Hexed and Vexed

by Rebecca Royce

  She squealed when he rolled her over, pressing her down on the bed. Any distressing thoughts would have to be dealt with at another time. Not when she could make love to Lawson.

  Lila paced the living room and Lawson squeezed Ava’s hand. Other than that movement, Ava had never seen him remain so completely still. They’d announced their engagement, and so far, neither of her parents had said anything.

  Zoe hugged Ava. Elijah shook Lawson’s hand. And that had been that.

  Except for the pacing. Her mother was going to wear out her rug if she kept that up. Her father sipped his human whiskey. All-in-all, it was going better than she’d thought it would. They’d not been thrown from the house, and her mother hadn’t said anything horrific about Enforcers and social status.

  “Eat your cookie.” Lila pointed at the table where Ava’s requisite cookie waited.

  Lawson stared at it. “Do you not want it, tiny? I’ll eat it.”

  “No,” her mother shrieked. “I make those cookies for Ava.”

  Lawson held his hands up like he surrendered. “Got it. I won’t touch the cookie.”

  Elijah snorted and everyone stared at him. He was usually so quiet during their family gatherings. Lawson grinned at him, and then they both stopped smiling, regaining their composure. Zoe rolled her eyes.

  “So that’s what it is, Mom.” She chewed her cookie. It never stopped being gross. “We’re getting married. Soon. Neither one of us wants to wait. We could go off and do it at an altar somewhere else and come back next week.”

  Lila put her hands on her hips. “No. That’s not happening. No daughter of mine is going off to get married. I mean, if you are going to insist on doing this, then you’ll do it at home where both sides of your family have married for years. Like your sister did. Like I did.”

  Lawson covered his mouth with his hand for a second, amusement lit up his eyes. What did he find funny about this? She elbowed him, and he stopped.

  Lila tapped her feet. “Well, then, if you want to do this fast, we’ll do this fast. It’s not like you can take time off. You have to stay around here, right? As an Enforcer. You’ll stay.” She seemed to brighten up when she said this. Apparently, Ava’s mother liked the idea of them not leaving?

  Lawson cleared his throat. “Next weekend. No later than that, or we’ll go do it. I’m not big on waiting. And as far as time off, I haven’t taken any in five years. I’ve recently taken a position that will keep me home a bit more, thanks to your daughter, actually. So, I think I’m entitled to a honeymoon. Couple weeks.”

  Emilio rose and crossed to them. “What do you mean? Thanks to my daughter?”

  Lawson raised his eyebrows. “I guess what I meant was that thanks to her saving my life and another person’s during the course of my investigation to find a hexer. We’d all be dead if she hadn’t intervened and helped us.” He rubbed his chin. “Even leaving her sister’s wedding to do so.”

  The room couldn’t have gone more silent if he’d announced she could sprout wings and fly. All eyes turned to her. Lawson sat back in his seat. “I would have thought by now that you would have told them, babe.”

  She shook her head. “Pretty sure I thought that was secret.”

  “Well.” He shrugged. “I might be the guy who decides what’s secret now. Surely, your own family can be trusted to know how incredible you are, right?”

  Ava grinned at him, but her smile faded when she turned to her mother. Lila scowled like she’d just heard the house was infested with termites.

  Zoe, by contrast, hooted. “Look at you, sister. You are doing all sorts of incredible things. Taking down bad guys. Breathing underwater. You’re so badass.”

  She really wasn’t.

  She stood in her blue dress and stared out the window. The ceremony would be starting soon. Ava rubbed her hands together and tried not to remember the last time she had been in this room wearing a similar blue dress. With Monica out of the picture now—spending time in prison for what she did to Mitchell—the fashions had all moved toward purples. Ava was wearing the latest trend, for once.

  Out of her two wedding dresses, she liked this one better. She’d put Zoe in a long black dress. It was elegant.

  “Zo-Zo, you look beautiful.”

