Hexed Hit: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (The Lyon Fox Mysteries Book 4)

by Ann Denton

  I grab the flier and stare at it while the wizard in front of me stomps off in a huff. Apparently, he won’t be getting a stiff ‘hat’ today.

  I step to the front of the line. “Pick up for Lyon Fox.”

  Marian eyes me dully, pops her gum and stares boredly at the computer until she finds me in the system. Then her eyes widen. She turns from the screen to me and clears her throat. “Oh, yeah. Um … about your uniform. That baby who spit up on you was a zombie.”

  I crinkle my brows. “Okaay…” He didn’t look like a zombie. But then, if Nappies revert people to their baby state, maybe zombies turn back into human babies? I don’t really know. I add that to the list of endless annoying questions I need ask Seena instead of looking things up on a search engine like Wing or Goblin. Because, for some reason, talking into the little computer mic is way harder than bugging my desk-buddy. I glance back at Marian, who’s waving her heavily ringed hands and still talking.

  “So, whoever spit up on you is a zombie baby who like, must have crawled through radioactive waste or something. We don’t have a product to counteract radioactivity.”

  “No spell?”

  She shakes her head. “Sorry. Your uniform was toast. I thought Sue called you about it.”

  I bite down on the pit that opens up in my stomach at that news. Thanks to the key lime pie I bought while I watched Flowers physically shake under the weight of Nicolette’s demonic stare, I do not currently have enough gold to buy a new uniform in my account. “Tiger claws!” I mutter. I hate my life.

  Marian looks concerned. “Dude, it’s just a uniform. You okay?”

  I shake it off because there’s nothing else I can do but stew. I’ve got a hot guy at my apartment. I’ve got more important things to do.

  I turn to leave but Marian stops me. “Hey! You can’t take that flier.”

  I look down at Rachel’s flier. “Why not?”

  “I … we don’t have any more. And in case someone’s seen her…”

  I tilt my head. “You know this Rachel girl?”

  Marian bites her black lips. “Did. Before she bolted.”

  “She a shifter?” I ask.

  Marian licks her lips and her tongue turns a nasty sickly shade of grey from her black lipstick. “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, maybe?”

  Marian narrows her eyes at me. “I mean what-the-hell business is it of yours?”

  I roll my eyes and toss the flier on the counter. I take a picture with my phone. “Just think I might know someone who might have seen her.”

  “What?” Marian’s hands go flat on the counter. Her eyes are wide and shocked. Then her voice gets small and vulnerable. “I’ve tried calling. Going by her place. No one answers. At first I thought she might be avoiding me …” She shakes off the sadness and gets gruff again. “Take it then, if you know someone who’s seen her. Just … if you find anything out, will you let me know?”

  I look down at Marian, who’s clearly struggling to hold it together. Her tattoo-sleeved arms come up and she wraps them around herself. She looks lost in that moment.

  The fight drains out of me and I grab Rachel’s flier. Then I go scoop up the one for the guy, too. “I’m gonna take both. I’ll tell my boss. Police will keep an eye peeled for them, alright?”

  Marian nods, her face pale.

  Poor kid. I don’t want to say anything, but if her friend Rachel was mixed up at the nap shack, things don’t look good. At least not from where I’m standing.

  I leave and tuck the missing fliers into my purse. I walk home wishing that the world were a different place.

  Coming home to find my apartment smells like a chocolate factory makes my jaw drop. I find Luke in the kitchen, wearing only an apron, and pulling homemade brownies out of my oven.

  “What is going on here?” I ask with a smile.

  Luke looks a little startled. “That was quick.” He glances at my hands. “I thought you were picking up your uniform.”

  “Apparently, it was ruined.”

  Luke takes off my chicken-shaped oven mitt and comes and gives me a nearly naked hug. “Sorry. But I’m kinda glad. They use all kinds of nasty chemicals, spells, shifter—”

  I’ve literally resisted as long as fairily possible. But I smack his butt and interrupt his sentence. I mean it was just there!

  I laugh. “So, is naked cooking something I need to be aware of?”

