by Tessa Adams
She’s been branded with my mark.
“You know, the whole purpose of sitting on that thing is to sway back and forth.”
I’m curled up under a blanket on my mom’s antique patio swing when Donovan finds me hours later. It isn’t moving because I’m too shell-shocked to push, too shell-shocked to do much of anything but sit here and stare out into the garden I usually take such comfort from.
This morning, that’s nearly impossible, especially with the ritual ring cast by my family still sitting front and center. Normally, it vanishes at the end of a ceremony as mystically as it appears, but the Solstice rites weren’t completed last night and so it remains, a dark and lonely reminder of everything I would rather forget.
“You doing okay?” Donovan asks as he settles down next to me.
“Just peachy.”
He snorts. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He doesn’t say anything else for a while, just sits with me, swinging us back and forth in a slow, easy rhythm that makes me want to cry even as it relaxes me.
I ignore the prickles behind my eyes—crying won’t do me any good—and instead let the warmth of everything Donovan isn’t saying simply soak into me. I don’t tell him, but I’m glad he came out here. Sometimes being alone isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
“They think I did it,” I finally say, nearly choking on the words.
“Moira wants to believe you did it but she’s not exactly objective. She’s so blinded by hatred she’d arrest you for every crime that crosses her desk if she could.”
“What’s with that, anyway?” I demand. “I’ve never done anything to her.”
He shrugs. “I think she’s just always wanted to be you.”
“Yeah, because being me is so great. I’m sure she’ll change her mind once I go to prison for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“You’re a princess, Xan. The one thing I can assure you with absolute conviction is that you are not going to prison.”
“They think I did it,” I repeat.
“No.” He scoots over, hugs me to his side. I put my head on his shoulder despite my resolve to stay strong. “They don’t know who did it so they’re casting around, trying to figure out who in the community is strong enough to hide from them after doing something so terrible.”
“Which should be reason enough for them not to bother looking at me at all. Yet here we are.”
“Here we are.” He starts to say something else, then stops himself and I’m left wondering what he’s not telling me. From the look on his face, whatever it is is pretty serious stuff.
“Do you know?” I sit up straight, my hands clutching at his shirt. “Have you seen what happened to that poor girl?”
“You know clairvoyance is my weakest gift.”
“I also know you didn’t answer the question,” I say with a glare.
He grins. “There’s my Xandra. I knew my hard-ass sister was in there somewhere.” He holds up a hand, his smile fading away. “And before you ask again, no. I have no idea who killed that girl. I just know that neither the chief of police nor any of the investigators—besides Moira—believe you had anything to do with it.”
I should be relieved, but instead I’m just…numb. I slump against the back of the swing with a sigh, use my foot to rock it back and forth as I try to figure out what it is I want to say—and how I want to say it. Finally, I just burst out with, “Do you think it’s possible that belladonna poisoning actually works?”
Donovan turns, eyes me sharply. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Xandra.”
“Seriously, Donovan. Nothing happened. I was just wondering. You said the mandrake didn’t work, but has Mom used belladonna on anyone besides me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So none of the others had any trouble with their powers? Mom didn’t have to do anything to kind of jump-start them—”
“No. Why are you asking?”
“I don’t know. I had this weird hallucination thing when I was under its influence. I thought it was a memory, from before. But now I’m wondering if, maybe—”
“Don’t go there, Xan. The whole thing’s ridiculous. There’s no way the belladonna did anything except confuse you about what’s real and what isn’t.” He stands abruptly and in those brief moments he is every inch the future king, the usual indulgence he reserves for me buried under layers of royal detachment.
It only lasts a few seconds before he jogs across the porch and down the steps into the garden. “Are you coming?” he calls over his shoulder. The distance is gone and he’s my big brother again. But I can’t help being freaked out by the transformation. I’ve seen my mom and dad do it plenty of times, but not Donovan. Never Donovan, never with me.
“Where are you going?” I demand, wary of him in a way I never have been before.
“Mom needs some fresh clippings, since the Solstice was ruined last night. She’s planning a kind of makeup ceremony for tonight. One all of us will be involved in.”
“All of us?” I repeat, a sick feeling starting in my stomach. I’m not very good with the whole ritual thing—I don’t have much experience as anything but an observer. Add in the lack of magic and it’s a recipe for disaster.
“Yep. You too.” He pauses, holds out his right hand to me even as he grabs one of the pruning baskets Mom keeps at the bottom of the stairs with his left. “If you ask me, you should have been involved last night, too. Then you wouldn’t have ended up out there in the middle of everything.”
“You mean I’d have an alibi.”
“You already have an alibi. The whole party saw you dressed like a character from the Wizard of Oz. You weren’t exactly inconspicuous last night.”
“And aren’t you glad I wasn’t?” I catch up to him, but instead of taking his hand, I pick up a basket of my own. “Where are we going to start?”
“With the bittersweet.”
I stop dead, eye him with suspicion. “Seriously?”
