Shanna Swendson - Don't Hex with Texas

“Omigod, I just had the best idea,” she said as soon as I walked into the lobby. She opened the little gate that let me go behind the front desk as she kept talking. “I’m thinking we could put some potpourri in each of the guest rooms, have bagels and juice in the lobby, call it a bed-and-breakfast, and raise our rates by about twenty bucks a night.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “But who in their right mind would come to Cobb on purpose?”

She took a big bite of her burger, pausing to savor it. “That’s the genius of my idea. We hook up with the antiques stores in town, put together a brochure and a website, and advertise antiquing weekends.

We could also throw in a spa package. Do you think Kiki at the Kut ’n’ Kurl knows how to do facials?”

“More important—would anyone want a facial from a place called the Kut ’n’ Kurl?”

“Good point. I’ll give it some more thought.” I smiled, imagining it would probably get about as much thought as any of her previous wild schemes, which included theme-decorated rooms and taking the motel’s look back to its 1930s glory, complete with the metal lawn chairs she’d found on eBay. I recognized her impulse as the urge to do something bigger and better with her life than sit around in a small town and work for the family business. She wanted to stretch and grow, but she didn’t have an outlet for it. I knew the feeling. Not for the first time, I wondered if I’d made the right call leaving New York.

As I suspected, Nita was ready with a new plan before she finished her burger. “What do you say we take off and get out of here? We could get a place together in Dallas or Austin! I’m sure you and I could get jobs.” I looked at her expectantly. “Okay, so my dad might declare me no longer a member of the family, but I’m almost twenty-seven years old, so it’s not like he could bring me back forcefully, and I’m sure he’d get over it eventually, especially if I managed to find myself a nice Indian boy to marry, since it’s not like this town is crawling with them. I just know if I have to stay here one more second, I’m going to explode from boredom.”

“If you do, at least the explosion would give the rest of us something to talk about for a while.”

She threw a salt packet at me. “You know what I mean. What I don’t get is why you came back here.

You’d escaped. You were free! New York can’t have been so bad that you had to come back.”

Nita had been my friend forever, and I hated lying to her, but the existence of magic was a secret I wasn’t allowed to share. “Things got complicated,” was all I said.

“Then what do you think about going to Dallas, hmm?”

In the back of my mind, I hoped to move back to New York eventually. There wasn’t any particular reason why I had to live out my exile in Cobb, but it wouldn’t be fair to Nita to agree to move to Dallas with her, only to run back to New York at the first opportunity.

Fortunately, before I could come up with a way to say so without hurting her feelings, she was on to something else. Unfortunately, that something was me. “Now, really, what was it? Broken heart, love affair gone wrong? I know! You had a hot affair with your boss and had to leave your job when he dumped you for someone else, like Bridget Jones.” We’d had this conversation about once a week since I’d been back, and her theories were getting increasingly wilder. Her version of my life was starting to sound more exciting than the reality, even with all the magical warfare.

I looked away, trying to think of something I could say to distract her, and noticed the side window with plastic sheeting taped to it. “Is that what happened last night that spooked your brother?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. I was on duty, and I went into the back right before midnight to check something, then when I got back out here, the window was gone.”

“Was anything stolen?”

“Not that I could tell. The computer, TV, and cash were all here. I called Ramesh over, and he sent me home. He didn’t want me working alone at night if stuff like that was going on, so he switched shifts with me.”

“I guess you had a bit of cleanup work to do.”

“That’s the weird thing—there wasn’t any glass. No rocks or bricks inside, either. It was like someone just took the glass out of the window. Isn’t that spooky?”

“Yeah.” She had no idea how spooky it was. I’d actually seen something like that happen once before. Owen had zapped the glass out of a window when the restaurant we were in caught on fire and the doorway got jammed with people trying to escape. Somehow, though, I doubted that was what happened here. Not only were there no magical people in this part of the world, but nothing was missing, so why would someone even bother? “You know, it was probably some senior class prank, part of a scavenger hunt,” I said to reassure her.

“You’re right, but don’t tell Ramesh. I hate working nights, so this new arrangement is fine with me.

Well, I hate working here, period, but until my dad enters the twenty-first century and lets me move away, or until some nice Indian boy drops by to take me away from all this—or until you agree to run away with me—I’m stuck.”

I was afraid she’d go back to nagging me about why I’d left New York, but she didn’t. We chatted about how much we hated our current jobs until it was time to force myself to head back to the store.

Sherri hadn’t waited for me to get back from lunch before taking her own lunch break, but Beth, Teddy’s wife, had come to my rescue, ringing up customers with a baby on her hip. She flashed me a smile as I squeezed past her to get to the office, then once I’d put my purse away, I took the baby off her hands. Babysitting sounded a lot more pleasant to me at the moment than dealing with the store.

“Thanks,” I said when the minor rush subsided. “I guess Sherri was hungry.”

She rolled her eyes. “That girl needs a keeper.”

“That girl needs a jailer.”

“Ted said to let you know that the Internet access should be working now. Frank will be here in a moment for the afternoon shift, Dean’s MIA, as usual, your dad’s making a delivery, and Ted’s off checking his test crops.”

“So everything’s about as under control as you can get around here.”

“Exactly. So go sit down and catch up on paperwork. I’ve got the register if you’ll watch Lucy.”

Lucy was teething, so she tended to eat paperwork, along with anything else that came anywhere near her mouth, but it still sounded like a good trade-off to me. It was hard to concentrate on the bookkeeping, though, when all I could think about was Nita’s missing window. When Owen did that spell, the window had returned a while later. I wondered if that would happen this time. And then I reminded myself that it couldn’t be magic. We didn’t have magic around here. I was immune to magic and I’d never seen anything magical being hidden from other people. I’d discovered during my parents’ visit to New York last Thanksgiving that I’d inherited my magical immunity from my mother, and in her whole life in Cobb she’d never noticed anything that made her think of magic.

That was one of the reasons I’d come here when I needed to get away. It was the last place where my magical problems were likely to follow me.

“Katie!” Beth called from the front. Her voice was a lot more pleasant than Sherri’s screech.

“Someone’s here to see you.” I got the impression from the teasing singsong of her voice that whoever was there was male and good-looking. My heart rate went bonkers, and I could practically feel the adrenaline rushing into my system. I kept an extra-tight grip on Lucy as I stood, for fear my suddenly rubbery limbs wouldn’t be able to hold her.