Chapter 14
Vivi had never liked Penhaven’s library. Maybe it was too close to the witchy side of things, or maybe it was the fact that, unlike the rest of campus, it was dark and slightly foreboding, almost medieval with its narrow windows and dark stone, the towering shelves blocking out what little light did manage to make it in. Even with the banks of computers in the center of the first floor, Vivi still felt she was stepping into the twelfth century or something every time she came in here, and as she led Rhys toward the back, she actually shivered a little, pulling her jacket tighter around her.
“Bloody hell,” Rhys muttered next to her. “Do they hang meat in here?”
“It’s not usually this cold,” she replied, frowning. Seriously, the library was not always her favorite place, but it usually wasn’t quite this chilly and oppressive. And when she glanced around, she noticed that the few students in there at this time of the morning were clearly feeling it, too, huddled at the study carrels, their shoulders up around their ears.
“Heating must be out,” she said before looking over at Rhys. “Good thing you brought a jacket.”
“Also good thing I’m from a country for whom ‘chilly’ and ‘dank’ could be written on the flag or possibly in some sort of motto,” Rhys said.
Viv opened her mouth, wanting to ask him more about Wales, but she shut it just as quickly, shaking her head as she continued to head for the Special Collections. Bad enough Rhys had found out that she’d studied Welsh history in college and grad school. She didn’t need to make any more small talk with him that inadvertently revealed too much.
Not that she’d studied Wales because of Rhys—she definitely had not. Not even a little. Yes, him talking about it that summer had piqued her interest, but you didn’t devote years of your life to study because a guy you went out with for three months talked about it one time.
Just like her never actually going to Wales had nothing to do with him, either. It was a small country, but she could’ve avoided him because what were the chances—
“Vivienne,” Rhys whispered, leaning down so close that his breath wafted warm over her ear, and now her goose bumps were from more than the cold. “We’re in a library.”
She stopped, confused, and then Rhys put a finger over his lips. “You’re thinking too loud.”
Vivi wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or flip him off, so she settled for ignoring him.
And if she smiled a little when her back was to him, that was her business.
There was something wrong with this library.
Rhys hadn’t been in all that many libraries over the course of his life, but he’d been in enough to know they usually didn’t feel like this. Hell, even his family home, the scariest place on god’s green earth, as far as Rhys was concerned, didn’t feel like this.
It wasn’t just the chill in the air, although as he and Vivienne walked through a pair of heavy wooden doors to access the back of the library, he was very glad he’d thrown on his leather jacket this morning.
It was something . . . unnatural. Something off.
And the feeling crawled over his skin in a way he didn’t like.
Vivienne felt it, too. He could tell from the way her gaze kept darting around. But she wasn’t saying anything, so he wasn’t going to mention it either, even though he knew they were both wondering the same thing: Was this something to do with the curse and the ley lines?
They passed through long rows of shelves, the space between them getting narrower and narrower until they had to walk single file, Vivienne leading the way. She’d worn her hair up today in a messy knot caught at the back of her neck, and in spite of everything, Rhys’s fingers itched to reach out and take it down.
What would she do if he did?
Kick you in the balls as you’d so rightly deserve, he reminded himself, and shoving those feelings down, continued to follow Vivi through the warren of shelves.
Finally, the shelves opened up, and they stood in a dim, circular room, a massive oak desk in the center of it, raised so high that Rhys’s chin barely came up to the edge. Vivienne, tall as she was, had to stand on tiptoes to peer over.
“Dr. Fulke?” she called softly, and an ancient, wizened face suddenly appeared.
“Ms. Jones?”
Smiling with relief, Vivienne rocked back on her heels and adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Yes. This is my . . . research assistant.” She jerked a thumb at Rhys, and he looked up at the ancient woman behind the desk, wondering if this would actually work. If she was a witch and worked at Penhaven, there was a good chance she might know who he was.
But the woman at the desk didn’t seem to care much. She barely gave Rhys a cursory glance before nodding and typing something out on a computer in front of her.
“Two hours,” she said, and there was a little whir as a machine printed out a sticker, which she handed to Vivienne, who turned and handed it to Rhys.
v. jones guest, it read, a little time stamp underneath, and Rhys frowned.
“This is . . . a lot more prosaic than I was expecting.”
“We live in the twenty-first century,” Dr. Fulke said from her perch, folding her arms over her narrow chest. “Forgive us for not scratching your name on vellum with a quill.”
“Well, I don’t need vellum, but the odd quill would be—”
“Thank you, Dr. Fulke,” Vivienne said quickly, pulling Rhys away.
“Your research assistant?” he asked as they moved deeper into the stacks.
