“Is this a new hobby? You should have told me, and I would have had you help with the flower arrangements for your wedding.” I was still trying to keep my voice light.
“The hobby is a recent development. Come to think of it, I started getting interested in it after the wedding. Maybe it was the arrangements you made that triggered my interest.”
I frowned. My aunt had gone full steam ahead with projects before. The bakery was a clear example of that. I had shrugged off Bryce’s concerns, but the new suggestion about making flower-flavored pastrieswasstrange. It seemed to have come out of nowhere, and the recipes she was proposing weren’t likely to have a large market. As creative as she was, my aunt understood business.
“This interest started after the wedding? You’re not having any sort of post-wedding letdown, are you?” I echoed the concerns Bryce had expressed. They had been married for three months. Was my aunt having a hard time adjusting?
“Oh no! Nothing like that.” Aunt Vera waved a hand in a subtle motion, brushing off the idea. “It’s just that suddenly, I’m noticing every flower I see. I can’t pass them in a store without purchasing some. It’s like they’re speaking to me. I swear they lean in my direction as if asking me to take them home.” She let out a little laugh. “You probably think your aunt is going crazy.”
A nagging sensation tugged at my chest, and I inhaled sharply as something clicked. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said, calling the words back over my shoulder as I went to retrieve one of the bouquets from the tables in the front room. Ihad a preposterous theory, and there was one way to test it. The blooms in the vase immediately leaned toward me as I gathered them.
When I returned to the back room, I set the bouquet on the table then stepped as far out of its range as I possibly could while monitoring them, my heart racing. Once I was farther away from the flowers than my aunt was, I watched in astonishment as the blooms slowly reversed course, straightening then shifting so that every single bloom stretched directly toward my aunt Vera.
“See?” Aunt Vera said, glancing up at the blossoms. “Aren’t they beautiful? It’s like they’re displaying themselves just for me.”
Holy blossoms.
The flowers were drawn to my aunt. She had a floral affinity.
Aunt Vera was a magical botanist. And something had activated her powers.
Chapter Seven
My head was spinning as I tried to casually keep up with the small talk my aunt initiated as we prepared a batch of camellia-infused cookies. The flowers in the vase on the bakery counter were split into two bunches, half stretching toward her and half fanning toward me.
I attempted to piece through the timeline of when my aunt’s magic had been activated. If her powers worked the way mine did, they would have had to be unlocked by touching one of Leonardo da Vinci’s books. It wasn’t like those were just casually sitting around.
I sifted through everything Aunt Vera had said as we prepared the new and unusual recipe. The interest had seemed to start after the wedding, which made me wonder if it could be tied to the wedding somehow.
I continued to rack my brain, scavenging through the memories of that day and night. I had used my powers to puttogether the floral displays for the wedding. Could that have had some kind of downstream effect on my aunt? Did the massive bouquet she carried activate her powers?
I shook my head as I aggressively rolled a cookie into a ball. The camellia fragrance was so strong that I almost wanted to leave the room. No, the bouquet theory didn’t track with what I knew about my magic. Professor Tenella had explained that some magical botanists of the Renaissance period had tied their power to their journals. There was no evidence that the magic could have filtered through me and into the flowers. Plus, I had given my aunt magically enhanced plants before, like the poinsettia at Christmas a year earlier.
The wedding…The beautiful ceremony ran through my mind. I’d been surrounded by the friends and family of Bryce and Aunt Vera. Then there was dinner, speeches, and cake. I had taken the elixir of bliss with Callan, and we had danced the night away. Even the presence of Alex as Maci’s date hadn’t put me off as much as I thought it would.
Wait…Alex had been there.
Alex, who I saw at the tree conservatory last week. Alex, who had never given so much as a hint that he was a magical botanist until I saw him among the other tree affinities.
Could he have… no.I slapped the cookie ball onto the sheet.
“Whoa there. What’s going on with you, Briar Rose? You’ve been distracted this whole time. And now you’re attacking the poor innocent dough.”
I tensed then immediately softened at the teasing look on her face, not quite masking a hint of concern behind her brown irises. “I just have a lot going on,” I said.
“Things with Evergreen Academy? Or with that handsomeman I saw leaving the shop as I pulled up? That was Callan, right? The one with the scary parents?”
I couldn’t help it—I let out a sharp laugh, and my shoulders relaxed. “It might be a little about him,” I admitted, unable to explain that my primary concern had become abouther. Callan and I had told Professor East about Alex, and he promised to do some digging, but it had only been a few days since the discovery, and I hadn’t seen Professor East at all in that time.
The only thing keeping me sane was hearing from Maci, his kind-of girlfriend and my best friend since childhood, that Alex was still out of town. Figuring out what to tell Maci about Alex was a problem of its own.
I wondered if Alex planned to be back to start the new semester at Siskiyous Community College. Was it possible he knew we were onto him?
My aunt took the cookie tray and slid it into the commercial oven. “All right. Time to spill.”
I took a deep breath. If I couldn’t share anything else, I could at least share this.“We kissed,” I said, the words coming out as a squeak.
Aunt Vera nodded and smiled knowingly. “When did this happen?”
