Halfway Hexed Read online

  He yawned and came headfirst down the trunk in that gravity-defying way of his.

  I started talking as we raced across the lawn and didn’t stop until we were halfway down the street in my car. Merc licked his paws thoughtfully. I exhaled hard, then worked to suck in another breath. Turns out truth spells feel kind of like an asthma attack.

  "Where should we go? There might be workmen at my house. There might be kidnappers at Zach’s.” I bit my lip. “I love Georgia Sue, but you can trust her with a secret like you can trust me not to eat a chocolate chip cookie. So if I’m under an I’ve-gotta-tell-the-truth hex, I better not go there. Tom Brick’s? It’s isolated and deserted. But what if the Conclave takes Bryn there for a ‘scene of the crime’ interview?”

  Mercutio set a paw on my leg and looked out my window. I glanced over. We were passing Macon Hill, the magical tor.

  I swung the wheel. “Good thinking. Hardly anyone uses the chapel on the tor. We can hide the car behind it.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror several times as I sped up the road to the top of the tor. I parked my car on the grass. No other cars around.

  I rolled down my window to get some fresh air and launched into telling Merc how worried I was about Bryn. I wanted to think of a way to get the police to go to his house and break up the Conclave’s interrogation, but I couldn’t call and make a false report on account of having to tell the truth. And, if I told the truth, they either wouldn’t believe it or that would start another whole mess.

  Then I started talking about the state of my life in general. Kind of chaotic and confusing was my assessment. When Merc stopped making any noise, I glanced over and found him asleep. Sometimes having a sidekick who’s nocturnal works out. Sometimes not so much.

  Feeling restless, I looked out the window at the grass swaying in the breeze.

  I shouldn’t be sitting around wasting time.

  Plus, I needed a distraction from worrying about Bryn. The tor was a place of concentrated magical power, which might help me to see more of the brooch vision.

  I didn’t have any candles or matches or bowls of water, but I could always come back with those things if this attempt didn’t work. Also, it seemed to me that those things were mostly used to help the mind drift. If I could get relaxed and let my mind roam, I might be able to achieve the same effect.

  I rubbed the top of Mercutio’s head for luck and then got out. I pulled off my boots and set them on the driver’s side floorboard. I tugged off my socks and set them on the seat. The ground was cold under my feet and I shivered.

  I retrieved the brooch from the trunk, waiting for a moment to see if the vision would just come, but it didn’t. I closed the trunk and went around to the stone bench in front of the chapel and dug my toes into the dirt there to let the Earth’s magic flow into me.

  I held the brooch lightly in my hands and stared at the rippling grass. For a long time, nothing happened.

  “Powerful Earth, show her to me.” I whispered the request over and over until I was barely aware that I was saying anything at all.

  She rose suddenly, partly transparent at first, then the slope of the hill faded and she came sharply into view. She was running with her back to me, getting farther away. I rushed after her.

  The sound of her feet on the cobbles. A narrow street with gas streetlamps. An alleyway. Heart banging. Breath short. Something hit us, and we fell.

  A cold lance of pain in my side made me scream. Blood spilling. Dry lips.

  How could you?

  I held my side and my hand cramped, fingers tingling with pain. She was on her side near me, starting to turn and then she was gone for the blink of an eye before she appeared again, standing over me.

  “Help me. Please help me,” she said, voice soft as the wind.

  Mercutio leapt over me, yowling in fury. He passed through the apparition, and she vanished. My hand felt like it was dipped in ice water. Gasping in pain, I pried the fingers of my right hand open with my left. I let the brooch fall onto the grass and my mouth hung open, trying to get enough air. Mercutio hissed and knocked the brooch away from me with an angry paw. He clawed the dirt and stamped it down into the earth as if to bury it. The terrible pain in my side faded to a dull ache, and I blinked away the tears that had formed in my eyes.

