Chapter 20

Chapter

Twenty

T he mage showed up at nine a.m. on Sunday morning.

On the phone, he'd informed me that he was an earth mage and had traveled the southwest for the last five years. I'd tried to keep the excitement from my voice when I invited him to tour the property. I wasn't sure I'd stifled all my joy, but I was certain I'd done a better job of it than Ida was doing right now.

"Calm down." I applied a second coat of red lipstick in the mirror and tossed the tube in my cosmetic bag. I wore my usual uniform: black top, black slim-fit jeans, and black heels. I toyed with the idea of wearing Ida's flower in my hair but decided against it.

" Calm down ? He looks like Jongho," she squealed.

Jongho was the lead singer of Ida's current favorite K-pop band, ATEEZ, she explained—exhaustively.

"His name is Baek Ye-Joon."

She ignored me. "He's so handsome. He doesn't have Jongho's height, but he's a dead ringer for him otherwise." She pulled her head away from the window and waggled the brows I'd just drawn on her face. "You know, they used to say I resembled Marilyn Monroe. That was the year I went blond, of course."

"When was that?"

"In my thirties. I drew a mole on my face to heighten the effect."

She poked her head back out the window of my trailer and excitedly watched the mage stroll up to my door. I peeked at him over her shoulder.

He had black hair cut stylishly short, looked to be in his mid-twenties, and was dressed as if for a job interview, in slim-fit green trousers, tobacco brown dress shoes, and a button-down shirt beneath a navy-blue sweater.

I'd left the mage a stone inside my mailbox allowing him temporary entrance into the park. He tossed the rock in his hand and caught it, examined it for a moment, and then tucked it into his pocket.

"He's so young ," I said.

"And handsome," Ida said, as if I hadn't heard her the first time.

"Why would someone like him want to stay here?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's hiding from the government or something." Her eyes lit up. "You know, I've always had a thing for anarchists. Did I ever tell you about the time I met Noam Chomsky? Lovely man."

Ida and I took the mage on a tour around the park. I gave him all the highlights and expounded on a few of the challenges. He nodded in the appropriate places and did his best to humor Ida, who peppered him with comments and questions.

"Boy, do I love the kingdom version of ‘Wonderland.' All that swashbuckling. And when Jongho hit that high note, I was cheering at the TV." She attempted to sing said note with a cat-screech level of musical ability, and I quickly cut her off. "Ida, cut it out. Ye-Joon said he doesn't listen to K-pop."

"Sorry. It's just that you look so much like Jongho. He's very good looking."

"Good looking, huh?" Ye-Joon gave Ida a smile that had her visibly swooning. "Tell me more."

I gave Ida another couple of minutes to gush then sent her home and invited Ye-Joon into the garden room. Fennel sleepily surveyed the mage from his bed. I felt Cecil's eyes on me like hands—wrapped around my throat. He was picky about who entered the garden room.

"Sorry about my friend," I said. "She kind of fixates."

"If the worst thing that happens to me today is that someone thinks I look like their favorite K-pop idol, I'm having a pretty good day." He grinned, and I couldn't help grinning with him. Joon, as he'd told me to call him, was immensely charming.

"That's a generous way to look at it," I said.

"Besides, my great-grandmother back in Korea was the same way about Garth Brooks. She assumed every white American man who crossed her path was related to him and could get his autograph for her. She could get pretty nasty when they told her they didn't know him."

Young, handsome, and charming.

Damn. No way was he going to want to run this place.

"I get Dita Von Teese. Sometimes Bettie Page."

"I see the resemblance." He gestured to the lavender spilling out of the planter. "May I?"

"Sure."

He gently brought a flower to his nose and drew in the scent. The lavender rustled with delight. That was a good sign. He definitely had an affinity with herbs.

"You said your grandmother was in Korea. Did you live there as a kid?"

"No. The U.S. and Canada, mostly. We traveled a lot. My dad was born in Seoul, but he came to California when he was three."

"My story's similar. Mom and I were born here. My grandmother was born in Mexicali and immigrated when she was a young woman."

Joon and I strolled around the parts of the garden room I considered safe for visitors. "Whoa. It's larger on the inside." He opened the door to peek outside then came back in. "How did you accomplish that? Portal magic?"

"No. It's just the way the earth bends for us," I said. "Earth witches, I mean. Is it not the same for mages?"

"To be honest, I'm unsure. I've never stayed in one place long enough to find out."

