“It’s a long story.”
He studies me. “I see that.”
“Oh, pah. You and your supposedseeing. What do you know?”
“You,” he returns simply.
I take a bite of pepperoni calzone, rolling my eyes. “Afffilfionshershago!”
He correctly translatesa million years ago. “You’re still really easy to read. And you still talk with your mouth full. Ew.”
I glare at him. “I was going through a... difficult time. Before flora fortunes found me.”
The gleam in his eyes goes flat. “What happened?”
When my life was in shambles after leaving Spencer, a friend of my grandmother’s dropped by the shop to give her a fern. Grandma’s health was declining, so the fern sat neglected for a while. I happened upon it when the pitiful thing was half dead.
I’m still not sure what possessed me to care. To whisper hello as if it could hear, picking dead, shriveled fronds out of the pot, offering its cracked soil a long drink. To my shock, it mattered. The plant responded to my attention. I still wasn’t good at nourishing myself, forgetting to eat at times, but I nourished the fern, so it grew tall, vibrant. I started to feel the hugs Luna and Aisling provided, a slow-acting medicine, the nuzzles from the cats, the fist bumps from Trevor. I started to reciprocate, slowly emerging in a softer, kinder reality. I covered myself in flowers and came back to life.
“I had this fern, of Grandma’s, that was dying. After I revived it, I started planting more things. Luna kept giving me seeds. I was looking for a job, not knowing what I wanted to do—I wasn’t interested in candle-making and I didn’t want to go back to the daycare I used to work at. My newfound interest in plants led me to pick up a book calledGarden Spells: The Magic of Herbs, Trees, and Flowers, which led to creating little posies out of flowers whose symbolism I thought would complement each other. A lady came into the shop one day, talking about her boyfriend, how she hoped he’d propose soon. Luna had a candle to help with that, of course, but I threw in some flowers. Gardenias and orchids. I’d been reading up on the floriography, so I thought—who knows? Maybe it would bring about a marriage somehow.”
“Let me guess.” He scratches his chin, smiling wryly. “The boyfriend coincidentally happened to propose.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence. I could tell by the feeling that overcame me when I put those specific flowers together for another person that I had... created magic.”
He studies me closely. “What sort of feeling?”
I tip my head back, filtered sunlight warm on my face. How could I possibly describe it?
Magic brought back a memory of Zelda and me splashing in puddles, galoshes dirty. Bangs dripping wet under rubbery hoods. Smiling teeth, stained cherry-sucker red. I saw Grandma strolling across a windswept street toward us, a paper bag of surprise treats from Half Moon Mill in hand. Her ribbons of white hair streamed sideways, and she was radiant, absolutely spectacular with our mirrored joy. I saw her painting the dot of the letterion our curved front windows,The Magick Happens, to look like a crescent moon. Part of me will always envision the shop name the same way I did when I was small, before I could read: backward, the way it looks from the interior side of the window. A bunch of symbols that felt mystical.
“Unconditional love,” I say finally. “The first time I made magic, when I heard the click of a door and felt this rush of wild wind with petals on the air, it was the first taste of joy I’d known in a long time. I discovered how to manufacture happiness where there had been none, and all I wanted was to keep doing it, again and again, until I felt alive.”
His stare, while remaining skeptical, softens just a little.
I look away, remembering what it had been like to lie at the bottom of darkness. The hope I clung to when magic blossomed, providing me with joy and purpose. Flora fortunes saved my life. I chased that feeling all the way to where I am today, creating magic now not only to bask in vivid feel-good sensations or recapture old memories, but to help others find happiness. Muchof the time, my flora fortunes act as tokens of courage: People just need that push to go for it, to let themselves love and be loved.
“The business side of my magic ignited almost overnight. When customers walked in for Luna’s candles, they left with complimentary flowers that addressed their specific romantic desires. Before I knew it, customers were walking in purposefully to visit me, andboom. Flora fortunes became my living.”
When Zelda got wind that we were selling flowers in addition to candles, she wanted to be involved somehow, to contribute her own passion to the mix, so the fantasy/witchcraft book collection was born. We cleaned out basement rooms that had previously been too creepy to visit, transforming them into the Cavern of Paperback Gems.
Alex stretches out a leg, slapping a mosquito away. “Hmm.”
“Go ahead and doubt all you like,” I tell him mildly. “I’m secure in my magic. I make a real difference in people’s lives.”
His expression is frustrated. “Are you calling yourself psychic, then? Like Gilda? I know that woman makes shit up. She tried to tell me I was captain of theTitanicin a past life.”
“No. I’m a flora fortunist, like I told you.”
“Okay, but that isn’t a thing. Youinventedthat.”
I smile. “Somebody invented roofing, too. Does that mean it isn’t real? Should I not believe in roofs?”
He leans back, gritting his teeth. I can tell he wants to laugh, wants to prove me wrong. This is the sort of conversation that must make him absolutelyloseit internally. It isn’t enough for Alex King to believe he’s correct; he has to make the other party acknowledge that he’s right. “That is... not equivalent.”
I squint up at the treetops, which flutter side to side in a sweet spring breeze. “A daylight new moon.” What I’m about to say next is going to annoy him. “Indicates a hidden truth will soonemerge. Maybe it’syourtruth. Are you hiding anything?” I fasten my eyes on his.
“You can see the moon in daylight every day.”
