Page 94 of Hex You

“Like Mother Moon, your heart has always been in Goodeville. You only need your true magic to find it.”

Energy sizzled and crackled against Hunter’s skin as sparks exploded in the air around her like a thousand shooting stars. Heat washed over her, a hot shower on a cold day, a steaming mug of tea in snowy winter, comforting and soothing. Power shot from her fingertips, the fiery blue of a burning star, lifting her off the ground. She was a supernova, changing, evolving, bursting with new life.

This is what it meant to be a Guardian of the Gates, one of the Sisters of Salem.Thiswas magic.

Scenes played behind her closed lids—the school, Main Street,bonfires in wooded fields, swimmers in the lake. She felteverything. Puffs of happiness and joy fluffy as cotton candy against her fingertips and pain that poked and stung like cockleburs. She felt the air that blew through the cornstalks and slipped past whispering lips. Rudders that churned lake waters. Pebbles that shifted under footsteps. She was a part of this town, and this town a part of her.

And then came the ancient trees and the gates they represented—the Norse apple tree, its buds swollen, ready to burst into bloom, its gate sealed by Abigail Goode’s sacrifice; the Hindu banyan tree, its waterfall of aerial roots and thick trunks supporting weak, decaying branches; the Japanese cherry blossom tree, its hanging branches cracked and splintered, unable to flower; the Egyptian doum palm, its green, fanlike leaves shriveled and falling from its four surviving trunks; the Greek olive tree—its once beautiful trunk, now twisted and weathered like a dying behemoth. Each withering tree had a crumbling gate, an easy exit for the evil that lurked in the Underworld on the other side.

Hunter cried out as she felt each tree’s pain like a wooden spike through her heart.

“Heal them!”Her voice came from deep within, from the earth below and the heavens high above.“Heal these trees, mend these gates, protect this town. So I command, so mote it be!”

A scream tore from her lips as a final burst of sizzling heat shot through her and a pulse of azure light blazed through Goodeville.

Hunter’s feet met the earth, and her eyelids fluttered open as the ground beneath her trembled. A doum palm trunk shot out from the dirt, replacing the one that had burst into ash only days before. She had healed it. She had healed the gates. And Hunter Goode was well on her way to healing herself.

She exhaled as the fuzzy warmth of happiness and peace radiating from the ancient doum palm wrapped around her like a well-worn sweater.

She walked backward, staring through the restored doum and itsverdant palm fronds to the shimmering gate beyond until she felt Jax and Emily by her side.

Jax looked down at her, his dark eyes wide. “You did it.” He breathed.

“And your hair!” Emily thrust her phone in front of Hunter.

A streak of white colored her brown hair, the reflection of the moon upon dark waters. A reminder of her duties. A reminder of her home.

Emily tucked her phone back into her pocket and glanced up at the doum’s verdant palm fronds. “Does this mean it’s over? All the bad stuff. All the death.”

Hunter ran her hand over the band of white hair, brushing stray strands behind her ear. “Those things were always here, and they always will be. But we’ll fight them,” she said, reaching out to take each of their hands in hers. “And we’ll do it together.”

EPILOGUE

TWO WEEKS LATER

Hunter plucked a freshly baked pie from the front porch steps and leaned against the open screen door as Jax, Emily, and Kylie hopped into Em’s car.

The back window rolled down, and Jax hung out the opening. “Thanks again for breaking your Marvel movie ban!”

Hunter shook her head. “For the last time, it’s not a ban! I just don’t care about them.”

Jax’s brow pinched. “Not possible!”

His shout was followed by the mechanical whir of the passenger window as it sank into the door. “I agree with you, H. The whole movie was confusing,” Kylie added with a flip of her hair. “At least we got theater popcorn.”

“You were confused because they’re all connected!” Jax said with a groan. “You can’t watch the most recent movie and expect to know what’s going on.”

“Guess this means we’re bingeing all one hundred Marvel movies at this weekend’s sleepover!” Emily hollered before she put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

Jax tossed his hand into the air. “There aren’t one hundred!”

“You’re obsessed, Jax Ashley!” Hunter shouted as Em and Kylie burst into laughter.

The trio had picked Hunter up and dropped her off at school every day since joining her on a two-day hiatus from school, practices, and their own lives to help Hunter sort out hers and the end of her sister’s. It hadn’t been as difficult to explain away Mercy’s absence as they’d all thought it would. Turns out, when at 100 percent Gate Guardian power, there was a spell for pretty much anything.

Jax, Emily, and Kylie also opened their homes to her. Well, Jax more figuratively than literally. After the Jana Ashley fiasco, Hunter would most likely never be allowed in his family home again. But her friends had made sure that she wouldn’t be alone if she didn’t want to be.

The gold bangles Kylie had insisted she borrow tinkled and sparkled in the porchlight as Hunter waved to her friends.