"Is your whole family traveling magicals?" I asked.

"They were. They're all gone now. I am the sole magical heir of my family." He looked wistful, and I realized that Joon was probably one of the few people who could truly understand my situation.

"You don't feel like you have to keep moving? I mean, because your family was that way?" I asked.

"No. They're gone. I'm here." He smiled softly. "I want to settle somewhere, find a stopping place."

"You make it sound nice."

"I make it sound easier than it is," he replied.

"Does Smokethorn feel like a stopping place to you?" I asked.

"I don't know. I like your property. The garden room in particular is remarkable." He glanced over his shoulder. "What about the cottage? Is it suitable for residential use?"

Ida had offered to give him the house tour as she'd done with the few magicals who'd been interested in the place over the last couple of years, but I'd already decided I was going to do it. It was past time. Three years of near-total avoidance was long enough.

"It's been sitting empty for a little while, but it's in great shape. Might be dusty. Desert dust gets everywhere." I pulled Mom's key from my pants pocket with trembling hands. "But the electricity and water are on, and everything's in working order."

We took the long way to the front door so I could show Joon the exterior. I hadn't been lying—the place was in great shape. I pointed out the paned windows, the crisp white paint, and the gray tiled roof. Detailed the three-bedroom, two-bath floor plan and informed him the house was 1300 square feet not counting the porch. I told him about the mosaic fireplace and the magnificent clawfoot tub in the master bath, and wondered if he could tell I was stalling.

If he noticed, he said nothing.

A too-short amount of time later, we stood in front of the house again. Joon bent down and rested one slim, long-fingered hand on the soil. A white light pulsed from his palm, and a section of dead grass instantly greened.

It likes him.

Something angry and unkind churned in my gut, nauseating me.

Jealousy.

"Hope that was okay. I'm asking the soil's permission to enter," the mage said without looking up. "I did this outside the park, before I picked up the stone you left for me, and it didn't respond. It's responding now."

"That's … good."

He stood, dusted the dirt from his hands, and stepped onto the porch with me. "A porch swing. I haven't seen one of these in ages."

"It came with the house." I tried to look at the swing without thinking of Mom curled up there with a glass of iced tea. It wasn't easy. "I wouldn't advise using it during the summer, but it's nice to nap on in cooler months."

"I like the dark blue door. Was it recently painted?"

"Fairly recent. It used to be red. Mom painted it blue five years ago or so." My hands shook so badly I dropped the key twice before finally getting it in the lock.

Her body on the living room floor, eyes fixed and glassy…

Why didn't you wait for me, Mom?

"You mentioned that your mother is deceased," Joon said. "Did it happen here?"

My throat tightened with emotion. "Yes."

His expression softened. "We don't have to go in now. I can?—"

"I'm fine. I've been in here since it happened, I just don't come here … very often." I squared my shoulders and turned the key in the lock.

I stepped over the threshold, boot heels clicking against the wooden floor. Everything was as I remembered it—not only from the day Mom died but from my youth.

She'd bought the house when I was fifteen, a couple years shy of being old enough to take her place as a travel witch. Before that, we'd lived out of an RV, though Smokethorn had been our home base for most of my life.

The living-room furniture was draped with white sheets, the fireplace swept clean. A trace of the lemony furniture polish she used for years flavored the air, along with an earthy basil and mint blend that was uniquely Mom.

Joon followed me through the door and immediately went to the fireplace. Everyone did. It was so beautiful it drew you in. "You weren't overselling it. This is magnificent."

"We did it ourselves. Every element was found in the park. The glass, the stones, the quartz—all of it. Mom would tell the earth what we needed, and a pile of the material would show up the next day."

He ran a finger over the pale, glass moon offset to the left. A polished wooden beam ran across it, the mantel another gift from the soil. The moon was the centerpiece of the mosaic, though the gray, blue, and brown sky had taken us the longest to construct.

"This house feels loved," he said.

"It was," I said softly.

Once again, the question I'd asked since the day I'd found her body on the living room floor ran through my mind.

Why didn't you wait for me, Mom?

He stopped in front of Mom's urn. "How did she pass?"

"She took on a spell she couldn't handle." I don't know why I said it that way. It made it sound like it was her fault the spell had backfired on her, and that wasn't fair. It could happen to any of us. Except…

Why didn't you wait for me, Mom?

"My father died the same way. A curse-lifting spell he did for a quiver in Botswana. The cobra shifters tried to save him, but there was nothing to be done."

