Don't Hex with Texas

by Shanna Swendson

  Now, get to bed—in separate rooms, please.”

  When she’d gone and shut my bedroom door behind her, Owen said, “I honestly never thought of silencing the stairs. I know I can’t make that squeaky spot in our house go quiet, but that’s probably a spell Gloria put on it. I guess I assumed it would be the same way here.”

  “Climbing out the window is more fun.”

  “Speaking of which, I’d better go.” His gaze lingered on me for a second. “I’m a little afraid of what your grandmother would do to me if she knew I was in here unchaperoned for too long. She’s scarier than all those wizards who are gunning for me.” I moved toward him to say good night, but before I got there, he’d already climbed back out the window.

  Owen looked less exhausted and more like himself the following morning, aside from the slightest sense that he might be facing his own execution soon. Granny showed up while we were still eating breakfast, so I went off to work without worrying about how Owen would occupy himself in my absence. He had her eating out of his hand, and when it came to spending hours listening to her stories, it was better him than me. I hoped he had enough background knowledge to allow him to tell the truth from the stuff she made up. She couldn’t describe a family event without getting details mixed up, so I wasn’t sure how he’d get anything useful out of her ramblings about the wee folk.

  Work went more or less without incident. On my way home, I drove by the square to see what the wizards were up to. They seemed to be roaming in groups of four or five, looking like they were searching for someone. The wandering groups made the townspeople nervous. People crossed the street to avoid passing them on the sidewalk. As I drove past the pharmacy, Lester was in the process of throwing a group out. I hoped Rainbow’s candles had given them headaches or coughing spells, then I got an idea.

  I pulled into a parking space in front of the pharmacy and ran inside. “Hey, Rainbow, do those aromatherapy candles come in votive sizes?”

  “The full jar is a better value.”

  “That’s okay, I need them for a pretty small space.” I bought a bag of ten of the candles that were designed to balance your energy for a more even mood. I figured that encouraging romance with this bunch would be asking for trouble.

  When I got home, Owen was out in the horse pasture, having what looked like a deep conversation with Daisy. “I swear, you’re like something out of a Disney movie with all your animal friends,” I said as I approached them. “When the little birds come sit on your shoulder and bring you news, I’m out of here.”

  “She was looking at me over the fence like she was sad and lonely.”

  I laughed and patted Daisy on the neck. “Meet the only horse I know of who can make puppy-dog eyes. She’s basically an overgrown dog. I’m not sure she realizes she’s a horse. How’d you learn to be so good with animals? Is that a magic thing?”

  “I’ve never been that great with people. Animals are usually easier. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with magic. Well, except for the dragons. That was magic, and I didn’t plan for that spell to have that effect.”

  “You also have that crazy Granny–taming ability. Speaking of Granny, did you get what you needed?”

  “Oh yeah, a whole notebook full. I’ll spend the afternoon cross-referencing what she told me with some of my materials, and then tonight we can go out on a little diplomatic mission. Is there any news on our magical visitors?”

  I told him what I’d seen. “So far, it seems like they’re sticking to downtown, so you should be safe out here. Maybe I could find you a hat and dark glasses as a disguise.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

  “Just making the offer. While you’re doing your research this afternoon, I think I’ll help Nita at the motel.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Well, there’s the spying potential, and then there’s this.” I raised the bag of candles. “Take a whiff and see if they affect you even when they aren’t burning.” I opened the bag and he leaned over it, then recoiled instantly with a shudder. “Now, is that because of the magic, or because they smell nasty?”

  He sneezed. “Both.”

  “Good,” I said with a grin. “I thought they’d be a nice touch for our guests’ rooms. Anything to throw them off balance. Now, have you had lunch yet?”

  We were in the middle of making sandwiches when Mom got back. “Something really odd is going on downtown, and don’t tell me I’m imagining things,” she said as she came into the kitchen.

  Oops. Owen and I shared a guilty look. I’d been so distracted by finding out that Dean and Granny were magical and Teddy was immune, that Idris had his geek brigade gathering, and that Owen was here without permission that I’d managed to forget that Mom was still immune and not in on the secret. She’d have seen all the nonsense on the square. “Nita said some really odd people had checked into the motel,” I said. “She thinks it’s a rock band hiding out here to write songs for an album.”

  “I’m not sure we want that sort of people in this town. I bet they brought their drugs with them.” She was still grumbling as she went up the stairs.

  “We’ll have to be careful if we want to keep her out of things,” Owen said.

  I sighed. “I know. I’d assign one of the guys to look out for her, but I’m running out of brothers. And to think, I always thought I had too many of them.”

  The problem soon resolved itself when Granny showed up with an armload of books and family photo albums. “These may be of help to you,” she said to Owen. She put the books on the kitchen table, then handed Owen a bottle full of murky liquid. “I also made you a potion. It’s a recipe I got from my Gran. Best thing for restoring you after a lot of magic. You need to be careful about that in these parts. You can wear yourself out real fast.” She settled in at the table, making herself at home, and I knew that Mom wouldn’t stand a chance of getting away for the rest of the afternoon. Granny was better than a prison warden.

