Scarlett stared at Lex, having to process his question before she could even answer it. She shook his question off and said, “I’m not worried. Lex, Gus is my best friend.”
“He’s not my best friend,” Lex said under his breath, but it carried anyway. Her family started towards them, and she could almost feel their minds racing and the gossiping to come.
“What do you want me to say? That we’ll turn him out?” she hissed. “We won’t. Gus is family.”
“Scarlett, he’s dangerous,” Lex sounded as frustrated as she did. “I don’t want you to throw him out. We just need to think carefully.”
“He’s not dangerous to us,” she snapped as low as she could.
“I wish I could believe that. I’ve known too many vampires to…”
Perhaps it was fear for Gus, or perhaps it was the way that Lex coming into her life had been both good and a little suffocating, or perhaps it was the fact that her family was listening, but she said, “Then go.”
Lex leaned back, just a little. His gaze darted to hers, and she flinched at what she saw there. She’d hurt him.
She tried and failed to take his hand and then she said in a much softer tone, “But I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you’d stay and help me with him. Lex…Gus is my best friend.”
Lex’s jaw ticked when he replied, “Don’t be wrong about him.”
“I’m not,” she said. She met Lex’s gaze and tried to somehow project her faith in Gus to Lex.
To be fair, Lex had reason to be concerned. If you were to rank the abilities of supernaturals, vampires were very near the top. Even hungry and near death, Gus could cause a lot of damage. Especially to the little girls. But being powerful didn’t make you dangerous to everyone. It made you dangerous to enemies.
Scarlett was finding the quilt she’d bought at a craft fair and thinking about enemies. Mystic Cove wasn’t some ancient vampire conclave where you had things like enemies—it was a tourist beach town with bed and breakfasts and kitschy little shops. It was ranked as one of the cutest and safest towns in America. People didn’t have enemies here, they had an extra twenty pounds and too many parkas.
That being said, and even though it was ridiculous to think of enemies, someone had done this to Gus. Either way, if an enemy were to appear, Gus would use every ounce of his abilities to protect and safeguard Scarlett and her daughters. Truth be told, she would trust Gus with any child—not just hers.
“There’s a hungry vampire in this room. In this apartment. With our very young, very defenseless daughters,” Lex said softly but precisely. “Tell me I have no reason to be worried.”
Harper laughed at that, not even bothering to pretend she hadn’t been listening, and then she said, “If you think Ella and Luna are helpless, you haven’t been paying attention. All Amelie has to do is take off her magic dampener and focus her rage, and someone would be severely hurt.”
Harper and the girls had come down the stairs when Scarlett had stopped feeding Gus. They were crowded in a little group, eyes wide and fixated on Gus. Amelie looked afraid. The other three looked worried. It was little Luna, though, who weaseled her way to Gus. She placed her hand on his back, and simply said, “It’s ok, Gus. Mommy’ll take care of you. We’ll help.”
Scarlett’s eyes went shiny at that—the soft tender caring in Luna’s voice. Lex, on the other hand, had become a statue. Scarlett ignored him. He’d see that Gus wouldn’t hurt Luna. She rubbed his back and sang him a song. It was mostly jumbled words that formed the songs Scarlett sang to her daughters. When Ella joined in, they were singing different sets of jumbled words. As the girls sang to him, Gus’s remaining tension faded, and he settled into sleep.
Scarlett smiled at her girls and then looked at Gram and said, “He needs blood and protein. More blood than I can give alone.”
“We don’t have any of either,” Gram muttered.
Mr. Jueavas looked up and then said, “I called Throddy while you were getting the car. He and Henna are bringing some.”
While they waited, they prepared the living room for the magic they were about to enact, opening the windows fully to let the east wind cavort, linking with the garden downstairs, arranging themselves in a circle around Gus. Druid magic started to hum in the air. When they worked together—they were powerful, and there was so much magic to link to—the old trees that grew down Arbor Avenue, the ocean, the wind. Nature was everywhere, and the Oakens spent so much time around this particular building—they were old friends with the plants and animals here. It was easy for them to link into the magic here.
