HEX

by Stacy Charasidis

  Sometimes, when Barringtoners came back from traveling and wanted Bill Farmer to stock a new item in his store, he would. “We can’t make it? You think people would like this? Okay, I’ll stock it,” he would say, nodding his head and inspecting the item. We loved him.

  Ye Ole Sweet Shoppe, our local candy store, and Farmer’s Grocery only stocked candy from the Limerick Candy Factory up the road. The candy store made all their fancy chocolate confections with the factory’s chocolate. The original Mayor, Jacob Barrington, the man who built the town and gave it his name, made it clear that we would only thrive if we supported each other, and so we do. The town’s merchants supported each other exclusively.

  The Harvest Festival is organized by the town of Barrington every year. Anyone can set up a personal stall, and for Barringtoners, it’s free. The Bakers set up a huge table every year filled with the most incredible pastry. This is when they make the bulk of their annual income. With people camping and traveling to visit the fair, breads, muffins, cookies, and pies are in high demand to feed families wandering the fairgrounds. Joe’s Java Coffee House sets up a coffee table nearby, as well as The Fry Diner, who sells sandwiches and other fried things. They do brisk business. Only The Witch and the Broomstick Pub is not allowed a stall at the fair. Alcohol was limited to Town Circle or the pub itself.

  One of my girlfriends, Tess Smith, always helps the Bakers with their table at the fair every year. The Bakers have two boys that lack the bakery gene, so they switch kids with the Smiths. Reginald Baker helps at The Hammer & Anvil Hardware Store while Tess Smith helps at The Royal Crust. For three months it’s round the clock for Tess, so I don’t get to see her much during the summer. She works the bake table during the day and she bakes at night. I would have insisted on her taking a break and having a coffee with me today, but I didn’t see her. I looked at the baked goods and I realized that I was extremely hungry.

  There was an older lady running the bake table very efficiently. She was dressed in a very peculiar way, with a long grey dress with buttons from her neck to her feet that belted at the waist and had long, white, billowy sleeves. She wore a frilly white apron tied at the back in a pretty bow with a white lacy cap on her head. She was short and plump with pretty blond curls and rosy red apple cheeks. She looked like a throwback from the old days.

  “Och, can I help ya lassie?” she asked me, smiling. She had a pleasant accent I couldn’t place. I stared at her and was sure her blue eyes were twinkling at me, and I was getting a strange sense of déjà vu, as if I knew her.

  “Why, yes,” I said, shaking my head to clear it.

  “What’s your name, child?” she asked. She was staring at me, her expression suddenly very curious.

  “Oh, my name’s Nathalie. Nathalie Parker,” I responded. I looked at the bake table to see if I could find my favorite cookies. “What’s yours?” I asked.

  “You can call me Nettie…a Parker, eh?”

  “Do you know my parents?” I asked her curiously. I had never seen her before, so she couldn’t live in Barrington.

  “In a way I know everyone here,” she said quietly, looking around her. She turned her eyes back to me. “Try these,” she said, handing me a cookie. I bit into it. It was wonderful, spicy with a tart lemon icing.

  “This is delicious!” I exclaimed, taking a bag of them. “They taste like my grandmother’s!”

  “An old family recipe,” she said, waving her hand and looking at me. “So, are you married, dearie?”

  I choked on my cookie and looked at her, shocked. “Married? I’m only seventeen!” I told her in a high voice.

  “Och, so no children.” She seemed disappointed.

  Whaaaaat??? I thought to myself. I looked at her in disbelief. “No, of course not.”

  “Do you have a sweetheart?” she asked hopefully.

  “Why, yes I do,” I responded. She sure was nosey, but her face was so sweet and loving I couldn’t help answering her questions.

  She nodded happily. “That’s good,” she said. “Love is power. What’s your young man’s name?”

  “Dean. Dean Croft.”

  “A Croft…well, that’s unfortunate,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “Unfortunate?” I asked, now wondering if she was crazy.

  “What? Och, no dearie. Not what I meant, not at all. I just knew a family of Crofts years ago…unlucky family, but that’s neither here nor there.” She bustled around the bake table, straightening things up.

