As she turned to enter her store—not that she expected any customers that day, considering the mourning that was going to happen everywhere once the news got out—she couldn’t help but picture the woman, Kim, who had been hexed. A shiver moved through her. She’d saved Kim, but it could just as easily have gone the other way.
There had been way too much happening on her the little street where her shop sat.
Ava rubbed at her eyes. She’d pay a call to Todd’s family with her parents when they went. And she’d send something over tonight to express her condolences. Truth was, Ava had no idea what she was supposed to be doing, if anything. Death came for them all, powerful and powerless just the same.
She would be watching where she walked. If someone like Todd couldn’t manage to catch himself…
Ava took a deep breath. She was freaking out and not acting appropriately. People died every day. They got sick and had accidents. Even witches. Why was she so freaked out? Poor Todd. She hoped he hadn’t been afraid. Had he been aware enough of what was happening that he knew he was about to die, or was it fast enough he’d smashed to the floor and been unknowing about it?
Why was she thinking about this?
She set down her stuff and took out her tools. If she was going to obsess, she could do it while her hands were busy. There was one thing about her life she wouldn’t change; she knew how to work hard and get tasks done. Her fellow witches could make things happen very easily and then how did they fill their time? Well, she knew how. They did extraordinary things and didn’t worry all the time about things they couldn’t control.
And yet sometimes they still tripped and fell.
She shook her head. Why was she out of mint? Who ran out of mint when they sold products that needed to smell good? Maybe she had no business being in business in the first place…
As it was, her store had another day of constant customers and only some of them wanted to know what had happened across the street. She really did love helping people find products that made them feel better. Sure, a human could do her job. But they wouldn’t know how to talk the talk the witches needed to hear. Ava had been faking her way through the witch world since she was a teenager.
In the middle of ringing someone up, her pen started writing for itself. She sighed. Zoe. She was supposed to be on her honeymoon, not paying attention to things back here.
All okay?
Ava smiled and shook her head. Zoe had spellcast the pen when they were kids so they could talk to each other without their parents ever knowing. It had been useful during math homework. The pen would work if Ava wanted to answer Zoe, otherwise it didn’t write at all. She couldn’t call Zoe on it, her sister had to initiate the contact. They’d tried to fix that over the years, but magic didn’t always work on Ava’s behalf.
She grabbed the pen after handing the woman buying foot cream her order.
Yes. Mostly. I assume you heard about Todd Callahan. I feel awful. Slip and fall! Go honeymoon, and stop worrying about here.
Ava set down the pen and checked out the next person. She was going to be replacing product again that evening. Not that she was complaining. She much preferred to be busy than slow. Still, this was a record for her. She really had to find that message board and see what it said…
The pen wrote again. Watch where you’re walking. Let’s not make slip and fall an epidemic.
Ava rolled her eyes. Sometimes it amazed her how on the same track she and Zoe could be, considering how completely different they were. She’d thought herself that she was going to have to take better care about how she moved.
The day passed quickly with only a few questions from customers that she couldn’t answer. While most were too strange for her to process—no, she couldn’t make a potion to turn a dog into a cat; that would require magic and was probably illegal—she would find out about whether or not basil was any help curing planter’s wart if for no other reason than she was interested. She might be basically a plain old human when it came down to it, but she’d know as much as any potions witch could and more, if she could help it.
She stepped outside of her shop. Dinner was a must-do if she was going to stay up mixing after the supplies came. Of course, her timing was awful. No sooner had the cool breeze of the frozen night hit her than the two people she most wanted to never see again strolled in front of her shop.
Mitchell held Monica’s hand the way he used to hold Ava’s. He didn’t so much like to link fingers as much as he cupped their hands together in a tight, mitten-like embrace. She’d never given it much thought until it was gone. Unable to stop herself, she stared at their joined hands and let the pain that visited her with each emotional loss move through her. She would survive it. Ava always did.
That didn’t, however, mean that she relished going through it.
Okay, Monica held Mitchell’s hand the way she always used to.
Of course, the other woman was doing all of the things with Mitchell that she used to. She kissed him, held him, laughed with him, made love to him. She listened to his stories and knew he talked in his sleep, sometimes, at night.
Did he kiss the side of her neck the way he had Ava’s? These were the questions Melanie called ‘pointless,’ and Ava knew she should leave it alone.
She turned to lock the door of Pure Luck behind her. Maybe they wouldn’t see her.
“Ava!” The shout sounded in her direction, and Ava let pride settle in her spine that she didn’t visibly wince. Only on the inside.
She wasn’t going to smile at them. Ava could endure this until the pain of seeing them together finally went away. That didn’t mean she had to pretend that she was happy or even okay. They were never going to be pals.
“Monica,” she called back. There. They had acknowledged each other. Maybe that could be the end of it.
Instead, the couple stopped, actually backed up, and stood in front of her, effectively blocking her way down the sidewalk and to her car. Ava took a deep breath. She wasn’t above shouting at them to move if that was what it came to.
