Chapter 18
After the day he’d had, Rhys needed caffeine, and since the coffee shop was just down the way from Something Wicked, he’d suggested he and Vivienne go grab a cuppa.
As they made their way there, he had to admit that Graves Glen was a pretty place. The sun was setting behind the low mountains that surrounded the town, turning the sky a deep purple. The lights strung between the streetlamps twinkled, and in every store window, there was some charming display—a pile of pumpkins, cardboard witches on broomsticks, more fairy lights.
“It’s like being in a souvenir postcard,” Rhys said. “‘Greetings from Halloweentown.’”
Vivienne chuckled at that, crossing her arms. “No arguments there.”
“I see why you like it here.”
“It’s definitely a good place to be a witch. Even a secret one.”
“Technically we’re all secret witches,” Rhys said, “but I understand your point.”
The night had gone cool around them, but the sweet, soft sort of cool that comes on perfect autumn nights as opposed to the unnatural cold of the library. Wales got these nights, too, but earlier in the season and not usually quite this mild.
Still, as he wandered the cobblestone streets with Vivienne, Rhys felt an odd longing for home settle into his bones. Vivienne belonged in this setting, fitting as perfectly as a jewel.
Where did he belong?
Not wanting to follow that particularly maudlin train of thought, Rhys nudged Vivienne with his elbow and said, “So how exactly does it work here? The secret witch thing. Especially with the college. You can spot other witches, right?”
Shrugging, Vivienne tucked a stray lock of hair behind one ear. “Usually. And honestly, it’s not as hard to keep a secret from people as you’d think. Lots of people dabble in witchcraft now, so it’s not exactly weird to have an interest in that kind of thing.”
“Or run a shop,” Rhys said, and she nodded.
“Or that.”
“But the other students at the college still don’t know they’re going to school with witches, right?”
“Right,” Vivienne confirmed as they came to the coffee shop. Like every store or restaurant along this strip of main street, it was decorated for Halloween, little pumpkins stuck to the front window, and a garland of lights that looked like tiny cauldrons draping the door.
As they stepped inside, Rhys held the door open for a family with a baby swaddled up in a stroller, smiling down at the babbling infant as they passed, and when he looked back up, Vivienne was watching him with a strange look on her face.
“What?” he asked, but she only shook her head and gestured toward the counter.
“Tea?”
“Tea,” he confirmed.
Once they had ordered—basic English breakfast for Rhys, something with honey and lavender for Vivienne—they made their way to a booth near the back, and Rhys was suddenly very aware of how cozy this setting was, how . . . intimate.
“So.”
“So.”
They sat there with their steaming mugs of tea on the table, but neither of them made a move to drink. Instead, Rhys looked at Vivienne, and Vivienne looked everywhere but at him, her fingers twisting the fingerless gloves she was wearing nervously, pulling at the edges until Rhys was afraid they might unravel.
He reached out and covered one of her hands with his own, and dammit all, even through the wool of her gloves, even with his palm only barely touching the bare skin of her knuckles, he felt the touch all the way down to the soles of his feet, his skin lighting up with awareness of her.
“I think we need to talk about the library.”
She was already shaking her head, golden hair spilling over her shoulders. “No. No, no, no, no. We don’t. That’s a thing that in no way needs talking about.”
“Vivienne.”
“It was stupid, and it was just a kiss,” she went on.
He raised his eyebrows. “Just a kiss? Really?”
A flush crept up Vivienne’s neck, but she drew her hand out from underneath his and repeated, “Just a kiss.”
Rhys had not known Vivienne all that long in the grand scheme of things, but he recognized the look on her face now. This was a closed subject, and pushing her on it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
So he slid his own hands back across the table, resting them on the edge and drumming his fingers as he looked around him.
“Busy place.”
Clearly relieved at the change in subject, Vivienne nodded and picked up her mug of tea. “It’s always packed. We’re lucky we found a table.”
Leaning forward, Rhys gave a subtle jerk of his head to the barista, a short girl with bright turquoise hair and a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses. “Witch?” he asked quietly, and Vivienne didn’t even glance over to see who he was talking about.
“Yup. They only employ witches here. Usually students from the college. It’s part of what keeps things running so smoothly in here. There’s some kind of light enchantment, means orders never go wrong, no one ever drops a glass, that kind of thing.”
Her words seemed to dawn on them both at the same time and, slowly, they both looked down at their teas.
