He turns with military precision. Exact ninety-degree pivot. Strides back toward his property on that same metronomic cadence, each footstep landing on his pristine walkway with the regularity of a clock. The cargo shorts somehow look dignified.
I gawk at him because I'm a person with eyes and he's a green wall of muscle walking away in golden afternoon light and my brain is only human.
Then I remember the fertilizer.
The enchanted fertilizer. Forty-pound bag. Currently sitting at the very back of the truck bed, leaking a faint green glow through the cardboard, because enchanted fertilizer does that. The garden supply witch in Portland warned me to handle it with gloves and a respectful tone. I'd forgotten the gloves somewhere around hour six of the drive.
I climb into the truck. The bag sits in the corner, pulsing gently, warm to the touch. I hook my fingers under the bottom edge and heave.
Forty pounds of magically enhanced growing compound lurches upward, and the seam splits.
Not a little split. A catastrophic, full-length rupture that starts at the bottom corner and unzips the entire bag like a letter opener through tissue paper. Glittering emerald dust erupts in a plume that fills the truck bed instantly, billows out the open back doors, and rolls across my front yard in a sparkling green cloud.
I cough. Hack. Wave my hands uselessly.
The cloud expands.
It catches the breeze.
It drifts, with the lazy inevitability of a curse, directly toward the property border.
Flynn Danger stands on his front porch. He's set down his shears. He's surveying his Japanese maple, probably assessing the moonvine damage. His back is turned.
"Flynn! Move!"
He turns.
The cloud hits him at shin level and detonates across his boots. His spotless, white-soled, aggressively clean boots vanish beneath a layer of shimmering green fertilizer dust. It coats the leather, fills the treads, settles into every crease and seam with the thoroughness of a vendetta.
Silence.
The sunflowers duck back into the truck.
Flynn looks down at his boots. He looks up at me. Down at his boots. Up at me.
His left tusk catches the light as his jaw sets into something that transcends anger and enters a new emotional zip code I don't have vocabulary for.
"I'm so sorry. The bag ripped, and the wind?—"
"What." Each word a separate brick. "Is on. My boots."
"Enchanted fertilizer. It's organic! Mostly. The witch said there might be trace amounts of dragon compost, but?—"
"Dragon."
"Compost."
"On my boots."
"It washes off! Probably!"
His nostrils flare so wide I could park a bicycle in them. He looks down again. Around his feet, where the fertilizer dust has settled into the cracks of his immaculate front walkway, tiny green sprouts are already pushing through the concrete.
We both observe a miniature daisy bloom between his boots in three seconds flat.
He steps back from it like it's a landmine.
"Tomorrow. Nine a.m."
