Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  “Because I’ll be coming with you,” Sam announced.

  Dean went pale again. “I can’t drive around with that, uh, gargoyle with me.”

  “Relax, pal, no one will see me. Hidin’ from ordinary folk is my specialty. We can chat about how sweet your sister is to pass the time on the drive.”

  Dean didn’t look too happy about his companion, but he went without further protest. When they were gone, Owen ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “How did we miss this? Idris is teaching magic by correspondence course to maybe thousands of unidentified wizards across the country—

  people who’ll have no idea of the difference between light and dark magic, who’ll have no restrictions on how they use the magic. If this is any indication, we could have our hands full very, very soon.”

  “I thought most people with magical powers were identified at birth. You said it runs in families.”

  “Yeah, well, look at you and your family, never having the slightest idea what any of you were until you went to a place where magic was strong and there was something for you to see. Who knows how many magical families we’ve lost over the years as everyone spread out to places where there is no real magical culture or where the power sources are weaker.”

  “At least it doesn’t look like Idris is specifically targeting me if he’s going national,” I said, trying to inject a dose of hope. “It’s just pure dumb luck that my brother happened to see his ad so that we could figure out what’s going on. I guess the big question is, how do we deal with something like this?”

  He heaved a deep sigh. “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe we could do our own ads, offer better training and guidance. If we don’t steal his customers, at least we might attract a different class of people so we’d have our own army.”

  “That could work, I suppose.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, honestly. I already had enough to deal with. This is too much to think about.”

  “No one said you had to do it all yourself,” I reminded him. “Not everything is your responsibility.

  There are other people who can handle this now that you’ve uncovered it.”

  We sat like that for a while, Daisy watching us steadily. I thought I should pat his back or put an arm around him, or something. A friend would have done that kind of thing, right? But I got the feeling that he wouldn’t find the contact soothing. Being next to him was the best I could do, and I tried to enjoy the rare moment of quiet togetherness while I could, even if he was distracted. Now that our mystery was solved, I had a feeling Owen would be going back to New York soon, before we had a chance to figure out whether me staying here was worthwhile.

  My breath caught in my throat when Owen put his hand on top of mine where it rested between us on the hay bale. Coming from him, it was an unexpected gesture. He wasn’t a very touchy person. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Okay? Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “Because your brother turned out to be our magical would-be master criminal.”

  Oh yeah, that. I’d been rather sidetracked by thinking about Owen leaving town without me and wondering if clinging to him when he tried to leave would make me look desperate. “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It’s a lot to take in. I’m still finding it hard to believe. He always was a bit of a con artist, but a criminal? And then magical on top of it? This was supposed to be my normal place, you know? Where I went to get away from magical mayhem.” I shook my head, at a loss to put what I was really feeling into words. He gave my hand a squeeze and I tried not to sigh wistfully. I was in really bad shape if he could nearly make me swoon just by touching my hand.

  Dean and Sam returned way too soon for me. Sam flew to a rafter and perched there as Dean dumped a pile of booklets, papers, and a magazine in Owen’s lap. While Owen flipped through the booklets, Web printouts, and brochures, I picked up the magazine and turned past all the pictures of scantily clad young starlets and ads for body spray to the back where the less splashy ads were. Sure enough, there was an ad like the one I’d seen in the regional magazine.

  “These materials are actually quite comprehensive,” Owen said. “You should learn some of the basics if you follow them properly. The problem is that there’s no context, no guidance for how to use the power, and certainly no mention that there’s any kind of magical code of conduct. It would be like teaching someone the basic skills of how to do surgery without teaching about when and why surgery might be necessary. You’d have people who knew how to remove or cut apart organs with no idea of the proper reasons or situations for doing so. A bright person with a good moral compass might figure it out, but imagine a real sadist with that kind of training.”