"I'm sorry."

"I was four, and I barely remember him." Joon walked to the window. "But my mother's death I remember well."

He didn't elaborate. We stood there for a long moment, each of us lost in dark memories. Finally, Joon spun away from the window and faced me. "Would you mind if I had a look around? The way this house is designed is fascinating. Although it doesn't have the same magic-driven spatial properties as your garden room, it too feels larger on the inside."

"Sure."

I showed him the rest of the house. The rooms were easier to enter after taking the first step, and I found myself feeling more settled overall being inside.

"This is strange," Joon said, when we were back in the living room. It was really a "great room," as it was open to the kitchen, but I'd always thought of it as just the living room.

"Strange?"

He stood in front of the door and held up his dusty hands. Both palms were glowing. "The soil I picked up outside is reacting to something here."

"That's where I found her body." I looked down and away. "It misses her."

"Oh." Joon dusted off his hands on his trousers. Frowned. Briefly, I wondered if he was weirded out by the idea of living in a place where a witch had died. A couple of the people I'd shown the place to had been.

"You said she died casting, but why would she have set up so close to the door?" he asked.

"Maybe she wanted to be as close as possible to the soil."

"Then why not spell cast in the garden room? Or on the porch?"

Joon's questions were making me uncomfortable, and not because he was being pushy. "She didn't want to be seen?"

"I could understand that if humans were an issue, but the park is warded, and she could've easily hidden herself another way. What sort of spell was she casting?"

"I don't know."

He nodded as if arriving at some inner decision. "Would you allow me to park my transit van here tonight? I won't need to hook up or anything. I'd just like to get a feel for the place."

"That depends."

"On what?"

We walked out of the house, and I locked the door behind us. "How do you feel about demons?"

Turned out, Joon didn't feel any which way about demons, which was good, because a certain stinky one factored heavily into my plans this evening.

The mage parked in space five. I got him hooked up—water, electricity, and waste lines—and he tried to pay me several times. I refused to take it. The more tenants the park had the stronger it was, which made his presence a blessing, not a problem.

I told him to stay as long as he liked, and, in return, he told me he'd be happy to help out tonight. Well, not happy , per se. No one's happy dealing with demons, but he said he was glad to have a way to repay my hospitality.

Feeling buoyed by hope that Joon was interested in the park, I walked down to the Desert Café and returned with a cappuccino for me and fresh lavender scones for everyone else.

I dropped off the goodies with each tenant, including the mage, and headed to my trailer to pay some bills. The park ran almost entirely on solar power, but we had city water and septic tanks and trash pickup. Not to mention the insurance and taxes.

I finished with the books at around one o'clock, so I kicked off my shoes and walked barefoot toward the garden room with a packet of cat treats and bag of mini chocolate chip cookies. Cecil grew most of the food he ate, however, he had a weakness for sweets. And alcohol, but I wasn't bringing him a sour apple Four Loko this early in the day.

My cell phone rang halfway there. I juggled the packages in my hands and yanked it out of my back pocket. "Hello, it's Betty."

A long sigh gusted through the line like a winter wind. I shivered. " Witch Betty ."

"Hello, Sexton." I made a detour from the garden room to Mom's porch. I perched on the front step and stared at the green patch of grass the mage had brought to life.

"I have another job for you, if you are interested."

Something in his voice gave me more pause than usual. "What is it?"

"I'd like you to broker a deal for another artifact. This one will be easier, as I know where the artifact is and have already negotiated the price with the owner."

"What do you need me for?"

"If I were to enter the territory of the seller, my actions would be, by some, interpreted as an act of war. I wish to keep this quiet."

That didn't sound foreboding at all. "So you just need me to pick it up? From where?"

"Not far. A tiny city an hour from here."

"You mean Sundance?"

"In the other direction. The town located on the line between California and Arizona."

" East Pluto ? You weren't lying about the tiny part. That place makes Sundance look like New York City. There's a gas station, a diner, a couple businesses, and a few paranormals but not much else. I buy crystals from a woman there—pretty sure she's the mayor and maybe even the entire city council."

"There is also a cemetery."

Another graveyard. Wonderful. "Is this contact like you? A gravedigger demon?"

"No." He let several heartbeats thump by then said, "Dominick is a ghoul."

"Nope." I shook my head, even though Sexton couldn't possibly see it. "Nuh uh. No way. I don't mess with ghouls. They're even more terrifying than you are, and you scare the pants off me."

