The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(45)

“I’m Amanda Carter.” She stepped into Vivi’s office, shutting the door behind her. “From the witchery department.”

Vivi’s spoon clanged against the side of her mug. “Seriously?” she asked.

Amanda couldn’t have been thirty, making her easily the youngest witch Vivi had ever heard of the witchery department hiring.

And she was wearing jeans.

Did they let them wear jeans on the Witchery side of things? Because if so, Vivi wondered if maybe she should transfer after all.

“Did Dr. Arbuthnot send you?” she asked, and Amanda nodded. “She did, yeah. About the whole ghost thing?”

Excellent.

Gesturing at the chair in front of her desk, Vivi said, “Please have a seat. Tea?”

Raising her chin ever so slightly, Amanda sniffed the air. “Is that one of your aunt’s blends?”

Surprised, Vivi smiled a little, moving to the box of tea leaves on the corner of her desk. “It is. She sells it at the store, but this one is particularly good, I think.”

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

She made Amanda a cup of tea, and handed it over as the other woman asked, “How long have you worked here?”

Vivi blew across the surface of her tea before answering. “Three years. You?”

“A few months.” Amanda grinned at her. “Still finding my feet.”

“I bet,” Vivi said, and then Amanda reached down toward the bag that sat at her feet.

“So as you know, the ghost of Piper McBride is running loose.”

“Right,” Vivi said, remembering the ghost in her flannel and Converse, pacing the shelves. “Sorry about that.”

Amanda gave her another easy smile, waving a hand. “Hey, shit happens. And from what they’ve told me, Piper was a real mess back in the day. Obsessed with some history of the town, trying to summon spirits . . .”

Vivi frowned. Dr. Arbuthnot had told her Piper had been involved in dark magic, but she hadn’t known it was a summoning. That was a whole different ball game. No wonder she’d ended up dead.

“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?”





Chapter 20




Rhys hadn’t had any really solid plans for his evening. Mostly he’d thought about sitting on the horribly uncomfortable couch his father had bought for this place and drinking a bottle of red wine. Somewhere in there, he’d planned on making time for both some half-hearted googling of “curse removal,” and feeling sorry for himself, but he’d only just opened the bottle of Syrah he certainly hoped Simon had been saving for a special occasion when his phone buzzed.

Vivienne.

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.

So he grabbed his coat, plugged the address Vivienne had given him into his phone and hoped his rental car would hold up this time.

It did, but when he came to a stop on a dirt road barred by a metal gate, he kind of wished he’d blown a tire near the house and had just called it a night, gone back to his original plans.

Vivienne was standing by the gate, dressed all in black, her hair pulled back in a tight French braid, and as Rhys stepped out of the car, he took in her outfit, complete with black leather gloves.

“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.”

Shaking her head, she came closer, and Rhys caught another whiff of that damnable scent, sweet and heady against the crisp and smoky autumn evening. “We’re going on a kind of . . . quest.”

For the first time, Rhys noticed the satchel she had strapped across her chest, the torch—flashlight, he reminded himself—in her hand.

“A curse-breaking quest?” he asked, and she frowned.

“It’s curse-related.”

Well, that was promising at least.

Tapping the flashlight she held, Rhys asked, “Don’t trust your little illumination spell?”

The flashlight blinked on, and he could finally see her face clearly. Her pupils were huge in those hazel eyes, and she looked a little pale. Nervous, too.

“Didn’t think it was worth the risk.”

Reaching into her satchel, she pulled another flashlight out, handing it to him. “Come on.”

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, and if Rhys took a bit of satisfaction when he noticed her own eyes glaze over a little as he placed one hand on the gate and easily hopped it, well . . . he was only human.

Which also meant that the second his feet crunched on the dry leaves littering the road, a shiver of apprehension raced up his spine.