Hexes and Exes Read online

  If she lived. I tried not to blame myself for what she’d done to herself.

  I stumbled across a spell for unlocking doors. That would be a handy one for the future. If only I could find a spell for making better choices.

  I took a break before dinner. Thatch’s classroom was locked, and the library was closed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Miss Periwinkle. I hoped Thatch had found her. I went to Khaba’s office and tried to subtly ask him if he had seen the librarian, but his eyes narrowed, looking at me thoughtfully, “No. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged, “The library is closed. That never happens.” I tried not to look guilty.

  “It’s the weekend. Even librarians might want to take a weekend off.” Khaba inhaled deeply. “What is that fragrance you’re wearing? You smell like forgotten dreams and long-awaited wishes?”

  I backed away. “Yep. Long-awaited wishes. I made it through the first weeks of the new semester without anything . . . bad happening.” Mostly.

  If only Thatch used a cell phone. Or course that would have required me having one as well. The remaining option to find him was by going through the hallway of mirrors. I waited until no students were around, which took about a half hour of pretending I was monitoring the hall before I could duck under the tapestry. I ran down the hallway, slowing at the armor, and gave the knight the secret handshake. The tapestry materialized around the corner. I ducked under and headed toward the glow of mirrors along the wall.

  The usual eerie tint of the mirror portals was still in place, but every room was brighter with daylight streaming in through the windows. As I came closer to Thatch’s bedroom mirror, pink light showed through, as if he possessed a window in the dungeon. The view was blank. It took me a second to realize he’d covered the mirror in his room with a maroon blanket, light shining through. That probably meant he was in.

  He hadn’t managed to completely cover the mirror. Four inches at the bottom remained exposed. All I could see was the burgundy bed skirt around the bottom of his bed and a dark lump of gray to the side. I crouched, looking through the mirror and shifting over to the side to get a better view. I spotted Thatch kneeling on the floor. He’d removed his jacket.

  A beautiful blonde woman lay in his bed. Naked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Seduced by a Siren

  For a second I thought I was seeing Maddy. My heart clenched. It couldn’t be. He’d refused her. She’d apologized and promised she wasn’t going to do anything like that again.

  I looked again. That beautiful naked woman in Thatch’s bed was a siren, but it wasn’t Maddy. It was Gertrude Periwinkle.

  She was young, maybe in her twenties. My magic had restored her youth and beauty just as she had hoped. Best of all, she wasn’t dead.

  I should have felt relieved, but too many other emotions fought for a first-place ribbon in my heart.

  Déjà vu crept in, slowly dominating the shock of stumbling upon Thatch with Periwinkle. The horror was almost as intense as gazing at Julian having sex with Darla months before. Of course, the circumstances were different. Thatch wasn’t my boyfriend, and the young woman he was with wasn’t a student, nor was Miss Periwinkle as young as she looked. Thatch had courted Miss Periwinkle years before and was still friends with her.

  For all I knew, he might have pined for her for all these years. All that paste he made for her and the little gifts he gave her, it might not have anything to do with him wanting to get on her good side to mentor Maddy. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that he might have feelings for her.

  Thatch kneeled on the floor, facing the siren, her legs positioned on both sides of his head. She leaned back into a mountain of pillows. Her skin glowed like moonlight, and her hair reminded me of mercury. He smoothed a hand across her ribs, cupping her breast. His thumb circled her nipple, and she moaned.

  My affinity swelled inside me.

  “Felix, I’ve been waiting a lifetime for this.” Her voice was muffled from the mirror between us.

  I lifted my head away from the mirror. Heat flushed to my face. I hadn’t meant to spy on Thatch’s personal life. All things being considered, this was pretty hot. It was tempting to look again, but I decided it was better to leave some things to the imagination.

  I stared into the darkness of the hallway, trying not to think about what they were doing. Didn’t Thatch have papers to grade or students to supervise? No, it was none of my business.

