We run again. Past the tennis courts. Past the community mailbox station. Past Valerius's front yard, which even at midnight gleams with an unnatural luminescence, every blade of grass precisely one and three-quarter inches tall and probably individually blessed by a woodland sprite.
The hedge wall looms. Nine feet of dense boxwood, trimmed into a solid green barricade that separates Valerius's private greenhouse compound from the rest of the neighborhood. Flynn counts sections under his breath, fingers trailing along the leaves. Seven. Eight. Nine.
"Here."
The irrigation pipe punctures the hedge at ground level, a four-inch PVC tube feeding through a gap where the root systems never fully closed. Flynn drops to his knees and wrenches the gap wider with both hands, boxwood branches snapping like gunshots in the quiet.
I squeeze through first. Branches rake my arms. Leaves stuff themselves inside the balaclava. I tumble out the other side onto manicured grass and roll sideways as Flynn forces his shoulders through the opening, wood cracking and popping around his massive frame.
He stands. Brushes a branch from his hair.
The greenhouse rises in front of us.
It's enormous. Three stories of arched glass panels and wrought-iron framing, glowing faintly green from whatever bioluminescent nightmare Valerius cultivates inside. The front entrance is sealed with a ward lock that shimmers like an oil slick across the double doors.
Flynn bypasses it entirely. Side panel. Ground level. His fist punches through the glass in a single controlled strike, the sound swallowed by the thick hedge wall behind us. He reaches in, flips the manual latch, and slides the panel open.
Warm air billows out. Humid. Thick with pollen and something sharper underneath. Something chemical.
We step inside.
"Oh my God."
Rows and rows and rows of plants. Hundreds. Crammed into racks that stretch floor to ceiling across the entire first level. But these aren't normal specimens. A sunflower the diameter of a car tire swivels its head toward us, petals twitching. A rosebush with thorns the length of steak knives strains against wire restraints. A fern in the corner pulses with visible veins of blue magic, its fronds swelling and contracting like lungs.
Flynn's rosebush sits in the aisle. Roots submerged in a glowing nutrient tank. Already twice its original size. Already sprouting thorns that weren't there yesterday.
But it's the back wall that locks my legs in place.
Dozens of labels. Handwritten. Elegant elven script. Each one tagged with a name and address from our neighborhood. Mrs. Ashworth's award-winning hydrangeas. The Patel family's Japanese maple. Old Karl's heirloom tomato vines. Every prized plant that mysteriously "died" over the past two years, alive and grotesquely mutated under fluorescent grow lights.
"He's not just cheating," I whisper.
Flynn's hands curl into fists at his sides. The sunflower bandana on his knuckles glows yellow against the greenhouse dark.
"He's been stealing from every house on the block."
CHAPTER 14
FLYNN
Every label. Every tag. Every grotesque, swollen specimen pulsing under those lights.
I grasp the phone from my cargo shorts and start shooting. Flash off. Screen brightness killed to a sliver. The camera struggles in the low green glow, but the images are clear enough. Mrs. Ashworth's hydrangeas, roots thick as garden hoses and veined with purple magic. The Patel maple, bark split and weeping golden sap into a collection tray. Old Karl's tomato vines coiled around their rack like pythons, fruit bulging with something that isn't lycopene.
Thirty-seven plants. Thirty-seven theft victims. Two years of Valerius standing on that stage at the annual competition with his smug elven cheekbones, accepting trophies he built on a foundation of larceny.
My thumb jabs the capture button again and again. Wide shots of the full greenhouse interior. Close-ups of the name tags. The nutrient tanks with their branded Elven Botanics logos, the kind that cost four hundred dollars per gallon and aren't available to non-elf buyers.
"Flynn."
Junia crouches at the center aisle, her pruning shears out. Between her and my rosebush, a wall of Venus flytraps blocks the path. Not normal flytraps. These things stand waist-high on thick, fleshy stalks, their jaws wide enough to clamp around a forearm. Mucus drips from serrated pink edges. The nearest one lunges at her knee. She sidesteps it clean.
"Little busy here," she hisses.
I pocket the phone and move toward her, but she waves me off with the shears.
"Keep documenting. I need you to have so much evidence that Valerius chokes on it."