  He shrugs, “I was just trying to surprise you. I picked up some instant-brownie mix from Cherry last time I saw her. Thought it would be a fun little thing to tempt you with.”

  “You can tempt me with brownies any day.”

  He goes back to the oven and cuts a tiny brownie out for me. He blows on it and pops it into my mouth.

  Then we share a chocolate-coated kiss.

  Chapter 15

  Half an hour later, Luke’s dressed, our appetites are sated (by brownies duh, what were you thinking? ;) ), and he and I flip through the books on spell reversal. I try to keep my eyelids peeled open, but they’re drooping.

  “Okay! I think I got it!” Luke looks up excitedly. When he sees me practically asleep, leaning on my hand, he shoves me.

  My head falls off my hand and nearly smacks the table. Only his vamp speed saves me. His cold hand swoops underneath my face and cradles my cheek just before I hit.

  I blink a few times. “Nothing like violence to wake a girl up.” I push myself off the dining table and lean back in my chair.

  “Violence, please!” Luke rolls his eyes. He stands up, practically bouncing on his feet. “Come on! I think I might have a solution. Up! Up!”

  I stretch and begrudgingly stand. I crack my neck as I ask, “Okay, what do I do?”

  “Well, first, we need to make me lose something, like Flowers, so we can test this.”

  “I’m not taking away a letter.”

  “Come on. X is not a very important letter. Take that one.”

  “Happens to be at the end of my favorite word, which starts with S-E—”

  “Fine,” Luke laughs. “Not a letter. How about a number? Like a really high number? 4,872?”

  “What if that makes you lose all those numbers? You need measurements at work. How are you gonna build a three-quarter inch caster if you lose the number four? You can’t operate without half the numbers.”

  He sighs and runs a hand through his gorgeous, shoulder-length blond hair. “A phrase then? Skinna marinky dinky dink, skinna marinky doo—” he starts to sing.

  “How about zigazig ah?” I ask.

  He laughs. “I know that song. Isn’t it Nice Ghouls?”

  “Spice Ghouls.”

  “Not a fan?”

  I wave a hand. “No. Totally a fan. I’ve just been trying to force JR into a duet for years and if you couldn’t finish the line, I’d totally take you to karaoke and make you sing with me.”

  “But that’s the part of the song that gets all the glory.”

  My grin widens. “I know.”

  Luke just grins, shaking his head. “As you wish.”

  “That’s right, DPR.”

  Luke raises his brows.

  “You’re my Dead Pirate Roberts.”

  “Clever. Alright then, lose my zigazig ah. Let’s test this baby.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.”

  I clear my throat and stare into his brilliant blue eyes. “You’ve lost your zigazig ah.”

  Luke poses and lifts his heels up and down rapidly and he tosses his arms out, side to side. He shakes his hips as good as any drag queen I’ve ever seen. And he starts singing Spice Ghouls. He knows all the words, which just makes me cup my hands over my mouth to smother my laughter. “If you want the power to hover, let me eat your friends. They won’t last forever, but ghoulship never ends. I wanna huh, I wanna huh, I wanna huh …. And I really really really wanna—”

  “Zigazig ah!” I jump up and finish the song like we’re onstage, standing in front of him and stealing all the applause
.

  Luke grins and turns me around before my jazz hands get too tired. “Alright. That worked. Now, to test out reversal.” Luke grabs the book he was looking at and hands it to me. Then he goes into my kitchen and grabs a sharpie.

  “Look at you, all making yourself at home with my sharpies and my aprons.”

  He bites his lip and I can see a bit of fang. “I hope that’s okay.”

  I shrug. “Of course.” And even though we’ve just started dating, it totally is. I’m not weirded out at all. Which is … weird. I decide I better not think about it. I’m too tired to actually have any semi-decent relationship analysis right now. Instead, I look down at the book I’m holding. It looks like a math textbook, which—no lie—scares me. “Am I gonna have to multiply and shizzle? Because I’m the worst at—”

  “I think you just need to write this formula.” Luke points at a long-ass formula in the book that doesn’t only have numbers, it has runes.