  I was not jealous, I told myself. Just because Thatch wasn’t interested in me didn’t mean he couldn’t be interested in someone else. He and Miss Periwinkle had a history together. They were definitely closer in age. They would make a cute couple. Maybe he would smile and be happy now.

  Somehow I doubted that.

  Miss Periwinkle has her youth and beauty. We did it. Yay. I rehearsed in my head. I’m happy for you. See, you were someone’s Prince Charming.

  I was happy for him. Just like I knew he would be happy for me when Derrick’s curse was broken.

  I trudged down the hallway. I was so distracted, I went the wrong direction and found myself in front of the window that looked into Derrick’s room. I could have turned away and rushed past, but my feet had surely brought me here for a reason.

  There he was, painting in the buff. What was up with that? I studied the graceful line of his back and his muscled shoulders.

  Gazing at Derrick distracted me from Thatch, at least. Where was Derrick? How could he have used his wind to help me remotely? That took strong magic. Maybe he was bored and unable to use his full potential, like the character in Matilda, with all his powers stored up inside him, waiting to be released in an explosion. Actually, that pretty much summed up our high school experience, with the climactic explosion being when the tornado had swept him away.

  Derrick’s room was brighter than the time I’d seen him painting in the evening. Everything was still tinted blue, but the colors of his paintings were more obvious. His wall was bright with patterns in different hues. The door to his room was open, revealing the room outside. In the distance, a wall was painted with a young man with blue hair surrounded by a field of gray automatons.

  My blood turned to ice. I’d seen that painting only the day before when I’d gone with Hailey and Greenie to their secret clubhouse in the ruins of the school. I knew where Derrick was. He was here, at the school.

  I could have walked through the mirror and spoken to Derrick—which Thatch would have disapproved of. More than anything I wanted to, but I was afraid if I did, he wouldn’t be there.

  I left the hall of mirrors. Thatch had told me to stay away from Derrick, but he had lied. He hadn’t told me Derrick was here. He had implied Derrick was sick and me being near him would make him explode. All those ingredients for a spell—was any of it true or just a story he’d made up so I would collect alchemy ingredients for him?

  I wanted to believe he’d told me the truth, but Thatch was a liar. He’d even told me not to believe him. Could it be he was the one still under the Raven Queen’s control?

  I donned my coat and walked outside. Muscle memory from my jogging excursions earlier in the year took me to the back of the school where the crumbling arm of debris kept students away.

  I was not going to go any closer, I told myself. Well, just a little bit closer.

  I crawled over a heap of rubble, standing at the top of the miniature mountain and staring into an abandoned classroom inside. A rotting desk peeked out from underneath a fallen wall. Part of the ceiling was gone from the next room over, but what I could see was bright yellow. I crawled down from the hill of debris and climbed over pieces of wall to the next room. I yelped as a rock skidded out from the pile, and I stumbled down to the floor. I took in the secret meeting place the students had taken me to with the murals painted across the walls.

  Derrick’s art was beautiful. I wished I could have dove into them and lounged inside like I had in his dreams.

  “Oh, Derrick,” I sighed.

&nb
sp; “Yes,” he said, his voice coming from right behind me.

  I whirled. No one was there.

  “Derrick?” I said again.

  “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” He laughed.

  His voice was deeper than what it had been in high school. It was different from the voice in my dreams, not as young. A creeping sensation settled over me.

  I knew that voice. I hadn’t recognized it the first time I’d heard it because he was older. I suspected I understood why I had never realized why Derrick was so near.

  I scanned the shadows, but I didn’t see him. This only confirmed my suspicions.

  “Just so you know, I don’t go by that name anymore,” Derrick said in his cheerful way.

  “Where are you? Why can’t I see you?” I said the words, but I already knew why. I had been afraid Derrick was a ghost, but I’d been wrong.

  “I’m right in front of you, Miss Lawrence,” he said.

