Hexes and Exes Read online

  “I’m just warming up. It’s hard to think up insults when you haven’t done anything colossally idiotic lately.” He drummed his long fingers against the wood of the desk. “Why do you think you’re still . . . a virgin?”

  That didn’t make me sad, just uncomfortable. But if this was the route we were going down, I figured I would at least give it a try rather than telling him to mind his own business. I was doing this for Derrick. I wanted to break his curse.

  “When I lived in the Morty Realm, I couldn’t do more than kiss a guy before lightning struck him or he had a heart attack or something bad happened. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” I suspected he’d already known the answer to that. The idea of hurting people made my heart ache. I usually ignored the loneliness inside me, but not today.

  This felt like the path to virgin’s tears.

  “So it isn’t because you’re incompetent and awkward? It has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t know how to socialize with other people your own age?” he asked. “You don’t think it’s because you were unpopular in high school and you have continued to be a social outcast as an adult?”

  These questions struck a chord in my self-doubt. I didn’t know how to answer.

  He let the questions sink in for another moment before continuing. “Or could it be that you sabotage any potential relationships you might have on a subconscious level using magic so you don’t have to deal with real problems like an adult would.”

  I swallowed. The barbs of those words tore into me. I couldn’t tell if he truly thought that or he was saying it because he knew what would hurt.

  His smile was like a wolf’s grin, the illusion of friendliness one might perceive if they didn’t know the nature of undomesticated beasts. “You push all men away because it’s easier to cling to an unrealistic ideal of perfection in your friend Derrick. What you fail to see is that you will never have him because when his curse is cured, you will find he is less than you imagined. He won’t be who you thought he was. The only man whom you’ve perceived as perfect in recent years was a lie.”

  Every word he spoke sank into my soul, weighing me down. He didn’t need his torture chair to tell him what my secret fears were when he could see me so transparently. He could have doubled for a sociopathic psychiatrist with his Hannibal Lecter interrogation techniques.

  “Your reality,” Thatch went on, “is filled with villains like Julian Thistledown. You are surrounded by men who feign affection for you in order to use you for your magic. And those who don’t wish to control you are rewarded by being coerced by your magic—forced to become a slave to your desire no matter how they otherwise wish it.” Anger threaded through that arch of his eyebrow and punctured each heaving breath. His resentment of me stitched unspoken meaning to his words. This had to be what he had experienced the night I’d kissed him in the forest, the exact reason he had been terse to me since then. I had used him like Alouette Loraline had.

  I stared at the black skirt I wore, wishing he could have told this to me days ago. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “With Derrick, it will be the same. You’ll use him and bewitch him against his will. And you’ll call it love. The moment you touch him, you won’t know the difference between what your affinity desires and what either of you actually want.” He drew in a deep breath. “How does that make you feel?”

  My voice came out in a rasp. “You’re just saying this because you think it will make me cry.”

  He strolled around the desk, gazing into the birdcage. The silence was unbearable. Another moment passed before he turned back toward me and seated himself on the edge of his desk in front of me.

  “I’m not just saying this to make you cry. I’m telling you the truth. It’s liberating being able to speak one’s mind.”

  Sorrow bubbled up inside me, wanting the release of crying, but no tears came.

  Thatch lifted my chin to meet my gaze, the gesture unexpectedly gentle. “Do you realize, it would be so easy for you to entice men without magic if you desired? You could be pretty if you learned how to apply a touch of glamour or use makeup. You could dress like a normal Witchkin—not someone who mixes polka dots and stripes. If you didn’t dye your hair pink and have the fashion sense of a twelve-year-old—if you started behaving like a grownup—then I can see you might want to attract a man’s attention.”

  Was he saying that’s why he didn’t find me attractive? My insides twisted up on knots, confused and angry—and melancholy.

