The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(76)

“January suuuuucks,” she heard Ezichi call from her office as she passed, and Vivi ducked her head in.

“Agreed. But I hear you finally got the tenure track gig, congratulations!”

Unlike Vivi, Ezi had her Ph.D., and had been stuck in the lecturer trenches for ages, so Vivi was genuinely thrilled for her, and Ezi was, too, if her smile was anything to go by.

“And congratulations to you, too,” Ezi said, coming up from behind her desk. “Hear you’re taking on some extra classes in the folklore department?”

Vivi nodded, already feeling a little flutter in her stomach at the idea. After Halloween, she’d gone to have a talk with Dr. Arbuthnot about what had happened, the change to Graves Glen’s magic.

She’d assumed the woman would be angry, or at least snotty about all of it.

To her surprise, she’d been offered a job.

As of this semester, she was teaching two classes over on the Witchery side of things, a History of Magic course focusing on Graves Glen’s past, and a class on Ritual Magic.

And she’d even bought a new scarf.

But just one.

Saying good-bye to Ezi, Vivi headed to her office, flicking on the teakettle as soon as she got in, and setting her bag down on her desk. Reaching inside, she pulled out a heavy book, its cover bloodred leather, the title stamped in aging gold foil on the cover. It was a history of Wales as written by a Welsh witch over a hundred years ago. She’d gotten it in the mail at Yule, no return address, just a note scrawled in Rhys’s handwriting:

For your office. Xx



No cariad, no I miss you, but he was thinking of her, and that was enough.

Or at least she told herself it was.

Shaking her head, Vivi made herself a cup of tea, and fired up her computer.

By the time she was done typing up notes for her afternoon history lecture, she realized she was due over at the Witchery side of things to meet with Dr. Arbuthnot, and sighing, she shoved her arms back into her coat and twisted her scarf around her neck.

It was quieter on that side of campus, and the snow was a little less trampled as she walked into the main building, her nose wrinkling slightly at the scent of patchouli—seriously, was there someone she could talk to about that?—but she made her way down the hall, glancing at doors as she went.

Other than the classier furnishings, it wasn’t all that different from the history building. Same rows of doors, same frosted windows with names stenciled in black.

A. Parsons.

J. Brown.

C. Acevedo.

R. Penhallow.



Vivi was already past the door before it registered, and she slowly turned and looked back at it, her heart hammering.

It couldn’t be.

It had to be someone else, some other Penhallow, first name starting with R. Rhys probably had a cousin, Richard Penhallow, or Rebecca Penhallow.

But she found herself reaching for the doorknob anyway.

Vivi knew it was horribly rude to just walk into someone’s office without knocking, but she had to see, had to shut down this stupid little flutter of hope in her chest before it took flight.

The door opened, revealing an office that didn’t seem all that different from Vivi’s own. Small, one window, desk and a lamp, a filing cabinet, a bookshelf. The only difference was that the shelf was empty, and there was nothing on the walls, and there, sitting behind the desk, grinning up at her, was Rhys.

She almost wondered if she’d walked through some kind of spell when she came in here, or if this was a trick the witches were playing on her, some kind of faculty hazing thing.

But then he stood up and walked over to her, as warm and real as anything as he gently shut the door behind her and said, “Hello, cariad.”

There were a million things she wanted to say to him, to ask him.

But all that came out was, “You have . . . an office.”

“I do.”

“And a desk.”

“Even so.”

“And you’re . . . here.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“Why?”

Blowing out a breath, Rhys put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Well, you see, I went back to Wales, business as usual, only the thing was, I was completely fucking miserable. Just the saddest bastard you’ve ever seen in your life. So sad, in fact, that Wells—Wells!—told me I was a sad bastard, and as he is president of the Sad Bastards Club, I found this very distressing.”

Vivi’s face was aching, and she realized it was because she was smiling.

Rhys was smiling, too, as he continued. “And so I thought what I could do to make myself less of a sad bastard, and I realized the only thing for it was to be with you. Or at the very least, near you. And it turns out that when a college is named after your family home, they’re fairly willing to let you teach the odd class, so here I am.”

“What about your business?” Vivi asked, still feeling a little dazed, and Rhys nodded.

“Still got it. Can run it from here, no problem, but Bowen said this moment needed a big gesture . . . I mean, I decided this moment needed a big gesture and received zero help from my brother at all.

“Besides,” he went on, “I wanted to prove to you that I was serious about this, about staying here. Putting down roots. This isn’t a lark, Vivienne.”

He stepped closer, and Vivi breathed him in, her hands already going to his chest, where his heart beat a steady tattoo under her palms. “I realize that uprooting my life and moving to Georgia for a woman might fall into the reckless and ill-thought-out category, but the thing is, I’m very much in love with that woman.”