  My heart hitched in my chest. Tears filled my eyes. Thatch had said I couldn’t see Derrick. He hadn’t meant it figuratively. I literally couldn’t see him.

  Derrick was the invisible man.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Trying Not to Electrocute My Future Ex-Boyfriend

  “Invismo?” I asked.

  “Hey, don’t cry. I’m right here.” His feet shuffled forward. He placed a hand on my shoulder.

  I tried to see where he was but couldn’t.

  “How is this possible?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” He shoved something invisible into my hand. “Here.”

  It felt like a balled-up tissue. As I held it, the object grew less transparent, the white color solidifying.

  “That’s weird,” Derrick said. “You keep undoing my magic.”

  “Usually I have the opposite effect on people.” My eyes widened as I realized I had done it again and let slip what I was. But it was so easy to do this with Derrick. He had been my best friend.

  He laughed, “I know, right?”

  I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, but the tears wouldn’t stop flowing. I was so happy and relieved. And so hurt that Thatch had done this to me. He’d hidden Derrick from me in plain sight.

  “Are you all right?” He rubbed my shoulder.

  I threw my arms around him and hugged him. “Why didn’t you just tell me it was you? Did he forbid you? Was it that Wiseman’s Oath?”

  “Tell you what? I’m so confused.”

  I squeezed him tighter, burying my face against his coat. My hair caught on a button, and I cringed as it pulled some of my hair out. He shifted the coat away, and my face pressed against his naked chest. He smelled exactly like he was supposed to, like wind, art supplies, and dusty books.

  “He let me believe I would never see you again. I missed you so much. He told me you were cursed, and he might have to kill you. I did all that work for ingredients to fix your curse—”

  “Wait. What do you mean? I saw you yesterday. Who said you couldn’t see me? Is that a pun?” He pushed me back, holding me at an arm’s length as if studying me.

  “Thatch.” His name tasted bitter on my lips. “He told me you were cursed by the Raven Queen.”

  “That’s true. I am. She stole my memories from me. Or, I think she did. I don’t really remember. I have huge gaps missing from when I lived in the Morty Realm, and some from when I went to school here at Womby’s, and afterward some are gone too. Thatch helped get me the job here and said he’d look after me. He wouldn’t kill me. He just threatens to when he says I’m ‘not acting sensibly’ and my head is ‘full of more rubbish than the bin next to his desk.’ He never means it.”

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you work here as a teacher. I’ve observed you lots of times—I mean, not in a creepy-stalker way. Just watching out for you in a work capacity.” He sounded shy and self-conscious.

  My mind went into overdrive. I didn’t know if Thatch was simply being sadistic when he had hinted at Derrick’s curse, but not told me the entire truth. Or it was true, and the reason Thatch didn’t tell me was because he had erased me from Derrick’s memories. That would have been consistent with what Derrick was telling me and what I already knew about his situation.

  If that was true and I told him who I was, Derrick would remember me. That might cause the curse to be active again, and he might hurt me. I could see why Thatch might not have been forthcoming. I didn’t know if I could stay away from Derrick, and if I couldn’t stay away from him, I might accidentally let it slip that we knew each other. I wasn’t the best secret keeper in the realm.

  On the other hand, if Thatch hadn’t told me because he was sadistic, all that would show was that he was a big jerk—which would be a disappointment—but not a complete surprise. Unless he still worked for the Raven Queen but was trying to resist, and that was why he was so unpredictable and tortured himself.

  Derrick squeezed my arms, firmly but gently, bringing me back into myself. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Everything in me wanted to melt into Derrick’s arms and talk to him about the past, ask him about the night he had disappeared and what had happened, and to find out if he still felt the same way about me as I did about him. But I couldn’t permit myself to make any of those queries. I didn’t even know if he remembered enough to answer.

  I slipped my arms under Derrick’s coat and slid them over his naked skin to hug him.

