Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  Everything was all ruffles and lace, like a room fit for a fairy-tale princess. I’d tried to temper the effect as I got older by covering the pink floral wallpaper with posters, but since the posters were of castles or were from romantic movies, it didn’t help much. I’d barely been aware of my surroundings since I’d been back, but walking into this room with Owen, I couldn’t help but be slapped in the face with how awful it was.

  “I’ll have you know, I picked out the decor when I was five,” I said in a preemptive strike.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “But I know better than to say anything. Where should I put this?” He hefted the case. “I wouldn’t want it to clash with your decor.”

  “Very funny.” I lifted the pink ruffled and flounced bedskirt. “Here, slide it under the bed, up by the head. Even if someone gets crazy enough to vacuum under the bed, it should be hidden somewhat there because of the nightstand.”

  He knelt and placed the case as I directed, then stood up and looked around the room. “I never really saw you as the pink type.”

  “That phase only lasted a couple of years. Two years later, it was purple, but Mom wouldn’t let me redecorate. In high school, I wanted to go all modern with red, black, and white. Now I think I’d do it in pale blue and white.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but refrained from further comment. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Can you give me five minutes to change clothes? I’m kind of a mess from work.” Once I had the door shut with him safely on the other side, I frantically pulled off my clothes, then put on a nicer pair of jeans and a clean shirt. I tugged the ponytail holder out of my hair and ran a brush through it. I limited makeup to a little lip gloss because I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard.

  Feeling much better about myself, I found him in Teddy and Dean’s room. I gave him a quick tour of the house, avoiding the kitchen where Mom and Granny lurked. In the backyard, the dogs ran to greet us, going straight to Owen. I was a bit insulted at the snub by my own dogs. The dogs escorted us to the edge of the yard where we could see the fields, which were laid out in stripes in various shades of green. “We don’t really farm as a business anymore,” I explained, “but those are Teddy’s test crops.

  He plants different kinds of seeds and tests them with all kinds of fertilizers to see what works best.”

  “That would be the formula he was talking about?”

  “Yes, and like I warned you, don’t ask him about it. It’s like someone asking you a question about how magic works. Now, over there is the barn, which mostly serves as a storage shed. We have a few head of cattle—again, for comparing different kinds of feed—and some horses that are more pets than anything. And there you are. So I guess we need to go talk to Sam?”

  He produced the keys to the rental car and said, “Yeah, we’re set for a meeting in fifteen minutes.”

  “Then I am part of the investigation, huh?”

  “Only because it would be suspicious if I went off by myself so soon after getting here. That would raise too many questions with your family.”

  That wasn’t exactly an enthusiastic invitation, but it didn’t stop me from getting into the car with him.

  I couldn’t blame him for being a bit hurt and upset about the way things had happened, but I was sure he’d understood. And hey, it hadn’t been a picnic for me, either.

  As we drove away, I noticed the kitchen curtains moving and knew we were being watched. Mom and Granny probably thought we were off for a big, romantic night, but except for the one moment when he’d put his arm around me, he’d been acting anything but romantic. He seemed almost as distant as if he were still in New York rather than right there beside me.

  “I guess we’re heading to the square,” I said when the silence in the car grew oppressive.

  “No, that’s too public for a meeting. It takes too much power to conceal something that complex.

  We’re meeting somewhere else.” It was my hometown, but he seemed to know his way around already, turning onto side streets without hesitation. We pulled up in back of the town’s Catholic church, where a lone gargoyle sat on the roof ridge. He swooped down to join us.

  “Ah, that’s more like it,” Sam said. “I need a little recharge from perching on a church every so often.

  I was afraid if I sat on that courthouse much longer, I’d turn into a lawyer. So, what’s the plan, boss?”

  “You haven’t been able to identify our culprit?”

  “Hey, Katie-bug here’s the local.” He turned to me. “You know the townfolk. Did old Prances in Robes ring a bell with you?”