  I felt like a chicken leaving Owen to deal with Granny alone, but they seemed to be getting along fine, so I didn’t feel too bad about heading over to the motel. My main worry was that Granny might accidentally poison him with her magical home remedies while I was gone.

  “You said you needed housekeeping help?” I said to Nita when I got there. Then I noticed the new decor in the lobby. The faded prints of local sights from an old chamber of commerce calendar were gone, replaced by framed album covers. Bright fringed throws covered the vinyl lobby chairs.

  “Oh, bless you!” Nita said. “The housekeeper I did have quit this morning. She said she wasn’t coming back until these guys left.”

  “Why? What did they do?”

  She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “I’m not entirely sure, but I got the impression there was some kind of harassment going on. You know rock and rollers. I hate to make you face all that, but it seems like most of them are out for the afternoon.”

  “I’m sure I can cope.” I gestured around the lobby. “I see you’re already carrying out your new theme.”

  “Yeah, great, huh? Oh, and come look at this.” She gestured me back behind the desk and pulled up some files on her computer. “I took these pictures Monday afternoon. He must have gone out for a long walk because he came straggling back later that day. Look at that thing he’s wearing around his neck. It’s not big enough to be proper bling, but it’s too big to be a good man necklace.”

  I bent over and squinted at the photo of a tired, sweaty Idris as she enlarged the picture on the screen.

  His shirt was unbuttoned almost to his waist, which was not a pretty sight, and he had a medallion of some sort hanging on a leather cord around his neck. “There’s no telling what it is,” I said, wishing we could zoom in more and see if there was writing on it, but I knew it would only get fuzzy if we tried to enlarge the picture any more.

  “I really don’t know what to make of these guys. The leader’s been holed up in his room most of the day, bu
t I think he’s out now. And I guess I’d better let you get to work.”

  “Just give me the key and tell me what to do.”

  “Make the beds, change out towels, wipe things down, empty the trash, put out new soap. We don’t change linens daily unless someone asks for it. If anyone left a tip, keep it, but with this bunch, I wouldn’t count on it.” She made an exaggerated “what are you gonna do?” expression, then sighed.

  “Rock and rollers. At least nobody’s really trashed a room yet.”

  She gave me a master key, and on my way to the housekeeping closet, I stopped by my truck to get the bag of candles. I put them on top of the housekeeping cart, which I made sure was stocked with soap and towels. Consulting the list, I went to the first room, knocked on the door, shouted,

  “Housekeeping,” then when there was no reply, I opened the door.

  It looked like someone had held a wild party in there. Before I did anything, I put out one of the candles and lit it. I hoped that having burned it at all would get more of the slightly off-target magic into the room for a maximum reaction. Then I snooped around. There wasn’t much of interest to find.

  It could have been any twenty-something man’s motel room, with dirty underwear left lying on the floor next to crumpled wet towels in the bathroom and clothes strewn around the bedroom. I couldn’t find any evidence of magic or anything that looked like magical paraphernalia.

  My spying done, I emptied the trash, made the bed, switched out the towels, and straightened the bathroom. Somehow I doubted that these guys were likely to notice the finer points of motel housekeeping, and this wasn’t a mint-on-the-pillow establishment to begin with. I blew the candle out right before I moved on to the next room and left it sitting there on the dresser.

  I went through the same routine with each of the other rooms. Most of the guests were doubling up, which meant twice the mess. It reminded me of my brothers’ bedroom when we were growing up. I left two candles in Idris’s room, one in the bedroom and the other in the bathroom, because I really wanted him to suffer. I was fairly certain I felt the tingle of magic as I entered his room. He was smart enough to ward his room with Owen around, though it was kind of a futile gesture when I was around, too, but I didn’t find anything particularly incriminating or useful in there.

  Two hours later, I put the cart away and dragged myself back to the office to return the master key.

  “That’s a harder job than you expect it to be,” I said. “I left the dirty towels in the cart. Did you need me to wash them?”

  “No, Mom takes care of the laundry. Thanks so much for your help.”

  I was on my way back to my truck when a rental car pulled up in front of the office. I paused, waiting to see if there were more members of Idris’s gang arriving. But then a very familiar figure emerged from the car. It was Rod, Owen’s best friend. I took that as a sign that Owen wasn’t in too much trouble. Sending Rod was more like giving him a partner in crime than a babysitter. I was just about to run to greet him when another person got out of the car. It was Merlin, the CEO of MSI. That was kind of mind-blowing, when you thought about it, to consider that Merlin, the Merlin of Camelot fame, was standing outside the motel in Cobb, Texas. It also probably meant that either they thought this thing with Idris was a really big deal, or Owen was in really big trouble.

  I darted around the corner of the office bungalow before they could see me and got into my truck.

  Then I hesitated, torn between conflicting loyalties. If I warned Owen, that would in a way be a betrayal of Merlin and the company. It wasn’t a good idea for him to charge off and take matters into his own hands. On the other hand, I didn’t work for MSI anymore, and Owen was my friend who had cared enough to risk his job to make sure I was okay. That sealed the deal. I started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Owen met me in the driveway, with that uncanny knack of his for knowing where I’d be and when.

