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Okay, he was a womanizer. Score another point for Bee against Santos in the women versus men chauvinist race. The newcomer could at least have had the decency to keep his eyes above necklevel.
Bee pulled the elastic free from her braid and fluffed out her hair. Typical. I nudged her and raised myeyebrows.
“Geez, live a little, Scarlet,” she whispered. “You’ve been toosheltered.”
I tucked a lock behind an ear. “Brown as a deer,” my grandma had once called my hair. Nothing sexy about that. Maybe the reason I never got a guy’s attention was I stayed toosafe.
My sights fell on the newcomer’s blood. Was it a human who had shot him with a bow and arrow? I rounded the counter. “Are you allright?”
He stood at least six foot with a solid square jawline, studying me as if I might be an animal he’d crossed paths with in thewoods.
“You’re injured,” Icontinued.
The man didn’t say a word but scanned the room, and then looked out through the windows behind him. “I’m wonderful.” Yet he stood there, a trickle of blood rolling down the side of his leg from under histunic.
“Don’t think so,” Bee blurted out. “Unless you’re a mutant who bleeds instead of sweating, you’re about to dirty up Scarlet’sfloor.”
He stared at me, and a brush of desperation shifted behind his eyes. The kind I’d seen when I’d first met Santos over a year ago, when he’d been sleeping on the streets, thin and pasty. Sometimes asking for help was the hardest thing todo.
“Come,” I said. “We have a room out back, and I’ll bring you hot tea to calm your nerves.” I surveyed the dirt road outside and the woods in the distance for anything suspicious. My shop was located in the forest on the fringe of civilization, so I often saw strange things. But it was allclear.
A few weeks ago, in the middle of the night, another buff guy with no shirt had turned up on my doorstep asking for specific plants for healing someone gravely ill. Before that, another man had been at my door, his clothes torn and his buttexposed.
A loser in the town of Terra had scored Get Your Herb On with a one-star on the town review board. The priestess ruling over the Terra realm in Haven had introduced a new system. The Customer Approval Plank, she’d called it, insisting it would assist people in choosing the best shops for theirneeds.
So now, not only did the scoreboard sit in the main town square for everyone to view, but some troll kept marking my store with one star. Was that person spying on me and noticing naked men at my door? No wonder my business has slowedlately.
Mr. No Pants scoffed and folded his arms across his strong chest, then cringed and loweredthem.
“So, you going to buy somethingor—”
I cut Bee a glare, cutting off her words, then turned to the stranger. And I recognized the desperate need for someone to reach out and make that connection, offer a lending hand. When my grandma had passed away of old age, I’d lost everything. She had been my rock, my family, and without Grandma’s support, her tonic soups, her hugs, I hadn’t been sure how to go on. She’d raised me after my parents had been torn apart by a pack of wolves. Bee had reached out to me, guiding me to find purpose in life again, so now I’d do the same with thisman.
“Come with me,” I said and headed to the back, his footsteps trailing behind me. “Santos, can you show him a seat? I’ll bring him some tea.” Something to ease any pain he felt along with his nerves. Might even encourage him to open up about how he’d gottenhurt.
Without a complaint, the two vanished into the storage room. Bee shook her head, giving me aglare.
“Don’t say it,” Isaid.
I rushed to the pot with boiling water Santos had set up for samples. I collected a jar of valerian and arrowroot from the cupboard lining the wall behind me. Teapots, candles, and more tea containers filled the shelves. Together with a pinch of chamomile, the aromatic scent had my shoulderslowering.
Bee was in my ear, and I tensed again. “What if he’s a guardian? Do you want to bring the priestess’s attention to your business? You know she abhors magic. That’s why I do my enchantment spells in the basement at home so no one ever catchesme.”
“This is just an ordinary tea store,” I whispered, lowering my palm over the teabag.
Bee snatched my wrist and lifted my hand, sparks of white energy dancing across my fingertips. “Right, so this is perfectlynormal?”
I’d always had the ability to enhance plants, and my grandma had taught me how to harness the power she’d insisted I shared withnature.
“It’s nothing.” I lied, well aware that the priestess who ruled over the human district forbade anything non-human related. And punishment came in the form of imprisonment for life. Each of the seven territories in Haven were homes to various races, from wolf shifters in our neighboring land, to mermaids, and rumor spoke of a girl with magical hair. Yep, one day I’d explore Haven, but until then, I’d remain in Terra with other humans, pretending we were pure and everyone else was the freak… according to the ruling priestess. And leaving Terra or strangers entering was prohibited. Hence guardians captured any shifters or intruders in Terra for interrogation, never to be seenagain.
“Don’t kid yourself, Scarlet. I’ve heard the priestess infiltrated places like the bakeries in town, convinced their breads were too good to be true. And that the baker engaged insorcery.”
Her words left me jittery because I wanted to believe what I did benefited those in need. I drew on my ability to amplify the strength of herbs, so when people used them, they got the full effect. If chamomile calmed someone, then it put them into such a relaxed state, their anxiety slipped away. What was wrong withthat?
“We’ll be cautious, then,” Isuggested.
Bee nodded. “Smart idea. I’ll be the bad enforcer and you thegood.”
