—
Dahlia finally textedhim a few hours later when Maggie rejoined the land of the living, and the vise that had tightened around Arthur’s chest loosened, just by a bit. By then, Arthur had already emailed and received a response from a Hawthorn botanist named Kel Silva, who had agreed to meet with him and Maggie the next day.
All Arthur wanted to do was race to Maggie’s apartment to see for himself that she was feeling better, but he didn’t know how Maggie would feel about the intrusion. He stared at their text conversation for nearly an hour before he settled on the message to send.
Arthur:Hey
Magnolia Linden, PhD:Hi
Arthur:Are you feeling up for more detective work tomorrow?
Magnolia Linden, PhD:Only if you buy me a black trench coat and promise to call me a dame
When Arthur finally saw Maggie again outside Ulmus Hall, he wasn’t sure he remembered how to breathe. She was maybe a little pale, but she looked like she had gotten enough sleep to fight off most of the effects of the pall sickness. She had pulled her auburn hair back, with loose strands falling around her face, and she was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that showed her shoulders, the swell and dip of her breasts. If Arthur thought he was wound tight with wanting her before, he was mistaken.
He wanted to sweep her into a hug but gave her space instead. He pushed his glasses up and then swept his fingers through his hair, hearing every parent figure in his life say,Stop fidgeting, as he tried to give his hands something else to do.
“I’m happy to see you upright.” He thought about kicking himself immediately. Why did he open his mouth?
But she laughed, a light sound he wanted to bottle for dreary days. “Yeah, me, too,” she said, and there was something different about the way she spoke. Tender, tentative. Something he couldn’t really name. And she looked at him with an intensitythat Arthur didn’t know how to read. After a moment, she dropped her gaze and reached into the tote bag she had slung over her shoulders. “I brought this back for you. Thank you for letting me borrow it.” She held his tweed jacket out to him, but he didn’t want to take it. It had been a gift. It had been the one thing Maggie had asked of him that he could do easily.
“Oh, I—” he muttered, stopping before he could say something he would regret. “Why don’t you hold on to it?”
“I couldn’t—”
“It’s fine,” he said, interrupting her. His voice sounded strangely tight even to his ears. She looked at him with an expression that was a little confused and a little curious but slid the jacket back into her bag. “Did the sleeping aid help?”
She nodded, holding on to the straps of the tote bag like they were a lifeline, and he wondered, for the thousandth time, what she was thinking. “A perfectly dreamless sleep.”
“Good.” He looked her over again, searching for something, anything, to indicate she was still feeling the effects of the pall. Satisfied that she really was feeling better, he nodded toward the building in front of them. “Shall we?”
Dr. Silva greeted them at the door to the plant library. She was an older woman with deep brown skin and curls streaked with gray. Her hair was twisted off her neck and secured with a fern-shaped clip, and her skirt was dotted with purple sprigs of vervain.
“Dr. Taliesin and Dr. Linden, welcome to the plant library,” she said warmly.
The plant library was a room with wide, bright windows ontwo sides and vining plants hanging from the ceiling. The walls were covered in botanical drawings and maps, cases with dried samples lined the edges of the room, and shelves held book after book on the care and cultivation of every plant imaginable. In one corner there was a large pot housing a particularly sinister-looking carnivorous Cape sundew that had grown to an unnatural size. Its stalks of red tentacles dipped in false nectar were the width of a palm, big enough to ensnare a mouse instead of a fly. On the edge of the pot was a name tag:Bruce.Arthur could have spent hours in here, looking at everything.
After encouraging them to look around, Dr. Silva returned to setting up an old projector with ancient slides. The machine whirred to life with several mechanical clicks. Old photographs flashed on the only blank space on the wall, each one showing detailed shots of different plants with their names written in a careful hand in the upper corner.Demon’s fingernails,bane weed,love-in-a-mist. The machine came to a stop when Dr. Silva finally arrived at a slide labeledGloaming creeper (day).
Maggie walked up to the projection, the blue light illuminating the soft features of her face, full cheeks and that perfect divot in her upper lip that Arthur was desperate to taste again. He shook his head and was shocked out of his stare by Dr. Silva clearing her throat.
“I believe this is what you’re looking for?” the botanist confirmed as Maggie nodded. “There’s only one place you’re going to find a gloaming creeper on the eastern coast—deep in old-growth forests, like the Wilds.” She reached high above her head to a string and pulled down a map of Hawthorn and thesurrounding Wilds. She pointed to the three rivers that eventually met at the confluence several miles into the swampy forest. “The vine tends to grow within a few yards of a water source, on the north side of tree trunks. When it’s found near a confluence like this one in the Wilds, it can counteract the effect the confluence might have on spellwork.”
She turned back to the projector. The gloaming creeper vine snaked up the side of a river birch, with wide, almost heart-shaped leaves. “The stem is a deep purple color, more like an aubergine than a mauve,” she explained. “These leaves are variegated, with colors ranging from a deep green to a creamy white, but they can be solid as well.” Dr. Silva clicked the button on the projector, and the next slide appeared, labeledGloaming creeper (night). “The most notable thing about the vine, besides its otherworldly properties, is that the leaves curl at night.”
Arthur remembered reading about this property in the journal. “Nyctinasty,” he interjected, supplying the word he’d learned to describe this phenomenon.
“Yes, that’s right!” Dr. Silva beamed. Maggie, who was standing on the other side of the botanist, smirked.
“Show-off,” she mouthed across the room, and he couldn’t help his goofy smile.
Arthur stepped forward to examine the projected image of the vine. “Is there anywhere we can buy a prepared decoction of the gloaming creeper? Price wouldn’t be a concern.”
Dr. Silva shook her head. “Unfortunately, gloaming creeper has never been successfully cultivated. Prepared decoctions are very rare and difficult to transport due to its instability after it’sbeen heated.” She tapped her foot momentarily, looking thoughtfully at Arthur. “My colleague at Dartwood, Dr. Bellinger, has several rare decoctions in her collection. You might be able to check with her to see if she has any advice.”
Arthur stood in front of the Wilds, studying the landscape, shoulder to shoulder with Maggie. “Some explorer certainly had a good time naming these rivers,” she muttered. The Dismal. The Despair. The Dour.
“It is rather ominous, isn’t it,” he said, feeling a little bit breathless about how close they were standing. Memories threatened to surface—of holding her against him as they’d danced on Beltane, as he’d carried her out of the lab when he’d been so worried she might not wake up. He pushed the memories away and turned to Dr. Silva.
