He shifts. Both hands on his spade. He swings in wide, brutal arcs, clearing a circle of space, batting tendrils aside like he's scything wheat. Each impact rings out sharp and metallic and his shoulders roll with a power that belongs on a battlefield, not a suburban garden.
I drop to my knees. Dig. Bare hands in the clay because the shovel is still wrapped in root and there's no time. The soil is warm. Unnaturally warm. My fingers hit the loam layer and it pulses against my skin, alive with trapped magic.
Deeper. There. The taproot. Pale as bone and thick as my wrist, driving straight down into the enriched soil like a straw in a milkshake. I wrap both hands around it.
Pull.
The root system screams. Not a sound. A vibration that travels through the ground and up through my knees and into my teeth. Every tendril above goes rigid. Flynn plants his feet and holds his spade across his body like a shield.
I pull harder. The taproot tears free with a fibrous rip, trailing clumps of magical loam. The tendrils above collapse. They hit the ground like cut puppet strings, twitching once, twice, then going still.
Silence.
I'm kneeling in a crater of torn clay, holding a dead root the length of my arm. Sap coats my hands to the elbows. My overall strap hangs useless. My hair has achieved a level of chaos that transcends description.
Flynn stands over me. Breathing hard. White sap streaked across his face and shirt. His spade drips.
"Your jasmine," he says, "is an animal."
I start laughing. Can't stop. He extends his hand. I take it. He pulls me up.
The combined yard looks like a warzone. Torn soil. Displaced boulders. Sap everywhere. But the retaining walls hold. The drainage channels hold. The bones of the design survive.
"We can fix this."
"We can fix this," he agrees.
"ATTENTION, RESIDENTS."
Valerius stands at our torn-up property line, pristine silver suit untouched by a single mote of dust. His platinum hair catches the light like a weapon.
Behind him, three figures. Broad. Square. Stone-skinned. Not gargoyles this time. HOA enforcement officers in matching gray polo shirts, each one carrying a sledgehammer that drags furrows in the sidewalk.
Valerius lifts one manicured finger and points it at the granite archway Flynn installed this morning where the fence gate used to stand. The keystone. The centerpiece. The physical symbol of our truce.
"Ordinance 4,012, Section C: no permanent stone structures may be erected without a three-month review period and writtenapproval from the Architectural Compliance Board." His smile is thin and surgical. "Which I chair."
The three goons heft their sledgehammers.
"You have thirty seconds to vacate the structure's perimeter before we begin demolition."
CHAPTER 10
FLYNN
My knuckles crack before I make the conscious decision to crack them. Ten sharp pops, one for each finger, rolling through my hands like a string of firecrackers.
The goons flinch.
Good.
I step forward. The runic tattoos on my forearms burn hot under the bandages. Old instinct. Warband instinct. The kind that saysthree enemies, three angles, take the center one first because his hammer is heaviest and his stance is wrong.
"Twenty seconds," Valerius says.
I take another step. The lead goon adjusts his grip. Stone skin or not, his eyes are soft. Fleshy. Targetable.
A hand catches my wrist.
