Don't Hex with Texas (Enchanted, Inc. 4)

“I guess it would explain all of my grandmother’s talk about the wee folk. It also says something about how she must have spent her youth if she was here to see them. Go, Granny!”

He looked around some more, and I wondered if I should have been helping, but he hadn’t responded to my offer of help, so I left him to it since I had no clue what he hoped to see. “They may not be here anymore,” he said at last. “The drinkers and drug users might have driven them away. They’d have been drawn by the auras of the lovers, but the drinkers have a more negative energy.”

“What good would it do to find these creatures?”

“They could be allies. They also might have seen something that could help us. It was just a thought, since we don’t have much to go on.”

“I guess we could always get a few of those candles, set them up around the house, and then get Mom to throw a big open house and invite the whole town.”

“Hold on to that idea. We may need it later.”

“Do you have any ideas about any of our suspects?”

“Not really. And there’s always a chance that it’s someone you don’t know.”

“There aren’t too many people around here that I don’t know. This isn’t the kind of town people move to on purpose.”

“I think it’s a nice town. It’s like something out of an old movie.”

“Yeah, lost in time, that’s us. We’re the Texas version of Brigadoon. And now we even have the magic to go with it. So, what do we do next?”

“We wait for our wizard to make another move and see if that tells us anything.”

We walked back to the Dairy Queen where his car was parked. Dean’s flashy new truck was still outside, and I felt a tiny bit guilty about being relieved when he didn’t come out while we were there.

The relief grew stronger when I noticed Sherri’s little convertible parked nearby. If she’d joined him for dinner, I really didn’t want to run into the two of them.

That desire grew even stronger when I looked through the windows into the restaurant and saw Sherri and Dean yelling at each other, having yet another one of their very public fights. “Uh-oh,” I said.

“You may have to move into the other guest room tonight, unless Dean doesn’t mind using Frank’s old room.”

“Why?”

“He and his wife are at it again. They do this all the time. They have a big fight, then she kicks him out. A few days later they make up and start all over again. I guess it works for them, but it sounds like hell to me.”

We got home and chatted a little with Mom and Dad, then Owen called it a night. I stayed downstairs to get the interrogation over with. Mom barely waited until he was at the top of the stairs before she started in on me. “Why didn’t you say anything about him?” she demanded.

“Well, the last guy I dated didn’t stick around too long, so I didn’t want to say anything this time before I knew for sure where we stood. His visit here was a complete surprise.” Pretty much all of that was the truth, more or less.

“But to come all this way, just to see you! He must really like you. Or is there something else going on?” She elbowed Dad. “What do you think, Frank?”

Dad moved his attention briefly from the television. “He seems like a nice enough kid. But maybe you should wait awhile before booking the church. Don’t want to get ahead of yourself.” Then he went back to watching people sift through crime scene evidence.

“How do you two know each other?”

“From work. And before you ask, we hadn’t been going out that long. We started dating a week or so before Christmas, and then I moved back here right after the new year, so things hadn’t gone very far.

We haven’t even begun discussing marriage plans, so get that out of your head. I spent Christmas with his parents, who were very nice. Is there anything else you wanted to know about him? The floor’s open for questions.”

Mom opened and closed her mouth, and I escaped before she could think of something else to ask.

I woke in the middle of the night to hear a tapping sound on my window. It persisted, so I crawled out of bed and pulled back the pink ruffled curtains to find Owen crouching on the porch roof. I opened the window and mumbled, “What is it?”

“Sam says our suspect is up to something.”

“And you couldn’t have knocked on my door from inside the house to tell me this?”

If it hadn’t been so dark out, I’m pretty sure I would have seen him turn bright red. The moonlight glinted off his glasses, making it hard to read his eyes. “I didn’t want your parents to catch me sneaking into your room.”