Conjure Wife Read Online Free Page B

that there are those at Hempnell who would like to see you dead — and who would have seen you dead a long time ago, if they could have worked it!”
    “Tansy!”
    “What do you suppose Evelyn Sawtelle feels toward you for the way you’re nosing out her flutterbudget of a husband for the Sociology chairmanship? Do you think she wants to bake you a cake? One of her cherry-chocolate ones? How do you suppose Hulda Gunnison likes the influence you have acquired over her husband? It’s mainly because of you that she no longer runs the Dean of Men’s office. And as for that libidinous old bitch Mrs. Carr, do you imagine that she enjoys the way your freedom-andfrankness policy with the students is cutting into her holier-than-thou respectability, her ‘Sex is just an ugly word’ stuff. What do you think those women have been doing for their husbands?”
    “Oh Lord, Tansy, why drag in that old faculty jealousies business?”
    “Do you suppose they’d stop at mere protection? Do you imagine women like that would observe any distinction between white magic and black?”
    “Tansy! You don’t know what you’re saying. If you mean to imply — Tansy, when you talk that way, you actually sound like a witch.”
    “Oh, I do?” For a moment her expression was so tight her face looked all skull. “Well maybe I am. And maybe it’s lucky for you I’ve been one.”
    He grabbed her by the arm. “Listen, I’ve been patient with you about all this ignorant nonsense. But now you’re going to show some sense and show it quick.”
    Her lips curled, nastily. “Oh, I see. It’s been the velvet glove so far, but now it’s going to be the iron hand. If I don’t do just as you say, I get packed off to an asylum. Is that it?”
    “Of course not! But you’ve just got to be sensible.”
    “Well, I tell you I won’t!”
    “Now, Tansy —”
    10:13: The folded comforter jounced as Tansy flopped on the bed. New tears had streaked and reddened her face and dried. “All right,” she said, in a stuffy voice. “I’ll do what you want. I’ll burn all my things.”
    Norman felt light-headed. The thought came into his mind, “And to think I dared to tackle it without a psychiatrist!”
    “There’ve been enough times when I’ve wanted to stop,” she added. “Just like there’ve been times I’ve wanted to stop being a woman.”
    What followed struck Norman as weirdly anticlimactic. First the ransacking of Tansy’s dressing room for hidden charms and paraphernalia. Norman found himself remembering those old two-reel comedies in which scores of people pile out of a taxicab — it seemed impossible that a few shallow drawers and old shoe boxes could hold so many wastepaper baskets of junk. He tossed the dog-eared copy of “Parallelisms” on top of the last one, picked up Tansy’s leatherbound diary. She shook her head reassuringly. After the barest hesitation he put it back unopened.
    Then the rest of the house. Tansy moving faster and faster, darting from room to room, deftly recovering flannel-wrapped “hands” from the upholstery of the chairs, the under sides of table tops, the interior of vases, until Norman dizzily marveled that he had lived in the house for more than ten years without chancing on any.
    “It’s rather like a treasure hunt, isn’t it?” she said with a rueful smile.
    There were other charms outside — under front and back doorsteps, in the garage, and in the car. With every handful thrown on the roaring fire he had built in the living room, Norman’s sense of relief grew. Finally Tansy opened the seams of the pillows on his bed and carefully fished out two little matted shapes made of feathers bound with fine thread so that they blended with the fluffy contents of the pillow.
    “See, one’s a heart, the other an anchor. That’s for security,” she told him. “New Orleans feather magic. You haven’t taken a step for years without being in the range of one of my protective charms.”
    The