  My eyes roam over the symbols. It’s three lines long before the equals sign. My brain shrieks and curls up in a ball, chanting ‘not the math, not the math.’ I shake my head. “What is this?”

  “Alchemical equation. It’s the same kind of thing wizards use to change substances. Or conceal them.”

  “So, what do I do?” I ask.

  “Just use the marker and write on my hand. Copy that formula.”

  Luke and I sit back down at my tiny dining table.

  I lean over him and hold the sharpie poised. Then, glancing back and forth between the book and Luke, I carefully try to recreate every stroke on the page on Luke’s palm. It’s frickin’ difficult. There are little sun figures and I have to count out how many rays there are before trying to draw tiny triangles. I nearly botch the clover symbol because I start to draw a four-leaf clover instead of a three-leaf. Finally, after ten painstaking minutes, I’m done.

  I toss the pen on table and sit back. “I really hope that worked.”

  Luke puts his temporarily tattooed hand over mine. “I’m sure it did. I have faith in you, Ly.”

  “Alright, let’s test this. You wanna be the Baby Ghoul this time?”

  He laughs. “Let’s see if it works first. Then, if you are still up for it, I’ll let you upstage me as much as you want.”

  “Deal!”

  Luke leans back in his seat, eyes gleaming. “I really really really wanna—”

  I wait.

  He tries again. No dice. His zigazig ah is still gone.

  “Musky tiger balls!” I curse. “Why didn’t that work?”

  Luke pulls the book toward himself and starts checking my work against what’s on the page. When he gets to the clover, he sighs. There is a tiny, miniscule, nearly microscopic dot where I started to draw a four-leaf clover before I realized I didn’t need one. Luke points at the dot. “I’m guessing the spellwork is as specific as a hex. Can’t have a single piece out of place.”

  I sink into my chair and sigh. “Sorry. But … what do you know about hexes?”

  He shrugs. “Just that they’re math like this—what the fuck?”

  Luke holds up his left hand, the hand I just wrote that equation on. As we watch, it turns a deep hunter green.

  Fear punches me in the gut. “What’s happening?”

  Luke swallows as he shoves his shirtsleeve back. The green doesn’t seem to extend to his arm. It doesn’t seem to be spreading. It’s just his hand, from the wrist down. He holds his hand up close to his face, examining every detail.

  “Is it … are you part zombie?” I whisper, terrified that I’ve somehow ruined him. The best guy I’ve ever dated and I’ve turned him from the undead into the brainless undead. FML.

  Luke turns his hand back and forth. Flexes it. Slams it on the table. That makes me jump. Then he holds it up again and bends each finger one by one. “I don’t think it’s zombified,” he mutters. “But it is … an interesting side effect to say the least.”

  “Side effect? I ruined you.”

  Luke laughs. “Hardly. It’s just a little green. Calm down.” He pushes his hand toward me. “Tell me what it smells like to you.”

  I sniff. I pull his hand closer and sniff again. “Is that … mint?”

  He nods. “Kinda faint, right? But, yeah, I thought so, too.”

  “So, I turned your hand into a mint?”

  He stares at his hand again. “Mint plant? Mint relation?” He licks his hand. “Doesn’t taste different. I’m not sure. I can still use it. The muscles don’t seem affected … other than being green and the smell.”

  I grab the book next to him and slam it shut. “Forget this. Flowers can pay a professional and I’ll reimburse him for the next five years. We need to get you to a doctor.”

  “You could just say, ‘Luke’s hand has lost it’ green color.’”

  “With the way my stupid power is going, that could take away your entire hand somehow! No! We need a doctor.”

  Luke shrugs. “Fine. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

  My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “Excuse me, Mr. Green,” I gesture wildly at his green hand.

  “Yes, Ms. Peacock?”

  “This isn’t funny. I screwed you up somehow! We need to get it fixed! Ugh.”

  “You don’t like my new green thumb?” Luke grins and holds it up like he’s hitchhiking.

  “Stop it.”

  “It feels fine, Ly. Doesn’t hurt. Isn’t spreading. Let’s go to bed and I’ll figure it out tomorrow night.”