  He smoothed a hand over my hair and enclosed me in his embrace, his arms reluctantly holding me. His heart thudded slowly and calmly, half time compared to my own. I breathed in the perfume of magic lingering on his skin and savored this long-awaited moment. His fingers tangled through my hair and he slouched, resting his chin on top of my head.

  I knew the comfort of his arms—not from high school—but from here at Womby’s.

  I squeezed him tighter. “That one time in the wardrobe. It wasn’t Thatch. It was you?”

  He’d saved me from being hexed by students, and he’d kept me from being sucked into that strange portal that night. He’d held me close, his fingers threaded through my hair like now. As students passed by outside the wardrobe, he’d held me with such affection and kindness.

  He nodded. His heart did a double beat.

  “And that time in the woods, you were the one who kissed me?”

  He swallowed, the sound loud and nervous, a carryover from his teenager years. “That was also me. Before I knew . . . well, I probably shouldn’t say.”

  I lifted up my chin, anticipating the moment I’d been waiting for. He was no longer completely transparent. Sienna skin tinted every place he’d been in contact with me. I smoothed my fingers up his chest and neck until I found his cheek. He turned his face into my hand, letting my fingers brush against his skin. I stood on tiptoe, gazing at the translucent peach of his lips. They parted, and a breathy rush escaped. I wanted him now more than ever.

  “I love you,” I said.

  Everything about this moment was right.

  “I need you to take a step back,” he said calmly but firmly.

  Everything was right except that.

  He couldn’t have hurt me more if he had stabbed me.

  But I did as he asked. I wasn’t going to let myself be the person I had feared I would become. I loosened my grip. He drew away, keeping his hands on my shoulders. The places my head and arms had rested had turned bronze. His tattered jacket was a gray that may have once been black. The definition of his jaw faded under a mask of invisibility. From the angle of his chin, I could tell he was looking down at me.

  He wet his lips. “I’m not going to speak about what you are here or anywhere else. I understand the risk it is if anyone finds out, so I will be brief and purposefully vague.” He took in a deep breath. “Your magic, when left uncontrolled, is like a siren’s. It makes men want you, whether they want to or not. It makes you want men, whether you want to or not. When you touch a man, you think you’re in love, whether you
are or not.” He released my shoulders. “Do you understand that?”

  I nodded.

  The absence of his arms made my bones ache. Warmth leeched from me. I hugged myself, trying to contain the well of misery rising in me.

  “You think you’re in love with me because your affinity is in control right now. It’s because you were hugging me.”

  I shook my head. “No, that isn’t the reason.”

  “You think you want me, but in actuality, it’s your magic. If I kiss you, you’ll regret it later. And you’ll dislike me—loathe me—for taking advantage of you.” The bronze of his skin disappeared. He had become transparent again. “I’m not that kind of guy. I want you to want me without your magic influencing you.”

  My heart swelled with love. Derrick was exactly the same as he’d been in high school, still noble and good-hearted.

  “How can I convince you this isn’t just a whim of my magic?” I asked. “What would it take for you to believe I love you?”

  His feet scuffed across the ground. A cloudy puff of dust shifted around the shape of his feet as he paced. “Well, for starters, you can’t touch me.” He gave a little laugh. “You can’t touch this.” He started humming MC Hammer, but he wasn’t very good at carrying a tune.

  I laughed. “Have you been hanging out with Bart the unicorn?”

  “Hardly.” He laughed too.

  Girls’ laughter echoed from somewhere nearby. I recognized one of the voices as Imani. She squealed, “You did not say that!”

  “I did, too,” Greenie said. “He just rolled his eyes and told me not to waste his time.”

  I glanced around, uncertain where they were coming from.

  “Follow me,” he whispered.

  “Oh, uh. . . .” I started forward, but I couldn’t actually see him anymore.

  He grabbed me by the sleeve, tugging me in the opposite direction I had been heading. He was careful not to touch me, to only hold on to the fabric of my jacket.