Page 2 of Whisker me Away
"I don't understand any of this," Freya said. "The roses were fine yesterday evening. Beautiful, even. I checked on them before bed, like I always do."
"Magic leaves traces," Maizy said quietly. "If someone or something targeted your family specifically..."
"You think this was deliberate?"
"I think we need to find out fast, before whatever's killing the plants spreads beyond the gardens." Maizy's expression was grim. "Come on. Let's go see what we're dealing with."
Freya's mind raced as she grabbed her grandmother's woven basket from behind the counter, automatically reaching for the collection of tools and remedies she'd need to investigate magical plant diseases. Hollow Oak had always been a sanctuary for supernaturals, a place where magic flowed freely and nature responded to supernatural influence with unusual vigor. The town's gardens were legendary throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains, carefully tended by generations of magical practitioners who understood the delicate balance between power and growth.
If something was poisoning that connection systematically, especially right before harvest season when the town's magical energy reached its peak...
"I have to lock up," Freya said, her voice steadier than she felt.
"I'll wait." Maizy squeezed her shoulder.
Freya paused at the door, looking back at the shop she'd spent months preparing. Jars of carefully labeled herbs, shelvesof handcrafted remedies, and the consultation table where she'd planned to help her neighbors with everything from love potions to arthritis salves. All of it suddenly felt fragile, threatened by forces she didn't understand.
The metallic scent from the dying roses followed her as she stepped outside into the crisp September air, a reminder that somewhere in Hollow Oak, something had gone terribly wrong. The walk to the community garden would show them just how bad things had become.
But as she hurried down Moonmirror Lane with Maizy at her side, past the charming storefronts decorated with early autumn displays and magical businesses preparing for the harvest festival, one question echoed in her mind above all others.
If someone was targeting the Bloom bloodline just as the growing season reached its climax, what did they want with her?
2
KIERAN
Kieran Holt crouched beside what used to be prize-winning dahlias, their petals now black as charcoal and weeping something that smelled like death mixed with metal. His tiger prowled restlessly beneath his skin, hackles raised at the wrongness saturating the air. In three years of handling Hollow Oak's various crises—from supernatural domestic disputes to magical accidents—he'd never encountered anything that made his shifter instincts scream danger this loudly.
The September morning should have been perfect for a garden inspection. Instead, he found himself staring at botanical carnage that made his amber-gold eyes flash with protective fury, the green and gold flecks in them seeming to spark as his tiger pushed closer to the surface.
"Shit," he muttered, pulling his hand back as the corrupted sap hissed where it touched the grass. Not acidic, but something worse. Something that felt alive and hungry.
The community garden stretched before him in ruins. What had been a masterpiece of collaborative magic just yesterday now looked like a battlefield. Tomato vines that should havebeen heavy with their final harvest hung like broken spider webs, their fruit split open and oozing that same black substance. The herb spiral that Mrs. Patte had spent decades perfecting lay twisted and withered, releasing waves of decay that made his eyes water.
He'd been making his morning rounds—checking on Mrs. Patterson's fence that kept falling over, delivering firewood to the elderly Mr. Hobbs, and planning to help Miriam with her inn's autumn garden preparations—when Edgar Tansley came running from the Hollow Mercantile, shouting about his plants bleeding. Kieran had expected vandalism, maybe some teenager experimenting with dark magic they didn't understand. Not this systematic destruction that felt both ancient and purposeful.
His phone buzzed. Maeve Cross, probably wondering where the hell he was.
"Kieran here."
"Tell me you've got good news about whatever's happening to our gardens," Maeve crackled through the speaker. The lioness shifter never bothered with pleasantries when business was involved.
"Depends on your definition of good." He stood, brushing dirt from his jeans. The morning chill cut through his work shirt, reminding him that autumn was settling over Hollow Oak whether the gardens survived or not. "Whatever hit the mercantile spread here too. The whole community garden's gone."
"Gone how?"
"Corrupted. Every plant's dying the same way, weeping black sap that smells like sulfur and old blood." He walked the perimeter, noting how the corruption stopped in a perfect circle, as if something had contained it. "Maeve, this isn't random magical interference. Someone or something targeted these plants specifically."
"Any idea who?"
Kieran's tiger snarled softly as a breeze carried more of that metallic stench, mixed now with the scent of dying leaves and the kind of wrongness that made his predator instincts want to hunt. "Working on it. But whoever did this knows Hollow Oak's magical ecosystem inside and out. They hit the mercantile and the community garden within hours of each other. These are our two biggest concentrations of collaborative magic."
"Collaborative magic," Maeve repeated slowly. "You think they're trying to break the connections between our practitioners?"
"I think they're testing our defenses." Kieran knelt again, this time beside a section where healthy grass met the corruption. The line was too clean, too precise. "This feels like reconnaissance."
"Well, figure it out fast. Twyla's already got half the town in her café, demanding answers we don't have. Folks are worried about the harvest festival if this keeps spreading."