“It was the first thing I could think of,” she whispered back. “And, I mean. It’s not completely untrue.”
She stopped as they reached the back of the room, nodding at a row of doors. “Take anything you find into one of those rooms, and I’ll meet you back here in an hour or so, as soon as I get out of class. You can ask Dr. Fulke or any of the other librarians if you need help, but don’t—”
“Vivienne.” He stopped her by stepping closer, reaching out to put his hands on her shoulders before he thought better of it and stepped back again. “I am a grown, adult man,” he said instead. “I think I can manage asking for help without giving away the whole plot.”
Her pursed lips told him she might not actually believe that, but she gave a nod anyway. “Good. I’ll help once I’m back.”
With that, she was turning away in a swirl of golden hair and black skirt, leaving Rhys alone in her deeply creepy library.
Not just creepy, but heavy. Ancient magic, the truly old, deep stuff, hummed through the room like a current of electricity, the kind of magic that made you feel a little uncomfortable, skin suddenly too sensitive, teeth aching slightly.
Grimacing, Rhys rolled his shoulders and stepped farther into the breach.
Fifteen minutes later—and with no assistance at all, thank you very much, Vivienne Jones—Rhys had a stack of books and made his way to one of the doors in the back.
The study room was tiny, nearly claustrophobic with no windows, the only light from a heavy glass lamp overhead, and nothing more than a large wooden table in the middle, an ancient slab of oak that also seemed to hold some magical properties. When Rhys put his hand flat on the top, he could feel a slight vibration.
Sighing, he opened the first book from the stack.
It was mostly in Latin, and Rhys felt that part of his brain creak slowly into life as he read. Hadn’t had much use for Latin since school, and had taken something of a perverse pleasure in not being as fluent in it as his father and brothers, insisting any magic that required this much work wasn’t worth it.
He maybe regretted that now.
Just a smidgen.
And as he read, he couldn’t stop thinking about his father, whom he definitely should be calling, right now, this minute, actually several hours ago.
Simon would know what to do. He always did. But that didn’t mean Rhys was ready to talk to him about this yet.
Was that because he was afraid of his father’s reaction when he learned he’d actually been wrong about something?
Or was it because of Vivienne?
Rhys groaned and closed the book in front of him, reaching up to rub his eyes with one hand.
What a fucking mess this all was.
How could he explain to Simon that this wasn’t some act of war on Vivienne’s part, but just a teenage girl who’d been hurt—hurt by him being a complete dickhead—and a spell that had gotten out of hand? Simon wouldn’t understand that. Simon had not, to Rhys’s knowledge, ever even been a teenager, probably. Seemed likely he’d just sprung fully formed and terrifying out of a cloud or something.
And then Rhys realized who he could call.
Simon was out, but there was the younger, slightly less terrifying version of Simon.
Pulling out his phone, Rhys quickly did the math on what time it was back home, and dialed.
Within about five minutes, he was deeply regretting that decision.
“You have to come home.”
“Come home? All cursed and such? Wells, I know I’m not your favorite person in the world, but wishing me dead seems a bit much.”
“I don’t wish you dead, you git, but it’s obvious that you can’t stay there with a coven of witches who cursed you.”
Sighing, Rhys closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. This was what he’d been worried about.
“You’re making it sound worse than it is. It wasn’t like that, it was—”
“I don’t care what it was like,” Wells said, and Rhys could almost see him there behind the bar at the pub, glowering at his mobile. “You need to come home, and you need to talk to Father about this.”
“Or,” Rhys suggested, “secondary, also solid plan: I do neither of those things, and you help me think of some way to break this curse without having to involve Da.”
On the other end of the line, Llewellyn blew out a breath that Rhys could practically feel.
“I can ask around.”
“Discreetly.”
Wells made a rude noise. “The day I need directions from you on how to be discreet is the day I fling myself off the top of Mount Snowdon.”
“Something to look forward to, then,” Rhys replied, cheerful, and there was a pause on the other end of the line before Wells said, “Seriously, mate. Be careful. It would . . . if something were to ever happen to you . . . I know we . . .”
Sitting up straighter, Rhys looked in horror at his phone. “Oh my god, Wells, please stop.”
“Too right,” Wells agreed, clearing his throat. “Anyway, try not to die. As your older brother, I get the first shot at taking you down, Bowen the second, so it would be very unfair if you perished there in the wilds of America without letting us have our chance.”
Relieved to be back to taking the piss and not actually sharing feelings, Rhys nodded and tapped his pen on the desk. “Fair enough, old man.”
He ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket, wishing he felt better about this whole thing. Having Wells on his side was definitely a boon, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Rhys needed to figure out how to break this curse as fast as possible, and so far, the books weren’t exactly helping.