  “Oh, Merc.” I ran a hand over my sweat-dampened forehead and looked at the chapel that I’d left behind when I raced headlong down the grassy embankment after her. I sucked in air and blew it out. “I don’t think I can save that girl.”

  I let my head fall back onto the grass, staring up at the clear afternoon sky.

  “I think she’s already dead.”

  Chapter 13

  Mercutio didn’ t want me to take the brooch. He was really vocal on that account, but I picked it up anyway. I used the lower edge of my shirt to keep from touching it with my bare fingers.

  “I sure don’t understand, Merc. If she’s a ghost, why didn’t she appear as a ghost and talk to me from the start like Edie would’ve? And if it’s a vision, then why am I so sure that she was talking directly to me when she asked for help?”

  I sighed. “Maybe it was a vision and then the girl astral-projected to me?” I put the dirt-covered brooch into its box and closed the trunk. I put my hands on the car and leaned over it, shaking my head. “I don’t know. I felt that pain. It was really bad. Somebody stabbed her, I think. I felt it cut something deep inside me and then all the blood was gushing out.” I shuddered.

  I turned my head to look at Mercutio, who was eyeing the area suspiciously. “I’m not sure that Aunt Mel sent that thing. Why would she? Where would she even have gotten it if she’s been in Faery?” I rubbed my damp hands on my jeans and straightened up.

  “Maybe the Conclave sent it to me as some kind of a test.” I licked my lips. “But I feel like I’m connected to that woman. Like she’s someone in our family line. Maybe my grandma in London sent it to me.” The breeze blew across my skin and I shivered, chilly and exhausted. “I feel terrible. Let’s sit for a minute.”

  We got in the car, and I closed and locked the doors. I started it up so I could turn on the heat, then I put my seat back, trying to get my muscles to relax.

  “I know I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I think I might have to talk to Bryn about this brooch.” That thought gave my heart a slight pang. “I sure hope he’s okay.”

  I woke up when Merc’s paw bumped my arm, and I jumped when I realized someone was standing next to the car. The sun in my eyes had me half blind, but as my vision started to adjust I realized with relief that it was Bryn. I lowered the window.

  “Hey there,” I said with a smile.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were at my son’s house?”

  I jerked forward, blinking. It wasn’t Bryn. It was his dad, Lennox. “I was there. I pulled a gun on John Barrett, and Bryn kicked me out for my own safety.”

  “You managed to pull a gun on the president of the World Association of Magic?” Lennox asked with a smile. “What was his security detail doing? Admiring your pastries?”

  “They were distracted. Listen, I don’t know if Bryn’s okay. They were going to use some magical collar on him that was covered in needles! Needles! They thought they could make him tell the truth with it. I didn’t want him to go along with them.”

  “He agreed to put it on?”

  “I think so. He cast a spell on us. I think he thought he could outsmart the device.”

  “Then he probably will.”

  “You don’t know. Why aren’t you there helping him? You’re his dad.”

  “Why isn’t your father here helping you?”

  “Because he’s not a wizard. He’s not even human—” I slapped a hand over my mouth, muffling my words.

  “No?” he asked, cocking his head.

  The pressure in my chest was building. I clutched the steering wheel hard enough to make my knuckles go white. “He doesn’t live here,” I said, forcing out a brea
th. “Plus, I don’t think he cares about what happens to me.” I winced. The truth was hard. I rubbed the space between my collarbones that ached from trying to keep all of the truth from spilling free. “Can you go away? Bryn told me to be by myself.”

  “Why?”

  I hesitated, trying to find the right words, the pressure building again. “I think he thought I would get myself into trouble if I talked to people today.”

  “And that would make today special how?”

  “Can you go away?” I gasped.

  “I can,” he said in a tone that implied he wouldn’t.

  I needed to stop talking. If I could get him talking that would help. “You know some things about my family, don’t you?”

  “A bit.”

  “Do you know anything about my grandmother?”

  “I know she lived in Houston.”