“What? It’s on the list.” He waves a sheet of my mom’s private stationery in my face, then shoves it back into his pocket before I can get a good look at it.
“I bet.”
He just smiles, like he doesn’t know as well as I do that bittersweet is rarely burned in rituals. Instead, it’s placed in satchels and then charmed to encourage truth-telling.
We don’t speak as Donovan clips several shoots of the bittersweet, complete with berries, but when he moves on to the basil—another odd choice for a ritual—he comments, “I love herbs. They’re so much heartier than flowers.”
“Not all flowers are weak.”
“True enough,” he agrees, even as he snaps a few basil flowers off the plant and drops them into my mom’s compost bin. “But they are often unnecessary.”
He clips a few large sprigs of basil and drops them into my basket. “Unlike the actual plant, which can be used a million different ways. Strange, isn’t it, how we’re taught to admire the bloom when it’s so often the most dispensable part?”
“Not always.” But two can play his game. I walk to the east side of the garden. It’s the wettest area, and where my mother grows cattails. I clip a few, then return to Donovan and add them to his basket.
He looks down at the oblong spikes. “Feeling unsettled, little sister?”
“I thought you might be. What with all your talk of what’s necessary and what isn’t.”
He just nods as he snaps a few more flowers from the basil plant. When he continues speaking, his voice is carefully modulated, like a professor in front of a class. I might even buy the act, except his eyes are a turbulent violet.
“Sometimes you have to pinch a bush back so that it can grow and you can get the most benefit from it,” he instructs.
“Yeah, but what about the plant itself? It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, to think of it never flowering—never becoming what it could be—simply because it’s of better use to someone if it never realizes its full po
tential?”
“Do you really believe that?” Suddenly he is focused exclusively on me.
Actually, I was just being contrary. But his intensity surprises me, makes me wonder what I’m missing. I decide to play along, and with a shrug I reach out and clip the last of the basil flowers from the bush. When I’m done, I raise one of the blossoms to my nose and inhale its rich, earthy scent. “I like flowers.”
“Of course you do.” He crosses to the back of the garden, to the fence lined with white oleander and pink bougainvillea. He picks a few of the oleander blooms and presents them to me with a flourish. His way of warning me to be careful.
I respond with a few angelica flowers and a sprig or two of thyme. Magic and bravery.
He laughs, then counters with a handful of chamomile and a small cactus blossom from the dry side of the garden.
“What exactly is it I have to patiently endure?” I ask even as I cut a huge bunch of parsley and drop it in his basket. I’m sick of feeling like I’m the last to know anything.
Donovan must have finally gotten sick of communicating with flowers, because he stops in the center of the aisle and refuses to let me go around him. “Having power isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Xandra.”
“I’m aware of that, Donovan. It’s why I’m perfectly okay without it.”
“Are you really?”
I exhale a long, frustrated breath. “I thought we covered this yesterday.”
“So did I. But you’re the one asking about belladonna again today.” He pauses, like he’s searching for the right words. Finally, he says, “You’re going to have to trust me on this. Some things are better left unexplored.”
“Tell that to Mom.”
“I did. This morning.”
“Oh, yeah? How’d she take it?”
He grimaces. “About like you’d expect.”
“And yet, you’re still here warning me.”
“You’re my baby sister. It’s my job to take care of you.”
I groan, completely exasperated. “I’m twenty-seven. It’s my job to take care of myself. Besides, why the big change of heart?” It’s my turn to watch him as he walks over to my mother’s prize irises, then crouches down and strokes their violet petals. “Yesterday you told me not to give up, that my powers could still kick in, whether I want them to or not. Today you’re full of all kinds of admonitions.”
He doesn’t answer and warning bells go off deep inside of me. “What did you see?”
His hand clenches involuntarily on the iris, crumpling the fragile bloom and snapping it off the stem.
“Donovan?” I squat down next to him, look him in the eyes and repeat, “What. Did. You. See?”
“Not enough.” He pulls me into a huge bear hug and kisses the top of my head. “Not nearly enough.”
Then he strides out of the garden like the hounds of hell are on his heels.
I stare after him for a long time, feeling like I’m riding a Tilt-A-Whirl. Like the whole world is standing still but I’m twirling by so fast I can’t see anything but a blur of colors.
I’m missing something, but I don’t know what. I wait for hours for Donovan to come back and explain things to me, until long after it becomes apparent that that isn’t going to happen, even though he’s left his basket of plants in the middle of the garden for me to deal with.
I mutter to myself as I gather up all the foliage and take it to my mother, who looks at me like I’m crazy. She has plenty of greenery left over from last night, she assures me. Though she does thank me for the thought.
I just nod and head back to my room as the feeling of unreality grows worse. As soon as I open my door, I’m overwhelmed with the lush, heavy fragrance of flowers. I glance around, try to figure out where the scent is coming from. And that’s when I see them—bunches upon bunches of begonias covering my entire bed.
Okay, Donovan, I think as I walk over and lift one of the fragile pink blooms to my nose. Message received. I need to beware.
But of what? And more importantly, why?