  “There wasn’t anything particularly distinctive about him—or her. I guess it would help if he’d walked with a limp or had a certain gait that looked familiar, or maybe wore personalized cowboy boots under his robes so they showed when he took a step. I don’t think I even saw his feet.”

  “What’s your assessment of our local wizard?” Owen asked Sam.

  “Pretty basic magic. Really rough, not a lot of power or control. I’m most worried about him using magic as a pickpocketing tool.”

  “Yeah, that does put things closer to the dark side, which isn’t a good introduction to magic,” Owen mused. “I’m curious to see these lessons and how well they work. We don’t often see people learning as adults.”

  “How do people learn they’re magical?” I asked.

  “It’s an inherited trait, so parents are generally magical and then they know to look for the signs in their children.”

  “But what if someone slips through the cracks and doesn’t find out that they’re magical? Couldn’t that happen?”

  “I suppose there might be someone with latent magical talent out there who never knew. Families can drift apart and lose traditions, and if they’re not in a place with strong power lines or other magical people for them to learn from, they might not ever realize what they’re capable of. I imagine that’s what we’re dealing with here, someone who figured out he could do strange things that were useful and is enjoying the power.”

  “Which is what we gotta put a stop to,” Sam growled. “It ruins things for all of us if some wacko goes out and shows off.”

  Owen took my hand then, and shivers went all up and down my spine—not the magical tingle I had from Sam’s veiled presence. I heard a car drive by on the adjacent street, more slowly than normal.

  “That’s the third car in the last few minutes,” Owen said. “They can’t see Sam, but what they do see looks like us having a deep conversation.”

  I was all for giving them a show, but holding my hand seemed to be as far as Owen was willing to go at the moment. “By this time, my mom will have already heard that I’m with a guy in back of the Catholic church.”

  Owen turned back to face Sam, and I saw that the gargoyle’s stone face was etched with amusement.

  “We’ll check around and see if someone shows signs of being our culprit. You keep an eye out for magical activity and let me know if anything else happens.”

  Sam saluted him with one wing. “Got it, boss.”

  As we got back into the car, Owen said, “If you’re showing me off around town and introducing me to people, that gives us an excuse to talk to any suspects. Do you have any suspects?”

  “Not many. There’s this weird guy who used to be Teddy’s friend. Mom swears he made the pharmacist give him his prescription for free. I’m still not sure if that’s another one of the magical things she spotted or if that one’s all in her head. Frankly, I can’t see him working hard enough to learn how to do a real spell. If he flunked out of A&M, he’s not going to be able to learn magic. Then there’s Sherri, I guess, but she’s not the magical kind of witch.”

  “This isn’t witchcraft we’re dealing with, anyway. It’s entirely different.”

  “The first place we have to go is the motel so you can meet Nita.”

  “Is she a suspect?”

 
“No, but she’s my best friend around here, and wouldn’t it look funny for me to show off my handsome New York boyfriend to everyone in town without first introducing you to my best friend?

  Besides, something weird happened at the motel a few nights ago. A window disappeared entirely, like that time you made the restaurant windows vanish. There wasn’t any broken glass lying around, and nothing was stolen.”

  “The motel is the pink place on the north side of town, right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You must really like it, then.”

  I groaned. I’d clearly never live down the pink room. At least Owen was showing signs of a sense of humor instead of being more stone-like than Sam.

  Nita was sitting behind the front desk, reading a pastel-covered book with a stiletto-clad foot on the cover. She glanced up when the front door bell jingled, took one look at Owen, and her jaw dropped.

  It seemed to take her a full minute to realize I was with Owen, and then she looked even more shocked. Owen, as usual, blushed furiously, which had the effect of making him even more adorable.

  “Hi, Nita,” I said, wondering if I needed to do CPR or at least check for a pulse. “You’ve got to meet Owen, my friend from New York who’s here for a visit. Owen, Nita and I have been friends since fourth grade.”

