Chapter 13
The cold night air was a relief as Gwyn stepped back out onto the street. She was still overheated, still felt like she was burning up from the inside out, a fire a thousand cold showers couldn’t put out.
Her truck was parked in its usual spot in front of Something Wicked, but Gwyn bypassed it, heading instead for the small alley beside the store, her fingers still trembling as she did a quick spell on the side door that led up to Vivi’s apartment.
When her cousin opened the door, Gwyn knew she must look as completely bonkers as she currently felt because Vivi, who had really seen some shit when it came to Gwyn, muttered a term in Welsh Gwyn had never heard her use before, her eyes wide.
“Good lord, what provoked that reac—oh.”
Rhys appeared over his wife’s shoulder, and Gwyn pointed at him. “Out,” she said. “Vivi and I have . . . coven business.”
“Usually code for the two of you wanting to drink wine and talk about things you don’t want me to hear, and given the state of you right now, Gwynnevere, that seems fair.”
Pressing a quick kiss to Vivi’s temple, Rhys reached for his jacket where it hung by the door, squeezing past Gwyn with another quizzical look, but, mercifully, no questions.
As his footsteps faded down the stairs, Vivi ushered Gwyn inside. “What is all over you?” she asked, closing the door behind her.
Oh. Right.
Gwyn had been so busy focusing on the effects of the love spell that she’d almost forgotten she was still literally wearing it.
“Spell,” she said, her voice still dazed as she sat heavily on Vivi’s sofa. The apartment was Gwyn’s home away from home, and she reached for her favorite throw now, the soft purple one she’d bought for Vivi years ago and that always had a place of honor on the back of the couch.
“What kind of spell?” Vivi asked, her brow wrinkled, and Gwyn looked up at her, blinking.
“Love spell.”
Vivi stood very still for a long moment, then without a word, disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, she was carrying her two biggest wineglasses and a full bottle of Pinot Grigio.
Vivi really had always been Gwyn’s favorite person in the whole world.
She gratefully accepted a glass now, taking a long sip.
Okay, a gulp.
She could still taste Wells’s kiss, her lips tingling and raw from the scrape of his beard, and she shivered a little as she set her wineglass back on the table.
Vivi, patient as always, was curled up in the armchair opposite her, her feet clad in black socks covered in bright green spooky eyes. It was easier to look at those eyes than it was to look into Vivi’s as Gwyn told her cousin what had happened that night. About the crystal, about going over to Wells’s for some well-earned gloating, about wanting to see what else he might have in storage, and then, finally—humiliatingly—about the part where a shower of pink glitter that smelled like a cupcake made her put her entire face on Wells’s entire face and kiss him like kissing was in danger of going extinct.
By the time she’d finished, her glass was empty and Vivi’s mouth was hanging open, neither of which made Gwyn feel that great about her life choices tonight.
“Wells,” Vivi finally said. “You kissed . . . Wells. Because of a love spell.”
It sounded so innocent put like that. Just a kiss between two adults thanks to a little light magic, no big deal!
But that didn’t get across just how devastating the kiss had been, how it seemed to have rattled everything inside Gwyn.
“It wasn’t just a kiss,” she said now, rubbing her face and grimacing when her hand came away still streaked with glitter. “It was a magicked kiss. Love spell magic, Vivi! Just hanging out in some box in Wells’s store. Anyone could’ve bought that and then ended up making out with someone they hate.”
That’s what she needed to do—turn this around to how irresponsible this was, how dangerous that Wells had come to town and opened a magic store and didn’t even know what he was doing.
She opened her mouth to say just that, but Vivi was frowning, leaning forward slightly, her thinky face very much in evidence.
“Love spells don’t work that way,” she said, and Gwyn blinked.
“What?”
Getting up from her chair, Vivi went to one of the many bookshelves lining her walls, her fingers dancing along the spines until she found what she was looking for. “Magic can’t make people act against their basic will,” she said, paging through the book as Gwyn’s stomach began a slow descent to somewhere south of her knees. “It violates the . . . the basic tenets of magic. You can do bad spells on people, obviously, and those can do harm, but you can’t make a person do something they don’t want to do. Our spirits are inherently too strong to be bent, even with magic. Right, here it is!” She planted her finger on a page and began to read.
“‘While the idea of a love spell has loomed large in popular culture, such magic is nearly impossible to pull off unless both subjects feel a mutual pull toward one another.’”
Did Gwyn just think Vivi was her favorite person in the entire world? That couldn’t possibly be right. Her favorite person in the entire world would not be a lying liar.
“Let me see that.”
Gwyn got up from the sofa, trailing the purple blanket as she took the book from Vivi, her eyes skating over the page and, to her horror, reading the exact thing Vivi had just read.
Slamming the book shut, Gwyn pushed it back toward Vivi. “This is obviously a stupid book. A stupid book of extreme wrongness that I can’t believe you have on your shelf. It must be one of Rhys’s books.”
Vivi only laughed, shaking her head as she slid the book back into its space on the bookcase.
“Sorry, girl. The books don’t lie, and the spell didn’t make you do anything. You kissed Wells Penhallow because you wanted to kiss Wells Penhallow.”
When Wells heard footsteps on the stairs leading down to the basement, his heart gave a quick leap in his chest.
She’s back.
