All my hexes, p.1
All My Hexes, page 1
All My Hexes
Leigh Landry
ALL MY HEXES
Copyright © 2022 by Leigh Landry
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by Viano Oniomoh at designedbyvee.com
Contents
1. Crystal
2. Erin
3. Crystal
4. Erin
5. Crystal
6. Erin
7. Crystal
8. Erin
9. Crystal
10. Erin
11. Crystal
12. Erin
13. Crystal
14. Erin
15. Crystal
Epilogue
Also by Leigh Landry
About Leigh Landry
Chapter 1
Crystal
A quick scan of the serving tray filled with green and purple frosted cupcakes revealed they were all covered in silver sprinkles. But one was missing the most important bit of decoration.
Crystal pointed at a green-frosted cupcake in the back that was short a pair of candy eyeballs. “I need one more set of eyes. Stat!”
Her niece, Tilly, rushed in with her blonde space buns bouncing and a serious expression on her face. She carried her stuffed frog in one hand and two more candy eyeballs in the other. Tilly nestled the eyeballs into the green frosting.
“There,” she said, holding both hands and Mr. Hops-A-Lot in the air. “Monster cupcake saved!”
Crystal held up her own hand, and Tilly high-fived it.
“Thank you. Excellent assisting today.”
“You’re welcome,” Tilly said. “What’s next?”
Crystal checked her list. “Witch’s Brew Punch. We can grab everything and pour it when your friend gets here. What time are they coming?”
“Should be here in less than an hour,” Jenn said, swooping in to grab a banana from the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter. She wore teal scrubs and her straight blonde hair was slicked back in a ponytail. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”
“Am I sure I’m okay with pumpkin carving?” Crystal scoffed. “I am always okay with pumpkin carving.”
“You did always like that disgusting mess, didn’t you?” Her sister peeled the banana and took a big bite.
Crystal looked down at Tilly. “Did she just call our pumpkins disgusting?”
They both opened their mouths and put a hand to their hearts in matching mock horror.
“Not Jack,” Tilly said, dramatically wrapping her arms around the gigantic pumpkin on the table.
Jenn slipped her backpack on one shoulder, ready for a long shift in the E.R. “You two have fun. But not too much. I don’t want to come back to this place looking like a frat house.”
“What’s a frat house?”
“Never mind.” Jenn kissed Tilly on the head.
“I’ll tell you later.” Crystal winked at Tilly. “We have big plans to make a huge mess and forget to clean it up.”
Jenn raised her brow at her sister but said nothing. She gave the familiar look she’d given since they were kids, back when Jenn was in charge while their mom worked her own long nursing shifts.
Crystal couldn’t help teasing Jenn a bit more. “We’ll be sure to use glitter.”
“Lots of glitter,” Tilly agreed.
Jenn gave her sister a look of desperate pleading since her threatening glares weren’t working.
Crystal laughed. “I’m kidding. Your house will be pristine once again when we’re finished. I promise.”
“Thank you.” Jenn headed out the door and blew Tilly another kiss. “Love you! Have fun! See you in the morning.”
As sad as she’d been initially about leaving Texas that summer and the disastrous reason for her exit, Crystal was glad she could stay at Jenn’s house for a while. And not just for the free lodging. The timing worked out perfectly, since Tilly’s dad had been getting ready to leave for a long tour with his band. He normally arranged his rehearsals and studio time so he could stay home with Tilly when she didn’t have school and Jenn was at work. But this tour had thrown a wrench in their scheduling just when Crystal was slinking home with her tail between her legs.
The best part, though, was getting lots of time with her niece.
Access to a fabulous kitchen for testing out her new business venture was a nice bonus, too.
The door closed behind Jenn, and Crystal looked down at Tilly. “Okay, what’s next?”
“Make a gigantic mess?”
Crystal laughed again. The kid was hilarious. Always had been. Crystal swore her niece had been born with a stand-up routine prepped in her tiny baby brain. “Besides that.”
“You said we can’t do punch yet.”
“Right. And we did the cupcakes and brought out the carving kits.” Crystal surveyed the table and assessed the mess-containing supplies. She had a cheap vinyl tablecloth, a roll of paper towels, giant metal spoons for scooping, and big plastic bowls to hold the innards. Planning ahead for a mess instead of winging the clean-up was not Crystal’s usual style, but Jenn was apparently rubbing off on her. “What other snacks do we need to grab?”
Tilly thought for a moment, tapping a finger with chipped purple polish against her chin. “Oh! Pretzels. Mom always puts out pretzels for us.”
“Do you know where they are?”
Crystal followed Tilly to the cabinet and reached onto the top shelf Tilly pointed at. She had to stand on her own tiptoes to reach them.
“Why don’t you use magic for that?” Tilly asked when Crystal nearly fell over, trying to regain her balance coming down from her toes.
