Chapter 8
“So I think maybe we cursed Rhys.”
Vivi kept her voice low as she said it, glancing back over her shoulder toward the curtain in the corner of the room. He’d been back there for a while now, and she wondered what he and his dad were talking about. Could his dad do some kind of long-distance spell and find out that yes, Vivi and Gwyn had laid a curse on Rhys all those years ago? Would he declare Witchy War on them? Pull the magic from Graves Glen? Would he—
“Vivi, if we could actually place curses on people, that bitch who always gives me whole milk when I ask for soy at Coffee Cauldron would be a dead woman by now,” Gwyn said, placing another one of the chattering plastic skulls on the display table in the middle of the store. They went through thousands of the things this time of year, parents happy to have something cheap and spooky to buy their kids, kids delighted to chase their siblings around downtown with a cackling head.
Vivi picked up a stray one from the counter now, tapping her fingernails against its teeth as she fretted. “Okay, but doesn’t it seem like a lot? The car thing, that might be nothing, but the statue?”
“That thing has been there forever,” Gwyn said, turning to face Vivi, her witch’s hat slightly askew. “And maybe when they were setting up the stage, they bumped it or something. Look, if anyone should be freaked out about that statue, it’s Jane. And trust me, she will be. It’s gonna take, like, at least two bottles of wine to get her to chill out tonight.”
“I didn’t think you two were still a thing,” Vivi said as the skull’s mouth creaked open, eyes blinking, and Gwyn shrugged.
“We’re thing-adjacent. Speaking of,” she added, giving Vivi a look from the corner of her eye, “you and the Dickbag seemed a little sparky.”
Setting the skull back on the counter with a thwack, Vivi straightened up. “Excuse me?”
Another shrug as Gwyn drifted around to the other side of the table. “Just saying. The chemistry seems like it’s still there, and you are awfully worried about him.”
“I’m worried that we might have accidentally hexed the son of a very powerful witch,” Vivi argued, and Gwyn waved a hand.
“A likely story. I think you still like the Dickbag. Or at least want to have sex with him, which is understandable. I actually forgot how cute he is. Or did he get cuter over the past nine years?”
Moving to the counter, Gwyn faced Vivi, propping her chin in her hands. “What do you think?”
“I think that if you keep calling him ‘the Dickbag,’ you can’t also act like you’re a matchmaking tween in a Disney movie.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“Gwyn, I swear—” Vivi started, but before she could finish that threat, the curtain opened and Rhys appeared.
He looked irritated, an emotion Vivi had never associated with Rhys and one that, disturbingly, looked . . . really good on him. Something about the way frowning made the lines of his face even sharper, the blue of his eyes more intense.
She realized she was staring, and somehow sensing that Gwyn was looking at her with more smugness than any woman should, Vivi moved from behind the counter toward Rhys, holding her hand out for the mirror that he still held.
“Did it work?” she asked, and he blinked, like he was surprised to see her there.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes, got through to him no problem, thank you,” he said, handing her the mirror. “You said you found it at an antique store?”
Nodding, Vivi looked at her own reflection in the mirror, fighting the urge to stick her tongue out at her too-pink cheeks and too-bright eyes. Get a grip, girl.
“Yeah, just hanging out in the back. The owners had no idea what they had, and I decided to store it here rather than at my place.”
“Why?”
Rhys was looking at her, really looking at her, and oh, shit, here was another thing she’d forgotten about him. He was a champion listener. And not for show. He genuinely cared what you had to say, always wanted to know more. It was like having a spotlight on you all the time, but not in a way that made you feel exposed or on display. It just made you feel . . . warm. Appreciated.
Until it was gone.
Vivi tore her gaze from his and looked back at the mirror. “I don’t know,” she said. “Too tempting, maybe. No one should look into the future too hard, right? Of course,” she added, wiggling the mirror slightly, “I didn’t know it could also be used for long-distance phone calls.”
“Only if you’re trying to contact a particularly pretentious prick,” Rhys said, and Vivi raised her eyebrows.
“So it’ll work to contact you, then?”
Rhys’s smile spread across his face as slow and sweet as honey, and over his shoulder, Vivi saw Gwyn smirk, her fingers coming together to produce a quick shower of purple light as she mouthed, Sparky.
Had Rhys not been watching her, Vivi might have had a few choice words to mouth back to her cousin.
Instead, she lifted her head, holding the mirror against her chest. “Anyway. Everything’s fine? With your father?”
I didn’t curse you? This is just bad luck and has nothing to do with a drunk and brokenhearted teenage witch nearly a decade ago?
Rhys’s smile faded, the moment lost, and Vivi told herself that was a good thing.
And then, to her immense relief, he nodded. “So it seems. Now just to charge the ley lines, and I’m back to Wales.”
“Right, the lines. When?”
He pulled a delicate watch from the pocket of his vest, glancing at it. “The moon rises around seven tonight, so sometime around then?”
Gwyn was still watching them although, thank the goddess, at that moment the door chimed again, meaning customers. When Gwyn learned that Vivi was going to charge the lines with Rhys, she was never going to hear the end of it.
She still wanted to do it, though.
As Gwyn walked toward the door, Vivi nodded at Rhys. “Meet me here at six-thirty.”
Just a few more hours. Then she could see the ley lines, Rhys could do what he needed to do and this could finally be over.
Which was what she wanted.
Absolutely.
Of all the times Vivi had thought about Rhys over the years—and it had been more times than she wanted to admit—she’d never thought about something as basic and boring as having him in her car.
But here he was, leaning back in the passenger seat of her Kia, the seat moved back, his long legs stretched out in front of him, her travel mug, the one with the green sparkles and frogs on it, held in one of his hands as Graves Glen disappeared behind them and they climbed higher into the hills.
