Shanna Swendson - Don't Hex with Texas

Owen didn’t need any encouraging to get out of the store. As we settled into his rental car, he said, “I see you moved to New York for the peace and quiet.”

I laughed, and the strange tension between us eased. “I’ve missed you,” I said. I might have hugged him, but he was driving and I had the strangest fear that he’d dissolve into a magical mist if I broke the spell by touching him.

“Which way do I go?”

I directed him back through town toward our house, trying not to feel stung by the way he’d ignored what I’d said. “You’re probably going to regret staying with us. You’d have been much safer, and you’d have had more privacy to work if you’d gotten a room at the motel.”

“It didn’t sound like I had much of a choice.”

“No, you probably didn’t. She might have kidnapped you from the motel. Then again, it might not have been such a good idea to give her any sense that we might be involved.”

“How else were you going to explain me being here? It doesn’t look like there’s much to do here on business, and it’s not a tourist center. The only reasonable explanation for my presence is if I’m your boyfriend.”

It was the first time he’d ever used the b-word with me, but it wasn’t the best context for it. This was definitely not the way I’d imagined our reunion. Of course, I’d tended to picture us running toward each other across a flower-dotted mountain meadow or him walking into the store, sweeping me off my feet and carrying me away, so my ideas of the reunion were highly unlikely. Still, even my sanest, most rational versions of the reunion fantasy had been nothing like this. I’d been rather partial to the one where I secretly went back to New York, then showed up at a meeting at work as though nothing had happened, much to his shock and delight.

I’d had a lot of time for daydreaming over the past few months, and I’d spent it well.

“Okay,” I said, nodding as though we were agreeing on a business deal. “You’re my boyfriend here to visit me from New York. How do we explain the fact that I’ve never said anything about you?”

“You haven’t?”

“You met my mother. Would you tell her anything?”

“Probably not.”

“And you thought your folks were scary.” His foster parents had been a little intimidating, but they weren’t likely to give anyone a nervous breakdown, unlike my family.

“I guess I must have broken your heart, which sent you running back home to your family, and you kept it a secret because you didn’t want pity for your heartbreak.”

“But that still makes you sound like a bad guy, if you broke my heart so badly that I had to run home.

That wouldn’t go over well with my brothers, and that would certainly get in the way of you getting any work done. How about something closer to the truth, that we’d just started getting to know each other when I had to leave because of work, and then you realized how much you missed me and came to see me?”

“That works, too. Okay, let’s go with that one.” Great, I could finally call him my boyfriend, and it wasn’t even for real. Fate could be really cruel sometimes.

I pointed him toward the road to our house, and it was silent in the car for a long moment. “It was the exact opposite, you know. I mean, about you breaking my heart,” I said softly.

“I know.” I had a feeling there were layers of meaning in those two words. It kind of sounded like he meant that I wasn’t the one whose heart had been broken.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was trying to help you.” He didn’t respond to that, and I chewed on my lower lip the rest of the way to our house. When I spoke again, it was to direct him to turn in at the driveway and then park in back.

As he got out of the car, he looked admiringly at the house. “Wow. And you were impressed by my house,” he said. Our house was a rambling Victorian farmhouse with wraparound porches.

“It’s just a farmhouse,” I said.

“Is that a historic marker?”

“Anything in Texas that survives more than a few years is considered historic and gets a marker. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that my grandmother has one tattooed somewhere on her body.”

He took a small suitcase and something that looked like an oversized briefcase out of the trunk, and I led him through the pack of curious dogs into the house through the kitchen door. “I’d bring you in properly through the front door, but I’m honestly not sure it opens anymore. We never use it. I think I’ll put you in Dean and Teddy’s old room.” We went up the stairs, and I guided him to the largest bedroom, which had two twin beds and lots of science fair trophies in it. “It’s not our usual guest room, but it has the advantage of being easy to escape from.”

He looked out the window. “Onto the porch roof, then onto the tree branch and down the tree?”

“You got it.”

“Is there a problem with the stairs that makes this necessary?”

“They squeak like crazy, worse even than that spot in the hallway at your folks’ place, and it’s several steps in a row, so you can’t just skip the squeaky ones. Mom and Dad’s room is right by the stairs, so no one can get up or down those stairs without being caught.”

“With four kids—and three of them boys—I bet your parents kept them that way on purpose.”

“Exactly. I’m still not sure Mom and Dad know about the escape route, and boy, did Dean make use of it. The one downside of putting you in this room is that Dean’s the one most likely to need it. He still moves back home every so often, but he can take Frank’s old room if Sherri kicks him out while you’re here.”

“Complicated relationship?”

“Don’t ask. Now, there are a couple of bathrooms off the hall here, and there’s one downstairs under the stairs. Mom will tell you to make yourself at home and get anything you want to eat or drink from the kitchen, but she’ll spend the entire time trying to force food on you, so that probably won’t be an issue. And now before the whole mob gets here, we should probably talk. The store closes at six today, so that holds off most of the family, but Mom could be back sooner. She’s probably making the rounds to let everyone know about her future son-in-law, so we have a little time. However, my grandmother could show up at any moment.”

He blanched a bit at my recitation of family likely to invade us, and I could tell that he was reconsidering the offer to stay with us. He sat on one of the room’s twin beds, braced his hands on his knees, and asked, “You haven’t had any more encounters with our suspect, have you?”

I thought I detected a hint of worry in his eyes. “No, nothing since the other night, and I still don’t think that was targeting me, specifically, for who I am. You don’t attack a magical immune with an illusion.” I fought back a shudder. “For all I know, the guy was flirting with me. What’s Sam found out? I haven’t talked to him since Wednesday night.”

He went into professional mode, the way he was in meetings at work when he seemed to disconnect his emotions from the situation. “Sam observed the suspect over the course of two days. He hasn’t been able to identify the suspect yet, so we may have to confront him or her directly.”

“So, magical duel on Main Street?”

“Not if I can avoid it. I’d rather have a friendly chat about the responsible use of magic and the need to be registered centrally, then see if I can use him to get to Idris. If he or she isn’t receptive to that, then I might have to take other measures. Having power means you have to abide by the code, whether or not you know about it.”

“I guess this means some detective work for us, huh?” I felt my spirits lifting at the thought of it, and I realized how bored I’d been away from the magical world.