Page 2 of Moth to a Flame

There was, actually. If she had hit the camas, it would have been disastrous—for her and my pollinators—but I’d had to keep it near the front door for the optimal conditions before tonight’s ritual. I hadn’t expected visitors. And I hadn’t yelled.

“I’m sorry. Here, just take the tea.” I didn’t know why I even bothered anymore. Some small part of me probably still had hope that maybe this time it would be different. Maybe someone would be able to hear what I really meant. But as the look on her face changed, a little bit more of that spark of hope died.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize there’d be…conditions. Goldie at the café always said nice things about you.”

“There are no conditions.” Stop talking, Lucia. Stop. Talking.

She went pale. Whatever she’d heard that time was worse. The curse punished persistence. Doris fumbled behind her for the door handle, and her handbag knocked a pot of feverfew off the shelf. She didn’t even stop to apologize for it.

“I’ll wait for Dr. Bones, thank you. Sorry to bother you.”

She fled into the pale evening light, her footsteps quick on the gravel until darkness swallowed them.

I stood there, surrounded by my flowers and vines, and listened to the silence come back. It was always so fucking quiet.

Then I got my broom.

As a witch, I had my rituals, and this was the one I practiced the most—sweep the soil, save the feverfew, and do not, under any circumstances, replay the conversation.

Do not imagine what she heard. Do not picture her tomorrow at the bakery, telling Goldie in a hushed voice that Lucia Atropa had made demands in exchange for medicine, and Goldie wincing and not defending me because Goldie had been on the other end of my curse once or twice herself. The whole town knew I was more toxic than my garden.

She always said nice things about you.

There was that hope, trying to flicker back to life. But every time, it just ended up burning me.

That was the curse’s real teeth—the hope that it let fester in my heart. Even after five years, when someone walked through my door, some idiot ember in my chest lit up and whispered maybe this one, and every time, the result was the same. The line between hope and insanity was apparently razor-thin.

I swept, the broom’s stiff silver birch bristles rapping against the stone floor. I replayed the conversation four times. The plants around me reached out, growing new tendrils or leaves. Was it empathy, or did they just want the magic in my tears? It was hard to tell.

Crying again, sister? So emotional. You’ll never play with the big boys if you can’t control yourself.

I stamped that voice down, shoving into the pit of my stomach right along with my thoughts of Doris and Goldie.

Mugen wove between my ankles, meowing softly.

“I’m okay,” I murmured, reaching down to stroke his back between the wings. “I’m okay, because tonight—tonight, I’m going to fix this.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Ritual

The greenhouse settled around me, and as the sun sank low over Pumpkin Hollow, casting everything in a deep autumnal orange, it came alive. By day it might have looked like an ordinary greenhouse—maybe even a mildly neglected one—but by night it bloomed. The belladonna unfurled its purple flowers, hiding the dark berries beneath. The night phlox breathed out honey and almonds. My black hellebores were littered with small flower buds, although they wouldn’t bloom until later in the season. The datura hung its great pale bells in rows, gorgeous and hallucinogenic, my best girls. I specialized in night-blooming flora, which the town found ominous. Sure, most of them were highly toxic, but that wasn’t their fault. They’d been made that way, and most people refused to look past that to what good they could offer.

Most importantly, they let me work in the dark. The dark didn’t ask questions or expect answers.

And tonight, on the new moon before All Hallows’ Eve, the rarest thing in my collection was going to open for the first and only time in its life.

I made my way to the heart of the greenhouse, to the glass bell cloche on the center table that held the very last ember of my hope.

The Selenicereus arcanaflora—commonly known as the Moon Queen flower—sat in its pot of grave-dark soil, spindly limbs spread out around a bone-white flower furled tight as a fist. Its narrow petals overlapped in an intricate knot, faintly luminous along the seams, like moonlight had been caught inside. Five years I’d nursed it from a seed I’d acquired from a very shady wizard. The world’s rarest flower, and the most difficult to keep in captivity. I’d actually started with one hundred seeds, but only one had survived to maturity.

Five years of perfectly balanced soil and whispered encouragement and exactly the right amount of neglect. Not one night had gone by when I hadn’t doted on it. It would only bloom once. And the witch who harvested its pollen could work a spell like the kind not seen since the age of the fae.

I could see the Atropa Pharmaceutical Catalog now: When life leaves you empty, feel a real connection again. That would be the copy when they patented it and sold it. But I didn’t want to sell it. I wanted to use it.

Deep in the family archives, I’d read about it—before they’d cast me out, of course. A childhood spent reading instead of making friends had paid off in some ways. The archive had contained an etching of an ancient temple, acquired by my family during an expedition to Central America, where the Moon Queen grew in the heart of the deepest rainforest. The etching was of an ancient song of the Yucatec people sang about the flower. I’d spent a whole summer in high school translating just the first verse:

When sun descends to the well below,