The Ex Hex

Immediately after Rhys finishes his speech and steps down from the stage, the head of the Gryffud Penhallow statue behind him falls off, narrowly missing him. Rhys visits Something Wicked, as he is suspicious his bad luck is turning worse and has a nagging instinct that Vivi is somehow connected to it. Rhys asks Gwyn if they have a scrying mirror in the shop, but she refuses to help “any and all exes of Vivi’s,” especially him. Vivi helps Rhys find the mirror in the stockroom. Rhys calls his father via the mirror, and Simon outright dismisses the possibility of Rhys being cursed, since no Penhallow man has ever been cursed.

Vivi confides in Gwyn her fear that they actually cursed Rhys, but Gwyn disagrees. She thinks Vivi still likes Rhys, and that is why she is so worried. Rhys returns to the front of the store; behind his back, Gwyn makes fun of the “spark” between him and Vivi. Rhys and Vivi agree on a time to meet up to go to the ley lines together that night. On the drive up, Rhys and Vivi talk about their parents. Vivi’s mother was a witch, but her “rebellion” was to not practice magic, so Vivi grew up not knowing she had powers. Rhys calls this “the Full Potter” (a reference to Harry Potter’s childhood). Vivi recalls levitating flower petals by accident when she was a child, and her mother’s reaction made it hard for her to separate magic from danger. Rhys and Vivi arrive at the cave entrance to the ley lines. 

Rhys’s father gave him a map of the caves, but Rhys pointedly left it behind, and now he and Vivi are lost. Vivi finds a secret entrance in an instinctive moment she cannot fully explain. When they find the ley lines, the lines themselves are stunningly beautiful, but what surprises Rhys and Vivi is the sudden sexual arousal the intense magical aura provokes within them both. Vivi is annoyed that Rhys brought her to “a magic sex cave.” She scolds him for not asking his father what the ley-lines cave entailed before coming there, because the magical aura could just as easily have made them want to kill each other rather than have sex. The aura’s effects begin to fade, and Rhys attempts to charge the ley lines. The bright purple lines darken and ooze black, and the cave shakes as if it might collapse. They run outside just in time to see the purple and black magic lines streaming toward town. Vivi confesses to Rhys that she put a hex on him.