The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(46)

They were in the middle of nowhere, in a forest, at—he checked his watch—11:47 p.m. The night was so black it felt like it was pressing in on him, and he stopped, catching her elbow with one hand.

“All right, I pride myself on being the sort of bloke who rolls with the punches, but seriously. Where are we going?”

Vivienne nodded up the road. “There’s a house up there. Well, a cabin, really. Several of the witchy students at Penhaven have rented it in the past.”

Pausing, Vivienne fiddled with her flashlight, and Rhys prodded her foot gently with his toe. “Go on.”

She cleared her throat. “Including Piper McBride. The ghost we saw in the library, and now we have to catch her.”

Vivienne went to continue walking back up the road, and Rhys caught her elbow again.

“I’m sorry, did you say we’re going to catch a ghost?”

Blowing out a breath, Vivienne threw her hands up. “Not catch, exactly. We just have to—hold on.”

She fished in her satchel again, and Rhys wondered if it was some sort of Mary Poppins bag. What was she going to pull out of that thing next? Sword? Houseplant?

“We just have to light this,” she said, and Rhys squinted at the silver candle she held.

“A Eurydice Candle? Where did you even get that?” Rhys had only seen one once before, in a locked cabinet in his father’s library, and Rhys was pretty sure Simon had threatened him with bodily harm if he ever touched the thing. They were rare to come by, and the magic they used was powerful stuff.

“Amanda,” Vivienne said, and when Rhys just kept looking at her, she shoved the candle back in her bag. “She’s one of the college witches. Dr. Arbuthnot sent her to my office with the candle. Apparently, all we need to do is go to Piper’s house, find the spot where she kept her altar back in the day and light the candle. Then the candle will—”

“Pull her spirit into it, trapping it within the candle, which can then be lit somewhere else, releasing her more safely.”

“Right,” Vivienne said with a nod. “And then the college witches can rebind her.”

Overhead, an owl hooted, and Rhys tilted his head back to study the night sky. The moon was nearly full, skeletal trees reaching up for the stars, the perfect night for summoning up evil ghosts, and Rhys knew deep in his gut this was a terrible idea.

“Why can’t they come do it themselves?” he asked, and Vivienne sighed, pushing a stray bit of hair off her forehead.

“It has to be us. We’re the ones who set her free, so we have to capture her. But the candle does all the work. We just have to light it, wait for her spirit to, you know, get”—she lifted a hand and made a kind of swooping motion—“sucked into it, and then, done!”

She smiled at him, possibly the fakest smile Rhys had ever seen in his life. “Easy as pie!”

“You mean one of those kinds of pies they used to stuff live birds in, I take it? Because nothing about this strikes me as particularly easy, Vivienne.”

“Amanda said it would be.”

“Oh, well, if Amanda said it would be, then no problem at all! Our old friend, Amanda.”

Rolling her eyes, Vivienne turned away. “Maybe I should’ve come on my own.”

“Maybe neither of us should have come, and you should have told that witch to bugger off. I thought you didn’t like the college witches anyway.”

“I don’t,” she agreed, her boots crunching over the dried leaves as they moved deeper into the forest, and Rhys raised his shoulders, tugging at the collar of his jacket. Wasn’t this the South? Wasn’t the South supposed to be warm?

“But Amanda was nice, and she wanted to help, and since it’s my fault this ghost is out—”

“It’s our fault,” he said. “This entire thing is very much a disaster caused by two, Vivienne.”

She stopped then, turning around again. “Well, if it’s your fault, too, then maybe you should stop whining about helping.”

“I’m not whining,” he insisted, but then realized that it was almost impossible to say that sentence without sounding like you were whining, so he cleared his throat and said, “I just think that at a time when, as has been established, magic is on the fritz, maybe lighting a Eurydice Candle is a bad idea.”

“Ah!” Vivienne pointed at him, but since she did it with the hand holding the flashlight, Rhys was momentarily blinded.

He threw a hand up against the glare, and Vivienne immediately lowered the flashlight.

“Sorry. But as I was saying, ah! I thought of that, too. But there are loopholes. One, we’re not doing any magic ourselves. No spells, no rituals. The candle is doing all the work, and two . . .”

She crooked a finger at him, and Rhys was dismayed by how quickly he felt that gesture like a tug in his chest.

He felt it lower, too, his cock eager to follow wherever she wanted, and Rhys thought again of that kiss in the library, the feel of her under his hands, how quickly she lit up for him.

“Rhys,” Vivienne said, and then dammit all, she crooked that finger again. “Come here.”

He was truly an idiot, just the most besotted wanker in the entire world, because there was that tug again.

Keeping his hands in his pockets as he walked over to her, Rhys raised his eyebrows. “What?”