  Her twin kissed her cheek. “Ava, you have told me several times. I know what you’re obsessing about. He’s not going to leave you at the altar. I promise you. I don’t know Lawson the way that you do, but he’d never hurt you like that on purpose and were he hexed you have a whole group of Enforcers out there who would know. They’d tell you, and you’d fix it. So there you go. He’s coming.”

  Melanie walked through the door, her shoes clicking on the old floor like she wanted to be announced before she arrived. “He’s here.”

  Ava turned around. The black dress looked as good on Melanie as it did on Zoe. “How do you know?”

  She shrugged. “I went and checked.”

  Ava gasped. “You what?” The groom and the bride were kept incredibly secluded with only their closest family and friends around them right before the wedding. “You checked?”

  Melanie yawned. “Yes, I walked right in. No one stopped me. I can’t believe you’re marrying Lawson Abramowitz. In a million years, I wouldn’t have seen it coming. But now that you are, I can say today before you get married that he’s very hot. And he was also somehow not surprised that I came to check. I thought I was being stealthy. I was apparently not.”

  “Well,” Zoe interrupted. “He’s an Enforcer. He does that for a living. Okay, time to go.” She hit Ava with a little bit of power. As per usual, Ava could feel Zoe’s magic. She jolted forward just a bit. “You’re going to get married.”

  * * *

  She stood with her back to everyone and tried to breathe. He was coming. He had to be. Melanie had even checked. Sweat broke out on the back of her knees. Wow, she hated that feeling. In a second, the room might start to feel like it tilted sideways. She had such unusual reactions to stress and…

  The hand on her back caught her attention, and he gently touched her right in the center, where he always did whenever they walked through a door. She took a deep breath. The rule where she couldn’t turn around to see him coming in was torture. Or at least it was for her.

  Lawson bent over to whisper in her ear. “You look beautiful.”

  Heat traveled to her cheeks. “Thank you.” His suit was perfectly cut, and the black made his dark good looks even more striking. “You are so incredible.”

  He winked at her. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Ava followed along with the ceremony, drinking the wine when instructed, repeating phrases. At the end of it, when Lawson bent over to kiss her hand, he jolted. That was the moment. When he should have felt that he was given half of her soul. He’d clearly felt it. He raised his eyes to meet her gaze. She couldn’t feel anything different. Ava swallowed. She’d really… hoped… that when it came down to it, because she sometimes felt Lawson’s spells, that she would have felt whatever it was that happened when they received the permanence of the marriage spell.

  He kissed her hand again. “Doesn’t matter, tiny. It was always yours.”

  “I thought maybe I’d faked it,” she whispered back. “Like you wouldn’t know.”

  Lawson shook his head. “Maybe to everyone else you could. Never to me.”

  Ava lay on her stomach, the warm breeze of the Caribbean settling over her beach chair. A heavy weight pressed down on her, Lawson laid his much bigger self on top of her, effectively pinning her to the beach chair.

  She grinned, staring through the strips of the chair onto the sand. “Oh, look who joined me, my husband.”

  He kissed her shoulder before he bit her lightly. “Can’t blame a guy for needing a little rest. What? With the way you keep me up all night.”

  She giggled. “I could leave you alone tonight. I mean, this is the second week here. You might need to sleep. I could go sleep in the other room.”

  H
e sucked in a long breath. “Don’t you dare.”

  A second later, she was popped over. They switched places, thanks to his spell, and she lay on top of his chest. His heart beat slowly, and she kissed the spot right above it. This was Lawson relaxed. “My mother has been trying to get in touch with me all day. She keeps sending notes through the air. Even a cookie appeared before me.”

  “Two whole weeks not speaking to you, and she’s getting desperate.” He sighed. “Did you eat the cookie?”

  Ava made a gagging noise. “One of the benefits of being Mrs. Abramowitz is that I don’t have to eat that cookie anymore if I don’t want to, right?”

  “Am I going to have to run cookie interference?”

  She closed her eyes. “Maybe.”

