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I SLAMMED MY HANDS down on the keyboard. My grandmother had the Command Center locked tighter than the files about Area 51 and all those spooky aliens. If she’d set out to prove a point, her point was well taken. I couldn’t worm my way into this system, and if I couldn’t get into the Book of Spells, I couldn’t figure out my witch’s intuition. And I certainly couldn’t form a proper sleigh route for Santa or finish the Naughty List.
Angrily, I pushed my chair back from the desk and stood. I grabbed the closest pile of papers and threw them across the room. For a moment, they swirled within the churning air of the cooling system before gliding into a mess on the floor. With my tantrum slightly abated, I growled under my breath and went to pick up the papers. I didn’t know what information they contained, but I didn’t need to make any more work for myself.
As I stood from the floor, I bumped my head against an open filing cabinet drawer. “Oh, sweet cheese and crackers,” I grumbled as I rubbed the pain out of the back of my head. I braced myself on the drawer, trying to make it to my feet in one piece.
I stood there, trying to decide on my next move when I realized the cabinet contained files of past Naughty Lists. I reached for the closest folder, and my hand disappeared into a hazy mist. I whipped my hand back out of the drawer. I would not reach through some sort of magical mist, no matter how much I wanted answers. For all I knew, once my arm passed through that mist, I’d never get it back.
I slammed the drawer shut, and a paper tacked above the file cabinet fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and went to pin it into place, but the words on the page stopped me dead in my tracks. Witch’s Intuition.
I couldn’t believe what I saw. “Witch’s Intuition.” As I read it aloud, a weird far-off giggling sounded from inside my head.
“Crazy old bat. You left this here for me to find, didn’t you?”
What my grandmother had written on the paper, as clear as day, was a spell for Witch’s Intuition. It wasn’t some super-special ability that I was going to be gifted once I earned it. It was just a spell, a simple chant if I was reading the instructions right.
I tucked the paper into my pocket and headed back to my room. Hacking into Santa’s Command Center needed to wait until later. Right now, I needed to practice being a witch and see if I couldn’t get the Naughty List sorted out.