We kept searching.Papers scattered everywhere.File folders stacked two and three deep.Every drawer emptied.Every page shuffled.
Delivery receipts that were at least a decade old.Phone orders from people in town that she’d kept for years.A sketch of the greenhouse out back—like she was trying to envision it before it was built.
“Hoarder,” Tani muttered as she shuffled more papers.
“Thorough,” I corrected, though by the piles of papers everywhere I was starting to agree.
I peered down in the drawer I’d emptied to make sure I got everything out when I noticed a seed catalog at the bottom.Like it had fallen out of the folder and Alice never noticed.The cover was bent at odd angles.I rescued it and placed it on the counter in front of me.I don’t know why but I started flipping through it.
There, stuck against the crease in the middle of the book, was a scrap of paper folded in half.Like it had been stuck there absently.
I unfolded and read it.
MM.Old ways.Crossroads.Stellar convergence.
What did that mean?
Tani peered over my shoulder.
“Stellar convergence?”Tani asked.
“Something about the Crossroads and a stellar convergence—but what?Planetary alignment?”This was, of course, rhetorical.Tani wouldn’t know.
To prove me right, she shrugged.
Someone knew the old ways.Someone was helping her.Someone with the initials MM.
“Maybe it’s like astrology,” she said.
My brows drew together.“What do you know about astrology?”
“You know.Like Mercury retrograde.Don’t sign contracts.That sort of thing.”
I stared at her.How did she know about that?
“Maybe.”And then I forced away a yawn.
I glanced down at the book again and froze.All my thoughts fled as I stared down at the open page.
Staring back at me was a picture of the mystery flower in the cooler.The one that preferred to be in the cold with pale pink petals brushed with blue translucent edges.The name of the flower was Moonpetal.
I had a name for the mystery blooms in the flower shop.And now I had a place to buy the seeds.
“Oh.”It came out on a breath.
“What is it?”Tani peered over my shoulder at the open page.
“Moonpetal,” I said.
Maybe the note was related.
“Alice grew those in the greenhouse.”
My head snapped up.“She did?”
“Got them started,” she said around a yawn.“Then moved them to the flower shop cooler.The blooms are winter flowers.”
This felt significant.I closed the seed catalog.Then picked it up with the scrap of note and the grimoire.
