The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(37)

For a moment, the cold Rhys had felt earlier seemed to slip over him from head to toe, enveloping him as though he’d fallen into the sea.

And then he was flying.

Well, not flying so much as tumbling slightly above the floor, his back connecting painfully with a bookshelf. Dimly, he heard it creak and wobble, heard the shrieks of the students in the library, the pounding of running feet and Vivienne calling his name. But above all of that, he could still hear that shrill scream the ghost had uttered, like Satan’s teakettle whistle, and as he tried to sit up, he winced, holding his ribs. None seemed broken, but they were definitely sore, and if that thing decided to take another shot at him . . .

The ghost had its back to him now, its attention focused on the shelves in front of it, and as Rhys watched, spectral fingers reached out to take a book down, only for the ghost to howl in frustration as her hand passed right through whatever it was she was trying to hold. Still she tried again and again, her movements jerkier and more frantic, and Rhys swallowed hard as he attempted to come to his feet.

Vivienne was still standing there, frowning at the thing, and when she took a hesitant step even closer, Rhys lifted his hand.

“Vivienne!” he called, and the ghost’s head whipped around, eyes narrowing.

He could feel it gathering up energy, the temperature in the room dropping even further, so cold now that he could see his breath, and every hair on his body seemed to be standing on end.

Bracing himself for another attack, Rhys gritted his teeth.

But then the ghost stopped, floating slightly to the right to glare at Vivienne, who still stood there, studying it like it was a puzzle she couldn’t quite work out.

With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a wail, the ghost dropped her head, and, as suddenly as a soap bubble popping, was gone.

The room almost immediately became warmer, and Rhys looked around him.

The few students in the room had fled, leaving him and Vivienne alone among the overturned tables, the abandoned textbooks and pages of notebook paper that had fallen to the floor, the library suddenly very quiet after all that chaos.

Rhys moved over to Vivienne, taking both her hands in his. They were freezing, and he chafed her fingers between his palms. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.

Moments ago, they’d been kissing. More than kissing, really. Rhys knew when a kiss was just a kiss, and when it was a prelude to more, and what they’d been doing in that study room had definitely been leading somewhere. He could still taste her on his tongue, still feel the damp heat he’d touched between her legs.

But now she was pulling her hands out of his and moving back, her eyes a little distant.

“Fine,” she said. “You?”

Rhys gingerly touched his ribs again. “Nothing a hot bath and a nice whisky won’t fix.”

She nodded, then looked back to the shelf the ghost had been searching. “What was she looking for?”

“That’s what you’re concerned about?” Rhys asked, raising his eyebrows. “Not the fact that ghosts are real?”

“That part, too,” she said, walking over to the shelf, frowning as she scanned the titles there. “Have you ever seen one before?”

“Most definitely not,” Rhys said, shoving his hands in his pockets with a shudder. He could still feel the unnatural coldness of the spirit slipping over him, remembered how he’d felt suddenly not in control of his own body.

Fucking horrifying.

And it hadn’t just been the cold he’d felt—that thing had been angry at him. But why?

“Ms. Jones.”

A woman stood in the doorway between the regular library and Special Collections, Dr. Fulke hovering nervously behind her. She could’ve been anywhere between fifty and eighty, somehow ageless and ancient all at once, her hair a bright shock of white against her dark skin, and she was wearing, as far as Rhys could tell, about sixty-eight scarves.

Next to him, Vivi heaved a deep sigh.

“Dr. Arbuthnot,” she said, and then looked at Rhys. “Head of Witchery.”





Chapter 16




Vivi had never been in the witchery department before, and she was surprised to see it was a lot like the regular buildings on campus, just nicer. The floors were marble instead of linoleum, the walls wallpapered in a dark green damask pattern and the chairs in Dr. Arbuthnot’s office were velvet instead of the hard plastic and polyester Vivi’s office featured.

But the office was still small, there was still only one window, and as Dr. Arbuthnot passed Vivi a cup of tea, she noticed a stack of papers at the edge of the desk, waiting to be graded.

“Would you like to tell me what you were searching for in Special Collections?” Dr. Arbuthnot asked now, coming to sit on the other side of the desk from Vivi and Rhys.

Vivi didn’t know about Rhys, but she felt like she’d been called to the principal’s office, and she sipped her tea, trying to regain some composure. Between the kiss and the ghost, her brain felt like it had been scattered into a million pieces, and she knew she would need every shred of that brain to go toe-to-toe with the head of Witchery.

“We’ve had a magical mishap of sorts,” Rhys said, smiling as he lifted his own teacup to his lips. “Something went wrong when I was charging the ley lines, as is my responsibility as a member of the founding family of this town.”