Prologue
Never mix vodka and witchcraft.
Vivi knew that. Not only had her aunt Elaine said it about a thousand times, but it was also printed on dish towels and T-shirts and, ironically, shot glasses in Something Wicked, the store Aunt Elaine ran in downtown Graves Glen, Georgia.
It might’ve actually been the closest thing the Jones family had to a family motto.
But, Vivi reasoned as she sank deeper into the bathtub and took another slurp of the vodka and cranberry concoction her cousin Gwyn had made her, there had to be exceptions for broken hearts.
And hers currently felt very thoroughly broken. Shattered maybe. Little bitty pieces of heart, rattling around in her chest, all because she got sucked in by a cute accent and a pair of very blue eyes.
Sniffling, she flicked her fingers again, filling the air with the smell of Rhys’s cologne, something citrusy and spicy that she’d never managed to put her finger on, but had clearly imprinted on her brain enough that her magic could just summon it up.
Even now, slumped in Gwyn’s claw-foot tub, she could remember how that scent made her head spin when she buried her face against his chest, how warm his skin had been.
“Vivi, not again!” Gwyn called from the bedroom. “It’s giving me a headache!”
Vivi slid farther into the water, letting it slosh over the sides of the tub, nearly extinguishing one of the candles she’d put around the rim.
Another one of Aunt Elaine’s lessons—the best cure for anything was candles and a bath, and even though Vivi had put plenty of rosemary and handfuls of pink salt in the water, lit just about every candle Gwyn owned, she wasn’t feeling any better.
Although the vodka was helping, she allowed, leaning over to take another sip through the bright purple crazy straw.
“Let me live!” she called back once she’d drained the glass, and Gwyn stuck her head around the door, pink hair swinging over her shoulders.
“My darling, I adore you, but you dated the guy for three months.”
“We’ve only been broken up for nine hours,” Vivi said, not adding that it was actually nine hours and thirty-six minutes, almost thirty-seven. “I get at least another fifteen hours before I have to stop sulking. It’s in the rule book.”
Gwyn rolled her eyes. “This is why I told you not to date Witch Boys,” she said. “Especially Penhallow Witch Boys. Those assholes may have founded this town, but they’re still fucking Witch Boys.”
“Fucking Witch Boys,” Vivi agreed, looking sadly at her empty glass as Gwyn disappeared back into the bedroom.
Vivi was still a lot newer to the whole witch thing than Gwyn. While her cousin had grown up with Aunt Elaine, a happily practicing witch, Vivi’s own mom, Elaine’s sister, had kept her witchery under wraps. It was only after she’d died and Vivi had gone to live with Elaine and Gwyn that she’d started tapping into this side of herself.
Which meant she hadn’t known about Witch Boys and how meeting one at a Solstice Revel on a warm summer night could be both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to you.
Lifting her hand, Vivi wiggled her fingers, and after a moment, a hazy, wavering image rose above the water.
The face was handsome, all good bone structure, dark hair, twinkling eyes and rakish grin.
Vivi scowled at it before flicking her hand again, sending a miniature tidal wave up out of the bath to splash down, the face vanishing in a shower of sparks.
Would’ve been nice if she could’ve erased his memory just as easily, but even in her sad and vodka-soaked state, Vivi knew better than to mess around with that kind of magic. And a couple of those little pieces of her heart didn’t want to forget the past three months, wanted to hold on to the memory of that night they’d met, the musical way he’d said her name, always Vivienne, never Vivi, how that first night he’d asked, May I kiss you? and she’d said, Now? and he’d smiled that slow smile and said, Now is preferable, but I’m open to whatever your schedule allows, and how was any woman supposed to resist that? Especially a nineteen-year-old one at her first Solstice Revel? Especially when the man saying those words was tall and ridiculously handsome, and Welsh?
It was illegal, was what it was, and she was going to lodge some kind of complaint with the Witches Council as soon as she—
“Vivi!” Gwyn yelled from the bedroom. “You’re making the lights flicker.”
Oops.
Sitting up, Vivi pulled the plug in Gwyn’s tub, hoping some of her misery was swirling down the drain with the water.
She carefully stepped over the candles, and pulled the robe Gwyn had lent her off the hook on the wall, feeling a little bit better as she tightened the black silk belt around her waist. This was why she’d come to Elaine and Gwyn’s cabin in the woods high up in the mountains above Graves Glen instead of back to her dorm room at the college. Up here in this cozy little space with its candles and cats, every room smelling like woodsmoke and herbs, Vivi was home.
Maybe she and Gwyn could do face masks or something. Have another drink or five. Listen to Taylor Swift.
Or, Vivi amended as she walked out of the bathroom to see Gwyn pouring a salt circle on the floor, they could do . . . whatever this was.
“What are you doing?” she asked, waving a hand toward the bathroom. After a second, her glass floated out, crazy straw bobbing, and Vivi closed her fingers around it before heading to Gwyn’s desk to pour herself another drink.
“We’re cursing this dickbag,” Gwyn replied with a grin.
“He wasn’t a dickbag,” Vivi said, chewing on the end of her straw and studying the circle. “Not at first. And to be fair, I was the one who called it off, not him.”
Snorting, Gwyn began gathering her hair up in a ponytail. “You called it off because he was a dickbag. He came to Graves Glen, seduced you, and all the while, his dad was back in Wales, arranging his marriage to some fancy witch. And he knew! And didn’t bother to tell you! No, dickbag ruling stands, so say we all.”