  Birds flew above them, cawing and squawking as they flapped their wings. The ocean made its slight roar as a gentle spray filled the air.

  Ava…

  Her eyes flew open. “What?”

  Lawson’s face was passive, his lids closed. Even though he’d only just roused from the bed, it was possible he was out cold again. She must have been dreaming.

  Ava…

  No, she was clearly awake. She got off the chair and looked around. Who was calling to her? It sounded… wrong, like the voice wasn’t a voice. Well, that didn’t make any sense at all. How could a voice not be a voice?

  Ava…

  At least she had a direction. The sound was coming from the ocean.

  “Ava?” Lawson’s distinct voice called out to her. “Swimming?”

  She whirled around. Her heart rate had kicked up, and she was feeling a headache forming between her eyes. “Can you hear that?”

  Her husband swung his legs over the chair and was there immediately in front of her. “Hear what?”

  “Something not right is calling my name.”

  Ava…

  She pointed toward the ocean. “Just then. Ava. Something said Ava.”

  “Some thing?” He looked past her shoulder. “Tiny, I’m not hearing anything.” He placed a hand on her forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Actually, no she really wasn’t. She stumbled backward, and he caught her before she’d have hit the ground. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I’m itchy.”

  “Okay, we’re going to find a Healer.”

  The world spun, and she closed her eyes. “Healers don’t work on me.”

  “Then I will find a damned doctor. I don’t care. If something is wrong, then we’ll get it fixed. Now.”

  She flew backward out of his arms, and she opened her eyes in time to see him dive for her. What was happening? Her feet were off the ground? She was off the ground and floating? In fact, she was flying?

  The trees swayed, whooshing. Well, no, that wasn’t the right sound. It wasn’t whooshing. They were pulsating. Their roots in the ground connected to the earth below and from there an energy rose. That’s how they were alive. And she could hear it.

  “Lawson.”

  He stared at her from the ground. “Ava, you’re flying.”

  She nodded. “And I can hear the trees beneath the earth.”

  He extended his hand toward her. “Try to come down.”

  Her breath came out in short gasps. “I don’t know how.”

  “If I recall, the first time is weird, right? Think heavy. I don’t have to concentrate on it anymore. But I used to think about weighted things. Like a bank vault. Then I’d come down.”

  Okay, she needed something heavy to think about. She pictured her former store. It was a big building, and then… sure enough, her feet touched the sand, which was good because her knees gave out.

  Lawson scooped her up.

  Ava…

  “The ocean is talking to me. Surely, you must hear it.”

  He shook his head, not trying to move her, not taking her anywhere but staying very still. “Those aren’t my powers. They’re yours. We’re all different, right? We can’t all do the same things. I can’t hear the ocean, Ava.”

  A pang banged in her heart, and she gasped. Pleasure moved through her. Love. Acceptance. Desire. Laughter. Understanding. She didn’t understand anything that was happening, but she grasped one thing right away.

  That was Lawson. The other half of his soul embedded with hers from the marriage ceremony. Tears came down from her eyes. “You really do love me.”

  He pressed their foreheads together. “I do. So much. Can you feel it?”

  “I can.” He kissed both her cheeks. “You’re getting your powers, tiny.”

  She was. “Did you do this?”

  “No.” He kissed her cheeks again. “I wish I had.”

  So how had the impossible finally happened?

  * * *

  That night at dinner, she played with her food, touching the sauce with her hand. Lawson nudged her under the table. “Not hungry?”

  “The sauce isn’t right. I mean, it’s close but it’s like I can taste it in my mouth that it’s wrong. Like I’m hearing it.” She dropped her fork to cover her ears and then made herself stop doing that. “I know this sounds crazy.”

  Sometime during the day, Lawson had donned his passive, unreadable expression. Whatever he was thinking, he was keeping it from her. “These things can take time. Learning our powers.”

  “Other people hear things?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard of before. But look, we don’t know what turned them on or why they didn’t in the first place, so we’ll just take this slow. I’m thinking we should go home. See people we trust there and try to get to the bottom of things.”

