The Ex Hex (Ex Hex #1)
Erin Sterling
Dedication
To Sandra Brown, Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, Judith McNaught and Amanda Quick, the writers who made me want to be a romance novelist when I was twelve. It took thirty years, but I’m finally here!
Prologue
Never mix vodka and witchcraft.
Vivi knew that. Not only had her aunt Elaine said it about a thousand times, but it was also printed on dish towels and T-shirts and, ironically, shot glasses in Something Wicked, the store Aunt Elaine ran in downtown Graves Glen, Georgia.
It might’ve actually been the closest thing the Jones family had to a family motto.
But, Vivi reasoned as she sank deeper into the bathtub and took another slurp of the vodka and cranberry concoction her cousin Gwyn had made her, there had to be exceptions for broken hearts.
And hers currently felt very thoroughly broken. Shattered maybe. Little bitty pieces of heart, rattling around in her chest, all because she got sucked in by a cute accent and a pair of very blue eyes.
Sniffling, she flicked her fingers again, filling the air with the smell of Rhys’s cologne, something citrusy and spicy that she’d never managed to put her finger on, but had clearly imprinted on her brain enough that her magic could just summon it up.
Even now, slumped in Gwyn’s claw-foot tub, she could remember how that scent made her head spin when she buried her face against his chest, how warm his skin had been.
“Vivi, not again!” Gwyn called from the bedroom. “It’s giving me a headache!”
Vivi slid farther into the water, letting it slosh over the sides of the tub, nearly extinguishing one of the candles she’d put around the rim.
Another one of Aunt Elaine’s lessons—the best cure for anything was candles and a bath, and even though Vivi had put plenty of rosemary and handfuls of pink salt in the water, lit just about every candle Gwyn owned, she wasn’t feeling any better.
Although the vodka was helping, she allowed, leaning over to take another sip through the bright purple crazy straw.
“Let me live!” she called back once she’d drained the glass, and Gwyn stuck her head around the door, pink hair swinging over her shoulders.
“My darling, I adore you, but you dated the guy for three months.”
“We’ve only been broken up for nine hours,” Vivi said, not adding that it was actually nine hours and thirty-six minutes, almost thirty-seven. “I get at least another fifteen hours before I have to stop sulking. It’s in the rule book.”
Gwyn rolled her eyes. “This is why I told you not to date Witch Boys,” she said. “Especially Penhallow Witch Boys. Those assholes may have founded this town, but they’re still fucking Witch Boys.”
“Fucking Witch Boys,” Vivi agreed, looking sadly at her empty glass as Gwyn disappeared back into the bedroom.
Vivi was still a lot newer to the whole witch thing than Gwyn. While her cousin had grown up with Aunt Elaine, a happily practicing witch, Vivi’s own mom, Elaine’s sister, had kept her witchery under wraps. It was only after she’d died and Vivi had gone to live with Elaine and Gwyn that she’d started tapping into this side of herself.
Which meant she hadn’t known about Witch Boys and how meeting one at a Solstice Revel on a warm summer night could be both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to you.
Lifting her hand, Vivi wiggled her fingers, and after a moment, a hazy, wavering image rose above the water.
The face was handsome, all good bone structure, dark hair, twinkling eyes and rakish grin.
Vivi scowled at it before flicking her hand again, sending a miniature tidal wave up out of the bath to splash down, the face vanishing in a shower of sparks.
Would’ve been nice if she could’ve erased his memory just as easily, but even in her sad and vodka-soaked state, Vivi knew better than to mess around with that kind of magic. And a couple of those little pieces of her heart didn’t want to forget the past three months, wanted to hold on to the memory of that night they’d met, the musical way he’d said her name, always Vivienne, never Vivi, how that first night he’d asked, May I kiss you? and she’d said, Now? and he’d smiled that slow smile and said, Now is preferable, but I’m open to whatever your schedule allows, and how was any woman supposed to resist that? Especially a nineteen-year-old one at her first Solstice Revel? Especially when the man saying those words was tall and ridiculously handsome, and Welsh?
It was illegal, was what it was, and she was going to lodge some kind of complaint with the Witches Council as soon as she—
“Vivi!” Gwyn yelled from the bedroom. “You’re making the lights flicker.”
Oops.
Sitting up, Vivi pulled the plug in Gwyn’s tub, hoping some of her misery was swirling down the drain with the water.
She carefully stepped over the candles, and pulled the robe Gwyn had lent her off the hook on the wall, feeling a little bit better as she tightened the black silk belt around her waist. This was why she’d come to Elaine and Gwyn’s cabin in the woods high up in the mountains above Graves Glen instead of back to her dorm room at the college. Up here in this cozy little space with its candles and cats, every room smelling like woodsmoke and herbs, Vivi was home.
Maybe she and Gwyn could do face masks or something. Have another drink or five. Listen to Taylor Swift.