“Ash knows if he doesn’t hear from us by midnight to open the store the next morning.” I’d need to give them all a bonus soon because they’d been picking up an extraordinary amount of slack lately.
“Good.” Mom pointed toward the west. “Your banshee resides over there.”
And with that, we were off.
Thalia’s wordskept playing on repeat through my brain.Beware the promised lands. Tir Tairngire literally meant Land of Promise. I knew as well as anyone that looks could be deceiving, but this place seemed like paradise. The temperature was comfortable, borderline cool. No bugs bit or pinched. There were no thorns on any of the plants or flowers growing wild in the grass. No poisonous air. No birds swooped down to attack us from the crystal blue skies. Nothing zoomed out from the woods to harm us.
I could walk through this place for the rest of my life and be content.
Usually when I felt like this, something or someone would crawl out from the woodwork and screw it up for me. But the wind stayed gentle, and the sway of grass against our calves made my shoulders drop, the stress over the last few weeks fading away.
I took my first deep inhale that I could remember and slowly released my breath.
Mom glanced over her shoulder. “Better?”
“This place feels like I smoked the best weed known to man,” Moira mused.
Mom’s lips twitched. “You found weed that worked with your metabolism?”
“I grew it,” Moira said absentmindedly.
“You grew super weed?” I asked, my eyes wide as I watched her.
Moira grinned. “You aren’t the only good gardener out there, you know.”
“I’m a Floromancer, and I never even thought about growing weed like that.” To be fair, I never thought about growing weed at all. “Have you sold any?”
“Weed is still illegal in most states.” Her prim tone made me roll my eyes.
“Like you give a damn about that.”
Mom’s eyes bounced back and forth between us. “Would you consider selling some to your best friend’s mother?”
Moira and I stopped walking.
“Mom!” I said with a gasp.
Moira blinked in surprise and started laughing.
“Being a goddess is stressful,” Mom said. “And as you both know, they don’t make substances for people like us.” She moved her hand back and forth. “And if they do, they’re extremely addictive and dangerous. I assume your new pot strain is not?”
Moira fished around in her purse and pulled out a perfectly rolled joint.
“I am in an alternate universe,” I muttered.
“May I?” Mom asked.
“You can have this one. I have another in my purse.”
“Moira! What the hell?”
“It helps me not summon interdimensional beings,” she said with a shrug. “I started experimenting some time back, and it’s not perfect, but in my defense, I had never pulled a god out of thin air until I took a weed break.”
“I’m going to need weed if you two don’t knock it off.”
Mom lifted the joint and sniffed it, the thing hovering under her noise like a white mustache.
“Don’t you dare light that thing up,” I snapped.