But the tread was too heavy to be Gwyn’s, the shoes not clacking the way her boots always seemed to, and after a moment, Rhys came into view, hands in his pockets as he sauntered down the stairs.
Wells told himself he was only disappointed because he was always disappointed to see Rhys. It had nothing to do with the feel of Gwyn’s mouth lingering on his lips or the way his hands were practically aching to be back on her body.
Not the time nor place for those kinds of thoughts, but luckily, his younger brother’s voice was better than any cold shower.
“You down here?” he called, and Wells, who had not moved from the spot where Gwyn had left him, who was, in fact, not sure he would ever be capable of moving again, managed a rather feeble, “Yes.”
Rhys appeared around the corner, a bobbing ball of light hovering just above his left shoulder. “Thought I’d—” he started, but then he froze, his eyes going slightly wide as he took Wells in.
Wells scowled, then glanced down at himself. The spell was still shimmering all over him, streaking his dark clothing pink, and he rolled his eyes, ready for whatever quip his brother undoubtedly had to deliver.
But Rhys didn’t say a word, only stood there stock-still, his face going a rather alarming shade of red before he burst into laughter.
Not just any laughter, either, but the full-throated cackle of a younger brother getting to make fun of the eldest, and that, finally, gave Wells the strength he needed to stop standing around like a fucking numpty.
“All right, yes,” he said, attempting to dust himself off. “I look as though I just raided a thirteen-year-old girl’s makeup, but that’s really no reason to get quite this amused, Rhys.”
But Rhys only shook his head, leaning against the nearest shelf as he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh, mate,” he said, and then he collapsed into laughter all over again.
Scowling, Wells folded his arms over his chest and did his best to look as foreboding as a man covered in pink glitter could. “It may look silly, but this is actually rather serious. Someone sent a box with actual magical artifacts in it. This”—he gestured at the glitter—“is a spell. A love spell, Rhys. Which could’ve been a disaster in the wrong hands.”
“Looks like it already was a disaster,” Rhys replied, still grinning. Then he jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. “Especially since Gwyn Jones is currently sitting on my sofa covered in that same shite.”
Bollocks.
So that’s what Rhys had found so amusing. Wells had hoped to get out of this without his brother ever, ever knowing what had transpired in this room, but this was, he was quickly learning, the issue with small towns and families in said small towns—secrets didn’t really exist.
“Yes, well,” he said, sniffing and tugging at the ends of his waistcoat. “It’s all over now and a lesson learned. Now, help me clean this up, and let’s figure out just why I had this spell in the first fucking place, hmm?”
To his relief, Rhys gave an easy roll of his shoulders and moved farther into the cellar. “I want you to put it in writing later. How you needed my help.”
“Fine,” Wells gritted out, and Rhys grinned before crouching down and picking up the little bag that had held the love spell.
“Careful!” Wells warned. “That’s strong magic. No idea where it came from.”
Rhys studied the bag for a moment before turning back to Wells, his expression carefully schooled.
That wasn’t a good sign.
“The spell. It was in this?”
Wells nodded, and knew immediately by the absolutely unholy grin that spread across Rhys’s face that something was very, very wrong.
Rhys rose to his feet and pointed to the torn box still on the upper shelf. “And it came out of this?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Wells muttered, crossing back to the shelf. “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re thinking rather than playing Poirot, hmm?” he asked, already reaching up for the box. “You make such a bloody production out of everything, I swear to Saint Bugi.”
The box came down easily, and Wells set it on one of the low shelves, tearing open the flaps. “Whatever else is in here will need to be disposed of safely,” he said. “There’s no telling how many other dangerous spells might be—”
Wells blinked at the contents of the box as Rhys stepped closer, peering over his shoulder.
“I don’t know, Wells,” he said with a shrug. “Some of that stuff looks a bit adventurous, maybe, but nothing dangerous per se.”
Reaching into the box, Wells pulled out a pair of purple fuzzy handcuffs, still trying to make sense of what he was seeing even as Rhys’s grin grew wider.
“Looks like there was some kind of mix-up,” Rhys said, tapping the side of the box where, for the first time, Wells noticed a rather grubby and torn shipping label. “And I have to say, I wonder what the . . . ”
He leaned closer, trying to make out the name on the label. “The Pleasure Palace is going to do with all the witch shite they undoubtedly now have.”
“This isn’t . . . ” Wells said, digging through the box, wondering why so much of his life here in Graves Glen seemed to involve plastic phalluses. “I don’t understand.”
That was possibly the biggest understatement he’d ever made in his life. He didn’t understand how he’d ended up with this box, he didn’t understand how this box had somehow still contained a love spell, and he certainly didn’t understand why he was suddenly so completely, painfully attracted to a woman who clearly spent most of her waking moments thinking up new ways to make his life as annoying as possible.
Because he’d been thinking about kissing her long before that spell had descended on them.
Rhys was still holding the velvet pouch, and he reached inside it now, a small piece of paper trapped between his fingers. “I think this might explain some things,” he said, thumping the paper against Wells’s chest before turning and heading back toward the stairs.
Wells looked at the words printed in pink curling script, his eyes already searching out the word “spell.”
But there was nothing about spells or magic written there, only . . .
“Oh, fucking hell,” Wells whispered.
Or possibly whimpered.
From the stairs, Rhys only laughed.