Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  “Can you believe such a thing?” she asked Molly.

  “Did you see anyone else around?” I asked. “Maybe they were filming something, like a commercial for the store.”

  “That could be it.”

  “Funny,” Molly said, “I was just there on my way over here, and nobody said anything. You’d think that would be the talk of the town.”

  “And that’s not all,” Mom said. “I could have sworn one of the antique lampposts on the courthouse square disappeared right in front of my eyes, and then came back.”

  Molly laughed. “You probably just blinked. Things do tend to go away for a second when you close your eyes.”

  “I know what I saw,” Mom snapped, causing Molly to flinch and then cast a worried look in my direction. I shrugged in response, not sure what to do. While I knew that it was entirely possible that Mom was going nuts, I also knew that there was such a thing as magic and that the things Mom described could actually happen.

  I might have been out of the center of the action, but it looked like I was back to investigating. If I saw something weird around town, then I’d know something magical was going on. If I didn’t, we’d either have to get Mom to a doctor or find her a hobby. Neither possibility appealed to me.

  Once dinner was over and all the guests were gone, I announced that I was going out and hoped that the fact that I was an adult who had lived for more than a year in Manhattan would mean nobody felt the need to ask where I was going or why. At any rate, I was out the door before anyone had a chance to ask. I drove into town, parked at the courthouse square, and got out of the truck to walk around.

  As far as I could tell, everything was where it should be. All the antique lampposts and replacement antique-looking lampposts were in place, as were all the statues and monuments to various wars and local heroes. The gargoyles on the courthouse roof stayed still. Not one of them winked at me.

  Looking at these lifeless carvings made me miss Sam, my gargoyle friend from New York. Even one of his less-capable colleagues would have been a welcome sight.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to open my other senses, straining to feel the tingle that told me magic was in use. That wasn’t any special power I had. Anyone could feel the charge in the air that meant someone was using magic nearby, but since most people don’t know magic is real, they write off that feeling as a shiver up the spine. Nothing here gave me shivers other than the thought that Mom might really be losing it this time.

  The grocery store across from the courthouse had closed for the night, so the parking spaces in front were empty. Owen would have been able to detect traces of residual magic, but I couldn’t sense anything. I decided it was time for the next-best weirdness detector in a small town: the Dairy Queen.

  On a warm night like this one, odds were that a fair number of people would have gone out for a banana split or a malt, and if anything even slightly out of the ordinary had happened, they’d certainly be talking about it. Sure enough, the parking lot was nearly full, and there were people crowded around all the outdoor tables. I went inside and ordered a brownie Blizzard, then looked around for a place I could sit and overhear as many conversations as possible.

  “Hey, Katie, over here!” a deep voice called out. I turned to see Steve Grant sitting with a couple of his buddies. For a second, I had a high school flashback. There’d been many a time I saw the same group of guys sitting at the same table in the Dairy Queen. Of course, back then they weren’t calling me over to join them. I’d have probably died on the spot if they had. In high school, guys like that didn’t talk to girls like me, unless they wanted help with their English homework.

  The group looked a little different these days. We hadn’t been out of high school for ten years, but already the hairlines were starting to recede and the waistlines were starting to expand. I didn’t want to give Steve any false hopes, but their table was centrally located, and if anyone in town would have the scoop on anything going on, it would be these guys.

  I wandered over to the table, pausing to take a bite of my Blizzard every few steps, so I’d look properly casual. “Hey,” I said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “What are you up to?” he asked.

  “Escaping from my parents. And eating ice cream.”

  Steve patted the space next to him in the booth. “Care to join us? I saved you a seat.”

  “That was sweet of you.” I perched on the end of the booth, as far from him as I could get, which wasn’t very far, as he made no effort to scoot over and give me room. I had a feeling that was more deliberate than inconsiderate of him. I took a bite of ice cream to stifle the giggle that threatened to come out. The last time I had men like him all over me like that, I’d been wearing enchanted shoes.