  Pink hair and stripes were who I was. I didn’t want someone who wasn’t going to appreciate my quirky fashion sense or wanted me to alter what I looked like with glamour. Derrick had never demanded I change my appearance or who I was inside. He’d dressed in his mismatched checkered shirts with striped pants, looking like a wizard in a Muggle world as if he belonged in a Harry Potter novel. Derrick had knitted himself a Doctor Who scarf—which hadn’t progressed past six inches—and he owned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He’d never looked down on me for liking the color pink, dressing up my dolls in fairy costumes, or liking unicorns. Derrick liked me—loved me—for who I was.

  Unless . . . Thatch was right and that was my dream of Derrick and not who he truly was.

  Thatch stared into my eyes, his face an unreadable mask.

  The cat tried to jump onto his lap, but the slope of his long legs as he half sat, half leaned against the desk didn’t make the best landing pad. Her claws snagged on the fabric of his pants.

  “Merlin’s balls,” he cursed. He pushed her off and stood abruptly.

  I felt like that cat right then. My confidence and hope had been skewered and crucified right in front of me. It wasn’t just Felix Thatch I would never have. Love was an intangible vapor I couldn’t grasp. It was as solid as ice and as refreshing as water for all but myself.

  The relationship I wanted with Derrick was doomed to fail.

  “How does that make you feel?” he asked.

  “Horrible.” More than that. Incredibly stupid.

  His voice came out in a sharp growl. “Why aren’t you crying yet?”

  “I can’t just turn the waterworks on. It isn’t something I have a lot of control over.”

  He shoved the vial into my hands. “Go then. Think of puppies getting run over or whatever you need to dwell on in order to cry.”

  I trudged out of the room.

  He cleared his throat. “You do realize I wasn’t being completely honest.” He smiled, though it didn’t touch the melancholy in his eyes. “I lied when I said you were ugly and fat.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Probably he meant everything else. No wonder he was so rotten to me.

  That night as I lay awake, thinking of all the horrible things Thatch had said, I grew angrier. Who did he think he was, saying I didn’t have social skills? He was the one people didn’t like. I had made two friends among the teaching staff. Josie and Khaba were good friends, and we didn’t use each other. Tears burned my eyes, and my nose ran with snot. I blew my nose.

  “Will you be quiet over there!” Vega shouted in the darkness of our shared room. “Some of us need our fucking beauty sleep.”

  I fumbled in the dark for the vial, uncorking it and trying to catch my tears. Without the use of a mirror, I didn’t know if I succeeded.

  I tossed and turned, thinking about Derrick and what I would say to him if I got to see him again. Maybe my feelings for him weren’t even real, just a fantasy of what they could be.

  In the morning, I found the vial on the nightstand. It was empty. Crusty lines of dried tears stained the outside.

  Between afterschool duties and dinner, I went jogging. The cold air burned in my lungs and seeped under my sweats, but exercise felt good. I pushed myself to jog faster, to run. For a moment I felt like I was running from my fears, from my anger, and from the overwhelming doubts that I was worthy of Derrick.

  Running from my feelings didn’t work for very long.

  Sorrow came bubbling up from the well of emotion
inside me again, bursting forth into a moan. My eyes stung, but I couldn’t tell if the moisture dripping down my face was sweat or tears.

  “Hello, beautiful,” a male voice said from the bushes.

  I nearly tripped in surprise.

  Bart neighed. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  I hastily wiped my face and continued jogging. “They’re going to shoot you with real arrows and cut off your horn if they catch you on school grounds.”

  He trod out of the shadows so that the dying rays of sunlight sparkled across his rainbows and glitter. He trotted alongside me. “Unlikely. So did you ask Professor Pegasus Breath if he needed you to collect any more . . . specimens?”

  “He asked if you know any dragons. He wants me to collect a dragon egg.” I veered off toward the forest, hoping to redirect him.

  Like a good pony, he followed. “He asked you to do that? Do you know how dangerous that is, especially for a pretty maiden the dragon will want to hoard away all to himself for fifty years. No way am I letting you put yourself in jeopardy like that.”

