Page 23 of Hex You

Ah, I understand. I may visit but not overstay in this realm of living mortals.Nure-Onna dove deep into the lake to easily avoid prying eyes as she retraced her watery journey from the lake to the creek that washed past the weeping cherry tree, which held the entrance to the World of Darkness.

Reluctantly Nure-Onna had slithered from the stream and followed her trail of slime to the newly opened hole in the rotting tree. She had reentered the tunnel and returned to her realm, but Nure-Onna would be back… lesson learned. Next time, she would be wiser.

NINE

Hunter ditched her bike in the front yard and ran up the porch steps, bursting into the house in a cloud of syrupy-sweet coconut milk. She raced up the stairs, thankful Mercy, Khenti, and Xena had already left, and she wouldn’t have to explain her appearance or what she was about to do. Her talk with Jax had made it clear that simply confessing wasn’t enough. She needed to fully rid herself of Amphitrite and focus on getting her life back on track.

She reached her room and shucked off her T-shirt, still soggy with chocolate shake, and tossed it into her overflowing hamper before pulling a face wipe from the pack on her bedside table and scrubbing the sticky mess from her skin.

Even though Amphitrite was gone, Hunter wasn’t completely free. She wouldn’t be until every piece of the sea goddess was erased from this realm.

Her fingers traced the bubblegum-pink bumpy scar against her pale stomach. “I guess some things will always be here.” She chewedthe inside of her cheek. “It’s a reminder. Never let power turn you into someone you’re not.”

Hunter threw open her closet door and pulled another tee from the hanger before yanking her luggage from deep within the closet’s shadowed corners. She didn’t stop, didn’t think, only acted. She unzipped the duffle and reached into the cavernous black interior. The spellbook was no longer puppy-ear soft, alive, and pulsing beneath her fingers. Its cover, once reddish pink with blood, was now dull and lifeless, the watery brown of a coffee stain. She opened the cover as rough as sandpaper and thumbed through the pages. They crunched beneath her fingers like fall leaves.

The book was dead.

Hunter ripped out the only page she still needed and shoved theWANTspell into her back pocket before tucking the book under her arm and dashing back down the stairs. She jogged toward the back door, pausing in the kitchen to gather the lighter fluid and long lighter from the grilling accoutrements section of their pantry.

The afternoon air was still and thick. The kind of weather that makes the earth feel as if it’s stopped spinning. Hunter swiped the sweat from her brow as she ran to the old Goode graveyard nestled behind the Goode house. The place where her mother and grandmother were buried along with all the ancestresses before them.

The wrought-iron gate opened with acreak,and Hunter didn’t bother to close it as she ran through the maze of headstones, her sandals slapping against her soles with each rushed footstep.

She came to a stop at the iron firepit in the center of the cemetery.

“You were never mine,” she said to the spellbook as she tossed it into the pit and doused it with lighter fluid. “Go back to hell.” She touched the lighter to the book’s crisp cover and pulled the trigger. The only power Hunter needed was her own.

Flames engulfed the spellbook, and its curling, black pages sent a flutter of satisfaction up her spine.

As she turned her back to the blaze and headed toward her next duty at the cherry tree, her hand shot into the air, her middle finger extended to the memory of the vanquished goddess.

TEN

Goodeville was awash in hate for the foolish young witch who had banished the sea goddess’s body from this realm. If the pliability of most of the townspeople’s opinions of Hunter Goode been a meal, Amphitrite would have been more than satiated.

Her laughter cracked through the air like shattering glass as she glided like a wispy cloud above Main Street.

The witch doesn’t know what she has done or who I have awakened.

The goddess swirled over the high school and finally dipped down beneath the boughs of the fetid cherry tree.

Shewas next—the creature Amphitrite’s wisdom and cunning had thought to call forth before her run-in with that pubescent mortal.

Amphitrite admired the streams of ichor that ran like silvery veins from the dark hole in the base of the guardian tree. The creature was already awake, active. No doubt, she had begun to feed.

Had she a true form, Amphitrite would wrap her azure fingers around the ripples of otherworldly energy that seeped from the hole like smoke and pull, yanking the bloodthirsty beast from her hiding place.

A spark of anger crackled within Amphitrite, and waves of heat shimmered from her fog-like form. She stretched and flexed, gathering power from the droplets of water resting in the clouds. She didn’t need a body. She only needed her magic.

“Creature from the Underworld

Come forth, come forth, come forth.

Through water, you are bound to me.

Come forth, come forth, come forth.

By ocean, rain, and river