The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(26)

And that guy was currently here.

“It was an accident,” she said again for what felt like the twentieth time this evening. “We were just . . . being silly.”

“There is no being silly with magic,” Aunt Elaine said, as stern as Vivi had ever heard her. She was standing in front of one of the wardrobes, her arms folded over her chest, her hair pulled back from her face. Several earrings sparkled in her left ear, a long strand of silver dangling from the right, and she looked every inch the powerful witch she actually was. “As I told both of you, constantly,” Elaine went on before walking over to the wardrobe and pulling out a T-shirt.

“What does this say?” she asked, shaking it, and Vivi saw Gwyn roll her eyes from her own spot, sitting crossed-legged on one of the trunks.

“Mom,” Gwyn started, and Elaine raised a hand. “Oh, you will not be ‘Mom-ing’ me, young lady.”

Rhys, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet since they’d all retired back here, walked up to Elaine and took the T-shirt from her.

“‘Never mix witchcraft with vodka,’” he read, then nodded. “Solid advice, that.”

“Okay, no,” Gwyn said, standing up from the trunk. Her mascara was smudged and there was a run in her tights, but other than that, she didn’t seem that much worse for wear, given what had happened tonight. “You don’t get a say in any of this. This is all your fault.”

“Because I did the curse?” Rhys asked, raising one eyebrow as he tossed the shirt back to Elaine. “Is that why it’s my fault?”

Hands on her hips, Gwyn faced off with Rhys. “Because it’s your fault we had to curse you in the first place. If you hadn’t shattered Vivi’s heart—”

“I didn’t shatter anything,” Rhys scoffed, and Vivi’s heart sped up as she watched him pause, thinking it over.

Then he looked at her with those blue eyes and asked, “Vivienne . . . did I shatter your heart?”

Now not just the night that would never end, but possibly one of the worst nights of her life.

“You didn’t,” she said, desperate to save some kind of face here.

And maybe she could have had Gwyn not existed.

Gaping at Vivi, Gwyn said, “Um, he very much did. Remember all the crying? The bath? You kept conjuring up the smell of his cologne, for fuck’s sake.”

Vivi’s face flamed red and she sunk farther into her chair. “I did not do that,” she muttered even as Rhys stared at her in obvious shock.

“You called me a ‘fuckerneck,’ which is not even a word,” he reminded her. “You threw my own pants at me. You weren’t brokenhearted, you were angry.”

“Right, because no woman has ever been both those things at the same time,” Gwyn said, and Vivi finally stood, scrubbing her hands over her face.

“Would everyone stop acting like I was this tragic, lovelorn victim? I was a drunk teenager goofing around with my equally drunk cousin. This was not that big of a deal.” She paused, then rolled her eyes. “Okay, so this part of it has turned out to be a big deal, but I mean the actual cursing bit. That was not meant to be a big deal, and you’re all being ridiculous about it.”

She pointed at Rhys. “Do you really want to tell me you didn’t do something overly dramatic and stupid as a teenager?”

“‘Overly dramatic and stupid’ describes my entire teenage career, so no.”

“Gwyn?” she asked, turning to face her cousin.

Screwing up her face, Gwyn said, “Girl, you lived with me when I was a teenager. You know.”

Nodding, Vivi faced Aunt Elaine, who continued to frown at her for a beat only to finally throw up her hands and say, “I know you’re just going to mention the whole thing with Led Zeppelin, so let’s just skip it and admit we’ve all done stupid things in our pasts, and leave Vivi alone about her motivation.”

“Thank you,” Vivi said. “Now that we all agree that the why does not matter, the issue is the what. Namely, what this curse might mean for Graves Glen.”

Sighing, Elaine reached up and tugged at her earring. “I assume the curse spread to the ley lines,” she said, “and given that the ley lines fuel all the magic in town, that magic is now . . . corrupted.”

Hence evil plastic skulls, and while Vivi prided herself on being optimistic, she wasn’t naive enough to think that was going to be the limit of this disaster. Who knew what other things the cursed ley lines might unleash?

“I need to talk to my father,” Rhys said as he leaned against the wardrobe, tossing one of the skulls that had survived Elaine’s spell back and forth in his hands. Every time its teeth clacked together, Vivi felt her skin crawl. Too bad they’d never be able to sell those things again because they really had been popular. But revisiting a nightmare was not worth the occasional extra five bucks, in Vivi’s opinion.

“Do you want me to get the mirror?” she asked Rhys, and he raised his head, startled.

“I said I need to talk to him, not that I’m actually going to do it.” Rhys shuddered. “This night has been horrible enough already.”

“Simon will need to be told,” Aunt Elaine said on a sigh, sinking into the chair Vivi had just vacated. “And I don’t look forward to his reaction.”