  “Where do you come from?” I asked her. I was curious now. Croft was not a unique name and there were probably Crofts everywhere, but it seemed personal to her.

  “I’m from a long time away,” she told me. “I’m here to help with the fair. Baking is my specialty.”

  She had odd expressions. It must have taken her a while to get here. “He’s very sweet, my Dean, and extremely adorable.”

  She nodded in agreement. “My Crofts were too.” She stopped and wrapped a pie and handed it to me. “Take a pie for your family, honey.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the pie, “but it’s not necessary—” My cell phone rang and I answered it. It was my mom.

  “Hi sweetie, it’s time to come home for dinner. You’re dad’s barbequing.”

  “Ugh,” I said into the receiver.

  “Be nice, Nat. Oh, and pick up a pie for dessert.”

  In the end, it was a strange, yet interesting, day.

  The Fairgrounds

  Much later Taline was closing down her stall for the night. It had been a busy day. She looked towards the stable and saw Wayman settling the horses for the night. He whistled while he brushed them, running his long fingered hands over their bellies and shanks. Taline shivered. She wondered what kind of night she was going to have with those hands. She hoped it would be a long one.

  She looked over to see Nettie packing up the bake table. Not much left. Nettie’s baking was hugely popular and was already gaining quite a reputation. The baking stall had a large silver fridge with electrical and water lines running to it, used to store the remains of the day’s efforts, which would be sold the next day for half price. “Amazing, this silver box,” Nettie said with awe, patting the fridge.

  Taline laughed. “So, Nettie,” she said casually as she walked over, sitting herself on one of the tables and kicking her long, slender legs back and forth. “The meeting with your descendent went remarkably well, considering. Of all the questions you could have asked her, you decided to freak her out and ask her about marriage and teen pregnancy.” Taline had a huge smile on her face. “Interesting tactic.”

  Nettie hmmmphed and looked at Taline, narrowing her eyes. “Look here dearie, seventeen is a perfectly respectable age to be wed and havin’ a child. How was I supposed to know that things had changed so much? I was married with my Henry at sixteen and had my Nathan at seventeen. What is she waiting for? She said she had a beau.”

  Taline sniffed. “Nettie, a seventeen year old today is like a ten year old in your time, without the sense of responsibility. They’re babies on hormones.”

  “Perhaps…but you all seem like babies to me.” Nettie sighed and looked around. “What am I doing here Taline? How is this possible?”

  “I have no idea, Nettie. That’s what Wayman’s trying to figure out.”

  Town Circle—The Apartment above Clara’s Crafts & Crystals

  Beth slammed the door to her little apartment and threw her purse across the room where it smashed against the wall. She was furious. She was losing to her rival. She never lost. Never, ever. She’d chosen Dean and she was determined to have a little fun with him. She wasn’t about to allow some mousy-haired blotchy-faced brunette get in her way.

  Danner had visited last night and congratulated Beth on a task well done. Marking the families was a big step in their plan.

  Then he had smiled slyly and informed her of Dean and Nathalie’s ride in the woods. “He’s getting so handsy…on a horse, no less!” he had said delightedly,
describing the encounter in detail. “They are progressing way beyond kissing,” he had taunted her, sliding an ocher finger down her face. “If you want any action from that pale meat bag you’re going to have to step it up a bit, sister.” His touch had been painful, but not as painful as his words that picked at her obsessive crush, making it bleed, and making her angry.

  “Mind you, if he’s too much of a challenge for you, I still plan to keep my promise to send you a distraction.” He laughed as he left.

  Today, Nathalie’s face had revealed everything, and while she hated to admit that Danner was right, he was. She was a witch, and a powerful one at that. Men were pathetically weak when it came to temptation and sex. No male had ever stood against her before. She had always taken what she wanted. What was holding her back now? She had Elanah’s spells.

  She walked straight to the long table overflowing with different dried herbs, plants and flowers, which were all tied in bunches with twine. From her pocket she took out a tissue containing a single black eyelash—to identify him. Working quickly, she collected the rest of the items she needed; she chose a small white rose—to attract him, she cut a lock of her hair and selected a pink ribbon—to bind and enslave him to HER; she lit a white candle—to seal the hex.