  “Do you mean that? You think I’m pretty?” I asked. If a chimera told me I was delicious, I probably would have taken that as a compliment right about then.

  Bart tossed his rainbow hair into my face. “Clarissa, you are the most beautiful human pet I’ve ever had.”

  “Ugh! Bart, I’m not your pet.” Plus, for all I knew, I was the only human pet he’d ever had.

  “You seem down. Is everything all right?” He kept up with me as I pushed myself faster. “Hey, did you bring me any sugar cubes?”

  “Um, no. I was just thinking about . . . stuff. About my pink hair and how I like to dress like a witch, but I guess some people think that makes me look, I don’t know, childish. Do you think I might subconsciously be trying to make myself appear unattractive to men?”

  “What kind of pegasus brain doesn’t think pink hair is cute? Were your students being jerks? Or was it the other teachers? Do you want me to beat someone up?” He offered a little too jovially. “I can impale them on my horn if it makes you feel better.”

  I hoped he was joking. “Please don’t.”

  “You know what I think would make you feel better? You should ride on my back. I’ll carry you away into the sunset.” The golden rays of the sunset shimmered across his velvet fur.

  I looked away from the lure of his glamour. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “Or we could go on an adventure, and you can watch me heroically steal a dragon egg.”

  “I do need a dragon egg.” The offer was tempting, but I wasn’t in the mood. “Thatch can take his dragon egg and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

  Bart neighed. “Good one. But if we do go stealing dragon eggs, we need to make sure you are safely out of sight and downwind. If the dragon catches you with me, she’ll roast your head off. Dragons don’t mate often so they are very protective of their eggs. That Thatch is such a donkule for even suggesting you collect dragon eggs for him.”

  Thatch hadn’t asked me to collect the eggs. He asked me to ask Bart, but I didn’t feel like explaining. “Forget about it.” I glanced over my shoulder as I jogged. Most students with any sense were inside where it was warm, but that didn’t mean much with my students.

  I lowered my voice anyway. “Now that we’re alone, I wondered if there was something I could ask you.”

  “You can ask me anything.” His words came out a little too breathy and full of longing for my liking.

  “What is it about Felix Thatch that you don’t like? And don’t tell me it’s because he’s too old or some excuse like that. You were going to tell me something about him that night—before he shot a sleep arrow at you.” We headed closer to the forest path guarded by the tree sentries. If I needed to, I could always use them as an excuse for why I couldn’t venture into the forest.

  “Oh. That’s your question.” Bart blew air between his lips. “Well, let’s see. . . . Why do I hate Felix Thatch? Let me count the ways: He’s not a virgin. He’s a poacher. He’s killed unicorns for our horns before. He works for the Raven Queen. Also, I don’t like his hair.”

  “Whoa! How can you not like his hair? And in case you haven’t gotten the memo, he doesn’t work for the Raven Queen anymore.” As for the poaching, I wanted to believe Thatch wouldn’t actually kill a good unicorn, only evil ones. Were there evil unicorns? There were evil Fae.

  “You know what they say: once an emissary of the Raven Court, always an emissary of the Raven Court. No one who deals with those harpies is free from developing major issues. Because I’m a unicorn and I use magic, I can see into his heart and sense the baggage he’s carrying.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “He is bad news. You stay away from him, or he’ll break your heart.”

  I suspected Bart was reading into my heart more than Thatch’s at the moment.

  He batted his eyelashes at me. “If I go on a quest for you and get you a dragon egg, will you go on a date with me?”

  “Bart, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but I’m not interested in you romantically. I know I touched your horn before, but that was so I could collect an ingredient for a spell.”

  “You rode on my back. Didn’t that mean anything to you?” His large eyes expressed more hurt than I knew an equestrian species was capable of.

  “Do you think I let any girl ride me?”

  “It is something special, yes, but riding on a unicorn’s back is rarely anything sexual for humans. It’s more . . . I don’t know how to explain it.” If I tried, I was afraid I might come across as speciesist—the human trying to dominate the noble steed. “Can’t we just be friends?”

