Page 26 of Strike It Witch

“Miss you, Red,” I said.

Many times, I’d sat beneath the shadows of Red’s strong arms and chattered away my loneliness. As a certifiedweird kidwith a goth-meets-pinup-girl style, I’d been an outsider in this small desert agricultural town from the start. I wasn’t actively bullied in school, just overlooked, and maybe that was better, but it had also really sucked.

Most teens have a best friend to talk to about their problems. I’d had a cactus. Nevertheless, Red had been as real to me as Fennel and Ida were, as real as my mom had been. I’d loved that saguaro with my whole heart, and when I’d emerged from the ground to find him dead, I’d mourned him the way I hadn’t been able to mourn Mom.

I’d ringed his and the other saguaros’ spots with stones to honor them, and also because there was a tiny part of me that hoped that someday, under the care of a witch welcomed by the soil, they’d grow again.

I crouched, dug my fingers into the place where his base had been rooted to the ground, and sent magic into the soil.

When the seven saguaros had lived, there’d been no need to purchase ethically harvested saguaro spines from Wicked. No need to cast protection spells. They’d been the living protectors of the park.

I had to find a way to grow them back. I was never going to find a buyer for the place if the cost to protect it was so high.

Why Mom had tied her spell into the most elderly of the park’s residents was a mystery to me. As she had with so many things, Mom had kept her reasons to herself.

My fingers sank deeper into the soil. There was magic here that sparked below the surface, but when I reached for it…

Nothing.

After a few futile minutes, I withdrew my fingers and dusted them off over Red’s grave. I hadn’t expected it to work, not after three years of rejection, but damn if I didn’t keep trying.

“I know you loved her. And I know you blame me for her death,” I whispered to the soil. “That’s fine. I blame me, too. But if you keep pushing my magic away, we’re both going to die. Do you think that’s what she’d have wanted?” Tears clouded my vision. “I am doing my best to keep this place going, and you’re not helping one damn bit.”

The garden door swung open behind me. I rose, wiped my hands on my black jeans.

“Meow?”

“Fine, Fennel. I’m always fine. You know that.” I sniffed, turned to face the cat. “You sober?”

His tail swished lazily—a so-so gesture.

“Good enough. I need you to be alert. The belladonna client threatened you, Cecil, and me. I don’t know how he knows about either of you, but he does. And I’m still not sure who or what I’m dealing with. Watch your six. Cecil’s, too.”

Fennel's tail stiffened.

“Don’t say anything, okay? Just watch out for him.”

We went into the garden room together and found Cecil. We discussed the Desert Rose Café and Wicked orders. Then I told both of them about my run-in with the giantNepenthesand collapsed on the chaise lounge. The energy I'd expended this morning was catching up to me.

Cecil, in a rare gesture of empathy, brought me a few lavender buds and a pile of soil. This wasn’t the park dirt but a special blend I’d developed in my travels and transported into the garden room in burlap bags and clay pots.

In other words, this soil didn’t hate me.

“Thanks. I’m going to lie down for about ten minutes then I have to get back to La Paloma to meet a client who cancelled on me twice, because, apparently, I’ve got a masochistic kink.”

“Meow,” Fennel said.

“A getting-paid kink, whatever. Same outcome. I’m meeting him at two o’clock. Don’t let me oversleep, okay?”

“Damn it, Fennel.”

I slammed my hand on the steering wheel and floored the Mini. My partially stoned cat had woken me ten minutes late, and that had put me in a foul mood.

“American Woman” played on the radio, but not even a sing-along with The Guess Who could pull me out of my funk. Flubbing the lyrics of “Blinded By The Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band helped, but it was “Sweet City Woman” by The Stampeders that finally did the trick.

“Bon, c’est bon…”

Impromptu karaoke always made me smile, and I was in a much better mood by the time I pulled up in front of Ronan’s Pub for the second time today.

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