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  “Because I’ve had many magical incidents over the years. This is nothing. Trust me.”

  I bite my lip.

  Luke brings his hands to my shoulders and starts rubbing them. I eye the green hand. “It really is nothing, Ly.”

  “Text your friend George at least. Make me feel better. Get an appointment for tomorrow.”

  Luke rolls his eyes but complies. George doesn’t have an appointment until two nights from now.

  “We need something sooner.”

  Luke shakes his head. “I promise you; I feel fine. This will be alright. And I trust George.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I tell Luke in my bossiest, most no-nonsense tone.

  “Good. We can check on your blood and magic results at the same time.”

  Right now, that shit is the least of my worries. My powers suck a big one. I don’t even want to know what kind of demon I am because I’m kinda mad at whatever kind it is that gave me my shit powers in the first place. If I hadn’t fucked up Flowers, I wouldn’t have fucked up Luke. I run a tired, angry hand through my hair.

  As we head into my bedroom, Luke says, “If I turn all the way green, will you still date me, Ly?”

  I growl as I flop onto the bed, fully clothed. “Nope.”

  Luke jumps onto the bed and makes me bounce. He nuzzles me. “But you did this to me!”

  “I know. We’re getting it fixed the night after tomorrow,” I grumble, snuggling up to my pillow. I don’t want to even think about him turning all the way green. That’s not gonna happen. Not gonna happen, I repeat in my head, as if making it a mantra will make it come true.

  “I dunno if I want this fixed,” Luke murmurs. “How intimidating would it be if I keep it in my pocket, but when I get angry, I whip out my green hand, Hulk-style. That could be cool, right?”

  “No.”

  “What about a Green Lantern vibe?”

  “Your human is showing.”

  “Cool Hand Luke?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind … ok, non-human. Ninja Turtle? Ichabod the Uruly Troll? Jolly the Green Giant?”

  “Maybe.” I mumble, just to shut him up.

  The last thing I see before I fall asleep is Luke, holding his green hand up in the air and staring at it like it’s fascinating or the beginning of something awesome, instead of what I know it is.

  It’s another mistake by Lyon the loser.

  Chapter 16

  I get to work earl
y, before the sun’s even down. I hurry, wearing my sleep shirt and some yoga pants for our evening training and tossing other clothes into a duffel. I have to explain everything to Flowers—how I can’t do this reversal—and I don’t want a showdown in front of peeps.

  But when I get inside the gym, Flowers isn’t there yet. Bennett is. And he’s crying.

  He’s hunched down on a bench press bench on the far side of the gym, and I can hear his sobs echoing off the walls. My heart cracks in half, just hearing that. I’ve never seen Bennett look this broken. Not even when we broke up.

  I clear my throat, so he’ll know I’m there and I make my way over the mats.

  “Bennett, what is it?” I ask softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

  He starts, as if he didn’t even notice my throat-clearing, or my walk across the gym. He’s so wrapped up in grief he didn’t see me. Bennett latches onto my hand and stares up at me with tear-soaked green eyes. “That dragon they found? William? He was a rogue.”

  A shard of ice forms in my chest. It rips me up. Fuck. Seeing how much this hurts Bennett is just awful.

  “There was no one looking for him, Ly. No one cared. Three fucking days he was dead up there. I tried to give him burial rites. But she stole his fucking flame! Louise stole his flame!”

  I feel hollow. Disembodied. Stealing a dragon’s flame is akin to stealing his soul. I knew Louise took from shifters. Took and sold. But that? Stealing a dragon’s core magic to sell it? That was evil incarnate.

  “She took his flame … and no one—” he breaks off. He can’t even finish the sentence. His hand nearly crushes mine.

  I drop my bags and hug him with my free hand. Bennett drops my other hand and latches onto my waist. I stand there, patting his back and murmuring useless phrases as he buries his face in my stomach. It’s a while before he grows quiet. When I feel like he’s calm, I tilt his head until he looks up at me. And I give him the one thing I can. “If you ever go missing, I will search for you. I promise.”