Hexed and Vexed (5 page)

Campbell hollered to the sky. A loud, nonsensical noise. The shout of a man who had reached his limit. “I remember nothing of the last six months and maybe that’s a temporary blessing. I’ve never liked you. I can guarantee I’d never leave Olive for you in a million years. You or someone you hired did this to me.”

“Oh.” Cindy teared up. Or, Olive corrected herself, Cindy pretended to tear up. Her sister had two types of cries. One, the real one, when she didn’t get what she wanted. The second one, the fake one, used to get people to give her what she wanted.

“How can you talk to me like that, my love? We were overwhelmed with our feelings for each other. These things happen in life.”

“Oh, I hate that phrase.” She yanked her sister to her. “Tell me what you did. Tell the truth. Did you hex Campbell to take him away from me?”

“Why would I do that when he came so easily?” Venom poured from her sister’s every pore. Witches dealt with energy and Cindy’s felt so hostile Olive almost let her go to spare herself the pain of being within her field of existence.

But getting to the truth warranted a little pain.

“Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Sweetheart.” Cindy’s voice took back her false tone, the one where she pretended to be polite. “You wait a second. We both know you’re not going to hurt me or even really yell at me. You’re not the type to hurt a woman in any capacity. It’s one of the reasons I love you so much. She never understood or deserved you.”

Olive had always heard the expression
blood boiling
. She’d never knew what it meant before that very second. Her insides heated up like someone had set her aflame.

“You’re right.” Goose bumps appeared on her skin, each one a small dagger of pain that fueled her forward. “He would never ever do anything to you. I, however, will.”

“Ha. The worst witch in witching school. You could never do anything that didn’t take hours of preparation. I could crawl away and you wouldn’t catch me.”

“Is that so?” Her head buzzed. Perhaps someone else had arrived to wherever they were. Someday she’d have to find out where they actually were. Her sister
would
tell her the truth. One way or another.

“Yes. That’s how it is. You’re rich, successful, and everyone likes you. But, you can’t do magic, you never could, and you don’t have Campbell. Guess your life is not so perfect.”

Olive turned back to the man she loved, who watched them with his eyebrows lifted. If she asked him to, he’d step in and help her. That didn’t happen to be why she stared at him.

“Did you buy me a ring?”

“What?” His voice sounded hoarse.

“When you decided you would propose to me. Had you gotten around to purchasing a ring?” The answer to the question mattered a great deal at that moment.

“I did.” His mouth raised a fraction in a smile. “A diamond with amethysts surrounding it. Took me weeks to find it.”

“It’s antique. You found it in a store near the university. And you knew it would be the ring I wanted.”

“How did you know that?”

She narrowed her gaze. “Because I’ve been hearing about it for months from Cindy. It’s the exact story she’s been telling.” Olive grabbed Cindy’s hand and yanked it upward. “Is this the ring?”

“It is.” Campbell crossed his arms over his chest. “Bought for you not her.”

“Darling, how can you say that?” Cindy’s voice shook.

“Everything okay here?” Her mother and father, followed by Campbell’s parents rushed onto the scene. Olive paid them no mind.

A buzzing soared through her body. She knew the feeling, even though she’d only felt it once before when she’d zinged Campbell and herself out of the church and onto the island.

“Tell me the truth.” She pushed all her energy out onto Cindy.

Cindy flung into the air, suspended from the ground by the force of the spell Olive launched at her. Her sister squealed.

“Olive?” Her mother called to her. “What are you doing? Stop that this instant.”

“No. I’m sorry I can’t do that, Mother.” Her hands shook. She didn’t care. This had to happen. “Cindy lies. She cheats and she gets away with it because we all let her. I’ve had enough. This time she’s going to tell the truth.”

“You can’t make me tell you anything. Campbell is mine now. He made a commitment to me. He never breaks them.”

“They don’t count if he’s been hexed to make them.” Her whole body vibrated. She’d earned the reputation worst witch in witching school. Other witches did this when they were younger. She never had and her muscles were having a really hard time handling it. Still, she knew she wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t falter.