  “Yeah, my granny Justine, but she’s dead for sure. I saw her in the casket with my very own eyes. She looked like they’d stolen her from a wax museum, but I’m sure they didn’t. Well, pretty sure.” I slapped a hand over my mouth again. What an awful thing to say!

  Lennox smiled in an expression that was just like Bryn’s.

  “He looks like you. Bryn does,” I said.

  “Yes. Except for the eyes and the hands.”

  “What’s the Granville Prize?”

  Lennox looked surprised for a moment. “Are you—Did he mention it?”

  “Nope. John Barrett did.”

  “Ah.” Lennox leaned against the car and looked at the setting sun. “The Granville Prize is the highest award someone from our world can receive. It’s rather like a human Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer.”

  “How do you get it?”

  “There are different ways. In his case it was for writing a spell that changed the way wizards think about celestial magic. He didn’t do it alone, but that didn’t make it any less remarkable.”

  I smiled. I could hear the pride in Lennox’s voice. Usually Lennox acted like the end of the world was next Tuesday, and the rest of us were too dumb to know it. No need for him to be civil. No need for him to care about much.

  “He wrote it with his friend Andre?”

  Lennox looked at me closely then. “Taking the Bryn Lyons 101 course, are you? Is that because you need him to sort out your magic?”

  “Nope. He just interests me.”

  “He interests most people,” he said dismissively.

  I waited.

  "Andre’s a genius in his own way. Mathematics and science are his forte. Especially physics. When Bryn met him at school, Andre was an outcast, an oafish boy with no discernable social skills. The only things he and Bryn had in common were celestial magic and a fascination with theoretical magic—spells that should work but cannot be proven to work because no wizard has enough power to cast them.

  "Bryn wanted Andre to be allowed into an exclusive club at their prep school, but the other members refused. That club was a ticket to unlimited success, but Bryn left it because they wouldn’t admit Andre. It seemed a terrible decision at the time, but Bryn could see what others could not. Andre understood the universe on a fundamental level, but one he could not communicate or apply. Bryn saw its potential, and Bryn has an unparalleled gift for spell-writing that he inherited.

  “The two became such close friends that Andre insisted on going to Dublin for the summers to study alongside Bryn. And late one July, they wrote a spell that left the master spell-writers speechless. It later won the Granville and other awards.” He looked at me then. "When they wrote it, they were fourteen years old.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, wow,” Lennox said dryly. “At that point, in terms of magic, Bryn could have done anything with his life. But a year later he got expelled, and everything changed.”

  “Expelled? Why?”

  Lennox looked back at the horizon. “Because he needed something that no one could give him, and he was determined to get it, no matter what it cost. Sometimes even when he knows a thing has the potential to destroy all he’s worked for, he cannot let it go.” Lennox shook his head and looked at me. "Which is why I wish you’d leave him alone.”

  “Me? You think I’m bad for him?”

  “I know you are. See what he’s gotten himself into because he couldn’t resist helping you?”

  “You got him into this, too. You stole the locket.”

  “Yes, I did, but I never expected him to get involved with you or you with him. You’d barely even met, and your family had some sacred rule against it. Your mother and aunt certainly said as much.”

  “But they didn’t explain? You don’t know why?”

  “No, I don’t know why. Nor do I care.”

  As he walked away, I added, “Well, I do. A lot.”

  The instant that Bryn lifted the spell, I felt the change. It was like my chest had been duct-taped for hours and someone had just cut the tape off. I twisted and stretched and breathed in huge breaths, feeling much better.

  “Well, now I know how a mummy feels. Getting wrapped up in constrictive bandages, I really can’t recommend it,” I said to Mercutio as I started the car.

  I couldn’t go to the banquet at City Hall in jeans and a turtleneck, so I had to stop by my house. TJ and his crew had put a new door on my house, but I didn’t have the key so I went in the backway again. Merc didn’t come in. He went over the fence with a pounce, and I suspected he was going off to hunt for his dinner, which made me feel like a bad friend for not having fed him sooner.