  “Yeah, it would be awful if someone found out he had magical powers and then used them to rip off other people,” I said with a dark glare at my brother. “And it seems like not even years of Sunday school prevented that behavior.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll put the stuff back,” Dean said. “That is, if I can get it away from Sherri. I finally had her happy with me because I was giving her everything she wanted.”

  “No, you had her worried because she thinks you’re involved in something illegal,” I corrected. “And hey, what do you know, she was right.”

  Someone cleared his throat, and we all looked up to see Teddy standing in the doorway. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  Dean immediately went on the defensive, and he was the master, so I let him handle it. “And what are you doing here?” he asked. “Did Mom send you out to spy on Katie?”

  Teddy rubbed his ear and looked away, avoiding eye contact with the rest of us. “Well, yeah. She saw the car and the truck, but nobody was in the house. Which was why I cleared my throat first, to give you some warning.” He glanced over at Owen and me, with books and magazines lying open in our laps, and then at Dean and added, “I must say, this isn’t what I was expecting. You know, Sis, I’m almost disappointed in you. Didn’t your older brothers set a better example for you about what you should be doing alone in a barn with your significant other?”

  “They’re not alone,” Dean said.

  “I noticed that. Were you playing big brother watchdog, too? I thought you didn’t approve of Owen.”

  “Minor misunderstanding,” Dean insisted. “We’re best buds now.”

  “I wouldn’t take it that far,” Owen muttered under his breath, so softly that only I could hear it.

  Teddy came closer, his eyes narrowed as he studied us. “What are you guys doing, anyway, reading comic books?”

  “Nah, just some brochures,” I said. “Dean was asking our advice on something. How long were you lurking out there and clearing your throat?” I wondered what he’d overheard. We’d been talking about Dean’s criminal behavior, and that was almost worse than Teddy hearing something about magic.

  “Not too long. I know you well enough to know I wouldn’t be interrupting much.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I was fairly certain he meant it as a compliment, but it was discouraging when my own brothers couldn’t imagine me as someone who might inspire a man to tackle me in a haystack.

  “So, what are you guys up to?” Teddy asked. “And why are you doing it in the barn?”

  I decided to let Dean handle that one. He was the glib one in the family. Besides, it was fun watching him twist in the wind. After what he’d put us through, I figured he deserved at least a little torture from his baby brother. He didn’t miss a beat before saying, “We wanted the chance to talk without Mom bugging us. You know, the same reason we always used to hide out here even when we weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “I guess you never outgrow some things,” Teddy agreed.

  “Care to join us?” I asked, hoping he’d decline but sure things would look less suspicious if I invited him.

  “No thanks. Unlike some people around here, I have work to do.” He turned to go, then paused halfway to the door and turned back to us, as if to say something. But then he gla
nced upward and jumped back, stumbling and nearly falling. “What is that thing?” he blurted.

  I tried for my most innocent look and hoped he wasn’t talking about Sam. “What thing?”

  “There, in the rafters. It’s either the biggest bat I’ve ever seen or—or I don’t know what. Wait, it’s one of those gargoyles, like on a cathedral or something, but what is it doing in our barn?”

  Oh, boy. It looked like I’d discovered yet another magical immune in the family if he could see Sam.

  I’d thought I was so special with my magical immunity, and at the rate I was going, I’d turn out to be the least special member of my family. But before I could go into a snit, I had to deal with Teddy. I tried to think of a rational explanation for a gargoyle in the barn. Scavenger hunt? Fraternity prank?

  Bad decision on eBay?

  “What are you talking about?” Dean asked. “I don’t see anything.” I wondered if that was because Sam had veiled himself even to magical people or if Dean was trying to play innocent.

  Unfortunately for Dean, Teddy had long ago learned that the more innocent Dean looked, the more guilty he was. “Okay, y’all are definitely up to something. What is it?”

  “You’re absolutely certain you see something that looks like a gargoyle perched on the rafter in our barn?” I asked. “And you still see it?”

  “Yes! And it just looked down and winked at you.” There was the slightest bit of hysterical edge in his voice.

