The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(10)

The Magician was dressed in bright red robes, a white crystal crown on her head, and Vivi smiled as she realized the figure was clearly modeled on Elaine. She could even spot Sir Purrcival winding himself around her ankles, his eyes a glittering green.

“So,” Gwyn said before taking a sip of her own wine. “First things first, we find out if you have any bad luck right now. Bad luck, they send Rhys. Good luck, it’s one of his brothers or his dad. Maybe a hot cousin.”

“That seems much more likely,” Vivi admitted, as Gwyn lit the candle in the silver bowl. “I mean, Rhys hated dealing with family stuff. I can’t imagine he’d want to come back here.”

Not after I threw his own pants at him and called him . . . something bad?

“We’ll soon find out,” Gwyn said, pulling four more cards from her tarot deck.

She slid The Magician in with them, her long fingers dexterous as she shuffled the five cards, sliding them back and forth over one another until Gwyn had no idea just where The Magician had ended up.

“Okay. The simple part. Turn over these cards one at a time,” Gwyn said, laying the cards facedown on the floor. “If The Magician pops up in the first three, bad luck.”

Frowning, Vivi studied the cards in front of her. Gwyn had painted the backs, too, a swirling pattern of green and purple spirals, and Vivi let her fingers dance over them for a moment before turning over the first card.

A man stood at the edge of a cliff, one foot lifted like he was seconds from stepping off, his eyes blue over the rim of a pair of sunglasses, his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his sternum.

Vivi’s heart did a little flip-flop in her chest because that sure was a familiar face.

Then she looked at what card it was.

“The Fool?” she asked, lifting her eyes to Gwyn’s.

Gwyn just shrugged, leaning back on her hands. “I take inspiration from everywhere, and when it came time to paint that one, he just . . . leapt to mind. Am I wrong?”

The Fool was all about risks and chances, leaping without looking, so no, Rhys was not necessarily a bad model for that card. Still . . .

“So is this bad?” Vivi asked. She lifted it between her thumb and index finger, shaking the card slightly. “Does this mean it is him?”

“No,” Gwyn said firmly, shaking her head. “Well. I mean. Probably not? I don’t know. Let’s see what the next card is.”

Vivi turned over the next one.

The Magician, wearing her aunt’s calm face, stared back up at her.

“Rhiannon’s tits,” Gwyn said, sitting up so fast that her knee nearly clocked her glass. “They are sending him.”

Vivi wished her pulse hadn’t suddenly sped up at that, wished her hands weren’t trembling slightly as she reached out to flip over the last three cards.

The Star, which was clearly Vivi, standing on a desk in a classroom in a polka dot dress, an apple in one hand, a glowing orb in the other; The Tower, Elaine’s cabin, but with a massive crack up the center of it, half the house sliding off a cliff; and last, The Moon, which was a . . .

“Werewolf?” Vivi asked, holding up the card for Gwyn, who rolled her eyes and plucked it from Vivi’s fingers.

“Do not question my artistic vision, Vivienne,” she said, sliding The Moon along with the other four cards back into her deck.

The two of them sat there on the floor, staring at the candles, and finally Vivi said, “So this is dumb.”

Gwyn glanced up. “Which part? Him coming? Us finding out he’s coming? You feeling weird about him coming? How many times I’ve said the word ‘coming’?”

“All of the above,” Vivi said, rising to her feet and sliding her skirt back into place. “Look, this was always bound to happen. His family founded this town and the college, the college where, let me add, I happen to work. He’s part of this place. I knew that when I got involved with him. And!” She lifted a finger in the air. “I have had many boyfriends since him!”

“To be fair, you’ve had three.”

“Which is more than two, which is ‘a couple,’ so therefore is many, Gwyn, whose side are you on?”

“Yours,” Gwyn hastily acknowledged. “One hundred percent.”

“It’s no big deal,” Vivi went on as she searched for her shoes near Gwyn’s bed. “He’ll come, he’ll do his whole Founder’s Day ‘Ooh, Look at Me I’m Fancy’ thing, and stuff will go back to how it was. I can continue to live a Penhallow-free life.”

“Except for the part where there’s a statue to his ancestor downtown and also your workplace is literally named after his house.”

“Except for that.”

“Remember when we pretended to curse him?” Gwyn asked, grinning as she shuffled her cards, and Vivi snorted.

“Something about his dimples and never being able to find a clitoris again.”

“Which,” Gwyn said, tilting her head to one side, “now that I think about it was actually more a curse against any women he dated, and I kind of regret that. For the sisterhood.”

Laughing, Vivi shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I may have done the occasional light social media stalking, and he seems . . . fine.”

Better than fine, really. He was still handsome, apparently ran some super chic travel business that took groups all over the world to do various glam things and probably still knew exactly where the clitoris was. She and Gwyn had just been two silly, drunk witches, joking around and lucky that no actual magic had been employed. Whatever had happened with that candle had been a fluke, clearly.