Monica pointed at Callahan’s. “So I’m thinking about taking that shop.”
Ava knew Monica had spoken. The problem was that she’d gotten so accustomed after a decade of time spent with Mitchell to look at him, treat him, and generally feel like he was the most important person on the planet. Without meaning to, or even wanting to, she’d waited to see if Mitchell was going to tell her why he’d left her standing at the altar.
She was always waiting, and at some point, that got pathetic.
But today wasn’t going to be the day she pulled herself together and stopped caring.
“Ah, hello.” Monica waved her hand in front of Ava’s face and snapped her finger. “A little attention. I’m going to take that shop since Todd died. It’ll be a great place to sell my designs.”
Vomit surged up Ava’s throat, and she had to swallow it back down before she puked on the street, right there, all over everyone’s shoes.
“He just died.” Ava couldn’t deal with having Monica right there, exactly across the street, every single day. That just couldn’t happen. “I don’t even think the police are done with it. You can’t just decide you want it. He has a family. Maybe they’re going to keep the place.”
Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Ava never did understand how these things work. They’re going to be broke now. They’ll need the sale of the building to pay off his debt. Most of what Todd sold was third party. His family will be grateful to hear from us today.”
Ava balked, nearly falling forward in the movement. “Today? You’re going to bother those poor people today?”
Ava’s Mitchell had been one of the most sensitive beings she’d ever known. She took a deep breath. Maybe Ava had never known him. Was that possible? A decade of time with someone, and she really had no idea who he was?
“Shouldn’t you put your shop somewhere else?” Anywhere else… “This isn’t the most fashionable place in town.” There were much
more trendy places. In fact, rows and rows of witch fashion shops. Monica was one of a few witches with her particular ability. She could actually see what the customer needed to wear. Of course, there were multiple possibilities, which was why there were so many designers. Every one of them could see what you needed.
And maybe they could. Ava’s eye rolling over designers had only started once Mitchell left her for Monica. Before that, Ava had been in awe of Monica’s talent.
Monica raised her hand and snapped her fingers. A card appeared in her hand, and she handed it to Ava. “When your sister gets back, give her this. I’d love to design for her.”
That was never going to happen. If Ava had powers, she’d destroy the card mid-air in a burst of flames. She looked at Mitchell one more time. “Shouldn’t you be at work? Don’t you teach at this hour?”
At some point, Ava would find a way to not remember every specific detail about her ex. She would have it magically removed from her brain. Surely there was someone who could do that. Maybe in the mountains, hiding away from the law.
“I’ve stopped teaching.” Mitchell pulled Monica to his side. “We’re focusing on my love’s career. I don’t need to work, not when I have the family money to pull me through.”
Ava nodded. Maybe she should make a point to speak to Mitchell more regularly. The stuff spouting out of his mouth was so completely opposite of everything she had ever known about him that it might be extremely helpful to hear the change in him over and over again.
“Well.” Ava took a deep breath. “Good luck with everything.”
She watched them walk away, hand cupped in hand, slowly, together. The breeze picked up, and Ava shivered. Out of habit, she looked up, watching the way the day switched from the rainy one it had been to a more pleasant evening. Mitchell used to tell her to keep her eye on the sky—it told a story to witches.
Ava had never heard it tell her anything. The wind shifted abruptly, hitting her square in the face, and she actually had to step back.
She knew the words to calm the weather. Her father had said them for years, aloud. Parents did that to teach their kids how to say them. A witch didn’t require the actual words, not when she or he was spellcasting. They could think it, and the power happened, in the same way Monica had just created her business card out of thin air.
But first they had to know what to think. Her father had thought one of them might be a weather controller like he was. He’d, of course, had no idea that one of them wouldn’t be able to perform at all.
She could close her eyes and picture him speaking the words. “Call the winds unto me and move them through.”
Nothing happened, and she hadn’t expected anything to. Back then she had. When her powers turned on, she’d be able to do things the same way that her parents did. Only, the age eleven had come, and nothing happened. Twelve rounded the corner, and she was still not able to do anything. By the time she was fifteen, the healers gave them all the bad news—she was an anomaly. Sometimes these things happened.
Even to Blakelys.
Mitchell had been there the whole time. They’d only been together a year, and they were so young. She’d fully expected him to leave her. There were lots of girls at school to date. Instead, he’d shown up at her house and showed her pictures of the witch ruins in Egypt. He couldn’t wait to go and see them—which he eventually did two years later—and she’d felt like she was with him on a grand adventure.
The witches in Egypt had managed to live out in the open before humans had become aware of their existence, all the way back to ancient times.
And that same man walked away with Monica, into the nighttime where she’d never follow him.
An evening at home cleaning up and actually washing her clothes awaited Ava, and she got to it. Maybe if she actually made her personal space somewhere she wanted to be, she wouldn’t hate going home quite so much.
Chapter 4
Dinner, a bath, and then straightening up were on the agenda for the night.
“Hey.”
