The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(54)

“Sure it was.”

Vivi reached across the table to pick up the candle, but before she could, Aunt Elaine laid a hand on hers.

“Is that all you wanted to tell us? You caught a ghost in a Eurydice Candle?”

For a moment, Vivi had the horrifying idea that Elaine knew what had happened back here last night, that there was, like, the magical equivalent of security cameras, and Elaine had gotten quite the show, in which case, Vivi hoped there was some kind of “disappearing into the floor” spell.

But Aunt Elaine wasn’t giving her any kind of knowing look. She was genuinely asking, and Vivi realized there was something else she needed to tell them both.

“The ghost said some stuff before the candle got her,” Vivi said, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “About ‘cursed Penhallow,’ and taking something that didn’t belong to him. But I don’t think it was about Rhys specifically. I think it might have been about Gryffud, or some other ancestor.”

“Could be worth looking into,” Gwyn mused, resting her chin on her knee.

“I’ll do a little research,” Aunt Elaine said, then nodded at Vivi’s bag.

“And you go give that foul thing to its rightful owner.”

“Will do,” Vivi said with a little salute.

And then Aunt Elaine smiled at her, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “I’m proud of you, Vivi. A Eurydice Candle is serious magic.”

Vivi waved her off. “I didn’t do much, really. I just lit it. Not exactly next-level sorcery.”

“Still,” Aunt Elaine insisted, covering Vivi’s hand with her own. “You’re a witch who won’t even use magic to clean her apartment, and now look at you go!”

“Okay, that’s just because I use that time to catch up on listening to podcasts, plus I watched that Mickey Mouse cartoon with the devil brooms as a kid and it freaked me out.”

“I loved that cartoon,” Gwyn said, propping her chin in her hand, her silver earrings winking.

“Of course you did.”

“But Mom is right,” Gwyn went on, nudging Vivi. “Very baller magic.”

“I don’t really know what that means,” Aunt Elaine replied, “but I suspect it means ‘impressive,’ and it was. Your mother would have been proud, too.”

Surprised, Vivi glanced at Elaine. “Except that Mom hated magic?”

Aunt Elaine shook her head, leaning back in her chair. “It scared her. She felt like being a witch was . . . I don’t know, something that happened to her, not something she chose. But she was good. Really good when she wanted to be. She just chose another path.”

Vivi had spent so long with this idea of her mom as firmly in camp Magic Is Bad that she didn’t really know what to say to that.

Standing up, Vivi moved to the curtain sectioning off the storage room from the rest of the store, and came up short as she stared at the girl standing there, her eyes wide.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen this part of the store before.”

Gwyn leapt up from the table as Aunt Elaine turned around.

“Hey, Ashley,” Gwyn said, coming over and putting an arm around the girl’s shoulders as she began leading her back into the store, and throwing a look back at Vivi and Elaine. “That’s just the back room, nothing that interesting, but we do have some really cool wands in if you want to check those out . . .”

Gwyn’s voice faded as she walked deeper into the store, and Aunt Elaine stood up, sighing, hands on her hips.

“Well, guess we know that spell isn’t working as it should right now, either.”

It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was a reminder that this thing had to get sorted out, and fast. And that’s where Vivi’s focus needed to be.

Which is why she only glanced at the couch once before she hurried out of the storage room.

The drive to campus was uneventful, and Vivi was just locking her car when she heard someone calling her name.

It was Amanda, jogging over to her, a bright smile on her face. “How did it go?”

Relieved, Vivi reached into her bag for the candle. “Great! But now please take this because having a ghost in my purse is creeping me out.”

Amanda’s smile brightened as she wrapped her fingers around the Eurydice Candle. “Not a problem. I’ll get this back to our side of campus, and you can go on about your day.”

Since she had a class to teach in five minutes, Vivi was grateful to do just that, and with a wave, she turned toward Chalmers Hall, the building where her class met.

Clouds were thick in the sky today, leaves skittering across the brick walkways, and Vivi shivered a little, tugging her scarf a bit tighter around her neck. As she did, she glanced back over her shoulder and spotted Amanda walking across the parking lot. She turned left, disappearing behind a row of trees, and Vivi frowned as she turned back around.

That’s not the way to get to the witch side of campus.

But maybe Amanda knew a shortcut, or was getting something out of her car.

That had to be it.

Vivi taught her first class, then her second, forgetting all about Amanda and the Eurydice Candle as she enlightened a hundred freshmen about the Magna Carta, even forgetting about Rhys for a little while, and by the time she got back to her office late that afternoon, she was actually starting to feel a bit . . . okay, “normal” would’ve been too strong a word, but at least more settled, more sure of herself.