“Curse magic doesn’t work like that,” Aunt Elaine went on, ignoring him. “You’ll get general bad luck or, if you go really dark, death. But nothing that small or specific.”
“Good,” Gwyn said. “Now we don’t have to feel guilty about the clitoris thing anymore.”
“Treeeeaaaaats.”
Oh, thank the goddess.
Vivi looked up to where Sir Purrcival had just strolled into the kitchen, twining himself around Elaine’s ankles as she stared at him.
“Oh, right,” Vivi said, shutting the book. “Um. He talks now. But he mostly just says that.”
Elaine and Rhys both took that in before Rhys nodded and said, “Right. Of course he does.”
Reaching down to pet the cat, Elaine looked over at Vivi.
“Why are you all dressed up?” she asked, and Vivi looked down her body, frowning, too.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m just going to work.”
“At the college?” Aunt Elaine’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her shaggy bangs. “Today?”
“Yes, today,” Vivi said, standing up and straightening her jacket. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“We have important things to do today.” Aunt Elaine placed one hand on her hip, the other holding a wooden spoon. “Witch business.”
“And I have a nine a.m. class,” Vivi countered. “Which I can’t just cancel. We talked about this last night.”
“We talked about Gwyn reopening the store as though everything were normal,” Elaine countered, “not about you going to teach class. This”—she tapped the book in front of her—“is more important right now.”
“I can do both,” Vivi said, standing up. “Penhaven is also a witchy college, remember? I can teach class, then go to the library, see if there are any more useful books there.”
She only barely managed to keep from frowning as she said it. Vivi had worked hard to keep her work life and her witch life separate, which meant she very rarely dealt with anything involving Penhaven’s more secretive classes. But when you had a witchy problem, it seemed stupid not to use that resource.
Even if that resource tended to smell like patchouli.
Rhys was already grabbing his own jacket from the back of his chair. “I’ll come with.”
Vivi stared. “To the college?”
He gave a shrug. “Why not? I am an alum, after all.”
“You came for one summer course, which I don’t think you actually attended more than, what? Five classes of?”
Rhys winked at her. “And whose fault was that?”
Okay, they were heading into dangerous territory now, and Vivi turned away to pull her keys out of her purse, breaking eye contact before she did something embarrassing like blush.
Again.
“Besides,” Rhys said, “it’s clearly not safe for me to be out on my own now, all cursed and what have you, so might as well stick close to the one that did the cursing.”
“I am never living this down, am I?”
“It’s certainly going to be the subject of conversation for a while, yes.”
Vivi looked up at him then, scowling, and was about to remind him that there wouldn’t even be a curse had he not been such an asshole nine years ago, but before she could, she noticed the shadows underneath his own eyes, the tension in his smile even as he attempted to give her his usual rakish grin. As horrible as it sounded, that was actually kind of comforting, knowing that Rhys was freaked out about this.