The Ex Hex

by Erin Sterling

“Treeeeaaaaaats,” Sir Purrcival croaked again, and then began wiggling in Gwyn’s arms. “Treatstreatstreatstreatsfoodtreats.”

“Treatstreatstreats,” he began again. “I think maybe that’s all he can say?” Vivi offered. “TreatstreatstreatsTREATSTREATSTREATS!”

“I changed my mind,” Gwyn said, scrambling to give Purrcival more treats. “Talking cats are bad. I see that now.”

There was guilt and fear and worry, of course, all that was mixed up in there, but overriding all of it was, Rhys knows he broke my heart.

And there he sat, wearing dark jeans and a charcoal sweater, his hair still very much doing The Thing despite the curse that was evidently real, and for just a second, Vivi gave some serious thought to cursing him again.

“Well, Vivienne, I don’t know if you remember, but it turns out I was horribly cursed, so . . .”

“His hair. It’s still doing The Thing. And it’s been doing The Thing ever since he got into town.” Rhys frowned, reaching up to tug at his hair. “What thing?” “Oh, like you don’t know,” Gwyn said, and Rhys’s frown deepened. “Seriously, what— ”

“I take it the two of you specified something about Rhys’s hair during the curse?” Now Rhys’s hand dropped from his head and he stared at Gwyn and Vivi. “You tried to attack my hair?”

“Treeeeaaaaats.” Oh, thank the goddess. Vivi looked up to where Sir Purrcival had just strolled into the kitchen, twining himself around Elaine’s ankles as she stared at him. “Oh, right,” Vivi said, shutting the book. “Um. He talks now. But he mostly just says that.”

Rhys looked around, too, although he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. There were no statues to fall on him, no cars to suddenly come careening his way. But who was to say a sudden sinkhole wouldn’t open up in the ground or that a stray tree limb might not come winging down from the heavens?

He knew Vivienne had been angry with him, furious even, and he’d deserved every bit of it. But that he’d hurt her badly enough that she’d done this . . . Fuck, that bothered him.

“You have a lot of books about Wales over here.” Bloody hell, mate.

“I love it,” he said at last. “The most beautiful place in the world, truly. Mountains, the sea, poetry, rugby. The national animal is a dragon, for fuck’s sake. What’s not to love?”

“No, they’re . . . look, you can meet them if you want. You’ll see.” “Vivienne Jones, you snob.”

“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.

“I am a grown, adult man,” he said instead. “I think I can manage asking for help without giving away the whole plot.”

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.

“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.”

“You didn’t leave,” she reminded him. “I left you after you suddenly remembered you were engaged.”

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 the hell is that thing?” he asked Rhys, and Rhys fought the urge to reply, How in the name of sweet fuck would I know?

That could’ve been an absolute shit show, but it wasn’t.” “First of all, it was definitely shit show–adjacent,”

“Stay with me here. You’re an adult woman going through a stressful time in her life, and now your hot-as-hell ex is back in town and wants to kiss your face off. I say smoke ’em if you got ’em, babe.”

“Tea?” “Tea,” he confirmed.

“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.”

“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 . . .”

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?

“Awesome,” Amanda enthused, and Vivi felt her mood lift. Someone from the Witch College who said “awesome” and wore jeans? Who knew?

“Anyway, we bound her, but obviously, she’s unbound now, so the trick is to capture her again,” Amanda continued. “How do we do that?” Sitting back in her chair, Amanda pulled a candle from her bag. “How do you feel about haunted houses?”

Many things went through his head when he saw that she was asking him to meet her near midnight, giving him just an address, and only 80 percent of them were filthy. Clearly, he was growing as a human being.

“Have you brought me out here to murder me?” he called. “Because that probably would solve your problems, but I have to say, I object on both moral and personal grounds.”

With that, she turned and headed back toward the gate, vaulting herself over with an ease that shouldn’t have turned him on nearly so much, but then, he was becoming used to finding literally everything Vivienne did erotic. Walking, jumping over fences, liking polka dots . . . all of it was immensely appealing,

“All right, I pride myself on being the sort of bloke who rolls with the punches, but seriously. Where are we going?”

She fished in her satchel again, and Rhys wondered if it was some sort of Mary Poppins bag. What was she going to pull out of that thing next? Sword? Houseplant?

But the candle does all the work. We just have to light it, wait for her spirit to, you know, get”— she lifted a hand and made a kind of swooping motion— “sucked into it, and then, done!”

nothing about this strikes me as particularly easy, Vivienne.” “Amanda said it would be.” “Oh, well, if Amanda said it would be, then no problem at all! Our old friend, Amanda.”

Amanda lol

“It’s our fault,” he said. “This entire thing is very much a disaster caused by two, Vivienne.” She stopped then, turning around again. “Well, if it’s your fault, too, then maybe you should stop whining about helping.”

“I’m not whining,” he insisted, but then realized that it was almost impossible to say that sentence without sounding like you were whining,

That was a relief at least. “Now, come on. We have a ghost to catch.” Aaaaand moment of relief over.

If you looked up “haunted house” online, he thought, this was the picture you’d get. It looked like something out of every bad horror movie he’d ever seen, and he was less afraid of ghosts than he was catching tetanus as he took in the crooked steps, the shutter slumping from one window, the front door hanging drunkenly on its hinges.

“Maybe the library needs a ghost,” Rhys said, studying the house. “Maybe we just leave it there. Bit of character, you know?”

“I grew up in an actual haunted house, and this is worse,” Rhys said. “Way worse. I mean, I haven’t seen your house, but I believe it.”

“Um. Yeah. Me, neither,” she said, then turned away before he caught her basically ogling him.

She was here to catch a ghost, pretty much the least sexy thing on the planet.

Pardon you, madam, these are sorcerer’s hands, he’d replied. Can’t play a single note.

In that case, she’d said, I know a spell you could cast. He had. Over and over again. For a hell of a lot longer than two minutes.

Rhys knew he should be thrilled they’d found what they were looking for. He also knew it was probably stupid to feel slightly resentful that, years ago, a witch had made her altar in a small closet where, decades later, Rhys had come very close to kissing a gorgeous woman before being thoroughly cock-blocked by said altar,

Lol

“She’s here,” Vivienne breathed, then looked up at him. “That sounded really creepy. Sorry.” “Yes, it was really you saying a two-word phrase that made this entire situation unsettling. Before? Pleasant as a day in the park.”

It was one of the most frightening things Rhys had ever seen, and Vivienne was stepping closer to it.

“That’s true!” Rhys said to Piper. “And I’m not exactly a taker anyway, more of a giver, really.”