Page 29 of Herbs & Hex-breaking

“Let me help,” he said, and turning, he scooped several bags in his arms and went quickly and silently up the rear metal stairs.

I fished out the remaining two bags, closed the trunk, and forced myself to walk calmly to the steps. It wasn’t until I had opened my apartment door and nudged him in ahead of me that the exterior lights bounced back on.

The heaviness that had been in the air was instantly gone; there was a noticeable temperature shift as well. Shaking off the surprise of the depth of his magickal talents, I closed the door and set the grocery bags on my kitchen table.

“Thank you,” he said, reaching up and pulling the hood of his sweatshirt down to his shoulders. “Thanks for giving me the chance to explain.”

I studied him from where he stood on the other side of my kitchen. His hair had grown out since I’d last seen him. It was now curling a bit around his shoulders. His face was a tad thinner too, but his eyes were still that magnetic shade of blue.

And damn it, he was still gorgeous. I steeled myself against it. I wouldn’t let him sway me again with his looks. I’d learned my lesson.

At least I sure hoped so.

“Talk,” I said and began to put away my groceries. The truth was I was nervous and angry at seeing him again. Staying busy would help me calm down. Hopefully.

“The night we were together...afterwards while we were sleeping, I had a precognitive dream.”

I pulled a gallon of milk from the bag. “I thought you didn’t do precognitive. You told me you were a postcog psychic.”

He nodded. “Typically, I don’t. It has to be something huge for a vision of the future to come through. And in this case the dream showed me sitting at a table surrounded by lawyers, a will being read, stacks of paperwork, and worse, me squaring off with my mother.”

I tucked the milk away, shut the fridge door, and gave him my full attention. “Go on.”

Dex tucked his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “The dream vision woke me up, and as soon I opened my eyes, my retrocognition kicked in, and I realized that my father had already passed.”

“You could have woken me up and told me,” I said. “You didn’t have to deal with that alone. Besides everything else… I thought we were friends, Dex.”

He hunched his shoulders slightly as he continued speaking. “It wasn’t that I was mourning his passing, Kate. The truth is that my father was cruel and controlling when I was young, and I never lived up to the expectations he had for me. He sent me to a mental institution for the first time when I was fifteen.”

“Oh my goddess,” I said, my heart breaking for him.

“I was seventeen the second time,” Dex said. “My father told the doctors to ‘cure’ my psychic ability and visions with pharmaceuticals and electroshock therapy.”

I recoiled at that news—I’d had no idea. “Dex, I’m so sorry.”

“Obviously that didn’t work out the way he wanted,” he said with a shrug. “After I was discharged the second time, I kept my head down, finished high school and went away to college out of state to get away from him. It was in college that I started drinking and doing recreational drugs, hoping it would somehow block my psychic abilities...but it only muffled them. They never went away. I managed to get through college and pretty much partied my way through the next few years... Until I got drunk one night and wrecked my car. Then my parents’ lawyers arranged for me to have a stint in rehab—as opposed to jail time.”

He was very pale as he stood there telling me about his past, and so I pulled out a chair for him. “Sit down,” I said, and joined him at the table.

Dex folded his hands on the tabletop. “I figured you’d yell at me. Be angry.”

“Oh, I am angry,” I assured him. “But I make it a rule not to lose my temper. Bad things happen and my magick goes chaotic when I do.”

“That’s a little scary,” he said.

I met his eyes. “Sugar, you have no idea.”

Dex blew out a stabilizing breath. “Anyway, it was during rehab that I realized the doctor’s ‘helpful’ prescriptions weren’t helping me at all, so I checked myself out, threw away the prescriptions, and stayed sober. I worked whatever cash jobs I could find...landscaping, construction, even overnight cleaning crews.”

“How’d you end up back in Birmingham?” I asked.

“A college friend that I’d kept in touch with asked me if I could help him remodel his old farmhouse in Warrior. He and his wife had a baby coming and they needed affordable help. I traded room and board for a salary and ended up staying there for six months. We finished the remodel a week before his wife was due. Then I heard from a mutual friend that a store owner in Birmingham had a bad experience with a local contractor and needed a handyman to help get her store remodeled. That’s how I met Lorna.”

Silently, I nodded.

“It was a risk living in Birmingham again, but this area is so far removed from my family’s world—and so I changed my name, my appearance, and started over. They would never think to look for me in Five Point South…and working for Lorna was like extra insurance.”

“I understand that.” I nodded. Lorna Southern was a force unto herself.