  Owen hit her with one of his heart-melting smiles and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  “Huh? Uh, New York, yeah,” she stammered. Then she pulled herself together. “And you left New York? With him there? And you never told me about him?”

  Owen’s blush deepened. “It’s a long story,” I explained. “I didn’t really want to talk much about it.”

  Her eyes got even wider, then she narrowed them meaningfully at me. In other words, we would be talking later. Now recovered fully and back to her usual perky self, she asked Owen, “So, how long are you in town?”

  “A few days.”

  “Do you need a place to stay? We have vacancies. Lots of vacancies.”

  “Mom already got him,” I said. “He’s in Dean and Teddy’s old room.”

  “I’ll have to talk to her about competing with me, but I don’t blame you. We don’t have breakfast here. I’m still trying to convince my dad that we should turn it into a bed-and-breakfast.”

  I looked over and saw that the window was back in place, the plastic gone. “Hey, you got the window fixed.”

  “Yeah, Ramesh must have done it last night when he got bored enough—goodness knows the night shift gets boring. It was like that when I took over this morning.”

  Owen wandered over to the window in question and placed a hand on the glass, as if out of idle curiosity. While he was occupied, Nita flipped up the desk gate to run into the lobby, grab me, and pull me off to the far corner. “Oh my God, Katie, he’s, like, gorgeous! Why didn’t you say anything?

  I knew it was a broken heart! And now he’s come to get you! You’ll have to tell me everything when you get a chance.”

  “Later,” I promised her. Then I raised my voice to a normal speaking level. “I guess we’d better move on. I’m showing Owen around the town today.”

  “And hiding out from your mom, I bet,” Nita added. “How big a family dinner did she try to plan for tonight?”

  “The works, but we scored a one-night reprieve.”

  She smiled up at Owen and extended a hand to shake his. “It was very, very nice to meet you. Have fun!” As we left the lobby, I glanced over my shoulder to see her miming, “Call me!”

  “Well?” I asked Owen once we were in the car.

  “Magic,” he confirmed. “It was sloppy, oozing all over the place, but I think I recognized the remnants of the spell.”

  “So if our guy isn’t actively, knowingly using bad magic, he’s at least trying to use magic to commit crimes. Why else would he have removed the motel window? He was probably trying to rob the place, but Nita almost caught him.”

  “This could get ugly,” he muttered.

  “Next stop should probably be the pharmacy,” I said. “There are a couple of possible suspects there, and that’s the place where Mom thought Gene was getting prescriptions for free. But I think that if anyone in that transaction was using magic or would use magic to shake people down for money, it was Lester, the pharmacist. He’s a mean old skinflint. Think Scrooge before the ghosts, only with less hair and with a stockpile of drugs.”

  “Who’s your other suspect?”

  “This one’s a stretch, but there’s a hippie chick who runs the card and gift part of the store. She’s someone I could totally see trying to explore magic. I could certainly imagine her wearing robes and dancing around the courthouse square. I’m just not sure I can imagine her doing anything mean or greedy. Though I guess she might have been collecting the money for charity. How does this work, anyway? Can you tell someone’s magical just from talking to them?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple unless I’ve been around them actively using magic. Right now, I’m getting a sense for things. Then I might know how to go about testing.”

  I directed him to park on the square, and then we walked over to the pharmacy. A blast of incense hit us as we entered, and not far behind it was Rainbow, which I was pretty sure was not her real name.

  “Greetings and blessings!” she trilled. “Is there anything I can help you find? I got a new shipment of healing aromatherapy candles that you might enjoy. There are some that balance your energy into harmony, and others that encourage the full bloom of love.”

  Owen turned bright red again, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of the suggestion of encouraging the full bloom of love or because he was coughing and gasping for breath from the heavy, scented smoke in the air.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “We just dropped in to get him some allergy medicine.” Then I dragged a still-coughing Owen back to the more sterile-smelling pharmacy part of the store.

