4 Witching On A Star Read Online Free Page B

are you two doing?” Her tone was accusatory.
    “What were you doing?” I asked suspiciously.
    “She was taking inventory,” Clove said hurriedly. “I already told you that.”
    Thistle cast a sidelong look at Clove and just shook her head. “I was on the phone.”
    “With who?”
    “Good news, I’ve been selected to be a contestant on America’s Next Top Model . I’m very excited,” Thistle said blandly.
    “Oh, well, that will be fun,” I replied, matching her tone. “I hope they make you pose with sharks.”
    “That’s your fear, not mine,” Thistle reminded me.
    “Fine, then I hope they make you pose with snakes,” I countered.
    “That’s Clove’s fear.”
    Crap, she was right. “Then I hope they make you pose with monkeys,” I said triumphantly.
    Thistle narrowed her eyes. “That’s just mean.”
    “And I hope they’re picking bugs out of your hair and eating them while it happens.” I have no idea why Thistle is scared of monkeys. Visits to the zoo as kids were terrifying for her, though. Maybe it’s because King Kong had scarred her like Jaws had scarred me.
    “You’re getting more and more like Aunt Tillie every day,” Thistle grumbled.
    “So, what were you doing?” If she thought that little display was going to distract me from the original question, she was sadly mistaken.
    “I was talking to my dad on the phone,” Thistle said angrily. “Is that a crime now?”
    “No,” I shook my head. “I just can’t figure out why Clove was hiding it.”
    “Because she freaks out about weird things,” Thistle replied, moving around the counter and throwing herself onto the couch next to me. “You know that. She’s a little dramatic.”
    This was true.
    “I am not dramatic,” Clove shot back. “You guys always say that but it’s not true.”
    It was totally true. “So, what did your dad want?” I turned to Thistle in an effort to avoid Clove’s overt pout.
    “He wants us to come out to dinner at the Dragonfly,” Thistle replied cautiously.
    “Us? Which us?”
    “You, me and Clove,” Thistle said. “They all want us to come out.”
    “Why?” While I had been on a few jaunts to the Dragonfly a few times over the past two months, which had all resulted in tense and uncomfortable interactions between me and my father, a dinner sounded just horrible enough to make me balk at the suggestion.
    “He said that he wants to get into a rhythm,” Thistle said blithely.
    “A rhythm?”
    “His word, not mine.”
    “I don’t know,” I hedged.
    “He says that all three of them want to be able to spend more time with all three of us,” Thistle continued. “He thought that, if we were all together, it might be more comfortable.”
    “For them or us?”
    “Both, I think,” Thistle nodded.
    “I think we should go,” Clove announced, widening her eyes as Thistle and I both turned to regard her coldly.
    “Of course you do,” Thistle scoffed.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Thistle ignored Clove’s whine. “What do you think?” She turned to me.
    I shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know.”
    “We can’t just ignore them,” Clove said. “They’re our fathers.”
    “Yes, and our mothers are going to look at it as if we’re betraying them,” Thistle said honestly.
    “You don’t know that,” Clove countered. “They’ve been acting fine.”
    “Acting being the operative word,” I supplied.
    “Yeah, they’re definitely up to something,” Thistle agreed. “I just can’t figure out what.”
    “It’s got to be hard on them,” I replied. “They raised us alone for a long time, with just each other to rely on. Now, our dads are back and they’re feeling threatened by that – and it’s not just because they’re our fathers but because they’re their ex-husbands, too.”
    “Yeah, it’s a whole pile of crap,” Thistle agreed.
    “What do you want to do?”
    “I don’t know,” Thistle said. “In an ideal world, I’d want to know my dad.