“That’s not how my particular type of magic works.” Crystal handed Tilly the bag of pretzels and hoped that answer would satisfy her. She didn’t want to get into the difference between telekinesis and her magical flavor of blessings and curses. And even if she could move those pretzels with her mind, she was on a magical hiatus for at least another few hours. She doubted her sponsor would believe that pretzels on a high shelf were a justifiable emergency.
“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” Tilly hugged the bag and said, “If I had magic, I’d use it all the time. For everything.”
Yeah. That was the problem. The whole reason Crystal wasn’t using her magic at all lately.
“Sometimes,” Crystal explained, “we can have too much of a good thing. Kind of like how mom will make me cut you off tomorrow night so you don’t eat too much candy.”
Tilly frowned. “When I’m a grownup, I’m going to eat all the candy.”
Crystal pointed at the cabinet and attempted to change the subject again. “Do you remember the ingredients for the punch? Let’s grab those while we’re in here and set them up for later.”
Tilly called out a few things she remembered, pointing to them in the cabinet one by one for Crystal to grab. Crystal reminded her of the ones she forgot and grabbed those, too. They carried everything back to the table and poured the pretzels into a big serving bowl.
“Aunt Crystal, when will I know if I have magic like you or not?”
“In a few years, probably.” Powers manifested around puberty for the people in their family. That had certainly been the case for Crystal. Not the best timing to have your entire identity upended while also going through a hormonal cyclone, but that’s the way it went. “But if you do have it, you might not have the same kind of magic as me.”
“Mom told me that,” Tilly said. “She said a few years, too. But I was hoping you had a better answer.”
“Sorry, kiddo. And patience is one of those things grownups have to have too.”
“Like how you have to have patience to find a new girlfriend?”
Crystal choked on a piece of pretzel she’d just started chomping on. She coughed it loose and poured some ginger ale from the punch ingredients to wash it down. “Did your mom tell you that, too?”
“I asked if you had a boyfriend, and she told me you like girls but don’t have a girlfriend either.”
“That’s right,” Crystal said.
“Do you want one?”
“I’ve had enough dating for a while. Taking a break since I moved back here. Besides, being single gives me lots of time to hang out with you.”
Tilly grinned at that answer. Then she tilted her head, and Crystal braced herself for the inevitable follow-up.
“Did you have a lot of girlfriends before you moved? Did you have any here before you left?”
The kid was brutal. Crystal admired her curiosity and desire to learn stuff, but it wasn’t always convenient. Especially when it was picking at fresh scabs.
“All my exes are in Texas, kid,” Crystal said. “Just a few, though. I wouldn’t call the number a lot.”
“But it would be okay if it was a lot, right?”
Crystal smiled at her niece and imagined the conversation with Jenn that must have spurred this response from Tilly. Crystal and her sister were different in so many ways, but they shared plenty of core values. That made it easier to help with Tilly without clashing over life lessons Crystal might impart.
“Definitely,” she confirmed to her niece. “There’s no right number to how many people it’s acceptable to
Tilly tilted her head as if she was processing that information, then gave a curt nod.
“Can I give Stout a treat?”
Grateful for a Stout break from this line of questioning, Crystal reached into the bowl of peanut butter biscuits they’d baked earlier that morning. “Just one. He already had his share of taste testing earlier.”
Chapter 2
Erin
Erin turned left into a new-to-her subdivision, while her little brother bounced in the back seat.
“This is it!” Aiden said, confirming he’d directed her into the right neighborhood.
Erin wasn’t familiar with this newish corner of the city, but the neighborhood was like all the other newly constructed areas—single-floor homes with tiny, wood-fenced backyards and a baby crepe myrtle or river birch near each mailbox. It resembled many of the neighborhoods in Dallas, except these houses were missing the hidden alleys for parking and garbage collection between streets.
Aside from the sheer size difference of the cities, Baton Rouge wasn’t as different from Dallas as she’d expected when she first visited several years back. Dallas had more big corporate offices and bigger roadways, while Baton Rouge had more political veins running through it, but both were jam-packed with chain stores and restaurants and lacked some of the characteristic heart of their respective states.
And both lacked any sense of autumn-ness, even at the end of October. Almost everything was still green instead of the warm fall palette Erin longed for this time of year.
Her mom and stepdad had moved to Louisiana to start their new practice together just after Erin’s half-brother, Aiden, was born. She would visit a couple times a year, but Erin never explored Baton Rouge during those visits and wasn’t familiar with this area.
“Turn here,” Aiden said, pointing at a stop sign.
“Which direction?”
“That way.” He pointed left. “All the way to the next road.”
Erin turned as directed. “Quick refresher for me. Your friend’s name is?”
“Tilly.”
“Tilly. Got it,” Erin said, committing it to memory. “And her mom?”