  Lester was around the pharmacy counter before we reached the first set of shelves, not so much because he wanted to offer great customer service, but because he was afraid we might be shoplifters.

  Never mind that he’d known me almost since birth—the word “trust” wasn’t in Lester’s vocabulary.

  “What do you need?” he demanded. If one of the chains moved to town or if someone else decided to open a pharmacy, as long as they had the basic customer-service skills of the Soup Nazi, Lester would be in huge trouble.

  I grabbed a box of Benadryl off a nearby shelf. “Just getting some antihistamines for him. It’s his first time in Texas.” Owen coughed obligingly, and Lester glared at him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Visiting Katie from New York,” Owen wheezed.

  That was the wrong thing to say. Lester didn’t trust the townfolk he’d known his whole life, so he certainly didn’t trust a Yankee. He snatched the box from my hand and went back to the register to ring it up. Owen paid for the purchase before I could get my purse open, and the sight of money thawed Lester ever so slightly. “You in town long?” Lester asked.

  “Just for a visit,” Owen said vaguely.

  “If you need something stronger than that, I have some prescription antihistamines. You normally would need to see a doctor to get them, but I’m sure we could work a deal.”

  Owen took a deep breath before we crossed through the gift part of the store and didn’t let it out until we were safely on the sidewalk. “Please don’t buy any of her aromatherapy,” he said as he gasped for air. “I’m not sure I could take it.”

  “Her aromatherapy doesn’t exactly encourage the full bloom of romance in you, huh?”

  “Well, there is some magic in it, but it’s not done right, so the effect on a magical person isn’t quite what’s intended.”

  “You mean, that stuff is for real?”

  “There’s a bit of a benign influence spell on the candle she was burning. You wouldn’t notice the effects, of course. On a normal person, it might promote a feeli
ng of well-being. To a magical person it’s like…Well, it’s like being a person with perfect pitch and listening to a singer who’s just slightly off-key. Other people might find it perfectly pleasing, but someone with perfect pitch would be climbing the walls.”

  “I guess she’s one of our suspects if she’s selling magical products.”

  “Probably not. If she can tolerate it, she isn’t magical. It could be something the supplier has done, and she has no idea that magic’s involved. All she might know is that the candles make her feel good.

  Just in case, you’ll need to go in there without me and buy one so the company can investigate. I can’t go in there again.”

  “Hey, there’s a test for our magical person. We herd the whole town through the pharmacy and see who goes into convulsions.”

  “That actually could work. Maybe you should buy a couple of candles and we could set a trap.”

  “It’s also a good sign that Lester isn’t our rogue wizard. He seems to be selling prescription meds under the counter, but he couldn’t be magical and survive spending all day around those candles.”

  “Unless maybe the constant exposure to those candles is what makes him so irritable. What’s next on your agenda?”

  “The grocery store. Mom swears people were dancing out in front, but nobody else seems to recall it happening. Idris did do that while Mom was in New York, so I thought it sounded like one of his spells. If it happened.”

  We walked around the square to the grocery store. He stepped off the sidewalk into one of the empty parking spaces in front, then shook his head and rejoined me on the sidewalk. “If there was any residual magic there, it’s faded by now. But if it did happen, perhaps someone who works in the store could be our culprit. They’d have access to the square, which seems to be the focus of magical activity. That in and of itself is proof this person doesn’t know what he’s doing. The square is the weakest magical point in the area. They’d be much better off in that park along the creek.”

  Frankly, I couldn’t imagine anyone at the grocery store resembling a mischievous rogue wizard. They were all nice, small-town folks who knew their customers by name and greeted everyone like a long-lost relative. I had to introduce Owen at least half a dozen times, and I knew they’d all know his name the next time he came into the store. We bought a couple of nonperishable items to explain our visit, then left.