Chapter 2

In the weeksthat followed the Carnival Cauchemar, my farmhouse seemed more like a prison than a haven. Even the hobs were starting to get restless. Though they continued to make their wassail and prep the orchard for the winter months, it was still less work than what they’d become accustomed to. During the decades they’d suffered under previous masters who’d wanted nothing to do with them, they would go into some kind of hibernation until the apple trees woke again. Not so anymore; I had apparently reinvigorated their lives.

They were in need of things to do to combat the seasonal doldrums, so they resorted to chicken racing. The hens I’d gotten them had quickly become pets instead of simple egg-layers. Every Saturday night after the communal meal was eaten, the packed earth of the barn floor was swept clean of straw, the trestle table moved to the side, and a track was drawn with chalk. Sawyer, in exchange for an egg, allowed the hobs to tie a sachet of meal worms to the end of his tail, and like greyhounds racing after a rabbit lure, the hens chased after the tabby cat to the finish line.

Bets were made and lost, hob grog was enjoyed, and all the chickens were rewarded with a heap of vegetable scraps.

While the hobs reveled in their newfound hobby, I wallowed. There were no spells to layer, no ingredients to forage and prepare, nothing to do except research, but the Redbud Library was poorly stocked when it came to the occult or demons or anything related to fae who practiced the dark arts. And Shari was as close-lipped as ever on Thursday Crafting Circle nights, despite Ame’s coaxing.

Then the hearth’s colors started flickering from yellow to green. They never remained green for long, just sporadic snatches of color as the hearth threw out counterspells. Since the perimeter wasn’t being breached, and the hearth wasn’t sending out warning pulses, this was clearly an activation of an early advanced warning system.

Something was coming.

“You’re teaching me about crystals,” I told Sawyer the day the hearth’s flickering had increased from once or twice a day to every few hours.

“I am?” he asked, sheathing the claws he’d been cleaning.

“I only know how to use them for simple things, like batteries and siphons, but you know all sorts of tricks.” His knowledge about the selenite had proven that. I flung up a hand before he could protest. “I know, I know. You can’t tell me what you do at Grimalkin University, but you can pass on some of your knowledge, right?”

His whiskers twitched as he thought.

I pointed a finger at the hearth and its color-changing flames. “I’d rather be prepared, wouldn’t you?”

His amber eyes slid to the braided rug in the hallway behind me, as if he could see through the fibers and the floorboards to the crawlspace beneath where the grimoire lay. The tabby tomcat let out a breath. “Okay. We’ll do some protection crystals first.”

So I gathered up all the remaining crystals I’d purchased at Chalce’s Crystal Emporium, laid them all out on the dining room table, and began to learn.

Tiger’s-eye had incredible energy-donating properties. Ruby enhanced circulation as well as sexuality. Black tourmaline was the epitome for protection. Clear quartz could heal and amplify energy.

Sawyer was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge and a patient teacher, and that same afternoon, I started imbuing a black tourmaline sphere with magic that would repel anyone it wasn’t coded to protect.

The hearth did that already to anyone who stepped foot in my farmhouse, but I couldn’t take the hearth with me when I went into town. A black tourmaline sphere the size of a guinea egg could fit easily in my pocket or purse, though.

Work on the crystals helped occupy my days and kept my mind off a certain lumberjack shifter, but not for long. Like Sawyer, I was a good and clever student too, and had absorbed everything he’d been able to teach me. With nothing challenging my mind or my time, my mood darkened towards despair, yet again.

Until Flora called and told me we needed to start checking on Alder Ranch’s moonflowers.

While part of me chafed to do anything that wasn’t working towards my ultimate goal, another part of me rejoiced at having something productive to do. Who knew, maybe there was something else I could glean from the heart tree and the moonflowers that kept its poison contained?

So my weeks were filled with tinkering with crystals, baking for my little bakery stand at the orchard gate, trying unsuccessfully to get Shari to talk, finding fleeting amusement in the hobs’ chicken races, and checking on the moonflowers.

All very humdrum and frustrating, until one day in the middle of November, when the hearth was still all a-flicker with yellow-and-green flames, it wasn’t.

Flora led the march past the anti-frost wards that kept the glen unseasonably warm, little doll-like feet stomping. The presence of the half-heart buried in the trunk of a tree in her own town that she could do nothing about except contain aggravated her to no end.

