The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)(9)

Hastily shoving her phone in her back pocket, Gwyn picked up her wine and turned her attention to Vivi. “So! How is teaching the normies going?”

“Uh-uh,” Vivi said, placing a hand on her hip. “You are the worst liar in the entire world, Gwynnevere Jones. What did Jane say that made you make that face?”

Gwyn looked between Vivi and Elaine, who was watching her with eyebrows raised, and finally groaned, wine sloshing out of her glass as she threw up her hands.

“Because it’s the hundredth anniversary of the town’s founding, they’re sending a Penhallow.”

For a long moment, there was nothing but silence in the kitchen as all three women took that in.

A Penhallow.

Vivi sipped her wine. There were lots of Penhallows. Okay, there were four that she knew about. Simon Penhallow, Terrifying Witch, and his three sons.

One of whom had shattered her heart into a billion pieces when she was nineteen.

Which had been a long time ago.

And was a thing she had completely moved past.

Mostly.

“It might not be him,” Elaine finally said, turning back to her candles. “Might be that nightmare of a father of his.”

“Probably is,” Vivi agreed. “One hundredth is a big deal. And while Rhys might have changed a lot in the past nine years, I still don’t see him as being the one you’d send for big ceremonial things, right?”

“Oh, totally,” Gwyn said, nodding and pouring more wine into her glass. “You send in Rhys for the fun shit like Solstice Revels and those weird summer courses the college offers. You don’t send him in to charge the ley lines.”

“Of course you don’t,” Vivi said.

“I’m sure they wouldn’t dream of it,” Elaine declared, tapping the table for emphasis.

“But,” Gwyn added slowly. “Maybe we should check?”





Chapter 4




“We haven’t done witchy shit together in ages!”

Vivi stood in Gwyn’s bedroom feeling the oddest sense of déjà vu.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t been in here tons of times since the night of all that weirdness after Rhys. She had.

But it was the first time she’d been back up on an autumn night with a salt circle on the floor and magic afoot.

“Gwyn, our entire lives are witchy shit,” she reminded her cousin as she attempted to sit on the floor in her pencil skirt, but Gwyn just shook her head, turning around with her arms full. Vivi spotted at least three candles, an altar cloth, a silver bowl and a small black bag done up with a gold clasp.

“No, I mean the real-deal kind of witchy shit,” she said, lowering herself to the hardwood. “Coven-type stuff. Getting our The Craft on.”

Smiling, Vivi hiked up her skirt, crossed her legs, and took a sip of her wine.

“Not since the night Rhys and I broke up,” she said, and Gwyn waved her off.

“That didn’t count. That wasn’t real magic. The last time we did real magic was . . . senior year? Maybe? That Beltane.”

Remembering, Vivi nodded. “Okay, well, as long as we don’t accidentally summon demons, I’m in.”

“It was just that once, and technically it was a very pissed off elemental spirit.”

Vivi shot Gwyn a look over the rim of her glass. “Do you remember how long it took my eyebrows to grow back?”

Dropping her pile of supplies onto the little rug in the middle of the floor, Gwyn heaved a sigh. “Vivi, if you bring bad energy into this, it’s not going to work.”

“I feel like you’re just saying that to get out of the Eyebrow Conversation.”

Gwyn didn’t reply to that, opening the little black bag and pulling out a deck of tarot cards.

“Ooh,” Vivi said, reaching for the deck, but Gwyn batted her hand away.

“No touching! Not until I’m ready.”

“But I haven’t seen this one before,” Vivi said, and Gwyn grinned, spreading the cards out on the floor. Even in the dim lamplight, their colors practically glowed, and Vivi caught a glimpse of a diaphanous white gown on The Empress, bright butter yellow on The Sun.

Gwyn had been painting her own cards for years, ever since they were teenagers, and not for the first time, Vivi felt a little pang in her heart looking at her cousin’s handiwork. Not just because the cards were beautiful, although they definitely were, but because Gwyn always seemed so connected to her craft in a way that Vivi had just never felt. Sure, she liked doing the occasional spell, and her little apartment over the store contained more candles than was probably wise, but she’d never had this. Never had what Gwyn and Elaine had, this ease with magic. Both of them did spells, big and small, as easily as breathing, and yet every time Vivi used magic, even the little things like her anti-cheater spell, something in her . . . paused.

Held back.

There were times she wished her mom had been a little more open about the whole witch thing. Maybe if she’d grown up doing magic, she’d feel more comfortable with it now.

Shaking her head, Vivi pushed that thought away.

It didn’t matter now. She had exactly as much magic as she liked, no more, no less.

Gwyn had set the silver bowl on the rug and affixed a fat white candle to the bottom of it. Now, she ran her hands over her cards, humming softly as she slid one from the deck.