  Owen and I exchanged a look. We held eye contact for a while, having a silent conversation about what we should do next. Then with a deep sigh he said, “Sam, come on down and say hello to one of Katie’s other brothers.” To me he said, “He may be helpful in this.”

  Sam raised his wings and let himself glide down to the barn floor in front of Teddy. “Hi, I’m Sam.

  Glad to meet you. Your sister’s a great gal.”

  Teddy took a step back, squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed them, then opened them again and blinked a few times. I waited for him to scream, yell, run away, or otherwise freak out, but he just breathed,

  “Whoa!” I should have known that a guy who’d spent his teens playing Dungeons and Dragons and reading fantasy novels would be more fascinated than upset by the revelation that magic might actually exist. After he’d verified and absorbed the fact that Sam was real, he asked, “Okay, so what is really going on here?”

  Owen put down the magic booklets and stood up. “You saw Sam here sitting in the rafters, right?”

  “Yeah. And I see him now. He talked to me.”

  Owen nodded. “Okay.” He picked up a handkerchief, draped it across his left palm, then waved his right hand over it. “Now what do you see?”

  “You’ve got a handkerchief draped across your hand.”

  “Dean, what do you see?” Owen asked.

  “You turned the handkerchief into a dove. That’s so cool! Can you teach me to do that? Maybe I could do magic shows, and then I could use it to make money instead of doing other stuff that you say I shouldn’t.”

  Owen glared him into shutting up. Teddy laughed. “Boy, Dean, you’ve got some imagination. It’s just a handkerchief. He didn’t even fold it into a bird, like Katie tried to do with the napkins that one year for Thanksgiving when she read something in a magazine. Though, actually, this probably looks as much like a bird as Katie’s napkins did.”

  “Shut up, Teddy,” I warned. “I’ve got stories on you, too.”

  What Owen did next shut Teddy up far more effectively. He waved a hand over the handkerchief again, and this time it did turn into a bird. He held the bird for a long moment, giving everyone a chance to see that it really was a bird, and then with a gentle motion he sent it flying out of the barn.

  Teddy gaped for a while, then he asked, “How’d you do that? I mean, I know it has something to do with having something up your sleeve, but you aren’t walking around with birds up your sleeve all the time, are you?”

  “Teddy, you idiot, it’s magic,” Dean said. “And I guess it doesn’t work on you.” He turned to Owen for verification, “Does it? Was that what that first trick was about, you made it look like you’d changed it into a bird, but it was only an illusion and it didn’t work on him?”

  “That does appear to be the case,” Owen said mildly.

  I could no longer fight back the snit that had been building up in me since I found out that Dean was a wizard. “I do not believe this!” I shouted, throwing my hands in the air. “Is everyone in my family going to get caught up in this? I was supposed to be getting away from all that stuff when I came back here, and it was here surrounding me all this time. I’ve got one brother taking magical correspondence courses and another brother who’s immune to magic—not to mention Mom being able to see everything when she doesn’t have a clue what’s really going on, and goodness knows what’s up with Granny—and I am sick of trying to explain it all and make it make sense.”

  Teddy, ever the peacemaker in the family, stepped toward me warily, like he might approach a mad dog. “Katie, honey, what’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s going on? And what’s this about magic?”

  I turned to Owen with a plea in my eyes I hoped he could read. “You explain it this time. I’ve run out of variations on the ‘magic is real’ speech.” Before he could answer, I grabbed my purse and ran out of the barn to my truck. Owen was probably the best person to explain things to Teddy, anyway. They spoke the same language, and I was sure Teddy would ask for hours’ worth of scientific-style proofs.

  By the time I got back, they’d probably be deep in discussions about theory. Owen and Teddy would be in hog heaven, and Dean would be bored out of his skull.

