Chapter 1 #2
"And by 'neighborhood board,' you mean..."
"Me. I'm the Compliance Committee"
"The whole committee?"
"The previous members retired."
"All of them?"
"Simultaneously."
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. Because if I laugh right now, directly into the face of this enormous, color-coding, plastic-covered, shear-wielding Orc who constitutes an entire neighborhood governance body by himself, I will never recover the diplomatic ground.
The moonvine reaches the fence. One tendril curls over the top rail, stretching toward Flynn's perfect lawn with the slow, deliberate intent of a creature that has found its next victim.
He sees it.
I see him see it.
"I'll read the packet," I say brightly.
"You have seventy-two hours to address the grass."
"Seventy-two hours." I repeat it back to him like I'm confirming a hostage deadline, which, honestly, tracks.
Flynn Danger stands there on his side of the property line, a monument to order and personal grooming, and I should be annoyed.
I am annoyed. The laminated packet in my hands represents everything wrong with suburban conformity, a philosophy of living that treats dandelions like war criminals and considers "whimsy" a code violation.
But.
The afternoon sun hits his jaw at an angle that turns moss-green skin into something luminous.
His forearms, holding those ridiculous custom shears, are roped with muscle and traced with pale scars that catch the light like old rivers on a map.
A small vein pulses at his temple, right above where his dark brow furrows into a shelf of pure disapproval.
He's furious about my grass.
He's beautiful.
These two facts coexist in my brain like oil and water, swirling around each other, refusing to mix.
"Seventy-two hours for the front lawn," he continues, apparently interpreting my silence as compliance. "The backyard is technically not visible from the street, so it falls under a separate—"
"Separate subsection?"
"Section four, paragraph B." He taps the plasticked packet in my hands without actually touching me. His finger stops a precise two inches from the paper. "Backyard vegetation is subject to annual review, not the seventy-two-hour standard. However."
That however hangs in the air like a guillotine blade.
"However, aggressive or semi-sentient plant life falls under the hazardous flora addendum, which I drafted last spring after the Hendersons' bamboo breached three property lines simultaneously."
"You have a hazardous flora addendum."
"Laminated."
"Of course it is."
The moonvine, apparently bored with the fence, redirects its attention toward Flynn's edging shears.
A tendril snakes down from the fence rail and brushes the blade.
He pulls the shears away with a speed that borders on supernatural, the movement so fluid and controlled it reminds me of a nature documentary about predators.
The tendril recoils.
Smart vine.
"Look, Flynn—"
"Danger."
"Flynn Danger, I appreciate the welcome wagon, but I've been here exactly three hours.
My furniture is still in the truck. My fern drew blood twice today.
I haven't eaten since a gas station granola bar at nine a.m., and I'm standing in grass up to my knees holding an HOA document while my sunflowers watch us like we're a reality show.
" I gesture behind me. The golden heads bob in confirmation.
"Can I have, like, twenty-four hours before we discuss mulch policy? "
His mouth opens. Closes. The muscles in his jaw work through something complicated.
"The grass—"
"Will still be here tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Grass is famously patient, Flynn."
"It's a safety hazard. Ticks breed in—"
"Tomorrow. Please."
He stares at me. I stare back. We hold this stare for long enough that Reginald gets bored and starts chewing on his own pot.
"Tomorrow," Flynn says finally, like the word physically costs him. "Nine a.m. I'll bring a revised timeline."
"Revised from the one you just gave me?"
"That was the preliminary timeline. The formal timeline accounts for your specific... situation." His gaze sweeps across my yard one more time. A muscle jumps beneath his left eye.
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."
He walks inside. The door closes with a click so controlled and deliberate it's louder than any slam.
I stand in my yard, coated in green dust, surrounded by hostile plants, holding the shredded remains of a forty-pound bag of magical fertilizer.
"That went well," I tell the sunflowers.
They refuse to come out of the truck.
The hammering wakes me at 6:47 a.m.
Three sharp strikes. Pause. Three more. The rhythm of someone who treats even knocking on wood as a task requiring precision.
I roll off the air mattress, because my bed frame is still in pieces in the living room, and stumble to the front door in my pajamas. Frog-print shorts. An oversized t-shirt that says BLOOM WHERE YOU'RE PLANTED with a screen-printed flower giving a thumbs up.
I open the door.
No one's there.
But nailed to the wood, dead center, aligned with a level's accuracy, sits a bright pink sheet of paper. Not just pink. Neon. Aggressively, violently, optically offensive pink. The kind of pink that doesn't exist in nature because nature has taste.
CEDARbrOOK LANE HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION
OFFICIAL CITATION
Violation: Hazardous Material Dispersal (Section 6, Paragraph 3, Subsection D)
Description: Uncontrolled release of enchanted agricultural compound across property lines, resulting in unauthorized botanical growth on neighboring walkway infrastructure. Dragon compost detected.
Resident: Junia Erikkson, 4712 Cedarbrook Lane
Issued by: Flynn Danger, Compliance Chair
Fine: $75.00. Payable within 7 days. Cash, check, or exact change only.
At the bottom, in precise handwriting:
The daisy is still growing. It has reached four inches. This is unacceptable.
I yank the nail out of my door. It leaves a perfect, tiny hole.
Across the fence, the sound of edging shears starts up with mechanical regularity.