“I command you by the ancestors whose blood gives us our gifts to tell me the truth. Or never speak again.”

Campbell’s mother squealed. The kind of magic Olive invoked simply wasn’t done. It could have dire consequences for the person who did the spell. Overwhelm their system, knock them out. If those consequences hurt her then so be it. Cindy would tell her the truth.

“Okay.” Her sister snarled. “I hexed Campbell. If you want to be exact, I hexed him half-a-dozen times. The first five times didn’t take. I’m not you. I can’t do perfect potions. But the sixth one took. And we became one. He would have stayed mine, too. Forever. All it took was one incantation every night from me. Then you had to go and ruin it by taking him away. At my
wedding
.”

Cindy said the last word like Olive’s removal of Campbell had been the worst possible offense out of the whole crazy escapade. This didn’t shock Olive at all. Her sister’s selfishness knew no bounds. Campbell’s father roared. Olive’s parents called out their denials of Cindy’s behavior. She didn’t care about any of them.

“Why?” Olive had to finish it up soon. Her ability to continue this level of witchcraft would vanish any second. Despite her wishing it might be otherwise, she’d not suddenly become the most-talented witch around.

“Because you have everything. Money. Brains. Respect. I wanted you to know how it feels to watch someone else have what you want. You can’t be rich and have Campbell too.”

Olive waved her hand and let Cindy fall to the ground. Her head spun and she stumbled forward.

Campbell caught her in his arms. “Are you crazy, doing that kind of spell? It could have killed you.”

She squeezed his hand in hers. “You would be focused on me when you should be thinking about you.”

“What do you mean?”

Barely able to speak, she still had something to tell him. “I’m so sorry I doubted you. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you’d been hexed….”

He interrupted her. “No one would have known that.”

She interrupted him right back. “I should have. I know you. I let you be abused by her. This is my fault.”

“It’s not.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “It is. Earlier I told you I’d beg your forgiveness if it all proved to be false. Please, don’t hate me Campbell, and if you can bring yourself to be in the same room with me again at some point, I’ll always be waiting.”

With what energy that still flowed through her body, she sent out one more spell, taking herself from the island. From Campbell. From the whole nightmare.

The world spun until she landed, a
thud
following her descent into her living room. “Ouch.” The wood beneath her skin felt cool. She closed her eyes. The floor would be as good a place as any to pass out.

Olive had passed out on the floor but awoke in her bed. Her head throbbed, her throat so dry and scratchy it had moved beyond the word parched to some other definition entirely. How had she gotten into her room?

Olive raised her head and looked around. Maybe she had gotten up, taken herself to bed, and didn’t remember?

Movement in the other room startled her. She pulled the covers up to her neck like the thin cotton sheet might protect her from whoever loomed in her hallway.

Although it hurt to speak, she called out. “Whoever is out there, I’m a very strong, powerful witch, and I’ll destroy you.” Her hands quivered. “Do you hear me?”

Campbell appeared in her doorway. “I do hear you.”

He grinned. For his part, he looked…well…amazing. Showered and changed out of his destroyed tuxedo, he wore his standard black pants and white T-shirt that showed off the muscles underneath. She leaned back against her pillows.

“And you are a strong, scary witch. You could destroy me if you wanted to.” He held a glass of water in his hand. “Thirsty?”

She nodded and he sauntered into the room to hand her the liquid. Well, she thought of it as
sauntering
. Campbell would probably call it walking. His movements were always so sexy; however, that
sauntering
better described the whole process.

Olive drank down the water finding relief for her poor, abused throat. “Thanks.”

He nodded, sitting down on the side of her bed. “You’re welcome. Can I ask you a question?”

“I have a couple of them myself.” She sat up before smoothing down her hair. What did she look like? She didn’t want to imagine. “But sure, go ahead.”

“Were you out of your mind? How could you go at Cindy like that?”

He was concerned with her sister again. Olive sucked in her breath. “I pass out for a little while, and you turn back around to loving Cindy?” She rolled over hiding her head in the pillow. Oblivion sounded really good. Could she force it? Or maybe manage some kind of spell?