  I wasn’t sure why this had me so upset. I liked magic and magical people, and I’d spent most of my life feeling like I was too normal. I just wasn’t quite ready to go all the way over the edge to where I no longer had any grip at all on the nonmagical world. My family was supposed to ground me, not be even weirder than my former working world had been. And, really, couldn’t I manage to be special in just one little way without being overshadowed by my big brothers?

  I drove straight to the motel. Nita was one of the few people I felt I could talk to who still had absolutely nothing to do with the magical world. Of course, at the rate things in my life were going, I’d soon find out that she was from another planet or was Wonder Woman’s mild-mannered disguise.

  “Ohmigod, what happened?” she gasped when I entered the motel lobby. Without waiting for me to answer, she said, “I’ll make tea.”

  “Nothing happened. Why? Do I look that bad?” I asked as she raised the counter so I could join her behind the desk.

  She put on the electric teakettle. “He broke up with you, didn’t he?” Her voice cracked with sympathetic tears. “Oh, Katie.”

  I sidestepped her hug. “Broke up? We aren’t really together. We were barely together before I left New York, and I broke things off with him when I left.” I knew it was a different story from what I’d told my family, but I didn’t imagine her swapping stories with any of them, and in this case, something resembling the truth was my safest bet.

  “Then, what is the problem? You came tearing in here like your tail was on fire, and you look ready to explode at any moment.” She poured water over teabags, then turned back to me, waving a spoon.

  “Sit, and tell me everything.”

  I did as she ordered, for fear she’d hit me with the spoon. It was funny how calming her hyper presence could be. There was a certain peace in her bubbly mania. Soon, she handed me a mug full of spiced tea sweetened with honey. “Now, you’d probably better start at the beginning,” she said as she took her own seat. “And don’t leave anything out. I’m already mad at you for not even mentioning the hot guy until he showed up in town.”

  While I was still thinking of a way to explain what, exactly, it was that had me so upset, a car pulled into the motel driveway, making too fast a turn off the main road so that it fishtailed a little on t
he shoulder’s loose gravel. It then came to a screeching stop under the motel office’s canopy. When the driver got out of the car, I saw that he was tall and lanky, with clothes that fit so that he looked like he’d recently gone through an adolescent growth spurt. I knew exactly who he was. Phelan Idris, the rogue wizard who was giving us so much trouble, had come to town.

  “Wow, a customer!” Nita said while I spilled my tea. “Nobody checks in on Mondays.”

  I didn’t want him seeing me. Him not knowing that we knew he was here might give us the slightest advantage. “Oh, my tea!” I said, grabbing a handful of paper napkins from Nita’s desk and dropping to the ground behind the counter just before the door chime rang. I halfheartedly mopped up my spilled tea while I listened.

  “Hi, and welcome to the Cobb Motel!” Nita said cheerfully. “How may I help you?”

  “You got any rooms?” he asked.

  “How many nights?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a few days.”

  “Okay, open-ended stay. We can do that. Smoking or non?”

  “Smoking.” Funny, I hadn’t ever seen him smoke, but I imagined he might want a smoking room so he could mix up potions without raising suspicions.

  “King bed or two double beds?”

  “I want a room, okay? Not a game of twenty questions.”

  “I’m only trying to make sure you get what you want,” Nita said, her voice still full of forced friendliness, but now with a little frost around the edges. “I’ll give you a king room. Now, how will you be paying for that?”

  “I’ve got a credit card.”

  “Great! Then I’ll need a photo ID, as well, and you can fill this out. Don’t worry about the car license number part. I’m not even sure why that’s on the form.” She gave me a funny look as she went to make a copy of his ID, and I hurried to look like I was still carefully mopping up the spilled tea. She returned from the back office, handed him his ID, his credit card, and a key. “Okay, Mr. Idris, you’ll be in room twenty-five. You should be able to park right in front of your room. Enjoy your stay!”

  Only when I’d heard the door chime and his car start did I stand up from behind the counter with my wad of damp paper napkins. “I can’t believe I made such a mess,” I said.