Angela didn't know where her life had gone wrong. She sat in her kitchen drinking a cup of tea as she thought things over. Normally, she would have been at work, but the company she used to work for had just gone through massive cuts, and at 40 years old she was either to qualified for the entry level positions at other companies, or too old to go through a career change.
Her family life wasn't much better. She loved her husband of 10 years, Jacob, she really did. But the spark had gone out of their marriage. Eight years of trying for a child with no results had strained their relationship. They hadn't even had sex since they decided to give up two years ago. Not that they didn't have children, well, Jacob had children from his first marriage. They had wanted one of their own. Instead, Angela had two step-sons, Jeffrey who was 13 and Andy who was 16. They had been young when she came into their lives, but to them she was always going to be Angela, their step-mother.
The only positive was not having a kid had spared her body some. She was still slim, with firm pert breasts, her hair had started to grey a little, but she kept it dyed back to her original blond, she kept good care of herself, and she knew some of Andy's friends at least called her a MILF where they thought she couldn't hear. It made her feel good even if it embarrassed Andy.
Not for the first time she wished she had some blood family to talk to, but she had only had her grandmother growing up, and she had passed away just before Angela's 18th birthday. A ding from the basement woke her from her thoughts and she set down the tea. The good thing about being laid off was at least she could catch up on the housework. She headed downstairs and swapped the clothes from the washer into the dryer, and put in a second load, this mostly comprising of her two step-sons smelly gym and sports clothes.
Turning around to go back upstairs something caught her eye. She wasn't sure why she suddenly found herself looking at the old wooden chest. Maybe because she had been thinking of her grandmother, the chest contained what few mementos and keepsakes she had from her. She walked over to the chest and carefully opened the lid. Inside was a hand made quilt she wasn't going to trust two teenage boys not to ruin, a few pieces of jewelry that weren't her style, and photo albums. She hadn't looked in this box in years, but one of the albums looked strangely out of place. She pulled it free only to realize it wasn't a photo album but a large, leather bound tome.
She opened the cover and a note fell out, she picked it up, unsurprised to see her grandmother's neat tidy handwriting across the page.
'Angela,
I'm sorry if you are finding this book without me giving it to you. It's the birthright of out family, but can only be passed on to the next in line when they turn eighteen. If you are reading this note, I passed away before I could give it to you. Remember what I taught you. Everything in this book is real, use it only for good, using it for evil will only result in pain for you.
Love,
Gran'
Angela carefully placed the letter inside the wooden chest and began to flip through the pages of the book, old and yellowed with age. The hand writing looked to be in several different hands, from old quill or fountain pens right up to her grandmother's handwriting in blue ballpoint pen. The only problem was none of it was English. If it was a family heirloom it looked the part. Her grandmother's parents had come from Poland, and the book definitely looked to be in Polish. Her gran had taught her when she was a girl, but years of disuse had left her rusty. She decided to take the book upstairs and read it at the kitchen table.
Just glancing over it, it looked like a recipe book - a title, a list of ingredients, and then some instructions. It took her time to read through it, translating from long dormant memory, but she soon realized some of the ingredients and instructions didn't make sense, even the titles - 'Banish Nightmares,' 'Fertility Spell,' 'Bountiful Garden,' 'Trade Bodies' ... "Trading Bodies is a difficult spell, take a personal item from each individual you intend to switch.." She read to herself. Was this a spell book? It certainly looked like it, there seemed to be a spell for almost anything, though with no order to how they were placed in the book. She wanted to laugh and put the thing away as a strange curiosity, but then she also wondered if this was the answer to her quiet prayers.
Turning the page she began to read another spell written in a broad, sweeping script that had quite a bit of flourish. "Spell to become soulmates." She said aloud as she translated. "Simple but powerful, this will bind two people to become one another's perfect soulmate."
What could a little attempt harm? The worst thing that could happen would be feeling a little silly when the 'spells' didn't work. She flipped through, looking for a spell to try first.