The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(29)

And then Vivi realized the kitchen didn’t smell like its usual mix of herbs and smoke, but of sugar and cinnamon.

“Aunt Elaine,” she asked, firmly ignoring Rhys, “did you . . . bake?”

Her aunt’s cheeks actually turned a little pink. “You don’t have to sound so scandalized, Vivi,” she said, waving one hand as she got up from the table and crossed the kitchen to the coffeepot. “I can cook, you know. I’ve just usually chosen not to.”

“Which is a crime and a sin,” Rhys said, licking a stray bit of icing off his thumb, a gesture that made Vivi’s own face suddenly feel a little pink. How did he look so good after the night they’d all had? Vivi felt like the circles under her eyes deserved their own zip code, and when she glanced down, she noticed that her blouse was misbuttoned. 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.

Instead, she also made her way to the coffeepot, grabbing a mug from the shelf above it. It was one of the ones they sold in the shop, white with a purple silhouette of a witch zooming away on a broomstick, the words Life’s a Witch, Then You Fly! in curling script below the rim.

“What are you doing here, Rhys?” she asked once she was a little more caffeinated. She wanted to resist the sticky buns on principle, but they smelled too good to pass up, so Vivi grabbed one still warm from the pan, careful not to let it drip on her skirt as she sat at the table.

Leaning back, Rhys folded his hands on his stomach and studied her. “Well, Vivienne, I don’t know if you remember, but it turns out I was horribly cursed, so . . .”

Rolling her eyes, Vivi held up the hand still holding the sticky bun. “Yes, I know, we can skip the sarcasm. I mean, why are you in my aunt’s kitchen right now?”

“We’re looking into curses,” Aunt Elaine said, rejoining them at the table. She nodded toward a yellow legal pad and a large open book Vivi had somehow missed, and now Vivi licked her own fingers before reaching over for it.

The book was heavy, the binding ancient and cracked, and Vivi could barely make out the letters stamped in gold foil on its spine. And even once she could, they didn’t spell any words she recognized.

“I guess it’s too much to hope that there was a really clear and easy-to-do anti-curse ritual in this, huh?” Vivi asked, carefully turning the pages. The paper was so thick that it crackled slightly, the illustrations painted and lurid.

Vivi paused on one that showed a man hanging from a tree branch by his ankles, all his insides on the outside.

“Ew,” she muttered, and suddenly Rhys was there, leaning over her shoulder to look.

“Ah, yes, the ‘Trial of Ghent,’” he said. “We had an ancestor that attempted that. Didn’t end well. You basically take your own entrails out and then—”

“Do not want to know,” Vivi said, quickly turning the page and also trying to ignore how good Rhys smelled.

You’re not allowed to feel turned on when the word “entrails” was just bandied about, she told herself.

“So far, we haven’t had much luck,” Elaine said, “but one bright spot. Thanks to Rhys using his magic to fuel the ley lines, most of the curse has probably drained off of him.”

She tapped the cover of another book. “The law of transmutation. Rhys was cursed, but in funneling his magic into another power source—”

“I passed on some of the curse to the ley lines instead,” Rhys finished. “So still cursed, but diluted. Maybe. Half of that particular page was ripped out, so we’re really just spitballing here.”

“Great,” Vivi replied weakly. And it was great that maybe Rhys could walk through town without being a disaster magnet, but she still felt guilt sitting like a rock in her stomach.

“One question,” Gwyn said, coming into the kitchen. She was still in her pajamas, her long red hair in a braid over one shoulder.

“Only one?” Vivi asked, eyebrows raised.

“Okay, lots, but one for right now.” She pointed at Rhys. “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—”

Aunt Elaine stopped them both with a lifted hand. “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?”

“Curse magic doesn’t work like that,” Aunt Elaine went on, ignoring him. “You’ll get general bad luck or, if you go really dark, death. But nothing that small or specific.”

“Good,” Gwyn said. “Now we don’t have to feel guilty about the clitoris thing anymore.”

“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.”