Shanna Swendson - Don't Hex with Texas

“Can we get ice cream to go and then take a walk? I’d like to check out that creek with the walking path alongside it.”

“Sure. I recommend the brownie Blizzard.”

We were watching the girl behind the counter make our ice cream treats when Dean came in. Every female head in the place turned to watch him. I usually didn’t notice it, since he was my brother, but he was almost as good-looking as Owen. “Why, if it isn’t my baby sister,” he said, grabbing me in a one-armed hug and kissing the top of my head. “Looks like you escaped for the evening. And this must be that boyfriend I’ve heard so much about. Hi, I’m Dean, the middle brother.”

I wormed my way out of his grasp and introduced them.

Dean held out his hand for Owen to shake. “Welcome. We’re glad you’re here. We may torture you some to make sure you’re good enough for our little Katie, but it’s just a formality. It’s rare enough for her to get a guy that we don’t want to risk scaring him off—unless he needs to be scared off.”

“Dean!” I protested, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Just kidding, Kitty-Kat. You know I love you. Say, are you two here for dinner?” I suspected Dean was really angling for an invitation to join us for dinner that would result in someone else paying for his meal.

“Sorry, brother of mine, but we just ate. And now we’re on our way out, since it looks like our Blizzards are ready. But don’t worry, Mom is planning to kill the fatted calf and throw a huge shindig tomorrow to celebrate the fact that I have a live one on the hook, so you can grill Owen then.”

Owen handed me one of the cups of ice cream that had just been put on the counter for us. “It was nice meeting you, Dean,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll talk later.” Once we’d strolled out of the parking lot and were heading down the sidewalk to the park, he said, “I get the feeling he’s not as nice as he seems. You really tensed up around him.”

“Wow, you are good. Actually, he’s not bad. He just tries to slide by on charm rather than bothering to develop any other skills. He makes Rod look like a rank amateur. We got along fine growing up, but I think his wife has been a bad influence on him. He might have made something of himself if she hadn’t been so much like him.”

“His wife was Sherri, right? The blonde in the tight clothes?”

“Hey, you may not need that chart, after all.”

“I’d still like it before the big family dinner—names and relationships annotated.”

“Okay, I’ll get to work on it. Now, what was it you wanted to see down by the creek?”

“The sense of magic is stronger here.”

“Really? So we’re not entirely empty of magic?”

“No place is entirely empty of magic. There’s just more magic in some places than in others. In this area, the magic is concentrated in a few spots, including areas around running water. The power comes from the earth rather than from the atmosphere, so it’s highly localized and more difficult to draw upon.” At the creek bank he bent over the water, holding a hand out with his eyes halfway closed. He dipped his hand into the water and let it flow around him for a while, then stood up, shaking the water from his hand. Then he went over to a nearby tree and put a hand against it.

I ate my ice cream as I watched him. “Is there something I could help you find?” I asked him after a while when he seemed to have forgotten I was there. It looked like he’d gone back to being distant.

Or maybe he was focusing on work, I reminded myself. After all, he hadn’t come just to see me.

“Did you ever see anything unusual around here?”

“I’ve told you, I saw nothing to do with magic until I came to New York. Was there something in particular I should have seen?”

He continued looking around, nudging clumps of grass with his foot and poking into bushes. “Any unfamiliar creatures? Or were there any local stories about seeing something odd down here at night?”

“Creatures? You mean like fairies and stuff?”

“Not quite like you’ve seen before. These would be wilder. There may be a few isolated species in the area.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen any, and I used to play down here all the time.”

“Did you ever come down here after dark or during twilight?”

“No. It was a big make-out spot back in my school days, which left me out, and now I hear it’s where kids go to drink and use drugs.”

“Then you wouldn’t have seen anything.”

“I guess it would explain all of my grandmother’s talk about the wee folk. It also says something about how she must have spent her youth if she was here to see them. Go, Granny!”

He looked around some more, and I wondered if I should have been helping, but he hadn’t responded to my offer of help, so I left him to it since I had no clue what he hoped to see. “They may not be here anymore,” he said at last. “The drinkers and drug users might have driven them away. They’d have been drawn by the auras of the lovers, but the drinkers have a more negative energy.”

“What good would it do to find these creatures?”

“They could be allies. They also might have seen something that could help us. It was just a thought, since we don’t have much to go on.”

“I guess we could always get a few of those candles, set them up around the house, and then get Mom to throw a big open house and invite the whole town.”

“Hold on to that idea. We may need it later.”

“Do you have any ideas about any of our suspects?”

“Not really. And there’s always a chance that it’s someone you don’t know.”

“There aren’t too many people around here that I don’t know. This isn’t the kind of town people move to on purpose.”

“I think it’s a nice town. It’s like something out of an old movie.”

“Yeah, lost in time, that’s us. We’re the Texas version of Brigadoon. And now we even have the magic to go with it. So, what do we do next?”

“We wait for our wizard to make another move and see if that tells us anything.”

We walked back to the Dairy Queen where his car was parked. Dean’s flashy new truck was still outside, and I felt a tiny bit guilty about being relieved when he didn’t come out while we were there.

The relief grew stronger when I noticed Sherri’s little convertible parked nearby. If she’d joined him for dinner, I really didn’t want to run into the two of them.

That desire grew even stronger when I looked through the windows into the restaurant and saw Sherri and Dean yelling at each other, having yet another one of their very public fights. “Uh-oh,” I said.

“You may have to move into the other guest room tonight, unless Dean doesn’t mind using Frank’s old room.”

“Why?”

“He and his wife are at it again. They do this all the time. They have a big fight, then she kicks him out. A few days later they make up and start all over again. I guess it works for them, but it sounds like hell to me.”

We got home and chatted a little with Mom and Dad, then Owen called it a night. I stayed downstairs to get the interrogation over with. Mom barely waited until he was at the top of the stairs before she started in on me. “Why didn’t you say anything about him?” she demanded.

“Well, the last guy I dated didn’t stick around too long, so I didn’t want to say anything this time before I knew for sure where we stood. His visit here was a complete surprise.” Pretty much all of that was the truth, more or less.

“But to come all this way, just to see you! He must really like you. Or is there something else going on?” She elbowed Dad. “What do you think, Frank?”

Dad moved his attention briefly from the television. “He seems like a nice enough kid. But maybe you should wait awhile before booking the church. Don’t want to get ahead of yourself.” Then he went back to watching people sift through crime scene evidence.