“So. Magic helps run this place.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And magic is . . . bad now.”
“Maybe it hasn’t affected this place?”
He could see Vivienne steeling herself as she picked up her mug, and he already had a hand out, her name on his lips as she closed her eyes, jerkily lifted the mug to her lips and took a big gulp.
They both sat there, frozen, as she swallowed and then, to his massive relief, smiled, her hazel eyes bright. “It’s fine,” she said, setting the mug back down. “Totally normal tea, no disaster magic afoot.”
Rhys took a sip of his own tea, and she was right—it tasted fine, and there was no hint of magic in it at all. “Right,” he said, and then lightly tapped her mug with his own. “So maybe this place escaped the cur—”
The shattering of glassware cut him off, and Rhys had a horrible prickling sensation on the back of his neck as he slowly turned to look toward the source of the noise.
There, by the door, an entire table had been turned over, glasses and mugs lying in pieces on the floor, and amid all that broken glass was a body.
Rhys was on his feet almost without thinking, crossing over to where a man, an older guy in khakis and loafers, lay on the floor, the fingers of one hand still curled like he was holding a mug, his face locked in a rictus of surprise.
“He’s breathing,” Vivienne said, appearing by Rhys’s side, her fingers pressed against the man’s wrist. “And his pulse is fine. He’s just . . .”
“Frozen,” Rhys finished grimly as he took in the wide, staring eyes, the half-open mouth.
And then he noticed the mug the guy had been holding was lying on the floor next to him, its contents spreading slowly across the hardwood floor.
There might not have been any magic involved in Rhys or Vivienne’s tea earlier, but there clearly was in whatever this man had been drinking. Rhys could practically see the spell, hovering like a miasma over the spilled liquid, and then he looked back toward the bar.
The woman Vivienne had pointed out as the owner was on the phone, looking back and forth between the man and the crowd of onlookers, but there was nothing in her face except concern. No guilt, no fear.
Then his eyes slid to the right, to where the girl with the turquoise hair stood, arms folded tightly around her body, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
And when she saw Rhys looking at her, she gave a little jump before opening the door behind the bar and disappearing into the storeroom.
“Vivienne,” Rhys said in a low voice, nudging her, but she was already standing up, her eyes on the spot where the girl had vanished.
“I saw.”
Outside, there was the distant wailing of sirens, but the man was already starting to stir a little, his eyelids fluttering, and Rhys assumed whatever the spell was, it wasn’t strong enough to last long.
Small mercy, that.
As he stood up, Vivienne moved closer to him and the two of them were able to slip back into the crowd of people gathered around the guy. As the ambulance pulled up outside, the owner of the shop put her phone back in her pocket and hurried over, leaving the counter empty and no one paying attention to anything but the EMTs currently coming in.
Which made it easy for Rhys and Vivienne to slip into the storeroom.
Unlike the back room at Something Wicked, there was nothing magical about this space. It was like the back room you’d find in any coffee shop in any town. Tall metal shelves stocked with stacks of paper cups, big sacks of coffee beans on the floor and several plastic crates full of mugs.
Rhys was, honestly, a little disappointed.
The girl with the turquoise hair was sitting on one of those crates, empty and overturned, her knees drawn up against her chest, the toes of her boots turned in and pressed together.
As soon as she heard the door open, her head shot up, and her dark eyes looked huge in her pale face. A name tag pinned to her shirt read, sam.
“Is he okay?” she asked, and Vivienne nodded.
“It’s already wearing off,” Sam said, and blew out a long breath, her shoulders sagging. “Okay, good.”
“Do you maybe want to tell us what you did to his drink to make him like that?” Rhys asked, and when she looked up at him now, some of her sardonic cool had returned.
“It’s a bespoke spell,” Sam said, sitting up straighter. “You wouldn’t know it.”
“Hipster magic, excellent,” Rhys muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Had he been like this as a young witch? All arrogant and so sure of his abilities?
Stupid to even wonder it, really. He knew he had been.
Next to him, Vivienne drew herself up a little bit taller. “What was it supposed to do?”
“Are you two the Magic Police or something?” Sam asked, scowling, and Rhys shoved his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels.
“No, pretty sure that doesn’t exist. If it had, I would surely have been arrested at some point. Just a fellow witch, trying to figure out what happened in there.”
He jerked his thumb back toward the shop, and some of the girl’s confidence faded, her eyes darting toward the door.
“It’s stupid,” she muttered, and Rhys shrugged.
