Chapter 17 #2
"Section 14-B. Subsection C. Willful misappropriation of residential botanical assets for competitive advantage.
" She doesn't look up from the clipboard.
"Additionally, Section 22: deployment of unauthorized magical constructs on residential property.
" A pause. "The earth golem registered on three separate seismic monitors this morning. "
Two officers step out of the enforcement van. They're not large, but they carry themselves with the specific energy of people who have dealt with HOA presidents before and are very tired of it.
"This is absurd. I am the president of this association. I have rights. I have legal counsel. I have..."
"Handcuffs in your immediate future." Voss clicks her pen. "Scores are final. Properties 4712 and 4714 Cedarbrook Estates receive a combined rating of 100. Highest in subdivision history."
The number doesn't register at first. It sits in the air like something too big to hold.
One hundred.
Perfect score.
I grab Flynn's arm. His bicep is rigid under my grip, tension locked in every fiber. Then the number lands. His arm softens.
"We won."
"We won."
The officers guide Valerius into the back of the van. His platinum braid catches the sunlight one last time before the door closes. The lock engages with a heavy, satisfying click.
Flynn looks down at me. Mud on his jaw. Golem dust in his hair. Eyes bright and burning gold.
"Your snapdragons weren't staked."
"No."
"They scored a hundred anyway."
"They scored a hundred because."
The first casserole arrives eleven minutes after the enforcement van turns the corner.
Mrs. Patterson carries it across the street in oven mitts shaped like lobster claws, her rescued dahlias tucked under one arm in a terracotta pot trailing roots and dirt.
She sets the casserole on Flynn's precision-cut lawn edge and is now a mud shelf, and she hugs me so hard my spine pops in three places.
"That elf stole my grandmother's dahlias. Thirty-seven years of cultivar development. Gone overnight."
"They're back now."
"They're back now." She pulls away, eyes wet, and shoves the casserole into Flynn's hands. "Tuna noodle. Extra cheese. You earned it."
Flynn holds the casserole like it might detonate. His fingers curl carefully around the warm ceramic edges and his brow furrows and I see him try to process a woman giving him food for no tactical reason.
"Thank you," he manages. Stiff. Formal. Like he's accepting a commendation.
But his thumbs press into the dish. Holding it close to him. Protecting it.
Then the Rodriguezes show up with a folding table and a cooler the size of a compact car.
Then the Okafor twins sprint across the cul-de-sac dragging a portable speaker system that looks like it was assembled from spare parts and pure determination.
Then old Mr. Finch wheels his charcoal grill down the sidewalk, trailing smoke and the smell of hickory like a one-man parade.
The street fills.
Not slowly. Not politely. It fills the way water fills a crack in a dam, rushing and loud and unstoppable.
Chairs appear on lawns that have never held chairs.
Someone strings twinkle lights between two mailboxes.
A group of dwarf contractors from three blocks over show up with a keg of something amber and potent, and they roll it right into the golem trench like it's a natural beverage station.
"Did you plan this?"
"I've lived here two weeks, Flynn. I don't even know half these people."
"They know you." He nods toward the street. "They know what happened."
He's right. Word travels fast in a subdivision that's been terrorized by a botanical dictator for years.
The stolen-plant footage is already on someone's phone, playing on repeat near the grill station, and every time Valerius's face appears on screen a cheer goes up that rattles the remaining windows in the greenhouse.
I step off the porch. My boots squelch in the mud.
I don't care. The evening air is thick with charcoal smoke and someone's questionable playlist choices and the sweet, green smell of dozens of rescued plants sitting in pots along the curb, returned to their owners like prisoners of war coming home.
The Okafor twins crank the speaker. Bass hits my sternum. A song I don't recognize but immediately love, something with horns and a drumline that sounds like it was designed specifically for victory laps.
Mrs. Patterson is dancing. Seventy-three years old, lobster-claw oven mitts still on, spinning her rescued dahlias in a circle like a partner at a ball.
Mr. Finch flips burgers with military precision that would make Flynn weep with pride.
The dwarf contractors have tapped the keg and are teaching the Rodriguez kids some kind of drinking song that is absolutely not age-appropriate, and Mrs. Rodriguez doesn't stop them because she's too busy laughing, actually laughing, leaning against her husband with tears on her cheeks.
This street was silent when I moved in. Manicured.
Perfect. Every lawn identical, every hedge trimmed to regulation height, every front door closed and locked against the threat of citations and fines and stone gargoyles.
Valerius built a neighborhood where beauty meant compliance and community meant fear.
Now there's a tuna casserole balanced on a mud shelf and a keg in a monster's footprint and Mrs. Patterson's dahlias are sitting in a cracked pot on a folding table next to a speaker blasting something with an aggressive trombone solo.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Flynn appears at my shoulder. He's put the casserole down somewhere.
His hands are empty, hanging at his sides, and he's watching the block party with an expression I've never seen on his face before.
Open. Unguarded. The rigid architecture of his jaw has softened and his gold eyes move across the crowd like he's cataloging every detail, not for threat assessment, but because he wants to remember.
"You did this."
"We did this."
"No." He shakes his head once. "I built walls. Literal walls. You grew through them."
The sun drops. Orange light pours down the street like honey, catching the twinkle lights and the smoke and the faces of people who are just now discovering what their neighborhood looks like when it's alive.
Flynn turns away from the party. He walks across the yard, past the ruined flower beds and the golem trench and the celebration, straight to the backyard property division. The backyard fence stands there. The last remaining barrier he built that nothing has breached.
He picks up the sledgehammer. Twelve pounds of steel. His fingers wrap around the handle and his shoulders square and the last of the sunset catches his jaw as he turns to look at me.
His eyes are dark. Intent. Certain.