  Somehow, I doubted my raggedy old tennis shoes had any kind of attraction spell on them. “So, guys, what’s the news in town tonight?” I asked.

  “Nothin’,” the guy across the table from me grunted. I couldn’t remember his real name. In school, he’d been called Tank, and it looked like as an adult he was making every effort to live up to his nickname. His nearly monosyllabic response reminded me why I hadn’t been that impressed with the football studs in school.

  “Wow, exciting,” I quipped, unable to hold back the sarcasm.

  “Not really,” the third guy said. I wasn’t sure I’d figured out who he’d been in school—probably one of the interchangeable second-string jocks who’d flocked around Steve. Clearly, he didn’t quite grasp the concept of sarcasm.

  “So I guess nothing much has changed while I’ve been away,” I said.

  “Very, very little,” Steve said, stretching his arm along the back of the booth. “But you sure changed.”

  I was fairly certain he was flirting with me, but I wasn’t sure how to respond. Part of me wanted to hear how he thought I’d changed, and part of me knew for sure that I’d changed in ways he’d never be able to see. “That does tend to happen as you grow up,” I said. Before he could come back with another attempt at flirtation, I added, “I suppose they still roll up the sidewalks pretty early around here. No dancing in the streets, or anything like that.”

  They all looked blank, so I could only assume that either the parking-lot dance Mom had talked about hadn’t really happened, or if it had, it had been a good enough spell that nobody remembered it enough to be able to talk about it. That was the way those things tended to work. Since I’d found no other absolute evidence of magic thus far, I was leaning toward the former.

  “I guess the big, bad city chewed you up and spit you out, huh?” Steve said, giving me a pitying look.

  I nearly choked on a chunk of brownie. “What?”

  “I mean, well, you came home awful quick. What was it, a year you spent up there?” He reached over and patted me on the thigh. “But don’t worry, nobody thinks badly of you. Some people just aren’t meant to go off like that. You’re a hometown girl. You belong back here with us.”

  “I—no—not—what?” I was too stunned to form a coherent sentence, which was probably for the best. If I’d said something, it would have been to give him a tongue-lashing for the ages. By the time I formulated an appropriate response, I’d calmed down to the point I no longer wanted to scratch his eyes out. “Actually,” I said coldly, “the company I work for is doing some restructuring, which meant my position was put on hold temporarily. My dad needed a little help at the store, so instead of temping in New York until the company needs me again, I thought I’d come back here and help out.”

  I’d told the cover story often enough that I almost believed it, though it was getting harder and harder to convince myself or anyone else about the “temporary” part.

  “Whoa, hey, didn’t mean to get you all riled up. I’m just glad to have you back. We should get together sometime.”

  “Sorry, I really don’t think I can fit it into my schedule.”

  “What, you have a boyfriend or something?” The guys all laughed.

>   “As a matter of fact, I do.” Well, technically I didn’t, as I’d broken things off with him for the greater good, but I was still hung up on him, which sort of counted.

  “And I guess he’s still in New York, huh? Well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  I gave him a smile with my teeth bared. “But it could hurt you.”

  “Big, tough guy, huh?”

  I gave Steve an enigmatic smile and finished my Blizzard quickly enough to give myself an ice cream headache, said a hasty good-bye to the guys, and headed home.

  Things settled back to normal after a few days. The following Tuesday morning, Sherri was late, as usual, so I worked the front of the store for the first hour, before I even had a chance to check e-mail and get my office work started. When she finally showed up, I took the opportunity to sit down at the computer. I handled the work stuff first, checking the status of my supply orders and notifying customers who’d have deliveries.

  A sudden commotion from the front of the store jolted me away from my work. I hurried out to see Mom leaning heavily on the front counter, shouting for help. Sherri, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mom, what is it?” I asked, rushing to her side. She was deathly pale, and her face was beaded with sweat. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp. I barely caught her as she fainted dead away.