  “Merc can take care of himself. Better than you can most of the time,” I mumbled, closing and locking the sliding glass door. The house was stuffy and a little dusty, so I opened the kitchen window above the sink, figuring it was too small for Scarface to climb through and that I’d be able to hear Merc yowling if he wanted to come in.

  After I took a shower, I went to Momma’s big closet where all three of us kept our party dresses. I leaned inside so I could see them well enough to pick one, then a flash of light behind me nearly made me jump out of my skin. I was only wearing a pink tank top and panties, which left me feeling underdressed for a fight. My eyes darted to the closet floor, and I grabbed a blue stiletto heel that had to be Aunt Mel’s. I jumped up and turned with the heel facing my would-be attacker.

  I was shocked to find Craig Cuskin, my fifteen-year-old neighbor, snapping a picture with a little digital camera.

  "What the Sam Houston do you think you’re doing?”

  “Taking pictures of you.”

  “Give me that camera,” I said, transferring the shoe to my left hand so I could hold out my right one.

  “Can’t do that,” he said, tucking it into the pocket of his khakis.

  “Have you lost your mind? You know my ex-husband’s a sheriff’s deputy and won’t take kindly to you breaking and entering and taking pictures of me in my undies. Plus, you’re the judge’s son. You ought to know better than to break the law.”

  He smiled, revealing clear plastic braces. “First off, everyone knows Zach Sutton left town ’cause you started running around on him. And second, the back door was open.”

  “That is not why he left town! And the back door was locked.” How in the world had he fit through the window? He was almost as tall as me, but I guessed he was kind of a string bean.

  “Your word against mine,” he said. “I don’t think you wanna ask the police to make that choice right now. I’ve heard you’re not too popular around the station.”

  “Even if the door was open, you can’t just two-step in.”

  “I called out. I guess you didn’t hear me over the running water.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tell you what. Let me put on some clothes and then we’ll take a walk over to talk to your momma about this.”

  “I don’t think you should do that. You see, some ladies have been to talk to my dad about you. They think you’re practicing witchcraft.”

  My eyes widened.

  “He didn’t believe them, but
he’d probably have to rethink it if he saw the footage I picked up on my video camera that I rigged to the top of your fence.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a smug grin. “First it was just to get you watering the yard in a tank top and shorts. Me and my friends, we take pictures around town and trade ’em. I lucked out living behind you; shots of you in a swimsuit are worth ten of any other girl. Then you came out that one night naked.” He let out a low whistle. “I don’t know what you were saying, but it was hot! The video’s kind of grainy, but the guys didn’t complain, even when I made them pay to download it.”

  I socked him. His head jerked, and he buckled, landing hard on his knees. When he looked up, I slapped his face hard enough to leave a bright red handprint, then I snaked my hand into his pocket and pulled that camera out before he even had a chance to recover.

  I deleted the pictures on the card and then slammed the camera lens down on the dresser, smashing it to pieces.

  He looked up at me, startled, his face pale except for the red swelling under his eye and the handprint on his cheek.

  “In this life, Craig, we’ve all got our choices to make. If you act like a man, I’ll treat you like one. If you act like a bad man, I’ll treat you like one. You get me?”

  His cheeks flushed. “Did you kill Earl Stanton? Some people think you did, but I said there was no way. Thought you were too sweet.”

  “Stand up.”

  He got to his feet and looked me straight in the eye.

  “Earl Stanton caught me in the woods and tried to rape me. I hit him in the head with a rock. Hit him hard enough to crack even the thickest skull.” I paused to let my words sink in, then added, “He didn’t die from that, but he could’ve.”

  “Sounds like he deserved it.”

  “He did.”

  “But look, these were just pictures. I wouldn’t have touched you, unless you wanted me to.”

  Unless I’d wanted him to, I thought wryly. Like I’d take a tumble in the grass with a fifteen-year-old? The things boys get in their heads. “Well, I’m sure glad to hear it. Go on home now.”