"More terrifying than me?" He sounded offended by the notion.

"Okay, the same amount of terrifying as you then. Either way, it's a no from me."

He harrumphed, cleared his throat. "I will pay you far more than you deserve for two hours and ten minutes worth of work. Two of those hours will be spent in your car listening to your horrendous music." He always used a spooky slow drawl, but he'd really leaned into a spot-on impersonation of Vincent Price with the last part. "It will be an advantageous payday for ten minutes of discomfort."

"Hey. I have excellent taste in music." And how did he know about it anyway?

He grumbled something in a language I didn't know, but from his tone it wasn't a compliment.

"Can you guarantee the ghoul won't feed on me?"

"Yes."

Did I trust he could ensure my safety? No. But, if he could…

Still no. Ghouls were terrifying. Death by ghoul was excruciating. It was an all-around terrible idea.

Because I knew he wouldn't let this go, I decided to postpone turning him down. I had other things to deal with right now.

"Can we discuss this later, Sexton? I'm summoning one of your brethren tonight, and I need to prep the parking lot."

"My brethren? Tell me what you're doing and for whom," he said, sharply. "Leave nothing out."

Why not? It wasn't like Sexton was going to alert the coven. He didn't care for them, either. Demons hated covens.

"There's this grimoire…" I explained the situation.

"Use caution when delving into my worlds, witch," he said when I was finished. "It would not be good for you to end up on the inside of a salt circle."

This from the guy who recently asked me to steal some demon-grown belladonna from Limbo. "I know. That's why I always pour two. Just in case."

"With certain of us, you could pour two hundred circles, and it wouldn't be enough protection." After dropping that frightening bit of trivia, he said, "My artifact can be retrieved once this chore of yours is complete. The funds will be in your account when you need them. I will await your call."

" Wait ," I yelped. Because I didn't want to piss him off, I added, " Please , Sexton . Don't hang up. I have a question about the note you left for me."

"What is it?"

"All it said was vita . Is there anything else?"

"Unfortunately, I have nothing more to impart. When I conversed with your soil—no, that's incorrect." He let out another long sigh, but this one was less winter and more autumn. Gusty and cool as opposed to blustery. "I was unable to speak with the earth in your park. I was only able to hear it."

I stared harder at the newly green patch of grass in Mom's yard. "What did it say?"

"What I told you. Vita . It repeated the phrase over and over."

"What does it mean?"

"Life, of course."

"Yes, but I don't understand what it means ." I peered at the front door over my shoulder. "I've searched for life in the soil. I've walked the park every day since Mom died, pulled up the tiles in the garden room, crawled under my trailer, and even searched inside Mom's house for anything that might help."

"And there was nothing there? No signs of life?"

"There are signs when I cast the protection spell, but they're weak. I haven't seen the soil here react in any meaningful way to anything—at least, nothing I've done. It did react to someone else today."

I told him about the soil glowing on the mage's hands, which led to me telling him about Joon possibly purchasing the park.

"No. You must not sell the park to this mage. Your mother would be saddened."

I decided to walk right past the comment about Mom. I didn't have it in me to argue with him about it.

"The soil responded to him, Sexton. I'm staring at a patch of healthy green grass in front of the cottage. I haven't seen anything like this since my mom died."

"That might not mean what you think it means."

I scooped up a handful of dirt and stared into my hand. "I don't know. I think the soil chose him."

Sexton made a bubbling sound. It reminded me of the noise a kettle made just before whistling.

"Are you laughing ?" I pulled the phone away and gaped at it before returning it to my ear.

"Yes. I cannot help it. You are a strong, smart witch, and yet you say the most asinine things."

"Gee. Thanks."

"This mage is not the right person to run the Siete Saguaros, but it sounds to me as if he did do one thing right."

"What's that?"

"He listened to the earth."

Rage erupted in me, and I jumped to my feet, spilling the cat treats and cookies. "For the last three years, I've asked this soil to talk to me, Sexton. Pleaded. Sobbed on my knees and begged it to regrow the saguaros. Regrow the flowers, grass, weeds. Grow anything."

"And yet, both the mage and I were able to do what you could not. And with far less effort." He spoke the next words in short, sharp syllables in a voice that dripped with contempt. "Stop whining and stop begging. Start listening . You are an earth witch, Lilibet Lennox. Cease your cowardice and trust your power."