When she was close, she examined my face. “You need to get that looked at. Follow my finger.”
She moved her forefinger back and forth across my vision. Then she shook her head again. “You want me to call an ambulance?”
“Listen,” I said. “I get that it’s your job, but you probably want to go to work and forget you ever saw me, okay? You’re good people and what I’m about to do isn’t for good people like you.”
With that, I turned and began the hike up the street to Derek McCallum’s house. Maybe I did have a concussion, usually I wasn’t so chatty with people I didn’t know. Now she was probably going to call the cops, which was one thing I didn’t need.
Because, dirty or not, concussed or not, exhausted or not, I was going to murder Derek McCallum.
Derek McCallum livedin one of the recent additions to the Hills. His house bore the bland anonymity of a house built in the early ’00s which wanted to look modern yet not out of place from his more established neighbors. He was like some reptile who had snuck his egg into a bird’s nest and, as soon as the egg hatched, was going to eat all the chicks.
And he probably would get away with it, convincing the mother bird that he was harmless, scaly skin and all. After all, he’d managed to convince me that I should do business withhim, even though if you’d asked me a few months ago,should you do business with Derek McCallum?My answer would have beennever, no,anddo I look like I want to end up in the harbor wearing cement shoes?
When I approached his house, I was surprised to see the lights weren’t on. McCallum didn’t seem like the kind of person who kept an early bedtime, but maybe he was out celebrating his victory. Champagne for the thug who’d killed the PI stupid enough to get into business with San Amaro’s most notorious crime boss.
McCallum had a gate, and I was sure he had wards, but I was so angry that pushing through them only felt like the prickle you’d get touching something that came out of the dryer snapping from static electricity. The fence was a bigger problem, as I was tired after having dug myself out of the dirt and then walking several miles until I found a bus stop.
Magic bled from me, like sweat coming off a race horse. The job I had done for McCallum had me using magic almost nonstop for weeks. If you had asked me several hours ago, I would’ve said I was tapped out. But desperation and fury meant that my reserves were back at full capacity.
I couldn’t work with the metal fence. This angry, there was no way I could even attempt to finesse the metal. Moreover, metal is almost impossible for me to work with. On a normal day, I might test to see if I could manipulate it, but I didn’t want to waste time trying, in case I was wrong.
No, I needed an alternative route into McCallum’s house. Walking around the fence, I saw where some lazy groundskeeper had let a few branches of a shrub grow just over the top of the black-painted wrought iron, complete with sharp, stabby points at the top. I could work with that.
The fence was easily ten feet tall, and I had no desire to test how my knees would take a fall from that height. I couldprobably do it, but the last thing I needed was to hobble myself on top of the concussion I was almost positive I was sporting. What I really wanted was for the bush to grow all the way down the opposite side of the fence so that it would be just like climbing a ladder down the other side.
Approaching the plant, I reached out a thread of magic and waited until I felt the shrub wake.
It was curious, uncertain about me. I’d never felt that from another spirit before, but then again, I’d never been four hours past a murder attempt before. Taking a deep breath, I reigned in my anger until I was able to speak without it sounding like a werewolf’s growl. There was no sense in scaring the bush back to a seedling.
“Hey there,” I said. “Look at your leaves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen leaves like that before, they’re so… green.”
Luckily, the bush didn’t have eyes, because it didn’t see me wince and smack my own head with the heel of my hand. I immediately regretted the action, because I’d gotten slightly too close to the bruise from McCallum’s muscle. Spots of light exploded across my vision, like my head was a giant disco ball in a roller rink.
“I think you’re the tallest one here. You’re way taller than the other bushes and you grow in your own shapes, unlikethem.” I jerked my thumb at the matching row of bushes every seven feet along the fence. “Theyneed some gardener to prune them and show them how to form interesting shapes, butyou. You’respecial. I bet, if you wanted, you could even grow down the fence. You would be like an arch. Usually they have to train a bush for years to get it to do that, butyou…”
I could already see the tendrils growing, climbing and supporting each other as they began tentatively moving down the other side of the fence. Plants aren’t usually meant to grow down, it’s not in their nature. They grow towards light; theygrowup. They can grow sideways, and if you train them right, some will grow along an archway, but growingdownward…
Well, I had the magic to help the bush-turned-ladder, even if my charisma was still at freshman-trying-to-explain-anime-to-a-girl-he-liked level. I reached inside me, but took a moment to calm myself before feeding the plant more magic. I wanted to end up with Jack’s beanstalk, not the three magic beans. If I fed the plant the magic that was currently swirling around inside of the vessel in my chest, there was no way it was going to do what I needed. It would take one hit from me and shrivel up in fear.
Normally, I don’t think too much about my magic. It’s always there, it always feels like me, and it always feels like a warm summer day.
Four hours post waking up in a shallow grave and realizing that by some miracle I wasn’t actually dead, my magic wasn’t gold like I was used to seeing. It didn’t have the warm precious metal hue of Summer magic. Instead, it was red, my anger tainting it, my need for revenge so strong that it overwrote the magic’s natural balance.
I was wrong. The plant wouldn’t be afraid of this magic. If I fed the plant this magic, I’d end up with man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors. The next gardener that came by trying to prune it would end up screaming when the thing ate his arm and then went for his leg.
I took a slow breath, calming my heart rate, and listened to the low hum of spirits around me. They weren’t angry. They existed, they were part of the flow of reality, each taking its own place, each with its own wants and needs. I was part of that, I reminded myself.
My need to murder Derek McCallum was just anotherwantamong an entire planet full of them. The small patch of ornamental daisies a few feet away were getting too much water, and wanted drier soil. The delicate Japanese maple wasdesperate for more shade. As I listened to the low hum of the surrounding garden, I realized that Derek McCallum also needed to hire a better landscape company. Whoever took care of his garden right now was leaving a lot of plants wanting.
When I was sure my head was in the right place, I checked in on my magic. While it wasn’t the pure gold I was used to, it also wasn’t the color of blood and fire. It was more like a rose gold, some new Apple product designed for women with Hermès handbags and matching pooches to go in them.
I unspooled magic from inside myself, feeding it to the receptive shrub.
The plant grew like it was one of those sped-up videos in science class, the frames sliding by until we were watching a year’s worth of development in a few minutes. There was my ladder.
The thing had even bothered to create distinct footholds for me that were stronger branches. Even I was a little surprised. This was the sort of work that would get the plant put in honors class, if plants went to high school and cared about things like college admissions.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s… you really are incredible.”