By the time everyone had found a place and were whispering amongst themselves, Lex had taken Amelie into the kitchen to sit at the table. There was a division between Lex and Amelie and the druids, and it wasn’t because they were different. It was because Lex had created it. Or maybe Scarlett had. Either way, the fact that it existed made her want to weep. Just not then. She had too much to do.
Mom did not take her place at the base of the circle across from Gram—instead, she knelt next to Gus for long moments. She whispered to him with Luna listening and as she did, he seemed to breathe a little easier.
“Why is it like this? Why do they know what to do?” Lex asked. The Oaken women were working like an oiled machine, and anyone who’d see them do magic as often as Lex would have noticed the differences. Usually, they discussed a little or talked about what to do. But not this time. Normally, they talked about who would take lead if only to confirm that it would be Gram or Mom. Aunt Briët rarely took lead, but she was a quiet woman. This time—no one said anything. If they spoke, they whispered giving Gus what rest he could grasp. Even Luna and Ella were solemn other than whispering to Gus or humming to him, they had fallen quiet.
“We did this all too often when we were little,” Scarlett admitted. She saw the way he was one mess of tense muscles and crossed to sit next to him. She placed her hand on the table, hoping he’d take it without thought like he usually did. He didn’t. “Gus…was sick a lot when we were kids.”
Lex nodded. There was another knock at the door and Mr. Throdmore came into the house with Henna. They were Gram’s closest friends. Henna was the closest thing Scarlett had to a second mother. Henna had sold Scarlett her bakery and taught Scarlett to bake in high school. Henna sighed as she looked down on Gus.
“This is far too much like the old days, Augustus,” Henna said, setting her hand on his forehead, checking his temperature as she’d done a thousand times. He’d spent every afternoon that Scarlett had worked in the bakery, hanging out there until Henna had tried and failed to teach him to bake. “You’ll be ok.”
“There are too many people here,” Lex said under his breath as he rose from the table. He crossed and pulled the box from Mr. Throdmore’s hands.
“Careful with that, Lex,” Henna said. “We had to get Pierre to open the clinic to get it for us. I doubt he’d like to do it again.”
Lex glanced down at what was no doubt bags of donated blood and maybe a few steaks. Luna would disapprove, but she’d get over it. Scarlett grinned at Lex as she took the teapot from the stove, poured the hot water into a bowl and dropped in a couple bags of the blood. They were just heating it up enough to keep Gus from getting too chilled while he ate. Lex gagged at the sight and then heaved a little harder when Scarlett casually cut a hole in the bag of blood, stuck a straw in, and crossed to Gus.
Lex crossed to Amelie, covering her eyes. Henna noted Lex’s movement and her gaze darted to Scarlett. The problem was that they knew Scarlett too well. And they knew what she’d think of the way Lex was acting. They also know how Scarlett hated to be gossiped about or discussed when she wasn’t around. And yet, here she was giving the fodder for good gossip sessions with her—surely she was too old to use the word boyfriend? Partner? Something that was ‘going steady' but not fully committed? Was there a word for that when you didn’t want to use ‘boyfriend’ because it made you feel old?
Scarlett was avoiding all of th
e things that were really bothering her as she debated vocabulary options. But holding a blood bag to her best friend as he ate too fast was something that deserved a little avoidance. Scarlett frowned at Lex, at Gus, glanced down at her unfazed daughters and smiled.
“He’s like us,” Mom told Lex and Amelie gently. “Just different. Like Amelie is different from us and you are different from us, Lex. We’re all of this earth. We all have slightly different needs, slightly different weaknesses, different abilities. Trap a druid in a facility without access to nature or the earth and see how crazed we get.”
Scarlett hadn’t considered that before, but the mere idea of it made her ill. She reached out and brushed Luna’s hair back wondering what she’d be like if she didn’t have animals to talk to or her powerful insight Or Ella..the sweet, traditional tree druid. What would she do if she didn’t get to run her fingers over a tree every day or sit beneath their branches and read a book?