Scraping away at the base of one of the vines with her beech wand, for she was still loath to touch this once-contaminated ground, Flora hummed with a thought.

“I’ve been thinking too,” I said, tracing a finger along a pollinated pod. Arthur’s bees must’ve found this place.

“About how this soil needs an acidifier?” the garden gnome asked. “Moonflowers like a little acid, like hydrangeas and blueberries. They’re sassy like that.”

Well, that was something for my notebook. “No,” I answered, plucking the pod. “I’m thinking we need to cultivate our own garden of these, as a backup.” Just like the black tourmaline was to my hearth.

Flora’s eyebrows shot up into her brown curls. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before.”

I collected another pod, knowing the viability of the seeds inside wasn’t guaranteed. “I think it’s because we wanted every flower available working to contain that.” I pointed to the glowing red ember within the wizened tree. “But it’s been weeks now and things have only gotten better, even when the new moon came and wasn’t charging the moonflowers. The crystals you placed as an auxiliary power source worked perfectly.”

“Well, yeah, I set them up.” She grinned.

Lifting a pod to eye-level, I examined the silvery shimmer of the sealed petals. It reminded me of the milk infusion I’d bathed in to heal my core, of the hallucination of my ancestor Violet I’d experienced. “Hallucinogens have been known to unlock buried memories, draw them upward from the subconsciousness. Could—”

“We’re not giving Shari moonflower tea,” Flora said stoutly, stomping her foot. “You know why she takes those pills? It’s because they’re the only thing keeping her scrambled brain together. The trauma… And a hallucinogen wouldn’t have a filter! She’d see all of that again with no context, no control, no—”

The garden gnome was as red-faced as her cowgirl hat, hands bunching into fists, her eyes wild with anger.

I lifted my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know. It was just a thought, that’s all.”

Flora still kicked me in the shin, but lightly. “I know you want answers, cider witch, but not at the extent of her sanity!”

“Of course not,” I said hotly, offended Flora would accuse me of such a thing. I glared down at her, tempted to give her a kick to her own shin that would send her flying across the glen.

“Well,” she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, “so long as you understand that, I won’t make carnivorous clematis flowers take root in your brain and grow out of your ears.”

If you’d did, I’d just take the antidote. You’re not the only one with green magic, Flora Ironweed.

It was the best apology I was going to get out of her, but I still chafed. Her words grated against my conscience. I knew I was a liar, keeping my true identity and purposes hidden from so many, and a one-time thief, but deep down, I was a good person. I wouldn’t use someone else for my own gain.

“Ugh,” the garden gnome said, hugging her jacket tighter against herself. “Let’s get out of here and get a hot drink, yeah? My treat.”

“I accept your apology,” I said, slipping the pods into my foraging bag.

“Hmph,” she said, spinning on her heel and walking back to the field where we could access my car. “Who said I was apologizing? We’re going because the Magic Brewery will have spent coffee grounds. We’ll get a bunch and sprinkle them here, then prep the soil of this new moonflower garden. Where are you wanting it, anyway?”

“You’re the moonflower expert, not me.”

She lifted an eyebrow, gauging my tone for sass and determining I was entirely correct. She was the expert here. “Moonflowers are rare and expensive. I wouldn’t want to grow them in an obvious place in case of thieves. We need someplace hidden but still accessible.”

“So not your house or mine, and not your garden center either.” I fiddled with the fringe on my scarf as I thought, curling the strands around my finger again and again. “What about the forest next to my orchard? It’s the one that separates my property from Daph and Shari’s. No one would think twice if they happened to see me go in—”

“Nor me from the other side,” Flora chimed in eagerly. “I’m always picking at things when I’m at their house, foraging this and that.”

“The hearth doesn’t monitor it, but Sawyer is always running patrols, and I run past it most mornings.”

“That’ll do nicely then. We’ll scope out a spot after our drinks. Those pods gonna be okay?”

I opened the sedan door and lifted the garden gnome into the passenger seat, settling my foraging bag next to her. “Yep. The bag’s spelled to keep whatever’s inside fresh. Sawyer had a few complaints about sticky, squishy things after he spent some time in there.”

Flora gave me an approving nod. “Well aren’t you as fancy as your drink order, Misty Fields. To the Brewery!”