Page 13 of The Heartbreak Hex

Vlad frowns. “Youwould make dinner after working all day? What about Harry?”

That confuses me. “What about him?”

“Why didn’t hemake dinner? He didn’t have a job, it seems like the least that he could do.”

“He didn’t know how to cook,” I say lamely, though his words give me pause. Whydidn’tHarry make dinner? He could have learned how.

“He could have learned,” Vlad says, eerily echoing my thoughts. “I know this isn’t my place to say this, Gertrude, but you deserved better out of your relationship and I’m glad you aren’t with him anymore.”

My heart twinges a bit, but I find the sting is less than it was yesterday. “I agree,” I sigh. “I don’t know why I stayed with him for so long. It was . . . comfortable, I guess? But I think I’ve been unhappy for a while and just glossed over everything that was wrong so that I could manage everything. But that just turned into me accepting less than I’m worth. Harry did me a favor leaving me for another woman. It opened my eyes.”

Vlad gives me an empathetic look. “Still hurts though, I’m sure.”

“I’m getting over it,” I tell him. “Faster than I would have thought. Maybe my potion really is working. But, also, when he told me about going to live with Calliope, it’s kind of like all my feelings for him died. I don’t want him back, I want the years that Ispentwith him back. I wish that I’d been with someone else, someone that would have been a better partner to me.”Someone like you,I silently finish.

“I wish that too,” Vlad says. “You deserve the world, Gertrude.”

The look that he gives me is as charged as the air was before I turned on the lights. The kind of look a man gives you before he kisses you.

Stop thinking of kissing, I tell myself sternly,he’s here because of a spell, not because he wants to be your boyfriend.

“Well,” I say, taking a step back and injecting my voice with false cheer to break the moment, “shall we get you your brew and then get started reverse engineering this thing?”

For a second I think I see something like disappointment in Vlad’s eyes, but in a moment it’s gone, replaced by a lazy smile.

“Sure, let’s get started.”

Returning his smile with a grin, I start up the bunsen burner to heat his blood and pull out my special relaxation blend and a vial of good dreams. While that gets ready, I summon my cauldron from home and get ready to take some swabs and samples.

With an optimistic smile, I say, “Let’s hope this won’t take too long.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Vlad says sincerely. “After all, how complicated could it be?”

∞∞∞

HOURS OF PAINSTAKING tests later, well into the night, I make a terrible discovery.

“No, it can’t be!” I exclaim, double-checking my results and then running to my pantry.

“What is it? Vlad asks, concerned and following me.

“I can’t have been that drunk, can I?” I ask, mainly to myself. I find the lock box with all my rarest and most expensive ingredients in it. Some are so rare that I never even intended to use them, they were so hard to procure. They are more just for my collection than anything. Punching in the code on the runes on top of the box I open it and immediately my stomach drops. My rarest, crown jewel ingredient is gone.

“No! It can't be, it can’t!”

“Please explain to me what’s going on?” Vlad asks, coming into the pantry behind me. “I’m getting worried when all I hear is ‘no, it can’t be’ over and over.”

“My goddess thread,” I explain, still shaking a little. “It’s gone!”

“What’s goddess thread?” he asks, sounding confused.

“It’s the stuff that weaves together the fabric of destiny, the silk that dreams are made of, and that the universe subsists from. It’s extremely dangerous to harvest and only one adventurer I’ve ever met successfully got some. It cost almost as much as my whole shop to buy, but it was worth it just to have it. And now it’s gone! I drunkenly used it in this potion!”

“Thatdoessound bad,” Vlad agrees.

“It is! It means that I can’t make another potion to reverse it. I’d need another strand of goddess thread and there’s no way I could get one. At least not before Halloween!” I slump down on the floor, totally dejected.

“Hey,” the vampire says comfortingly, crouching down next to me and putting a soothing arm around my shoulders. “It can't be that bad, right? Hexes get broken all the time, even without a counter-curse. We just need to figure out the conditions of the hex, right?”

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