  I lowered Mom to the floor as gently as I could, shouting, “Teddy? Sherri? Anyone? I need some help here!” Trying to remember everything I’d learned in the first-aid class I’d taken during Girl Scouts, I checked her pulse and her breathing. Both seemed to be fine, if a little rapid. I leaned over her and tried gently touching her face. “Mom? Mom, can you hear me?”

  Sherri chose that moment to wander back in. She took one look at Mom lying there on the floor and screamed her head off. I thought for a moment she might faint, herself, and waited for her to hit the ground, but, unfortunately, she didn’t oblige me. Teddy then came running in. “What happened?” he asked, sinking immediately to his knees next to Mom.

  “I’m not sure. She looked like she’d seen a ghost, then she keeled over on me.”

  “You think it has anything to do with all that stuff she was saying yesterday?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “She’s never been entirely normal, but this is odd, even for her.”

  I started to agree, but then I noticed Mom’s eyelids twitching. Little wonder—Teddy must have been unloading fertilizer, and the chemical smell on him was strong enough to work as smelling salts. Her eyes fluttered open, and she whispered, “What happened?”

  “You fainted. I don’t know why. You didn’t get to that part before you passed out.” She struggled to sit up, and I pushed her back down. “Maybe you’d better take it easy for a while. Give the blood a chance to get back to your brain.” I turned to ask Sherri to go get some water, but she was nowhere to be seen. If I knew her, she was probably out having her own fainting spell on the front sidewalk where more people might notice her.

  Fortunately, all the family comings and goings at the store meant someone else—someone more useful—was bound to come along at any moment, and sure enough, Molly soon showed up, dragging a whimpering four-year-old. When she saw Mom lying on the floor, she went pale and steadied herself against the counter. I hoped she didn’t faint on me, too. “What happened?” she asked.

  “Mom just had a little fainting spell. She seems to be fine now, but could you go get her some water?”

  “Of course.” She released her son’s hand and said, “Mommy needs to go get Gramma some water. Be a good boy and stay here with Uncle Teddy and Aunt Katie.” As soon as she was out of sight, he quit whimpering and went to work emptying all the nearby shelves he could reach. I had too many other things to worry about to bother stopping him.

  Teddy, however, had less patience. “Davy!” he scolded. The kid looked at him, weighed whether or not to test him, raised a hand toward the next item on the shelf, took another look at Teddy, then backed away and put his thumb in his mouth.

  Molly then returned with a glass of water, and I helped Mom sit up to drink it. “I’m fine, I’m fine,”

  she insisted after she drained the glass.

  “People who are ‘fine’ don’t pass out,” I said. “Now, what happened?”

  “I was on my way to the beauty shop, and I passed the courthouse square. There was a man on the square wearing robes. He looked like he was doing some kind of a dance, waving his arms around.

  And then the statues started moving, I swear. Not much, but more than statues are supposed to move.

  But nobody else seemed to see it, and there were a lot of people on their way to work in the courthouse, so there were people there. All they did was give the guy money as they went by him.”

  “It must have been an illusion, like that David Copperfield guy,” Teddy said. “You know, the one who does things like make the Statue of Liberty disappear on TV. He was probably panhandling with his magic.”

  “Were you even listening to me?” Mom snapped. “I said no one even looked twice at the statues. If they didn’t notice the statues moving, then why would they give him money? It was so odd, I had to tell someone as soon as possible.”

  With his mother back in the room, Davy resumed gleefully destroying the display at the front of the store. “Oh honey, don’t do that,” Molly moaned, but that didn’t slow him down.

  It was a sign of just how out of it Mom was that it took her a full minute to turn and tell her grandson,

  “David Chandler, you stop that this instant or you won’t be allowed in Grampa’s store anymore.”

  That did the trick with Davy, and it seemed to have snapped Mom out of her daze. The color returned to her cheeks, and her eyes sparked with life.