  She chanted a preparation spell as she worked. “Prepare to receive, that which I make, I invoke thee, my spell to take, prepare to receive, that which I make, I invoke thee, my spell to take…” She twined the ribbon around the rose, the eyelash, her hair and sealed it with wax from the white candle.

  The words were a litany as she put the bundle into a crudely stitched hemp bag and took it to the sink where she sprinkled it with running water, using the energy from the earth to activate the magic of the bag. No more trips to streams for her. She took the damp bag and her candle and sat in the center of the pentagram in the middle of the room. The candle flickered as she held the bag tightly and closed her eyes, chanting the spell to bind the hex to the items.

  “Master of Chaos, I submit to thee, by thy power divine, make him mine.”

  The bag flared brightly and then became mute. It was pulsing and glowing faintly in Beth’s hands. The glow would not be visible to human eyes unless they were told it was there. Only those with power would be able to see it, but she didn’t know anyone with those skills in this time, at least anyone who worked at the candy factory. It was liberating to know that those with the craft, and the ability to interfere, had died out.

  Tomorrow, Dean Croft, you are mine. Beth laughed with delight.

  Wednesday, August 7

  Limerick Candy Factory

  Beth hid the hex bag under Dean’s desk at the back near the wall. She watched silently from a nearby cube as he arrived at his desk. He was humming and drinking a coffee from Joe’s Java Coffee House. He was so beautiful. She admired the shape of his back in his tailored shirt and his dark hair curling at the nape of his neck. He was simply delicious. He sat down at his computer and turned it on, opened his notebook and started checking his voicemail. Then he frowned and rubbed his forehead. Beth smiled. He stopped moving and stared at his screen. This is what she’d been waiting for.

  She drifted over to his desk. She had dressed very carefully this morning. Her black dress was tight and showed her slim figure off to great advantage. Her hair was a golden mass of scented waves. Dean stood up when he saw her and shook his head in confusion. She stood very close to him, looking up into his chocolate brown eyes. She put her hand on his arm and smiled, inviting him to hold her. She could see the internal struggle in his eyes as confusion warred with sparking interest as the spell wrapped around him and took hold. He took a deep breath and tried to step back, but he had caught her scent. Instead he gathered her in his arms and pressed her against him. He put his face in her hair and breathed in. She smelled like sunshine and grass after it was mowed. His favorite smells. So familiar…

  She laughed. They could never resist.

  Nathalie came by looking for Dean. She wanted to thank him for the coffee he had left for her. She stopped when she saw the scene at his desk and looked at Beth and Dean with horror. Again? Seriously? He can’t think she was okay with this even if Beth did throw herself at him.

  Angry and exasperated, Nathalie marched over. “What on earth is going on here?” she asked furiously.

  Dean looked at Nathalie and for a split second his desire for her was so strong he ached and instinctively pulled away from Beth…but then the feeling went away. He looked at her with irritation. “Go away, Nathalie. We’re busy.”

  Nathalie was dumbfounded.

  Beth twisted in Dean’s arms to look at Nathalie triumphantly and gave a throaty laugh while she ran her hands over Dean’s firm behind. “Yes, BUG. Disappear…before I squash you,” she said meanly.

  Nathalie looked around and realized that no one was paying attention, or cared, that Dean and Beth were behaving inappropriately. What is going on here? Nathalie wondered frantically. She took a deep breath. No one was looking, and she’d had enough.

  “I don’t think so,” Nathalie said, grabbing a fistful of Beth’s hair and yanking her out of Dean’s arms. Beth screeched in pain and outrage as she stumbled back. When she regained her balance she flew at Nathalie in a fury, trying to rake Nathalie’s face with her long, red nails. Nathalie slapped her hands away.

  “Keep those talons away from me, witch,” she said firmly. Nathalie grabbed Dean’s hand and tried to pull him away, but he hesitated and stumbled. When he righted himself he seemed confused and absent. Nathalie turned and grabbed Beth instead, but Beth just laughed and yanked her arm away. She was unnaturally strong for such a slight girl.

  “Tough luck, BUG. Sweet Dean has decided that he doesn’t want a cow for a girlfriend,” she hissed viciously.

