“Hogan told me I can enter his house any time I need to,” I told her. “Open the door.”
She snorted and grumbled, and I caught more than one creative curse word as she stomped over to the sliding glass door, opened it, then galloped into the house.
“Avnas!” she yelled. “Hide the weed!”
I got to the door before Than, and followed Xtelle down the hall. She was making good time, her hooves clacking like canastas. She reached the room she’d taken over as her own and shouldered open the door.
I was right behind her. I thought she was going to slam the door in my face, but she left it open.
“This better not be a trap,” I said, strolling into the room.
The scene was not what I expected. The last time I had been in Xtelle’s room, it had been wall-to-wall mirrors and clashing tones of red and pink velvet and satin.
She’d done some interior decorating since then. So much so, that I had to pause just inside the door to orient myself.
The room had been divided into four quadrants. One section was familiar: the bed, the mirrors, the layers upon layers of pink and red velvet and lace. Another section of the room was set up in what looked like a tropical beach: sand on the floor, a hammock, fake palm trees, and the wall painted in what could be considered a sunset.
The other corner of the room was a sort of office: desk, chairs, and shelves all painfully white and clearly put together from flat packs.
But the last section of the room was a crime scene. It had been done up like a forest. That wall was painted dark green, sawdust was sprinkled across the rug, and a tree stump was propped up like a chair. Next to that was a stone—large enough I knew she hadn’t gotten it in through the door without using magic. All around that were plants: some ordinary sword ferns and fir branches, a few clumps of salal, and one crooked-looking rose bush.
But amongst all that, planted and arranged so they created a throne out of the boulder in the middle of them, were heritage plants. Several rhododendron bushes, azaleas, lilies, ferns, and daisies.
All of them stolen from the garden.
It took me a minute to get a grip on what I was looking at—and I still wasn’t sure that grip was all that tight. While I was staring, Xtelle and Avnas were shoving greenery into the closet.
“You can’t catch us, copper!” Xtelle tossed over her shoulder. “We don’t even know where any of this came from. Push, Avnas, push!”
“I am pushing, my queen.”
“Okay, you two,” I said. “Knock it off.”
Both demons turned their backs on the closet and faced me.
“Delaney!” Xtelle said, in a sugar-drenched voice. “I didn’t see you there. What a lovely surprise. Your hair is so…there.”
“Have you become more youthful?” Avnas asked. “You look more youthful than last I saw you.”
“You want to tell me why you have the plants that were stolen from the Heritage Garden in your bedroom?”
“This isn’t my bedroom,” Xtelle said.
“It looks like your bedroom.”
“Have a little imagination, Delaney. This is my bedoffistudiocation room. They’re all the rage. Work from home, play from home, vacation and create art from home.”
“Bedoffistudiocation room,” I said.
“All the rage.”
“Yeah, I’m not calling it that. Why are the stolen plants here?”
“Where else would I keep them?” she asked. “If I put them in Hogan’s boring bedroom, he’d ruin them.”
“You stole them.”
She scoffed. “I did no such thing.”
