Ana's Disappeared (Dark Secrets of the Craft)

Chapter One

Nicky

"I want to hex that sorry, old bastard," I shouted when I walked through the front door of the rambling Victorian where my sisters and I had lived for the last eleven years.

My sister Ana met me in the hallway. "Our magic doesn't work that way Nicky," she told me. "We only do good."

"Just once Ana. Please," I begged her.

She shook her head no. "What did he do this time?"

"I was walking down the sidewalk, coming home from school. He met me at the corner to ensure I didn't step on his precious lawn like he always does. One of the cats did so I had to. He was cursing me and I so wanted to curse him too." I ground my teeth together then I sighed in frustration.

"I stood with one foot on his lawn and one foot on our lawn and snatched up Esmerelda."

Ana shook her head. "She does it on purpose to piss him off."

"I'm sure she does because he can never catch her. I've seen her run into the cat door and stop, licking her paws like the fat, sassy cat she is. If only cats could talk. I'd love to know what she is thinking."

Ana just laughed at me. Oscar, my caramel colored Persian wound his way through my legs leaving his hair on my white knee socks. Bending over I scooped him up in my arms. "Stop that," I told him nuzzling him with my chin. He purred at me in response. He was also my fat, sassy, boy.

My straight, black hair was pulled tight in a ponytail that hung to the middle of my back. The only make-up I wore was eyeliner and a gloss. My smooth, olive toned skin needed little else. It never took me long to get ready to go anywhere. That couldn't be said for all my sisters.

"Where are the others?" Petting Oscar, I glanced between my cat and my sister.

Ana glanced up from what she was doing; mixing ingredients carefully in a special bowl she used just for magic spells I recognized.

"God knows where Gran is. She left early this morning and still hasn't returned. She hasn't been to the bakery either," she added, peeking at me before she focused on the mixture in front of her.

"Stella is still at school. She has classes on Tuesday until six. Promise left for work at four. She has a night shift tonight at the club. Jules is at the bakery till it closes at eight."

My three oldest sisters ran a bakery with our grandmother, Star Stobol. Since our parent's death after a freak accident, we had lived with Star and our grandfather Alexei until his untimely death four years previously.

Grampa just didn't wake up one morning. I could honestly say Gran was sad but I wouldn't say she was heartbroken which was surprising since she had been married to the man since the end of her senior year in high school. He was the father of her only child, my father Simon Stobol.

Speaking of my parents' accident. A bridge, the main entry into the town of Foxglove, Ohio, spanning the Little Miami River collapsed into the river on a cold, winter day.

Simon and Magdalena Stobol, my parents were in the middle of that bridge when it gave way; plunging them to their deaths in the icy waters a few weeks before Christmas. That is when we came to live with Gran.

"So, are you making your funny brownies?" I asked Ana.

Ana, the oldest of us turned to me, the youngest and scowled. Ana's hair was as curly as mine was straight but just as black as mine. It also hung to the middle of her back but was pulled back in a loose pony tail while she baked. Although crazy curls escaped the band she was using to pull it back; now tickling her face. Ana must have tried to push the strands out of her way because she had smeared batter on her cheekbone.