But Lex didn’t take his hand from Amelie’s eyes. It didn’t matter that what Mom said made sense.
On that, Gram hummed and a low contralto filled the air. Aunt Briët joined in and then her daughters. Mom went next. The girls followed with Henna and then finally Scarlett. As the person who knew him best, she would be the one feeding him power to replenish him. Whatever had been done to him had been ugly. He was weaker than she’d seen him since he’d been a child who’d gotten too ill, too often. His parents had told her mom once that he was so weak he might not survive childhood. Scarlett’s mother, Maye, had listened and then rejected the mere idea of it.
That was the first time that the druids of the Oaken family had channeled their power into Gus. It hadn’t been the last. They fed power into him and as he drank the blood and was flooded with power. As the spell worked, he seemed to grow back to himself. His muscles refilled out. The shrunken ribs turned back into the powerful abs that were his. The broad shoulders that many a woman had wanted to curl up on reformed. Scarlett hadn’t let herself really examine how badly he’d been hurt until he started to recover. It was the change that stabbed her far more deeply than seeing him ill had done.
“Oh buddy,” she said. Her hand was already on his shoulder, but she squeezed him and could feel his body actually push back against her as his magic took hold.
But then her attention was caught. Her head snapped to the fireplace, but so did the face of every druid in the room. They were like a pride of cats that had just found a mouse in their midst.
“Woah,” Lex said. Even Gus noticed. He tensed under Scarlett’s had—the magic she was feeding into him giving him a glimmer of what she was seeing. The druids were fixated on a corner of the fireplace.
“What the…” Lex and Gus said as Gram growled low in her throat and the other druids seemed to suddenly become a pack of hunters.
Chapter 3
Scarlett rose and crossed to the fireplace. It took a moment of feeling around before Scarlett that found a loose brick that hadn’t been loose before. In the depression behind it, there was a little burlap bag, stitched with gray thread the color of ashes. The bag was tied with black thread that seemed more sinew than twine. The sight of the bag seemed to send a black cloud into the room, and Scarlett gasped.
She coughed, went to take the bag, but stopped. Her every instinct shouted at her to get it away from her family, even if she had to touch it. But that did seem to be epically stupid.
Lex must have crossed with her, and she hadn’t even noticed him. Not until he grabbed her wrist and said, “No. Don’t touch it.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” she squatted enough to allow herself to look at it straight on. It was a hex bag. But—it was something she’d never seen before.
A druid hex bag.
Scarlett knew of them only in theory, but as she breathed in she caught the scent of decay wood, of bone, of salted earth. She took hold of Lex to keep him from taking the bag too. He pulled against her and they squared off for a moment.
“Ella, tongs,” Scarlett ordered, never taking her gaze from Lex.
He nodded once, and they both relaxed.
“Who would put a hex bag in your place, Scarlett?” His hand slid down to her fingers, and they twined, but the essence of him hadn’t re-melded with her family. Usually, he blended as easily as Gus, but this time…this time…he was separate.
“We need to break it apart and destroy it individually. Without touching it,” Lex said.
“Who cursed us?” Mom asked, rubbing her stomach where the baby was growing. She was only a few months pregnant and her pregnancy was only possible because she was a druid with an expanded lifespan and fertility. Fate had handed Scarlett’s mom an early surprise pregnancy and a late one.
“You need to go check that kid out,” Scarlett replied to her mother, not wanting her to get too close or too protective. She needed to think of the baby she was growing and her newly adopted daughter, Rebel. The rest of their family circle could deal with the curse and the hex bag.
“Sonograms or whatever they call them aren’t the druid way. Home births and doulas are,” Mom said. “Please be careful with that thing.”
Harper scoffed at Mom while Scarlett ignored them both as she said, “You can find out the sex of the baby and make sure everything is ok.”
“Scarlett,” Lex hissed, “Focus.”
“I don’t want Mom focused this way,” she hissed back.
Scarlett grasped the bag with the tongues and lifted it over her face to examine it more fully.