  He didn’t look worried enough to have already known what was going on. “Your backup is here,” I told him as I got out of the car.

  “They haven’t called me yet.”

  “I’m guessing it’s a surprise. Owen, Merlin himself came. With Rod.”

  Normally, he turned various shades of pink and red with strong emotion, but this time he went a sickly gray color. “Oh. Where are they?”

  “I saw them pulling up at the motel as I was leaving.”

  “Do they know you know they’re here?”

  “I don’t think they saw me, and I didn’t say anything to them.”

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and checked it. “No missed calls and no messages.” He pushed a couple of buttons, then said, “Sam?” There was a pause, and he swallowed hard before saying, “Yeah, I just heard. Go ahead and tell them everything, but try to give me a heads-up before…well, you know. Thanks.” He flipped the phone closed, then said, “Sam’s on his way to meet with them. But they haven’t called me. I guess that puts me out of the loop, huh?”

  “Or it means they don’t want you going out and about with a gang of would-be wizards looking for you, and they know it’s not a good idea to hold a magical convention around my family. Speaking of which, how did things go with Granny today? Did you get any useful stuff out of her?”

  “Your grandmother really is a fountain of information.”

  “Mom would say she’s a fountain of a lot of stuff.”

  “Well, true, not all of it is accurate. Her stories are heavily embellished, but there is a core of truth there, and I think there might be some things here that can help us.”

  “So you’re going through with your plan?”

  He shrugged. “I might as well, unless the boss tells me specifically otherwise. The more I can show I’ve accomplished, the better it’s likely to turn out for me.”

  “I guess this means yet another midnight excursion.”

  “Yeah. I haven’t been out so many nights since I was in school, with late-night magical training.

  Those midnight secret society meetings were murder.”

  That night, I followed the instructions Owen had given me. He’d said to wear something white, which was good because I’d run out of black clothes. I wore a flowing white peasant blouse with an old pair of jeans, because he’d also said things could get dirty and muddy. I left my hair down and put on some light floral perfume. If I didn’t know how serious this situation was, I’d have suspected him of setting up a romantic rendezvous. Unfortunately, Owen’s mind usually didn’t work that way, so it was most likely that his instructions had more to do with attracting whatever local magical folk there were than with creating a romantic atmosphere.

  When he knocked on my window—apparently he’d decided against magically dampening the sound of the squeaky stairs—he wore a white shirt untucked over faded jeans. He got some things out of his case, then asked, “Do you have any kind of portable musical instrument? Like a whistle, flute, pipes, or anything like that? I thought I had something in here, but I don’t. This was one thing I didn’t anticipate.”

  “I have my flute from high school band. At least, I think it’s still around here.” I found it on the top shelf of my closet and brought it down. “I have no idea what condition it’s in.”

  “Can you still play it?”

  “I’m sure I can get a few notes out, and I probably still have the school fight song memorized. I don’t know what it will sound like, though. It’s all in the lip, you know, and my lip is really out of shape.”

  He glanced at my mouth and smiled. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. We just need the music.”

  In the very few times during my teen years that I’d climbed out my window to sneak away, I’d never imagined doing so with my band instrument. Come to think of it, I’d also never imagined it with a really hot guy. The magical world really was opposite land, where the things that had made me a dork in school were what now made me useful.

  This time, instead of driving downtown, we drove
through the town and then up the road a few miles before Owen pulled over onto the shoulder. He did something to the barbed-wire fence that made it possible for us to walk through it, then we crossed the field to get to the stand of trees that indicated there was water. It was the creek that went on to flow through the town.

  The area around the creek was like an oasis in the desert. All around was flat prairie land, but the creek banks were rimmed with lush vegetation and trees. It was a miniforest stuck in the middle of a sea of grass. Owen held my hand to keep me steady as we made our way down the steep creek bank to stand at the water’s edge.

  The moon was bright, not quite full, but still enough to keep things from being pitch-black. Owen conjured a little hand fire to hover over his head and light what he was doing as he took things out of his pack. While he worked, I peered into the bushes and the creek water, looking for any signs of magical creatures. They wouldn’t be able to hide from me using magic, but I couldn’t see anything.

  I’d never seen anything remotely magical around here until a week or so ago, so I wasn’t optimistic about this working. I was still afraid that Granny, magical or not, was mostly nuts and all the wee folk she’d seen were only in her head.

  “Come over here,” Owen called from where he stood on a flat rock that jutted out into the creek. He held a hand out to steady me as I climbed onto the rock with him. Then he took a pouch of powder from his pack and made a circle around us. “A protective measure,” he said, “in case they aren’t too happy about being disturbed.”

  “How reassuring,” I said.

  “I don’t think they’d harm us, but we’re not dealing with tamed beings here. Now, get your instrument out. We need to be ready in case they show up.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To offer them a gift. Music is very commonly welcomed, so that should work.”

  “I wish you’d told me in time to practice something,” I said as I opened the case and put the flute together. “I’m not sure the Cobb High School fight song is going to do the trick.”