  “So, as I was saying, it was the weirdest thing. I felt like I was in the middle of a dream, where all these odd things were happening, and I was the only one who noticed—or maybe I was the weird one and everything else was normal.” I knew that feeling very well, myself. It was the way I often felt at work—at my real job as one of the few magical immunes working for a magical company. But that’s not the way it was supposed to be here. This place was supposed to be entirely normal.

  “Maybe you were dreaming,” Molly suggested. “Sleepwalking, or something like that. I’ve heard of people who make meals or go driving in their sleep.”

  “I was not asleep,” Mom insisted. “I saw it.”

  Sherri came running in then. “I brought you some coffee,” she said. She must have gone to the Starbucks in Waco to get it, considering the time it took and the fact that there was a full coffeepot behind the front counter.

  “Oh, bless your heart,” Mom said, taking it from her. “You’re such a doll to look after me that way.”

  Sherri preened, then as she straightened, she swayed and placed a hand against her forehead. “I think the room is spinning. Maybe there’s something in the air. We’re all being poisoned.”

  It took everything I had not to laugh at her, and I knew I didn’t dare meet my brother’s eyes. We’d lose it entirely, and then Mom would be furious with us. “Help me up, Katie,” Mom said. When Teddy moved to help on her other side, she said, “Teddy, hon, you smell like a chemical plant.

  You’re probably what’s making Sherri dizzy.” Back on her feet again, she shook us off and said,

  “You should have seen it!”

  And then she proceeded to act out the whole thing. She was in the process of imitating the mysterious robed man as he cast his spell on the square when a customer came in. And not just any customer. It was the minister at my parents’ church. He took one look at Mom dancing and waving her arms and frowned, but before he could say anything, Sherri was on him. He was pretty young, in only his second job out of seminary, and not bad-looking. I somehow doubted, though, that Sherri had any idea he was a minister. It wasn’t as though she darkened the doors of any church very often. />
  If he’d had a response to Mom’s quickly ended antics, it was soon overshadowed by his response to finding a bleached blonde in painted-on clothes wrapped around him. Sherri sold gardening supplies like she was selling expensive cars, which is to say that she used sex appeal, though really, to be honest, she was mostly selling herself. I waited for Mom to react to Sherri’s behavior, but it seemed that was a lost cause. If I hadn’t been certain that Mom was immune to magic, I’d have sworn that Sherri really was a witch who’d cast a spell on Mom. It was like watching Rod pick up women back in his pre-Marcia days.

  In spite of Sherri’s “help,” the minister got his vegetable seeds and left. We picked up where we left off, except Mom had quit trying to act out the courthouse square scene. “You don’t think it was a stroke, or anything like that, do you?” Teddy asked me under his breath.

  “I don’t think so. She’s not acting like someone who’s had a stroke. I think she just got overexcited.”

  “Maybe you should take her to see the doctor, just in case. I really don’t think she should be driving until we’re sure what happened.”

  “Do you think maybe she’s got diabetes?” Molly asked. “Doesn’t that sometimes make people pass out?”

  “I thought that was only after they were on insulin, though,” Teddy said. “That’s what makes their blood sugar drop.”

  “It could be epilepsy,” Molly suggested.

  Mom put her hands on her hips and glared at us. “I’ll thank you three to stop talking about me like I’m not here. I just got a little light-headed from excitement, is all. You don’t need to go diagnosing me.”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe you’re being so rude to Mom,” Sherri cooed. “You should treat her with more respect.”

  I might have had trouble resisting the urge to claw her eyes out if Davy hadn’t chosen that moment to push over the shelf he’d emptied with a loud squeal of delight.

  “Oh, Davy,” Molly moaned. In a preemptive strike to prevent more disasters, Teddy picked a protesting Davy up and moved him away from the scene of the crime as Molly headed over to straighten everything up.