Sorcery and the Single Girl by Mindy Klasky Page A

of my costume lay dozens of other outfits—skirts, blouses, T-shirts, slacks—all in black. After all, black was basic. Black was dramatic. Black was sexy.
    And I had enough to choose from. I had clingy black and sloppy black, goth black and elegant black, temptress black and too-fat black. I’d spent the evening combining separates that had no business being in the same closet together, much less on the same body. I’d dug out clothes that I hadn’t worn since I’d last tried to drag Melissa to clubs, over a decade ago. I even tried the outfit that used to be my favorite one for work, before I was forced into the finest that Martha Washington had to offer.
    Nothing was right for my date with Graeme Henderson. Nothing conveyed the energy that I wanted, the carefree, devil-may-care insouciance of a girl meeting a guy for late-night coffee.
    (Who drank coffee at night, anyway? What sort of strange relationship disaster was I setting myself up for?)
    Frustrated, I collapsed on my bed and stared at my nearly empty closet. If I were going to a formal dinner party, I was all set—I still had the emerald sheath dress that Neko had chosen for me last year, the one that was shot through with golden threads, the one that had made me feel like a princess at the Concert Opera Guild Harvest Gala. Somehow, though, I thought that was a bit much for a Wednesday-night get-together.
    Green, though. A shot of color. Maybe that’s where I was going wrong. Maybe I should look at the five percent of my wardrobe that wasn’t black.
    I tugged open my dresser drawers and dug to the bottom of a pile of T-shirts. (Yes, I needed four black ones. What girl didn’t?) The tourmaline blue had been a gift from Melissa; I’d teased her at the time that she’d chosen it because it would look great on her. She hadn’t appreciated my sense of humor.
    I pulled the seamless garment over my head and checked in the mirror. It was streamlined, sleek. It looked as cool as the water in a swimming pool, promising a refreshing splash on a sweltering summer night.
    And there. In my closet. A sapphire skirt. Now that I thought about it, the skirt had also been a present from Melissa. Maybe she was sending me a message. Maybe she thought that I needed to change up my wardrobe a bit.
    In this instance, though, I couldn’t argue. The T and the skirt worked perfectly together. They combined to look cool and breezy, fresh. It seemed, in fact, that I’d simply reached for two garments readily at hand, tossing on any old thing, because what girl has time to fuss with getting dressed? No one would be able to tell that I had decimated my wardrobe to get to this point.
    Next up: hair. I could take a quick shower and blow-dry my unruly auburn mop. Years of experience, though, told me that I’d be fighting fate. The dryer would take nearly half an hour, and my hair would frizz in the late-August heat within seconds of my stepping outside. I decided not to fight reality. A simple barrette would keep my mane off my neck.
    I ducked into the bathroom and washed my face. Continuing my theme of summer simplicity I decided to do without a full makeup session. A bit of blush, a hint of indigo eye liner, a dash of lipstick.
    Enough. This was a date. Not a marriage proposal. The paparazzi weren’t going to be anywhere in sight.
    I grabbed my clutch purse from my dresser and slipped into comfortable, flat sandals. Graeme Henderson might have been the most interesting man I’d met in months, but I wasn’t going to waste the pain of high heels on him. Especially not when I was walking to the restaurant, walking over the scenic cobblestones that still lined many of Georgetown’s streets.
    I got to the front door before my plan fell apart.
    “Sneaking out?” Neko chuckled from one of the hunter-green couches. I’d been so intent on leaving that I hadn’t noticed him. Him, or Jacques.
    “Not sneaking at all!” I said defensively, looking furtively at the door.
    Neko had been