Oh, there was information on curses, but mostly how to lay one. Apparently no witch ever wanted to break a curse.
Typical.
By the time Vivienne slid into the research room an hour or so later, Rhys’s eyes ached from trying to parse out tiny script, his brain hurt from all the translating and his hand was cramped from writing down every little bit of information that might be useful.
And he still didn’t feel like he had learned any more than he’d already known when he’d come in here.
“I don’t suppose you brought coffee,” he asked Vivienne, not looking up. He’d just come across an anecdote about a Scottish farmer who suspected his crops were cursed and had attempted to reverse the spell.
Going by the illustration, it seemed to have ended with him turning into a rather large cat, but it was still better than nothing.
“If I tried to bring coffee into this part of the library, Dr. Fulke would hang me up by my toenails, so no,” Vivienne replied, coming to perch on the edge of the table.
As she did, Rhys caught that scent again, that sweet, almost sugary smell that clung to her skin, and his fingers tightened around his pen.
“How goes it?” she asked, leaning in to see what he was writing, and Rhys sat back in his chair, rolling his shoulders to alleviate some of the tension that had gathered there.
“Not well,” he admitted. “But to be fair, I’ve only been at it for a little while. And of course, since I can’t alert the other witches here as to what I’m doing, I’m stumbling in the dark a little bit.”
Vivienne frowned, a wrinkle appearing over her nose, and Rhys wanted to reach out and smooth it away with his thumb.
Then she stood up. “Well, I’m here now, and I can help. What books haven’t you looked at yet?”
Thirty minutes later, she sighed and closed the last book, its spine creaking ominously.
“So this one is useless.” Leaning across the table, she reached for another from the stack, but even as her fingers closed over the cover, Rhys shook his head.
“Already tried that one.”
“What about this one?” she asked, tapping her fingers on another book, and Rhys barely looked up before shaking his head again.
“Also a dud.”
Vivienne sat up straighter in her chair. “Okay, so this entire endeavor has been a bust, then?”
Rhys finally looked up at her. “Did you think this was going to be easy?”
Rising from her seat, Vivienne rubbed the back of her neck. “No, but it just . . . it shouldn’t be this hard to reverse a curse. Especially a curse this stupid.” Throwing up her hands, she added, “I mean, we were barely even a thing.”
Rhys was tired. He was cranky. And he was quite literally cursed, which is probably why those words . . . irked.
More than irked, really.
Infuriated.
“Enough of a thing that you cursed me when I left.”
Vivienne frowned, her hand resting again on the back of her neck. “You didn’t leave,” she reminded him. “I left you after you suddenly remembered you were engaged.”
Tilting his head back to look at the ceiling, Rhys groaned. “I was not engaged, I was betrothed, which is not—”
“I know,” she said, standing up. “Not the same thing. So you tried to say at the time, but I gotta say, Rhys, I was not in the mood for a discussion about semantics then, and I definitely am not now.”
Had he forgotten that she could be this frustrating, or was this a new trait, another facet of Adult Vivienne he hadn’t learned?
Rising from his chair, Rhys stepped closer to her, suddenly aware of just how small the study room was, how close they were.
Christ, he should go home. To Wales. He should say “bugger it” to all this and leave.
Instead, he said, “That summer was important, Vivienne. It meant something.”
Her lips were parted, her breath coming fast, and every cell in Rhys’s body wanted to touch her even as his mind was screaming for him to back off.
Then Vivienne’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to him. “It was a three-month fling that I barely remember.”
“Bollocks,” he countered.
“Extremely not bollocks.”
She was openly glaring at him now, her hands curled into fists at her sides as he moved in closer.
“So you don’t remember the first time we kissed?”
Rhys did. He’d remember it until he died. They’d been sitting on top of a hill, the night a soft violet all around them, the smell of bonfires and summer in the air, and when he’d asked if he could kiss her, he’d nearly been holding his breath, wanting her to say yes more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“I’ve kissed a lot of guys,” Vivienne said, shrugging. “They all blend together after a while.”
“Do they indeed,” Rhys said, and somehow he and Vivienne were very close now, close enough for him to see how wide her pupils were, the flush climbing up her neck.
“Yup,” she replied, and he saw her gaze flick to his mouth. “Guess you should’ve been more memorable.”
“And if I were to kiss you now,” Rhys said, his voice gone low as he looked down at her, “would that refresh your memory?”
She was going to tell him to fuck off. Or slap him. Possibly knee him in the balls. Those were all things he was ready for.
What Rhys had not expected was for her to step so close that their bodies aligned, chest to chest, hips to hips.
“Go for it.”