“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me.” His hands were gentle on her hair as he stroked it. “Roll back over and look at me.”

Her throat felt clogged. After having put him through hell for hours on the island, not forgiving him, and saying mean things, she could at least do him the courtesy of listening to him. Even if she didn’t like what he said.

She did as he asked and sat up. “How am I not getting what you’re saying?”

“I don’t care one bit about Cindy. She can go fall in a hole. I hope she does. I want to know what you were thinking doing those spells. They could have, and did in fact, hurt you. All I could do was stand there and watch, knowing if I interfered I could make it worse. Then you took off without me. I found you completely zonked on the floor two days ago.” He raised and lowered his voice twice during his speech. Her hands shook from wanting to touch him but she kept them in her lap. He deserved to say whatever he needed to without her interrupting him. “You scared me.”

“I had to know if you’d left me or if she’d taken you. It mattered.”

“I could have handled her. Then you wouldn’t have been at risk.”

She swung the covers off the bed and then rushed to get them back on. The state of her bare legs was not something Campbell needed to see. How many bugs had attacked her on that island? She wasn’t wearing her dress any more, which meant Campbell had already undressed her and had probably seen them.
Damn it.

“Look.” She repositioned herself. “You were not going to handle her. Cindy knew what she was talking about. No matter what she did, you wouldn’t have harmed her. It had to me, and it had to be then. And as for the rest of your question, it never occurred to me I’d be at risk. I wanted answers. Right then and there.”

“Well, some things have been playing around in my head for the last two days while I worried about you and rearranged all my things back in our apartment.”

She looked around. Clearly, her powers of observation needed to be improved. Campbell had, indeed, moved back in and she’d not noticed. Or maybe she’d never gotten used to not seeing his stuff around. Like his alarm clock, now positioned right back where it belonged on his nightstand next to where he slept.

“Did you put everything back all by yourself? And I slept through the whole thing?”

Campbell shook his head. “I zinged it back in.” He wiggled his hands. “My spell casting is back on track. If I was off before, I think the hex played into that. My father knows about these things. He says I’m likely never to regain those six months of time in my memory, which suits me fine. I have to catch up on work, too. I guess I slacked all over there, too. My family is enormously relieved to see me back to normal. And to have Cindy out of their lives.”

“I hadn’t realized they didn’t like her.”

He smiled. “They were keeping their opinions to themselves to support me, but apparently they really felt I’d traded down.”

“That’s nice of them.” She’d never considered herself particularly liked by his family before. Maybe they’d found her favorable in comparison.

“So, anyway, I’ve been thinking and I decided the problem is that I didn’t make you feel secure enough. You had doubts in your soul. That’s why you didn’t immediately know I’d been hexed. You assumed I’d actually left you. Which I know could never ever happen.”

She stroked his shirt. “I’m sorry. It’s me. I’m sure it’s my own insecurity or something like that.”

“Well.” He kissed her cheek. “We can work on that. Starting with this.”

Campbell reached into his pocket and pulled out a jewelry box. Olive gasped, pushing down on the lid to close it. “I’m sorry. I love you. I want you to come back. I need you to forgive me for my part in this. But I can’t wear that ring. I know that you bought it for me, but it’s been on Cindy’s finger. I can’t. It’ll be a constant reminder.”

He gently pulled her hand aside. “That one is gone. Forever. Never to be seen again. This is something new.”

Olive held her breath while he exposed the symbol of his promise. A solitaire square-cut diamond gleamed from inside the holder.

“It’s simpler but I think that’s what we need in our lives, don’t you? No more drama. No more angst. We need security and an understanding that this time next year I’m going to be watching you walk down the aisle toward me. So, will you?” His eyes gleamed. A tick in his jaw told her how much stress he’d placed on this moment. Campbell faked calm with the best. That didn’t mean he also didn’t carry around a large bundle of nerves.

“I love it and I love you. If you ever need proof, ask anyone how I’ve been for the last six months. It was pathetic. Maybe I should have bounced or something, recovered from the fall. Only, I didn’t. I need you. I really do.”