Ava almost jumped out of her skin before she whirled around to see Lawson leaning against the building next door. He waited like he had every right to do so, as though pressing his tight backside against the bricks of Leander Shoes was the most common thing in the world for him.
But then again, as an Enforcer, perhaps Lawson had the right to do whatever he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it.
She needed to answer. “Hey.”
He stepped toward her, a piece of his dark hair falling in his eyes before he pushed it away. Did he always wear it long-ish, or did he need a haircut? “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just waiting until you were finished.”
“It’s cold out here. You could have come in.” Ava pulled her coat tighter around her. “Unless you can warm, I don’t know if you have that spell ability.”
He nodded, taking another step toward her. “I do. But you don’t. So you’re right, I should have come in and spoken to you inside for your sake, not my own. My apologies.”
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry about that. What did you need to talk about?” When was the last time someone had stopped to consider whether or not she was cold outside? It had been such a long time she wasn’t sure she could recall it ever happening before. She managed, and people assumed that she did.
Lawson moved until he was between her and the street. It was an odd, swift shifting of their positions, and she had to assume he’d done it on purpose. She looked at the street and then back at Lawson. Was there something on the street?
“Everything okay?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
This was the strangest conversation, and as they’d already discussed, it was cold. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Hexing.” He took her arm, leading her down the sidewalk. She stared at his hand on her sleeve. The men were trained to do this in witching school. Still, it had been a long time since someone had actually done this to her. She smiled at the moment. Small things in life could make or break a day. Seeing that someone still had manners was a real plus on the positive side.
She cleared her throat. “Is someone else hexed?”
“No, not yet anyway.” He shook his head. “The thing is, I’m tracking a serial hexer.”
Ava stopped moving. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“There’s a reason for that. In any case, I’m sharing this with only you. You did a good job keeping our secrets, and we didn’t even ask you to. This time, consider it a formal request.”
The coldness invading her soul had nothing to do with the outside temperature of the night. “How can someone be a serial hexer? Don’t they have to know the person? Couldn’t you just track them that way?”
Lawson’s gaze wasn’t on her but off somewhere in the distance past her car. In fact, she suspected he wasn’t present in this moment at all. “All a hexer needs is an in. Touch you on the street. I have my hand on you right now. If I wanted to, I could hex you.”
He was right. The sweetness of his slight embrace faded, and with it, the idea that the day could be anything but terrible. Ava stepped back so he couldn’t quite reach her, and Lawson blinked rapidly, as though he’d just realized what he’d said. “I’d never hurt you. Ever. But you’re smart to be careful. You don’t really know me.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “This guy is frightening. I’ve been doing this for five years, leading my team for two, and I’ve never seen anything like him. What’s worse, my bosses haven’t either. He’s hexing humans. That shouldn’t be possible.”
“It’s really not.” She couldn’t imagine the possibility. “I mean, I’m not hexable. I could be hurt but not actually hexed. And I’m basically human.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not human. You don’t make a single human alarm go off, and they’re all over the place. You have witch blood.”
Ava waved her hand. “Lots of good it does me. Go on. Did you come here tonight just because you wanted to share?”
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Lawson was quiet for a second before he spoke again. Ava had to wonder at the beat he’d taken before he answered her. “You can’t ever talk about what I’m going to tell you. I came to ask if it would be at all okay if I came back for help if we need it. If the Enforcers are low in anything, it’s witches who can undo hexes. Well, that’s not entirely true. We all have basic skills. But as you saw when Kim went down, when it gets complicated, we’re not prepared. It’s a position we’ll have to fix. We have one guy, but he’s useless. Don’t get me started. As it is, we’re in bad shape if Kim gets hexed again. I’d like to know I can count on you.”
Ava pulled her coat closer around her. Her mother had shown up that morning specifically to tell her not to do this, to beg her to promise she’d not work with the Enforcers again. And here one was—well the one as far as Ava was concerned—asking her to do just that. “You didn’t know you could count on me last time and you came. Why do you need the assurance now?”
“I don’t need it. If I marched into another of your gatherings and ordered you out again, I’m sure you’d come. I’d rather not do that. I’d rather know I could contact you and you’d come or might even, ah, want to help.”
This was the strangest conversation Ava had ever had. Well, maybe the second. The first had been, sorry Ava, Mitchell isn’t coming. But this ranked right up there. She forced herself to focus. “I would help you any time I could. I would never leave anyone to suffer.”
He nodded, a small smile appearing on his face. The movement crinkled his eyes just a little bit. “Just like that? You say yes. You didn’t even ask me how much I would pay you.”
“I wasn’t thinking that I’d do it for money. More like…” Ava couldn’t come up with whatever word she needed to complete her sentence.
He raised his eyebrows. “Patriotism? Adventure?”
“I like to be useful. Put the money you’d pay me to something to help victims, or whatever. My store takes care of whatever I need, and it’s really doing well all of a sudden.”
Lawson rocked back on his heels. “Is it? I’m glad to hear that. You could have lived off the Blakely name. You didn’t.”
Hexed and Vexed Page 4