  That sounded like a good plan. “Lawson, I’m thinking about Elmer. When he took me he kept insisting the earth spoke to me. Do you think he did something to me?”

  “There’s no dark spell on you. I’d see it, or if I couldn’t, Kim could. She was at our wedding. Nothing has been done to you.”

  “Okay.” She believed him. “Then let’s go home.”

  Lawson popped them back to their house. His bed had quickly become their bed, and she lay down on it, wanting the oblivion of sleep. But she could hear the wind… it spoke to her in a different voice than the ocean had.

  Ava… come play.

  Lawson scooted in behind her on the bed. “Okay?”

  “I can hear the wind outside. And…” The whooshing sound, “your house plant. It needs more water.”

  Thirsty…

  “Lawson.” She rolled over to look him in the eyes. “Don’t lie. Don’t protect me from the truth. Do you know what is happening? Have you heard of this before?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, but you can bet I will. After you fall asleep, I will start to find out. By tomorrow, we will have answers. I promise you.”

  When he made oaths to her, he kept them. Her head pounded, a memory moving through her. She’d taken the hit from a spell meant to make him a turtle. Suddenly, she could see all of that again. When they’d been in school, she’d been turned, briefly, into another creature. Everything had seemed dulled and terrifying, and then she’d been back. He’d saved her.

  Why could she remember it so well now?

  She buried herself under the covers. It was quiet in the room, but outside it was so loud. Even the dirt made noise and—oh—inside wasn’t silent either. The milk they’d left in the fridge was going to expire very soon. She could taste the sour in her mouth.

  Goosebumps broke out on her skin.

  “This is too much.” And every second the world was becoming louder, like she couldn’t tune any of it out, as though her mind couldn’t stop processing everything all of the time.

  The sheets were made of synthetic fiber. They burned her skin, and she whipped them away. The clothes Lawson had on that touched her where he held her body, they had picked up traces of something that didn’t come from nature… like a plastic. She had to get it away from her. Ava jolted from the bed. Her own clothes. Why was there smoke on them? Oh, the restaurant. Some human must have been smoking ne
arby… the tobacco was fine but the chemicals?

  She pulled her shirt over her head. Her husband extended his hand and suddenly everything stilled. Her heart slowed, and the sounds around her calmed down. What had he done?

  “I have the ability to calm you for brief periods of time. It comes in handy with suspects that might be violent. It won’t last forever.” Lawson walked to her and put her shirt back on her body. “We’re going to the Healers. I’d be shocked if their powers can’t work on you now. If they can’t fix this overload, they’ll be able to calm you for a longer period than I can. I promise you, Ava, we will get this figured out. I love you. It will be okay.”

  She nodded. What choice did she have but to believe him? Any other eventuality was too horrid to even consider. “Elmer is locked up. If I’m like him…”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You are not going to Prestige. No one will ever lock you away or banish you anywhere.”

  “You might have just married a nightmare.”

  Lawson placed his hand over his heart. “Feel me in there? That’s how much I love you. You are the love of my life. I can feel you in me, too. There’s nothing but goodness from you. I will never be separated from you. Whatever fears you have going on, let those go. You’re mine, Ava.”

  * * *

  Hours passed very slowly. The Healers had no answers but dosed her with a spell that made the world feel distant, like she wasn’t really present for whatever was happening around her. Lawson popped them into her parents’ living room and laid her on the couch. He knelt down in front of her. “Be okay here for a minute?”

  “Why are we here?”

  He kissed her nose. “I have to speak to your mother.”

  “About what?”

  Lawson smiled at her. “You’re slurring your words. Sleep. I love you.”

  She decided to do what he said.

  Lawson

  He found his mother-in-law on her porch. She sat, her legs crossed, spine stiff and stared out into the distance. She didn’t turn when he approached her, but she was aware that he’d arrived. Part of his gift was that sometimes he just knew things.