Twilight had just started to deepen, turning the sky a soft violet, the rest of the scenery blurring into blue, and Vivi’s fingers flexed on her steering wheel as she tried very, very hard not to think of the night she’d met Rhys.
It hadn’t been exactly like this, of course. It had been June, not mid-October, the air softer and warmer, the colors different, but it had been another magical night, a special one, and she wondered if he was thinking about it, too.
He was uncharacteristically quiet over there in her passenger seat, staring out the window, occasionally taking sips of coffee. Was that part of it? Did he have to center himself or something before he did magic this big?
For the first time, Vivi realized that she might be in a little bit over her head here. Not with Rhys, exactly, but with the magic she was about to witness. She kept her spells small, could go whole weeks without using her powers.
Was she ready for what she was about to see?
“It is truly amazing how much I can hear you thinking.”
Vivi threw him a quick glance before turning her eyes back to the road. “What, literally? Like mind-reading?”
Rhys chuckled and took another sip of his coffee before shaking his head. “No, I don’t have that power, and even if I did, I definitely wouldn’t use it on you. Only so many times a man should hear himself called a bastard, really. I just mean that you get this look when it’s clear you’re concentrating. It’s—”
“If you say ‘cute,’ I’ll throw you out of this car.”
“I would not dare. I was thinking more ‘charming.’”
Vivi couldn’t help but glance over at him again. He was smiling at her, that soft, fond smile she’d completely forgotten about until this moment, and this time it was a little harder to look back at the road.
“I’ll allow that,” she finally said. “And for your information, I wasn’t really thinking about you being a bastard. I mean, that is a default thought in my brain at all times, but I wasn’t actively thinking it.”
“Good to know.”
“I was thinking about the ley lines. What’s actually involved in charging them.”
Rhys shifted in his seat, putting the coffee in her cupholder. “Less than you’d think, really. A few magic words, a little razzle-dazzle”—he stretched out his hands, wiggling his fingers—“and it’s done.”
“Oh,” Vivi said, sagging a little in her seat, and he grinned, leaning back.
“Were you expecting to be more impressed?”
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” she admitted, and Rhys looked over at her, folding his arms over his chest.
“You were the Full Potter, right?”
Vivi screwed up her face as she turned the car down the narrow lane right off the highway, the one most people would miss completely. “The what?”
“The Full Potter,” he repeated. “Not finding out you’re a witch until you’re older, not growing up with it. ‘Yer a witch, Vivi,’ that sort of thing.”
Now that she didn’t have to watch for oncoming traffic, Vivi turned the full force of a glare on Rhys, knowing it was somewhat hampered by the smile she could feel tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“That is not a thing people say, ‘the Full Potter.’”
“It is, too. You just don’t know because you are, as stated, the Full Potter.”
“Okay, so if you can hear me thinking again, know I’m back to the ‘bastard’ thoughts.”
Still grinning, Rhys turned to look out the window as the car started its descent into the valley below. The night had gotten darker now, the sky more indigo than lavender, and the moon rose over the hills, bright and cold and white.
The perfect night for witching.
“Your mum was a witch, though, yes?” Rhys asked, turning back to her, and Vivi’s fingers flexed a little on the steering wheel.
“She was, yeah. Apparently really good at it, but . . . I don’t know. I guess that was her form of rebellion, rejecting all things magic.” It didn’t hurt to talk about her parents anymore. The loss still ached, but the pain was a weight rather than a sharp edge. Still, it had been forever since she’d mentioned them to anyone.
“Love a rebellious woman, me,” Rhys mused, leaning back. He was still watching her. Even though Vivi’s eyes were on the road, she could feel it.
“So you really didn’t do any magic growing up?” he asked. “Not even accidentally?”
“Oh, I totally did,” Vivi replied, smiling at the memory. “Did my first spell when I was five. I was in this tree house my dad had built for me, and I was making tea. By which I mean I was stirring dirt and water into an old teapot I’d found in the garage.”
“My father makes tea that clearly uses the same recipe,” Rhys quipped, and Vivi laughed.
“Anyway, there were these big azalea bushes under the tree house, and I thought it would be nice to add some of the petals, but I didn’t want to go all the way back down the ladder, so I thought really hard. About them floating up through the window. And then they just . . .” She lifted her hands off the wheel for just a moment, fluttering her fingers. “Did.”
She glanced back over at Rhys, who was still watching her with that fond smile, and it made something in her chest go so tight that she had to look away, concentrating on the road in front of her again.
“Anyway, my mom freaked, and had this big talk with me about how that kind of thing wasn’t safe, and she was right, really. I’m sure if the neighbors had seen, I would’ve ended up on some kind of really lurid talk show or something.”
Vivi hadn’t thought about that moment for years, but now she could see it all over again, her mom sitting at the edge of the bed, her hair the same color as Vivi’s, but shorter, brushing against her shoulders as she leaned in, smelling like smoke and spice.
I just want you to be safe, sweet girl.
Floating those petals hadn’t felt dangerous. It had felt fun and . . . light. Easy.
But her mother’s face had been so serious, and Vivi had never forgotten it, had never fully been able to detach the idea of magic from danger. She shivered now as the car descended, not from cold but just from the anticipation of what they were about to do.
Or maybe she could already sense the magic in the air.
“I see why ol’ Gryffud picked this place,” Rhys murmured to himself, sitting up to peer out the windshield.
“You can feel it, right?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Are we close?”
“Just around this bend.”
The car came to a stop at the side of a stream, the water burbling and sighing over rocks as it flowed from the mouth of an open cave just in front of them, the entrance yawning and dark in the glow of Vivi’s headlights.
She shut off the car, plunging them into deeper darkness, and in the gloom, Rhys turned to her, holding one hand out. “Well, Vivienne,” he said, “shall we?”