“Lots of things in life are. So what was the spell?”
Sam tugged at the hem of her T-shirt, not meeting Rhys’s eyes. “He wanted a potion to make him, uh. You know.” She made a weird gesture with her hands, lifting her palms up and then flailing her hands in the general direction of Rhys’s lap. “Like Viagra,” she finally said. “But magic.”
Rhys was very proud of himself for not betraying the slightest bit of surprise or amusement over this. Truly, he deserved a medal. Possibly a parade.
As it was, he just cleared his throat and said, “Right.”
“I figured out how to make that kind of spell as a joke,” she went on, “but then I gave it to someone who asked for it, and he told a friend, I guess, and he told someone else, and now I get these dudes coming in here a few times a week for it. But it’s never done that.”
“So wait,” Vivienne said, stepping in front of Rhys and folding her arms over her chest. “You’ve been what? Dealing potions?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Okay, that makes it sound super shady. It’s not dealing, it’s giving.”
Vivienne’s eyebrows rose. “You just give the potions away?”
Making a frustrated sound, Sam waved one hand. “Duh, no. I charge for them. A hundred bucks a pop, more if the potion is complicated or the ingredients were expensive to get.”
Her smug expression wavered. “Oh, wait, I guess that is dealing. Huh.” She shrugged. “Anyway, yes, I have a harmless side gig dealing potions here.”
Then she glared at Vivienne. “Out-of-state tuition isn’t cheap, lady.”
“Point noted,” Rhys replied, moving a little closer to Vivi’s side, “but you realize that what you were doing was dangerous, right? Potions are not something to mess around with.”
“Yeah, well, usually there aren’t any issues, and I’d never make anything that would hurt someone. We’re talking the lightest magic here. A potion to make your eyeliner last all day. One that makes sure you’re always on time for twenty-four hours.” She looked up at Rhys, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “That one is good for finals week. Makes sure you don’t oversleep, but doesn’t do anything scary like make you stay awake for days or something. Took some tweaking, but—”
“Sam, we’re definitely impressed with your skills, but you can’t make potions and sell them to people. It’s dangerous and if the college found out, you’d be in serious trouble.”
All of Sam’s bravado popped like a soap bubble, and Rhys realized just how young she was. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Same age as he and Vivienne had been the summer they met.
Christ, he hadn’t realized just how young they were until that age was sitting right in front of him, looking like she’d been sent to the bloody headmaster’s office.
“You’re not going to tell them, are you?” she asked, turning her beseeching gaze on Vivienne. “I know you work there. With the normies, not us, but—”
“I’m not,” Vivienne said. “So long as you promise me you’ll never do it again.”
“I promise,” Sam said quickly, holding up one hand, the silver rings stacked on her fingers flashing in the fluorescent lights. “Trust me, I don’t want anything like this to ever happen again.”
She got up then, dusting her hands on her apron before adjusting her beanie, only to pause, chewing on her lower lip again.
“It’s just . . . I really don’t think it was my potion. I didn’t do anything different. Even the phase of the moon was the same when I brewed it.” She flashed them a cheeky grin. “Always make that one on the waxing moon. Because of the whole ‘growing’—”
“Right,” Rhys said, cutting her off. “We’ve got that, thanks.”
“Point is,” Sam went on, “something went wrong, but it wasn’t my magic.” She shook her head. “It’s like magic is off all over the place. Today some of the normie kids wandered into one of my classes on herb magic, and that’s for sure not supposed to happen.”
Rhys felt a headache building at the base of his skull. Curse, ghosts, now bad potions. He thought again about those lines of magic snaking out of the cave, racing toward the town, and wished he could go back in time and kick himself repeatedly in the head.
He’d known something was off. He’d felt it.
And, as usual, he’d ignored things like “self-preservation” and “common sense,” and decided to just do it anyway.
And now look where they were.
“Maybe hold off on the magic for a little while,” Vivienne suggested, coming forward to touch Sam’s arm. She looked as tired as Rhys felt, and he had to fight the urge to rest his hand against her lower back, to pull her in closer to him and let her rest her head on his shoulder.
Sam scoffed at that. “‘Hold off’?” she echoed. “That’s like asking me to hold off on breathing. I know you don’t get that since you’re not a witch—”
“I am a witch,” Vivienne said, stepping back, and Sam’s face creased in confusion.
“Wait, seriously? But you teach the normal classes.”