  “With or without benefits?”

  “Without.”

  He shook out his mane, getting glitter in my eyes. “It’s because I’m a nice guy, isn’t it? Nice guys always finish last.”

  I was in no mood for this. “Go back to the forest, Bart. There’s got to be some nymph or satyr lady who will get you off, if that’s what you want.”

  “It isn’t want I want. I want a relationship.” He expressed a ridiculous amount of pathos on his horse face. “With you.”

  “Go!” I said.

  He hung his head and lumbered away. I hated being mean to a unicorn. Thatch was right; there wasn’t much worse than a unicorn with a broken heart.

  I showered and sat in my room, trying to muster up the sorrow to cry. Vega walked in, lifting her nose up in the air when she saw me. “What are you doing, loser?” she asked.

  This was like high school, only worse, because now I was an adult. Vega’s insults still didn’t make me cry.

  I went to my classroom to be alone. It was only seven, but I had to carry a candle with me so I could see in the passages. I sat at my desk and tried to cry. Even with a mirror in my pocket, I didn’t know if I’d be able to see, but I gave it my best. When I couldn’t make myself cry, I hit my arm with a ruler. I bawled up my fists and beat my desk, trying to embrace my inner angst. I had plenty to be angry about, but no tears came.

  I laid my forehead on my arms and tried to pretend to cry to inspire myself. It wasn’t like I didn’t feel horrible and hate myself for leading Bart on or using him or yelling at him. Plus, there were plenty of other stupid things I’d done in my life. None of it was working, though.

  My elbow bumped into something on my desk, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. It was the creaking of the closet door that drew my attention. I kept it locked.

  I sat bolt upright. “Thatch?” I called out. He had access to the back stairwell from the dungeon.

  No one answered, but I heard a sigh. Perhaps it was the wind.

  “Who’s there?”

  The closet door clicked closed.

  On my desk rested an unopened box of tissue. That was odd. I didn’t even have tissue in my classroom. Vega had access to my room from her closet the floor below, but there was no way she would do anything nice for me. She would have insulted me or told me to tou
ghen up.

  Thatch could have felt bad and brought it, but knowing Thatch and his pragmatism, he would have nudged me with a vial to collect tears instead.

  This gift had come from someone who didn’t know about the necessity of collecting virgin’s tears. It came from someone who thought I had been crying.

  The wind whistled through the shuttered windows. I thought I detected traces of jasmine and freshly cut grass, but perhaps that was wishful thinking. Even so, hope burned inside me. I wanted it to be Derrick.

  Another day passed, and the sting of Thatch’s words lessened. I was getting no closer to crying. I kept thinking about the box of magically appearing tissue. If there was a ghost at the school, I suspected it couldn’t be Julian Thistledown now. His ghost would be the sort to haunt someone out of revenge, not leave boxes of tissue.

  Part of me wanted it to be Derrick. The other part didn’t. I didn’t want to imagine he was dead, and that was the curse Thatch would attempt to cure.

  Thatch waited until one of our morning lessons to ask me if I had filled the vial. I explained my difficulties.

  He tossed back his midnight hair, the luscious waves shifting like dark water. “If you aren’t going to try, what do I care if you fail? It’s not like I need this spell for myself.”

  “I am trying!”

  “As I said, it matters little to me. It’s just to save your friend from imminent doom. To prevent him from being tortured and enslaved again.” He yawned. “You might not realize this, but time with the Raven Queen isn’t pleasant. You only saw her good side at the fair.”

  Sucking laughter from people’s faces didn’t seem like a good side to me. She hadn’t impressed me with her sweet disposition when she’d threatened to make me into her tithe.

  “So, why do you think I can’t cry?” I asked.

  He shrugged indifferently. “I’ve seen you cry, but it’s from physical pain.” He studied me, his expression thoughtful. “Have you cried since you used your powers to defend yourself?”

  I considered it. “Probably. Yes, when I was in the woods with you and I thought you were going to kill a unicorn.”