Six
“I’ll take a large latte with an extra shot of espresso.”
I’m in the back room, mixing up dough for my world-famous (okay, Austin-famous) chocolate chip cookies when I hear the order—and the deep voice delivering it. It’s been six days since I’ve heard that voice and I’ve missed it, and the man it belongs to. So, after checking to make sure my dough is in good shape—all it’s missing are the chocolate chips—I switch off my purple commercial-grade mixer and scramble toward the front counter without bothering to take off my flour-coated apron or even smooth down my hair.
“I’ve got this, Jenn,” I tell the teenage girl working the cash register.
“Sure, Xandra.” Her voice is perfectly normal, but when she turns around, she’s wearing a huge grin. I ignore it—and the fact that I know she’s going to have something to say about my sudden reappearing act the second Nate, and his latte, exit my coffeehouse.
“I was hoping you’d be back today,” Nate tells me as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet.
“I was hoping you’d be in today. I thought I missed you in the morning rush.”
“I was across town, on a case for most of the day.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Nate’s a homicide detective with the Austin Police Department, and though we’re a relatively quiet town for our size, there’s still more than enough work to keep him busy. After the better part of the week I just spent in Ipswitch, I’ve got a new appreciation for what he does—and what he goes through to do it. “How’d it go?”
“As well as can be expected actually. The perp is currently cooling his heels as a guest of the city and I am on my way home. It’s the first night in two weeks that I’ll be home before midnight and I plan on kicking back and actually watching the Stars game instead of catching the recap three hours after it’s over. I’m still on call, but if there is any justice in the world, it will be a quiet night.”
“You’ve been working late every night?” I ask as I take the ten-dollar bill he hands me and make change. “Did Austin have a run of homicides over Christmas that I don’t know about?”
“My partner and I’ve been picking up the slack for everyone who’s been out for the holidays.”
“You didn’t take any time off?” I want to kick myself the second the words come out of my mouth. I sound like I’m fishing. Which I’m not. At all.
“Part of Christmas. But holidays aren’t much fun when you’re alone, so I’d just as soon work.”
I snort before I can stop myself. “You only say that because you’ve never met my family.”
“Oh, yeah? Rough time at home?”
“You have no idea.”
While there’d been no more bodies discovered—and I’d had no more weird effects from the belladonna—the rest of my days at home hadn’t gone much more smoothly than the first two. Despite direct orders from the chief of police, Moira had insisted on hounding me whenever I left the house, and Salima, the crazed witch whisperer, had insisted on doing the same whenever I was at home. Needless to say, by the time I climbed into my hastily repaired Honda, I was chomping at the bit to get back to Austin, where things are normal—or at least as normal as they can be in a city whose official motto is “Keep Austin Weird.”
“I swore to myself it will be longer than six months before I go home again,” I tell Nate, who looks both sympathetic and curious. Not that I have any plans to satisfy that curiosity. One homicide detective on my ass at a time is more than enough.
The thought makes me nervous all over again and I wait for Nate to say something else or to at least give me a little wave good-bye before he heads out, but he makes no move to leave. And that’s when I finally remember—I haven’t made his coffee yet. The lapse makes me feel like an idiot, a feeling that’s reinforced when I turn around and find Jenn staring at me from the kitchen, a hand clamped over her mouth to keep a laugh from escaping.
Real smooth, X
andra, I snarl at myself. Real smooth.
I go for the French roast, though Nate didn’t ask for it specifically. But then he doesn’t have to ask—he’s been coming here long enough that I’ve got his order memorized. Our Costa Rican house blend in the morning with two extra shots, French roast in the evening with one extra shot.
“You know,” I comment, glancing over my shoulder at him, “I probably shouldn’t say this, since we’re talking about my livelihood and all, but you might want to ease off on the caffeine a little.”
His green eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. “You worried about me, Xandra?”
It takes me a few seconds to answer him—to be honest, I’m a little blinded by the grin. It lights up his whole face and showcases the dimple he has in his right cheek. I love that dimple, and am embarrassed to admit I’ve wasted more than a few minutes in the six months since he first darkened the café’s doorstep thinking up one-liners that might have a chance of bringing it out.
He’s never asked me out, and with his blond hair and boy-next-door smile, he’s a far cry from my usual type. Still, there’s just something about him that gives me a little buzz. Nothing major—not yet, anyway, but there’s enough chemistry between us that if he asked me out, I’d probably say yes just to see what happens.
But this time, though he’s laughing, I’m not trying to be funny. “More like worried you’ll drop dead on the floor of my café,” I say, sliding his coffee in front of him, sans lid. “Man cannot live by espresso alone.”
His grin widens farther when he sees the skull and crossbones I’ve drawn in the foam. “You poisoning me, Xandra?”
I think of my mom and the belladonna—not to mention everything else that took place in the five days I was home—and feel my own smile droop a little. And now here I am, flirting with a homicide detective of all people. What does it say about me that death seems to be around every corner in my life?
“Not planning on it.” The words come out more curt than I expected.