  “Look, you scrawny little tramp. Don’t you dare touch him again!” Nathalie yelled, all her hurt and anger boiling up, and to her shock, sent her fist flying right into Beth’s mouth.

  Beth crumpled. Blood spurted from her lips and mouth and dripped down her chin. Nathalie was shocked at what she had done. She’d never hit anyone before. What on earth was wrong with her? She was crazed!

  But Beth just sat there and smiled, her teeth and lips covered in blood. Dean bent to help her up. They had finally drawn a crowd. “You’re in big trouble, Parker,” she said with vicious satisfaction.

  “This isn’t over,” Nathalie said. She took one last worried look at Dean and went to find Shaemus O’Malley. He’d put a stop to all this craziness. She looked behind her and Beth was just staring at her, a vicious glint in her eyes. Dean stood there rubbing his head, but his arm was around her shoulders and hers was around his waist. For the first time Nathalie noticed that Dean seemed to shimmer. No…more like he was covered with static. She turned and ran to Shaemus’ office.

  When she got there, he was out. “Is he coming back today?” Nathalie asked his assistant desperately.

  “Who knows?” Kelly said, sipping her coffee. “I understand he spends his nights dancing and drinking these days…not that he’s invited me,” she muttered. “Nor has he shown up for work in the last few weeks. But, he’s the boss, right? He can do whatever he wants…”

  “Oh.” Nathalie was crushed. She wanted some adult help.

  “Sorry, Nathalie. I’ll tell him you stopped by, if he decides to stop by,” she said bitterly.

  “Er, well, thank you. That would be appreciated.” Nathalie rushed on, “Are you okay, Kelly?” she asked. “You seem a little…tense.”

  “More like scorned,” she mumbled. “Nah, I’m fine, Nathalie. Just fine. Nothing some Irish whisky and a gun wouldn’t solve…a few shots of each should do the trick,” she said loudly, slamming her desk drawers and smashing her keyboard with her fingers.

  Nathalie backed out of the office and left. She prayed Kelly was just kidding.

  Nathalie avoided Dean for the rest of the day, but she watched in agony as Dean and Beth had lunch together. Beth was nursing a swollen mo
uth, but not even that made Nathalie feel better. After work she watched the new couple walk down East Road together towards Town Circle, holding hands. He was obviously walking her home. Nathalie was overwhelmed with hurt. She stood there frozen, throat sore from swallowing unshed tears as pain and fury rolled in her chest. She didn’t know what on earth was going on. What was she going to do?

  Town Circle

  Luke was heading to meet Sadie at The Rotunda for a quick dinner when he saw Dean holding hands with a strange girl that was not Nathalie. He looked at them in shock. What on earth is going on here? he wondered as he raced towards them.

  “Dean! Hey Dean, wait up!” Luke yelled across the square.

  Dean stopped and looked at Luke with irritation. Beth was frowning. Luke looked at Dean with surprise and disapproval. He ignored the girl.

  “Dean, may I have a word with you, in PRIVATE,” Luke said firmly. He had barely glanced at Beth because he was so focused on Dean, but she had quickly turned her back on him.

  “Not now Luke,” Dean said, turning away.

  Luke grabbed Dean’s arm. “I think RIGHT NOW is the perfect time,” Luke said through clenched teeth, staring at his buddy. “Would you excuse us, Miss…?”

  “Lacey. Bethiah Lacey,” she said stiffly, turning to look at him.

  “Ah, Miss Lacey. I need to borrow my friend. Perhaps he could meet you later?” Or never, Luke thought, glancing at her and giving her his most fake, yet charming, Barrington worthy smile. He had a moment of disorientation when he looked in her face, but he dismissed it as his eyes travelled to her split lip and then back to stare at Dean.

  Beth didn’t argue. She was desperate to be gone. She was in the presence of The Seer. Willow had warned her to stay away from Luke Barrington at all costs. The longer she stayed in his presence, the more likely his gift would manifest and expose her. Thank the stars he was distracted. She could feel his power. She yanked her hand out of Dean’s.

  “No problem,” she said hurriedly and nodded nervously. “I’ll meet you at my place later, Dean,” she said as she bolted away.