And to the left—two humans.
A young man, blond, broad-shouldered, big for a human, swinging what appears to be a heavy push broom at a sunflower the size of a large dog. The sunflower has teeth. Rows of them, yellowed and sharp, snapping at him with every lunge. He’s holding his ground, but barely.
Next to him, a woman with long black hair is fighting a different battle. Rotted tree limbs have reached out from the dead garden and wound themselves into her hair, pulling her backward. She’s swiping at them with a dull kitchen knife, hacking at the branches with grim determination but limited success.
They’re young. Late twenties, maybe. Close to Elle’s age. And they’re here, at Jo’s house, fighting plants that want to kill them.
Just as I’m about to dive in and help, I hear a shrieking coming straight for my head.
“KAELREN, IT’S GOING TO EAT ME!”
Peeble rockets past my face, wings a desperate blur, with a massive sunflower in pursuit. This one is bigger than the first—the size of a wheelbarrow—its toothed maw open wide, spitting jets of toxic-looking green goo that sizzle where they hit the ground.
I let out a breath, reach inside for the magic, and let it go.
A wave of shadow and root spreads outward from my palms. Vines freeze mid-strike. Sunflowers lock in place, teeth still bared but powerless.
The weeds around Bryx and Mora’s legs wither and release. Tree limbs tangled in the woman’s hair go rigid, then crumble to dust.
The garden falls silent.
“Does someone want to tell me what is going on?”
Bryx straightens, brushing dead weed fragments off his legs with forced nonchalance. “Sorry, boss. We had it handled.”
Sarnyx snaps her head toward him. “You literally shoved me into those vines and took off running until the weeds caught you.”
“Hey, I was trying to save the beautiful Mora. She was a lady in distress.”
Mora pulls a dead vine from her ankle and gives him a flat look. “Bryx, is that what you call it? When you were hiding behind me telling me to protect you from the big, bad plants?”
“I was providing emotional support.”
“You were whimpering.”
“I don’t know who or what you people are,” the blonde man says, stepping forward, broom raised and voice tight with controlled fury, “but someone needs to tell me what the fuck is going on, and why my grandma’s garden is trying to kill us.”
My eyes snap to his. Grandma.
“You must be Elle’s cousin, Leo.”
His entire body goes rigid. He raises the broom handle toward me and steps forward, as if he’s going to charge. He’s large for a human male, I’ll give him that, but it’s laughable to think he could harm me in any way with a cleaning tool.
“What do you know about Elle?” His voice cracks. “What have you done with her? She’s been missing for months.”
Peeble, because Peeble has never once in their existence read a room, flutters over and lands on Leo’s shoulder. “Easy there, pretty boy.” They pat his neck with one tiny leg. “Gah, good looks really do run in the family, don’t they?”
Leo’s face cycles through about four expressions in two seconds. “How is there a beetle talking to me right now?”
“Oh, honey,” Peeble giggles. “Wait til you hear the story.”
Sarnyx points at the woman, who has freed the last bits of dead branch from her hair and is now standing beside Leo with the kitchen knife still in hand. “Who are you? Elle never mentioned you.”
Leo interrupts, but the woman holds up her hand to stop him. There’s fire in her eyes—the kind that comes from competence, not recklessness.
“I’m Sarah. What my husband is trying to say, in a less brutish way, is that we are very worried about Elle.” She keeps her voicelevel, but her knuckles are white around the knife handle. “No one has been able to find her. Police reports have been filed. It was like she vanished. Leo and I have been coming by to care for the house, and today there was an earthquake. When we looked outside, the plants were alive and attacking. That’s when you all showed up.”
The word missing sits in my chest like a stone. I’ve been so consumed by my own grief, months of it, the raw, all-encompassing weight of her absence, that I didn’t think about the people on this side who were suffering too. People who didn’t have a bond or a locket or the faint, fractured echo of her consciousness to cling to. People who had nothing. Just silence, police reports, and an empty house.
