came up to me and quietly said, “You’re glowing.”

I looked down at myself to find I was, indeed, glowing. Like a lightning bug. My skin was luminous and not in the way all those night eye creams talked about either.

When I glanced back up, Beth’s ex and his child-girlfriend were hurrying down the street, him with his arm around her protectively. “She needs your protection because she’s done one of the worst things a woman can do to another woman!” I screamed after them.

Beth blew out a laugh, bending over at the waist and hee-hawing a deep gut laugh. At one point, I swear she squeaked like a bike horn. “Emma,” she wheezed. “That was amazing! What did you do to them?”

With the strangest certainty, I said, “I’m not sure exactly. Sometimes Karma takes a bit of time, but it'll be good, no matter what it is. Or bad if you're them, I guess.”

“Good,” Beth said, and there was a sad note to her voice.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, fighting the urge to pull her into a hug.

“Surprisingly, it’s getting easier.”

“But you raised her, you--”

“I never did any of that thinking that she’d owe me, or even that she’d appreciate me. I took care of her because it was the right thing to do.”

That was the first time I felt my powers race over my skin, sending every hair standing on end. It seemed that every time I used my abilities, it felt different. “Well, you did something good, and the universe knows that.”

She smirked at me. “I guess I’ll trust that karma knows what it’s doing, or should I say she.”

I nodded, feeling strange. A breeze rolled over me, and I swore my powers scattered away from me like leaves in the wind. I even stared into the sky, expecting to see something. But the dark sky was the same.

Karma, I realized, wasn’t just popping tires. It took time. It worked in mysterious ways. But I had no doubt Tiffany and the ex would feel the bite of my powers, and that Beth would be rewarded for being a good person.

Having powers was definitely starting to have its perks.

“I’m going to go give those two a little present.”

I jerked at the high-pitched voice, searching for the source of the sound. What I found was a crow on a branch staring at us.

Beth said, “We shouldn’t..”

“You shouldn’t. Humans pooping on humans is strange.”

The bird lifted off the branch and about a dozen more left the tree, heading for her ex and her sister. At first I just stared in confusion, but around the corner, I heard a chorus of screaming and swearing, and then it hit me.

I looked at Beth. Beth looked at me. And then we both started laughing