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Lucky for us, then, that the Nicola Arboretum was so lightly guarded at night. The hurried precautions Florian and I took to dress in anything resembling black seemed to be more than enough, considering the only guy on duty was an older gentleman who wasn’t exactly very vigilant about doing his rounds. From the noises coming off of his phone, it sounded very much like he was a big fan of mobile gaming. At least he was having fun.
Plus, it meant that our job was going to be easier. Sneak in, steal some shit, then sneak out. The Nicola Arboretum was the biggest – scratch that, the only botanical garden in the city of Valero. It was the largest expanse of nature for miles around, too, unless you went beyond city limits, and who had the time for that? Theoretically, Florian and I could have gone all the way to wine country to steal some grapes to use as actual, literal seed capital for starting our illicit liquor business. But we needed fast cash, and this was going to have to do.
Not that it felt like a chore or anything. After we clambered over the gates, it was a mostly relaxed stroll through the gardens to go looking for fruit and flowers. The arboretum was gorgeous by day, but by night the ambient chill of the air gave the vegetation a distinctly dewy sheen. Simple leaves and tendrils shone like shards of glass and metal in the dark, the fruits and flowers we needed glimmering like jewels. It was easy, almost fun work, and it was an opportunity to actually get to know Florian a little better, for once.
“Hey, man,” I said, as we riffled through some bushes. “I really don’t give you enough credit. I’m sorry if I ever said really nasty things to you.”
He wrinkled his forehead, giving me a weird smile as he deposited a single red berry into his rucksack. “You’ve never been mean to me, Mace. I know I can be a bit of a burden. I’m just trying to fix that.”
“Yeah. Thanks for saying that.”
I scratched my forearm, kneeling in the grass to look for more berries. “Belphegor did say that it was the reason he made me take you in,” I said, chuckling. “As if I’d know the first thing about responsibility. I’m just a kid.”
A kid who grew up too fast, I thought, but I didn’t say that out loud. Life’s a little tougher when you don’t have a dad growing up, when your mom dies before you even hit your seventeenth birthday.
Things were rough for me early on, but hey. Now I was rummaging through some bushes with my dryad buddy, looking to make some magical bootleg wine. This was better than skipping from town to town, constantly unsure of where my next meal or my next eight hours in an actual bed would come from.
Florian shrugged. “I’m older than you by a significant factor,” he said, “but you’ve got a better head on your shoulders than I do most of the time. Don’t sell yourself short.”
I scooted down even further, landing on my butt, the wet grass seeping into the underside of my jeans. “You know, that’s the thing. You don’t seem like a bad guy at all. How the hell did you end up with someone like Belphegor?”
He shrugged again, sighing. “Long story, but I’ll give you the gist of it. You know how certain plants can hibernate underground for ages, like a kind of survival tactic to help them survive? They’ll go snooze for the winter, then come back out in the spring. That happened to me. I didn’t know it could happen to my people.”
I watched him intently, my mind swimming with images of him somehow regressing into the size and shape of a tiny little seed and burrowing into the earth. I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it happened, but at least I had a visual to work with.
“And Belphegor found me, brought me to his hell, planted me in his garden like I was just some succulent he picked up at a farmer’s market. I woke up, and that was it. He wanted me to tend his Crimson Gardens – massive place, full of carnivorous plants, just the craziest shit. But I was so groggy and weak from being asleep for so long. I guess he got frustrated, wanted some way to turn me into a better servant.”
I frowned. “So you’re indentured to him?”
“Not exactly. As far as I know, all Belphegor wants from me is the equivalent of a few days of gardening, but only when I’m fully awake and at full power. It’s like a weirdly specific favor, but you know how it is. Demon princes, am I right? Look. I’m not lazy, man. I just – I’ve been asleep a long, long time, and being awake in a world that I don’t understand? That takes a lot of getting used to.”
I squinted at him. “Exactly how long have you been asleep, Rip van Winkle?”
He looked down at his hands, scratching at his chest before he started clumsily counting out on his fingers. After a few seconds, he looked up at me glumly and forced a little smile. “About a hundred years.”
“Holy crap.”
“Yeah. Imagine being asleep for a full quarter of your life.”
My eyes bulged out of my head. “You’re four hundred years old?”
“Thereabouts.”
“Hot damn. You dryads live a long-ass time.”
“Yeah,” he said, chuckling uncertainly. “Us dryads certainly do.”
“You’ve probably seen some shit.”
He chuckled again. “Let’s not get into that. But rest assured, it’s why I’m so confident about brewing the good stuff.” He thumped his chest with his fist, smiling brilliantly. “I’ve put in a lot of practice.”
“Lots of practice drinking the stuff too, I’d bet.”
“Hey,” he said, throwing his rucksack over his shoulder as we moved to our next gathering spot. “How are you going to gauge the quality of your product if you don’t partake?”
I nodded. “Fair point. Look at these flowers. Can you use those? Don’t some people make wine out of flowers?”
Florian approached a shrub with tiny purple blooms, nodding as he sifted through them. “I don’t think anyone’s ever made wine out of morning glory, but there’s always a market for this stuff with the fae. They love flowers, and this is going to be exotic and enticing for them. We’ll mark it up, make it rare and exclusive.”
