Don't trust your little ones.
It took everything she had not to look up at the house because she could feel them watching—Brickkle and Avia—both of them from the shadows beneath the porch.
With her hands deep in the soil, testing her magic and learning to read the dirt the way a blind person might learn to read braille, Ivy felt their little feet as they shuffled back and forth. She wondered if somehow they could be feeding information about her to another Fae, who in turn whispered in the ears of the ones who killed her mother.
To think about it made Ivy ache, feeling as though she were betraying her friends, but were the Brownies really friends? Rowena summoned them and asked for their help to make the coven house beautiful again.
Their contract of service was with Rowena, but perhaps they resented it. The two little ones seemed so kind and eager to help, but what if they weren't?
Ivy’s hands fisted in the dirt, and a shock wave rumbled around her, rattling the gardening tools on the table by the shed. The wind chimes on the porch jumped and sang.
It was just violent enough to send the two sneaks hiding under the porch scurrying back inside. Ivy jerked her hands from the soil and sat back on her heels with a thump; the little quake faded to nothing as she sat there surrounded by a pile of weeds, startled by what she'd managed to do.
“I wondered if that was you.”
Ivy jumped again at the sound of Rowena's proud voice and looked to see her leaning against the porch rail with a smile on her face.
“It was an accident,” Ivy blurted instinctively.
Rowena shrugged and came down the stairs to sit in the grass next to her, scooping up the weeds to toss in Ivy's compost bucket. “We've all been there as we're discovering the depth of our powers. Were you angry?”
“A bit.”
“Something happen with Uriah?” Rowena asked carefully, reaching in to pluck a sprig of mint from the garden bed.
Ivy couldn't help the smile that split her face. “No. He's good. We're good. It's crazy how much I love him.”
“It's not crazy.” Rowena sighed, smiling as she popped a mint leaf in her mouth and turned her face up to the sun. “I'm surprised, though, that he let you out of his sight.”
“He's busy with Abel and the lions, patrolling the woods and knew I'd be safe here. I needed to come home for a while and work in the garden.”
Rowena made an agreeable noise, plucking out a few more weeds. “Ivy, this is and always will be your home, and we are your coven, but you have to know it’s okay to move forward. I love the way Uriah loves you. I want him for you. I want you to be so happy you can't stand it.”
Ivy hadn't realized how much she needed Rowena to give her blessing until that moment. She tossed down her handful of weeds and turned to hug her best friend. “I am happy; he's everything I could have wanted and more. With this threat of someone coming for me, I'm scared I'm going to lose all of you.”
Rowena hugged her back tight enough to make Ivy's bones ache, but she couldn't bear to let go. “I won't lie and say I'm not worried, but Astrid hasn't found a single portent to say we're doomed to die. There will be struggle, a fight, but we're strong together.”
Ivy nodded, using Rowena's hair as a shield to peer into the shadows beneath the porch, not daring to speak above a whisper. She couldn't see either of the Brownies, and it felt like a betrayal to speak ill of them, but Rowena, the coven, they were her family.
“There was a flower left for me this morning, one I didn't grow at the edge of the forest. There was a message inside, and I don't know whether to believe it or not.”
“What message?” Rowena whispered back.
“Don't trust the little ones.”
Rowena nodded and leaned back, her expression as serious as Ivy had ever seen. “I wondered about that myself. When I made the agreement, I asked a lawyer to consult with me. I was worried about making a mistake when the devil is in the details. Everything seems in order, but I'm going to call him again and inquire about what sort of confidentiality clause I used.”
Ivy nodded, yanking out the last weed from the bed of healing herbs. The mint and rosemary were on the brink of anarchy, the echinacea flowers in beautiful bloom, the St. John's Wort bush so big it cast shade. She had some harvesting to do.
“I don't mean to push, especially with what happened this morning, but have you gotten to the end of your mom's journal yet?” Rowena asked her question gently, but it still made Ivy flinch, deep inside where she barely held it together.
“No. I'm struggling to deal with all the new revelations. I will,” she promised quickly, not wanting Rowena to think Ivy's personal problems were more important to her than the coven. “I won't let you down. I just needed a break. There are orders to fill, and I can't get behind. Astrid's doing so well with mixing herbs for tea; I'm going to put in a tea garden.”
Rowena gave a soft sigh, leaning back on her hand, waving the stalk of mint now bare of leaves in Ivy's direction. “I'm not worried about the orders, Ivy, or a tea garden. Although that sounds amazing. You're my best friend, and I'm worried for you.”
“It's amazing here, this life we've built because you decided to make us a coven. How ironic is it that I'm not really a witch?” In response to Ivy's morose grumble, Rowena burst out laughing. Ivy looked sideways at her coven leader, hurt by her laughter.
“Do you remember the day we first met?” Rowena asked, peering at her over the tops of her ridiculously large glasses.
Ivy sat back on her heels, twirling the stem of dark orange echinacea flower in her fingers. “Of course.”
“You'd already been at Haggara for a year when I arrived, fresh out of the hospital, alone. Le Doux was waiting on the front steps, looking down that beak of a nose at me. The way she introduced us.”
Rowena's voice dropped to a croaking rasp, imitating the Headmistress. “'Miss Little, this is Miss Greene. The two of you have much in common, both of you without a family at all to speak of. I expect you'll get along famously.'”
Rowena snorted, snatching up a rock from the garden bed to throw out into the yard. “It was such a horrible thing to say. I couldn't keep myself from crying, and you came down the stairs immediately to hug me.
“You whispered in my ear that everything was going to be okay, and you held my hand the whole way to the dormitory. When we got there, you shut the door behind us, and I remember thinking it seemed so cold and sterile compared to the warmth of my bedroom at home.
“You sat with me on that narrow, lumpy mattress and told me we were going to be friends, and not just because we were orphans. I was grieving for my parents. I wanted to go home so badly, and every day you brought fresh flowers in to cheer me up.
“I barely talked, but you chattered on about all the different plants growing in the greenhouse and what they were used for while you arranged them in pretty jars.
“I'll never forget the day I heard June Barrows whispering to Farrah that you were such a shitty witch, you couldn't even light a candle without a match. I was so mad, but I didn't say anything to you about it. I asked you what kind of flower you would use if you wanted to make someone shit themselves.”