“Her mom had to work.” Aiden grinned and looked sideways at her behind the wheel. In a sing-song voice, he added, “But her aunt will be there.”
Great. The kid had inherited the meddling gene from their mother. Except he was missing the years of therapy training to make it at least seem subtle.
“Not sure why you think that’s super relevant information. It just means there will be a different adult than I expected.” Erin decided not to wait for elaboration on his reasoning. “What’s this aunt’s name?”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “But she’s your age.”
Most of the kids in his class had parents closer to Erin’s age than their mom’s age. Their mom had remarried and had Aiden in her forties, so she was usually closer to most of his friends’ grandparents’ age than their young, first-time parents’ age.
“Why does that matter?”
As far as Aiden and the rest of her family knew, Erin was only here for the weekend. There shouldn’t be any point in pushing potential long-distance dating prospects on her.
Never mind that she was secretly hiding out in Baton Rouge for Halloween weekend while she licked her wounds and considered a more permanent stay in this state.
“I don’t know,” he said in that sing-song voice again.
Erin dropped the line of questioning as she pulled along the curb. “This house?”
“Yeah!” Aiden was already half out of the car before she could cut the engine off.
She followed him up the driveway and past a small red sedan. Her head turned to look inside against her will as they walked past. It looked just like the last red sedan she’d ridden in as a passenger. Maybe a little cleaner.
Her brain tried to take a stroll down memory lane, but she shut it down quick. Those were just another set of memories she’d be glad to leave behind in Texas if it worked out that she could stick around here instead.
Lost jobs and lost relationships and lost nights riding around in a red car just like this one. If those memories could all stay forgotten in another state, that would make things a lot easier.
Aiden ran right up to the front door, his dark, unruly curls bouncing around his head, and pressed the doorbell twice before Erin caught up to him.
She grabbed his hand gently. “That’ll do, buddy.”
Erin hugged her sweater around her body while they waited. At least the weather had the decency to bring in a mild cool front in time for Halloween weekend.
The door opened, and a girl about Aiden’s age stood in the entry. She had a wide smile and messy blonde buns on top of her head, and she wore a bright purple T-shirt with a neon green tutu over her jeans.
“You must be Tilly,” Erin said.
The little girl nodded, and a woman who must have been her aunt appeared in the doorway behind her. As Erin lifted her gaze to greet the woman in the gigantic black witch’s hat, she suddenly realized why that car had stirred up so many memories.
It wasn’t just a small red sedan.
It was the small red sedan.
Her heart and mind raced at dizzying speeds as she took in the sight of this unexpected face. The face she couldn’t stop imagining in every corner of her apartment since it disappeared sometime that summer. She could barely remember when. Time had stopped making sense after that.
With a tiny gasp that she tried and failed to hide, Erin let out the name she’d been trying so desperately to forget over the last few months.
“Crystal.”
Chapter 3
Crystal
Crystal blinked at the woman standing on her sister’s welcome mat.
Her jet black hair was freshly shaved on the sides and a little longer on top of her pixie cut than Crystal remembered, but the rest of her was the same. Same big, dark eyes and thin eyebrows. Same cutting cheekbones and angular nose. Same perfectly shaped mouth…
“Erin?”
With a shy smirk on that perfect mouth, Erin gripped her ultra-soft-looking mossy green sweater tighter against her body. “Forgot me already?”
It had only been a few months, but even if it had been a few years or a few decades, Crystal could never forget the woman she once thought she’d spend the rest of her life with.
“No. Sorry. Hi.” Crystal shook her head. “I just… didn’t expect to see you. Here. Right now.”
The shyness evaporated from Erin’s expression as a hint of sadness filled her dark brown eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment, then Erin said, “Same.”
Tilly looked upward, turning her head back and forth between them. “You’re friends?”
Crystal ripped her gaze from her gorgeous ex and looked down at Tilly. She was grateful for this break in the mega awkward moment, even if Tilly and her friend seemed to be the reason Erin was standing in front of her right now.
“Um, yeah,” Crystal said, her gaze flicking back to Erin despite trying to keep her focus on Tilly. “Kind of.”
Tilly’s eyes grew wide and Crystal could see that big brain turning over the information and forming its next question. She decided to intervene before the words went from Tilly’s brain to her mouth.
“Come on in.” She stepped backward, opening the front door wider and tugging at Tilly’s shirt sleeve to pull her inside the house. Crystal’s heart raced as it sank in that she was about to spend an entire afternoon with Erin. “We’ve got snacks and pumpkins waiting in here. But not pumpkin snacks. Although that would have been appropriate. These are pretzels and cupcakes. Again, separate. Not pretzels on cupcakes.”
In one epic display of verbal diarrhea, Crystal proved she was still a nonsensical motormouth when she was nervous.
Crap.
That meant it was obvious to everyone, including Erin, that Crystal was nervous. And Erin was smart enough to know why.