“‘We all’ meaning just you.”
“Me and Sir Purrcival,” Gwyn said, gesturing to the tiny black kitten currently curled up on her bed. At his name, he lifted his little head, blinking bright green-yellow eyes at Vivi before giving a tiny mew that did kind of sound like agreement.
And Rhys had been engaged. Well, almost engaged. He hadn’t used that word. He’d said “betrothed.” Just dropped it on her this morning while they’d been snuggled up in the warmth of his bed, him kissing her shoulder, and murmuring that he had to go back home for a week or so, get some things sorted.
“Some things” apparently meaning, “Tell my dad to call off my actual wedding to a stranger,” and then he’d had the nerve to be shocked that she was shocked, and actually, yes, they should definitely curse this dickbag.
“Fair enough,” Vivi said, folding her arms over her chest. “What do we do?”
“Open the windows,” Gwyn said, moving to her desk and picking up a candle in a glass holder that Vivi had somehow overlooked for her ritual bath.
Vivi did as she was told, the late September air cool and smelling like pine trees as it rushed in the room. Over the top of the nearest mountain, the moon shone full and white, and Vivi gave it a little drunken wave before sticking her head out the window to look up Elaine’s mountain.
Up there, somewhere in the darkness, was Rhys’s family home, the one he’d never even visited before this summer. It was dark now because Rhys was gone.
Gone.
Back to Wales and whatever life he’d lived there before coming to take summer classes at Penhaven College.
And they were over.
Her eyes stinging again, Vivi turned back to her cousin.
Gwyn sat just outside the circle, the candle now in the center, the flame flickering, and for a second, Vivi hesitated. Okay, so yes, Rhys had broken her heart. Yes, he hadn’t told her his father was in the process of finding him a wife. No discussion, no warning, no care for how she might’ve felt about the whole thing. One Hundred Percent Dickbag Moves.
But cursing?
And cursing while drunk?
Maybe that was a little bit much.
And then Gwyn closed her eyes, held her hands out and said, “Goddess, we beseech you that this man shall never again darken Vivi’s door nor her vagina.”
Vivi nearly choked on her drink, giggling even as the alcohol seared her sinuses, and flopped down on the opposite side of the circle from Gwyn.
“Goddess,” Vivi said, taking another sip, “we beseech you that he never again use his dimples for evil against unsuspecting maidens.”
“Nice one,” Gwyn said before adding, “Goddess, we beseech you to make sure his hair never does that thing again. You know the thing we mean.”
“She totally does.” Vivi nodded. “Goddess, we beseech you to make him the sort of man who will forever think the clitoris is exactly one-third of an inch away from where it actually is.”
“Diabolical, Vivi. Truly dark magic.”
Her head spinning, but her heart not feeling quite so piece-y, Vivi smiled and leaned over the circle, closer to the candle. “You broke my heart, Rhys Penhallow,” she said. “And we curse you. You and your whole stupid, hot line.”
The candle flame suddenly shot up high, startling Vivi so much that she knocked over her drink as she scrambled back, and from his spot on the bed, Sir Purrcival hissed, his back arching.
Gwyn leapt to her feet to pick him up, but before she could, both windows suddenly slammed shut, the drapes blowing back from the force.
Yelping, Vivi stood up, her foot smudging the salt circle, and when she turned to look back at the candle, its flame seemed to rise impossibly higher, taller than Gwyn, before abruptly extinguishing itself.
Everything was quiet and still then except for Sir Purrcival, still hissing and spitting as he backed up against Gwyn’s pillows, and Vivi wasn’t sure she’d ever sobered up so fast in her life.
“So that was . . . weird,” she ventured at last, and Gwyn walked over to the window, cautiously lifting it.
The frame slid up easily and stayed put, and when Gwyn turned back to Vivi, some of the color was returning to her face.
“You made the lights flicker earlier, remember? Probably just, like, a power surge. A magical one.”
“Can that happen?” Vivi asked, and Gwyn nodded, maybe a little too quickly.
“Sure. I mean . . . we were just goofing around. None of that was real curse magic. That candle came from Bath & Body Works, I think.”
Vivi studied the label. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure ‘Orchard Hayride’ isn’t in league with darkness.”
“Right,” Gwyn said. “So yeah, no harm, no foul, except that we scared baby boy here.” She had managed to coax Sir Purrcival into her arms, and he snuggled in even as he seemed to glare in Vivi’s general direction.
“Don’t know my own strength, I guess,” Vivi said, and then, as one, she and Gwyn added, “Never mix vodka and witchcraft.”
Laughing a little sheepishly, Vivi set the candle back on Gwyn’s desk.
“Feeling better?” Gwyn asked. “Fake-curse that man right out of your hair?”
It was going to take more than one bath, several drinks and some magical silliness to forget about Rhys, but for now, Vivi nodded. “I think so. And you’re right, it was just three months, and now he’s back to Wales, so it’s not like I’ll ever have to see him again. He can go back to his life, I can go back to mine. Now, let’s clean up all this salt before Aunt Elaine comes up here and figures out we were drinking and magicking.”
Vivi turned away and neither she nor Gwyn saw the candle briefly ignite again, the flame sparking, the smoke curling back toward the open window and the full moon.