Mom was the one who scoffed this time. “Everything is fine,” Mom said, “And druids almost always have girls. Really, be careful with that bag. It’s over your face.’
“Really?” Lex asked. “Girls?”
Scarlett pulled the hex bag down, holding the hex bag in front of her, Lex just kept himself from taking the tongs and bag from her. Everyone’s gazes were on them and she glanced at him, grinned, and said, “I got this.”
“She’s having twin girls,” Harper said, curling into her boyfriend Quinton and tangling her fingers with his. Her position was utterly relaxed, but Harper was rarely that—especially given what was happening, so it had to be a front. “I saw it in my freaky ghost dream a few weeks ago.”
“Wait…what? Twins? That dream wasn’t a premonition,” Mom said hopefully as Scarlett cackled. She almost lost the hex bag in the process and Lex cursed at her while every druid present caught their breath.
“It was real,” Harper said idly. “You better start thinking about rhyming names.”
“Careful with that hex bag, girl,” Gram snapped. She held out her hand in a clear demand.
“Oooh,” Harper laughed, “You got “girl-ed.”
“Shut up,” Scarlett said as Lex just caught himself from snatching the hex bag from Scarlett. She’d surely have dropped it then.
Lex shook his head as Scarlett started to hand the tongs to Gram and demanded, “Give it to me. I’m the warlock.”
“Yeah,” Scarlett said, “And that’s a druid hex bag.”
“I didn’t know druids could make hex bags.”
Gram snorted, giving Lex a scathing look and Mr. Jueavas said, “Boy, you should probably drop your assumptions about druids if you are going to keep…spending so much time with one.”
See, Scarlett thought, as she happily stepped back from the hex bag, even Mr. Jueavas doesn’t know what to call it. Boyfriend? He was probably 80—surely boyfriend felt weird when someone referred to him as Gram’s.
“Twins?” Mom asked again, shaking voice and all as Gram took the hex bag onto the patio.
They’d been trying to keep things light for the girls. Scarlett was pretty sure Luna knew exactly what they were doing. Her daughter’s bright eyes were watching everything avidly noting every aside about Mom’s pregnancy while never drawing attention.
“Scarlett, could we talk?”
The room fell silent as the entirety of the Oaken family looked at Lex and Scarlett. Amelie giggled a little under her breath and Gus sort of
shifted, immediately catching Lex’s far too serious gaze.
“Gus needs another round,” Scarlett said. “Luna can feed him the power.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
Scarlett didn’t answer but let Lex lead her into the bedroom where he said, “Why are you ignoring me?”
“I’m not,” Scarlett said. She tried to step closer to him, but he wasn’t having it. He thrust his hands into his hair.
“And yet, Gus is out there with our daughters, you all are feeding him power without wondering where his power went, you have no idea what you’re doing.”
“Of course we do,” Scarlett shot back, “We’ve been taking care of Gus in place of his family since he was 6-years-old.”
“And I’m the sheriff and the experienced investigator, and while your Gram is out there disabling a hex bag…it should be me,” He shrugged that enigmatic shrug, but this time she knew him well enough to know what it meant. He was trying to shake off his fury and wasn’t quite making it.
“It’s a druid hex bag, Lex. You aren’t the best qualified,” Scarlett said. “But go argue with Gram if you want to.”
“And Gus?”
“I don’t understand your problem,” Scarlett told him honestly. “Gus is family to me.”
“Gus is in love with you,” Lex said. His intense eyes were fixated on her face, and his body curled towards her just enough to make her feel like he wanted to wrap her up but wasn’t going to.
Scarlett wasn’t sure what to do. She had been in a relationship before, of course, but never one where someone was jealous of her.
But then he said, “And he’s dangerous. Of course, I’m worried.”
Scarlett took a breath and then she admitted, “Maybe Gus thinks he has feelings for me…”
“He does,” Lex said flatly.
Scarlett took a breath and tried to say calmly, “But that doesn’t change that he’s important to me and to the rest of my family. My mom half-raised him, Lex. Gus is family to all of us.”
Christmas and Curses Page 2