Page 22 of Hex You

Hunter stared at her milkshake, suddenly wishing she was five years older and they were at a bar. “Your mom is telling the truth. I was doing blood magic, banishing Amphitrite from the garage apartment and from my body, when she walked in. I used another spell to clean up the mess and didn’t correct anyone when they said she was lying.” Her voice was flat, unflinching. The wash of tears and visions of Chuck, his warm blood on her hands and the way he’d slumped against the pavement like a wet paper bag, had drained the compassion from her tone.

It wasn’t fair, not to Jax. A part of her knew that. A part of her wanted his anger so she could focus on his needs and not her own.

Jax pulled his hand from hers and leaned back against the booth, his throat tightening with a thick swallow. “People are saying she’s crazy. My dad called six psychologists, and the whole time you knew she was right.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Jesus, Hunter!” He stared at Hunter as if trying to find a way to understand why she’d let so many people think his mother was crazy for so long. Why she hadn’t even toldhimthe truth. Whatever he was searching for in Hunter’s face, it clearly wasn’t there, because he snatched his phone off the table and got to his feet. “I can’t even look at you right now.”

Her chin quivered and another slow leak of tears slid down her cheeks.I’m sorry!she mouthed, but only the gentle cracks of a whimper escaped her lips.

Feet from the exit, the door to Shake It flew open in front of him, the bells above it seeming to clang instead of chime.

The scent of fresh grapefruit hit Hunter, bringing goose bumps to her arms. “Hunter Goode, you traitorous bitch!”

The diners turned to face Hunter as Kylie stormed past Jax, her hair swirling around her shoulders in a whirlwind of glossy red as the closing door forced in a gust of warm air. “I turn my back for five seconds and you try to go after my man?”

Hunter wiped her cheeks as anxiety flew from her lips in a burst of laughter.

“Why are you laughing?” Kylie screeched, her hazel eyes brimming with tears. “We’re supposed to be friends.”

Hunter swallowed. Jax was right. There was something very wrong with Kylie York.

“Wearefriends.”

“Friends don’t take another friend’s boyfriend!” Kylie hissed, her clenched fists brushing the hem of her Mustang-red practice shorts.

Jax’s forehead creased with worry as he gingerly placed his hand on Kylie’s shoulder. “You know Hunter and I are just friends.”

Kylie whirled around, and their audience shifted uncomfortably as she channeled her rage at her innocent boyfriend. “Oh, like I’d ever believe you. You skipped practice to meet her.Behind my back.”

He snatched his hand from her shoulder, his expression hardening, as unreadable as stone. “I skipped practice because I didn’t want to deal with team bullshit. My mom has been an even bigger wreck since finding Julie Stoll’s body, and Hunter—” His hands were fists now, too.

“Hunter what?” Kylie demanded with a stomp of her red-and-white sneaker.

He walked backward toward the exit, chest puffed, chin lifted. “You two work it out.”

Another chime of the bells, and he was gone.

“Jax!” Hunter and Kylie shouted in unison.

Kylie spun back around to face Hunter, her cheeks nearly as red as the strawberry lengths of her hair.

“You don’t get to say his name!” she shouted, and swiped Jax’s discarded shake from the table. “He’s mine, not yours!” With a flick of her wrist, soupy chocolate flew from the glass.

It coated Hunter’s face and slid in thick globs down her chin, splattering against her T-shirt.

Gasps and murmurs flew around them while Hunter groped the table for the napkins.

Hunter flinched as Kylie slammed the empty glass onto the table. “People—thesepeople—”

Hunter wiped her eyes and stared at Kylie’s outstretched arm, her long finger pointing at the patrons of Shake It.

“They’re all saying that you’re the reason bad things keep happening. I haven’t believed them, but I see now that they’re right.” In a burst of grapefruit, she whirled around and stormed out of Shake It.

Hunter buried her sticky face in her sticky hands. She didn’t care that people now whispered about her, about Jax, witches, and murder or that Alex had accidentally flung mop water all over her bare legs and patches of skin revealed by her strappy sandals. Hunter just wanted to melt onto the floor like Jax’s milkshake and get absorbed by the dirty cotton ropes of the mop head. She should leave Goodeville, disappear into the crowds of tourists boarding the commuter trains to head back to their real lives after a weekend in the quaint town, and start a real life of her own.

EIGHT

After Nure-Onna had embraced and drained the mortal woman at the lake, she was languid and filled with the sweet warmth of mortal blood for the first time in centuries. Lazily, she’d swam to a deserted area across the lake and slithered onto the rocky bank, where she’d stretched her serpentine body to bask in the fading sunlight. Flushed with borrowed mortal heat, the enormous viper had dozed amid the sun-warmed rocks until she had been interrupted by the garish sounds of mortal hysteria at the discovery of the body of the discarded woman.

Nure-Onna had raised herself to her full height. Her small, heavy-lidded eyes had flashed red as she stared across the lake at the mortal pandemonium. She’d imagined diving deep and swimming to the shore where they had already covered the woman’s corpse. She would’ve loved to have surged from the depths of the lake to attack the mortals. First, she would’ve slashed them with her poisonous fangs and then, as their bodies succumbed to her toxin, she would have drained them all dry. As she’d readied herself to dive and thenstrike, the creature had swept back her long, dark hair and noticed that her arm had changed color from porcelain to slate. More surprised than disturbed, she had studied her serpent body. Her beautiful scales, usually the turquoise and jade that reflected the waters that surround Kyushu, the island of her birth, had also shifted to different shades of sickly grays. It was then she had realized that even though she had been so recently filled with fresh mortal blood, she was feeling increasingly weak and dizzy.