“Right, because—”
“And, like, obviously this dude is magic,” Sam went on, pointing to Rhys, “you can tell, but you are? Seriously?”
Rhys saw Vivienne swallow hard, and for at least the thousandth time, Rhys wished that mind-reading were one of his abilities. Of course, the way things were going right now, he’d probably be able to hear every stray thought of a person within a hundred-mile radius and lose his bloody mind, but it might be worth the risk to know what was going on behind Vivienne’s bright hazel eyes.
Her shoulders went back a little, chin lifting, and she said, “Anyway, still a witch, still think you need to be careful with your magic while things are out of sorts.”
Sam was still looking at Vivienne like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted. “I mean, I knew you were related to the people who run Something Wicked, but seriously, I thought you were just—”
“So you’ve said.” Rhys cut her off as Vivienne’s eyes began to narrow. He’d been on the receiving end of that look, and wanted to save Sam from herself.
“Ms. Jones here is right,” Rhys went on. “Hold off on the magic until things have settled down a bit.”
“But why are they all fucked up in the first place?” the girl asked, and Vivienne’s face got that slightly murdery expression again that had Rhys stepping in front of her.
“They just are,” he said. “But we’re fixing them.”
He wished that were actually true. So far, they’d been at this for nearly twenty-four hours, and all they had to show for it was eye strain and possibly stray bits of ectoplasm in his hair.
Sam scowled at that, but all the same she muttered, “Fine,” before slipping past them and back out into the café.
Sighing, Rhys nearly flopped against a tall metal shelf, almost upsetting a stack of paper cups, and Vivienne moved across to lean next to him. For a moment, they were silent, both of their minds whirring.
“Hard,” Vivienne murmured to herself, and Rhys blinked at her.
“Beg pardon?”
Startled, Vivienne glanced over at him. “Oh, um. I was just thinking. That’s . . . that’s where her potion went wrong. The spell was supposed to make him . . . you know, and it did, but it was . . . an all-over effect instead of . . . region-specific.”
“Vivienne Jones, are you blushing?”
She pushed off of the shelf with a roll of her eyes, but he saw the way her hands fidgeted with the ends of her gloves again. “Definitely could’ve been worse,” she said.
“Do you see now what I was saying?” Rhys asked, stepping closer to her, close enough that he could see the little constellation of freckles on her right cheek, close enough to touch her if he wanted to.
Which he did.
But he wouldn’t.
“We can’t keep putting out these little fires, Vivienne. We have to fix this.”
“I know,” she said, her head snapping up.
And then she lowered her voice, ducking her head. “Halloween is huge in this town. The biggest moneymaker, too. Some of the businesses in Graves Glen are set for the year after Halloween. And if we haven’t fixed this by then, it might not be safe. We can’t risk that.”
“Also slightly concerned about me being safe,” Rhys said, “but I see your point. Luckily, magic tends to be at its strongest around Samhain. And that means that if we work quickly, any kind of curse reversal might work stronger.”
“I like where your head is at, Penhallow,” Vivienne replied, pointing at him, and Rhys brightened, smiling at her.
“Did you just call me by my last name? Like we’re on some kind of sports team together?”
To his surprise, she actually smiled a little at that. “In a way we are, right? Breaking a curse has definitely turned out to be a lot more . . . athletic than I’d anticipated.”
“Hiking across campus,” Rhys noted.
“Fighting ghosts,” Vivienne added.
“Snogging in libraries . . .”
At that, her smile dimmed and she straightened up, moving back from him.
“That was a mistake,” she said, and Rhys shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Was it, now?”
She turned back to him, meeting his eyes. No blush now, no fidgeting. “You know it was.”
What Rhys knew was that kissing her had felt like waking up. Like he’d been drifting sleepily through everything for the past nine years until he tasted her mouth again and remembered what actually being alive felt like. Better than any magic, Vivienne’s kiss.
And he didn’t want to go without it for another nine years.
“We’re adults,” he reminded her. “Not kids furtively sneaking into dorm rooms anymore.”
“Which is why we know better than to complicate things right now,” Vivienne said, eminently sensible and, much as Rhys hated to admit it, completely right.
He was leaving when this was over.
She was staying.
What they had was not the kind of thing that worked in a long-distance sense, and hell, for all he knew, all they had was intense physical chemistry that would burn itself out.
It didn’t burn itself out over nine years, the bastard part of his brain reminded him. Do you really think it’s going to now?