Page 40 of Best Hex Ever
Immy rolled her eyes at Dina.
“Fine, you go with Eric. But if you win I will fire you as my maid of honor.”
“Someone’s feeling competitive I see,” Dina responded. The rest of Eric’s team quickly assembled, claiming Rosemary and one of Immy’s cousins, Tom, who seemed uninterested in the whole affair.
Scott was on Immy’s team and was staring at the entrance to the maze like it was a monster that was going to swallow him whole.
“We don’t all need to go in. People can stay out here if they want,” Dina said aloud, hoping that would make it clear that Scott had no reason to go in if he didn’t wantto.
“Dina, don’t be silly, we have to go in as teams,” Immy replied, completely oblivious.
“Who takes left, who takes right?” Rosemary asked, incliningher head toward the two diverging paths just inside the maze’s entrance. The hedges had to be at least eight feet tall.
“We go left and you go right, Immy?” Eric suggested.
“What do we win?” Tom chipped in, apparently suddenly interested.
“Everlasting glory, obviously,” Immy cackled.
Dina sidled up to Scott.
“Are you okay?” she asked under her breath. He looked a little pale and was biting his lip—and not in a sexy way. “You don’t seem keen on going in.”
“No, no. It’s fine. I’m fine,” Scott replied, wiping his clearly clammy hands on his trousers. “It’ll be fun,” he said, probably in an attempt to convince himself. She reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze.
“Dina, no cheating! Get back over here,” Eric called. Once they had conferred in their teams over possible strategies—not that it was possible to have much of a pre-planned strategy for navigating a maze—Immy counted down from three and the game began.
Scott offered Dina a half-smile as he reluctantly followed Immy into the maze. Dina and Eric took the left path, followed closely by Tom and Rosemary.
The maze swallowed them up. It had been a warm morning, at least by late October standards, but a damp coolness settled over them once they stepped into the shade of the hedges.
Unlike the woods, Dina didn’t feel any kind of magic in the bones of the maze. It wasn’t particularly old, nor menacing. Which was a good sign. The last thing they needed was a maze with an attitude. Dina had been in one of those in Vienna before, and she’d had to cast her way out, leaving scorch marks in the brush.
They stopped once they got to a fork.
“I say we go right. Dina?” Eric asked.
“Why would Dina know?” said Tom.
“Ah. Well. Dina tends to be good at these kinds of things. Bloodhound instincts, like I said,” Eric replied carefully. Behind Tom, Rosemary was wiggling her fingers around, pretending she was performing witchcraft and cackling silently—she looked unhinged, and Dina loved her forit.
“I say we go right,” Dina said. She couldn’t be sure; she didn’t have any kind of prescience. But, like most witches, she possessed a gut instinct—though some might call it a sixth sense. When it told her which way to go, she normally followed, no questions asked.
Occasionally, they heard Immy’s group through the hedges, and saw a flurry of color on the other side as they walked past. Once, Dina thought she smelled Scott’s cologne and felt a sudden need to reach through the hedge for him. Though she had to admit that a pair of bodiless arms poking out through a hedge wouldn’t exactly be comforting to anyone, let alone someone who clearly didn’t love mazes.
“This is perfect writing fodder,” Rosemary remarked, as they took a path to the left. Silence hung heavily in the maze, and a low mist collected at their feet. It had grown quite cold, and the sunlight had petered away into that half-brightness of a fully gray sky.
“How so?” Dina asked.
“The gothic maze, the creepy woods, and the manor with rooms full of antlers and taxidermy? It’s deliciously spooky. The house isn’t haunted though. I checked.”
“What about the maze?” Dina asked, looking around her as fogged rolledin.
“No ghosts here. Some in the woods though,” Rosemary responded matter-of-factly.
Dina smiled at her. “One day we’re going to create a TV show calledEngland’s Most Hauntedand it’s just you and mewandering around old estates where I get all freaked out and you tell me that it’s just a regular building.”
Haunted or not, Dina couldn’t deny the spookiness of the maze; it was also proving surprisingly difficult to complete. They took turn after turn, several times ending up where they’d been a moment before, not that it was easy to tell. Every wall of green leafage looked identical. Finally, when everyone’s legs were starting to get tired and Tom had complained about being thirsty at least four times, they found the center, complete with a tarnished bronze sundial. There was no sign that Immy and her team had beaten them to it, but they couldn’t be sure.
