Chapter 20
LEO’S NOTES
Place: Private collection in Bern, Switzerland
Favorite quote: Gnomes are one of the elemental spirits of the earth, responsible for the well-being of soil, minerals, and plant life. When the elements are out of alignment, gnomes may act without caution.
Misc: One of the coolest manuscripts I’ve ever found. Unfortunately, collector wouldn’t sell. First time my gift led me to an item I couldn’t buy. Perhaps it sensed the value in viewing it
Leo watched Pan pop strawberries into her mouth as they zoomed toward her house. She hummed every time she ate one, and licked her lips. Her curls fluttered in the breeze and her face glowed with a sunlit warmth. He felt positively, obnoxiously optimistic. Pan had gotten her gift.
He felt a weight lift from his shoulders, like he’d been yoked for years, unable to move past her.
Yes, he’d realized, in time, that a life without Pan—normal or not—wasn’t worth living, but now he was free to pursue her the way he’d always wanted.
They could stop dancing around what had forever been between them.
He wasn’t going to let Deja’s negativity drag him down.
Pan would listen to him. She would understand all his hesitations that had kept them apart. She had to.
“Why are these so good?” Pan asked, popping another strawberry between her juice-stained lips. “They’re better than chocolate.”
He forced himself to look away from her mouth, figuring he’d put off the explanations for a little while. “Do you remember how I fainted when I got my gift? Different people get hit with different kinds of sensory overload.”
“Hm. And how long did it take for you to figure out your gift?”
“A few days,” Leo said. “Well, for the basics.”
She ate the last strawberry. “What does that mean, the basics?”
“That my gift pinpointed a single book at a time, instead of something more general. And it took me years to realize that I fixate on a book that I need. Most of the time it is the rarest or most valuable book, but sometimes it’s just the one that’s most valuable to me personally.”
“Huh.” She licked her fingers. “How does a gift decide that?”
“Magic,” he said.
She stuck her berry-red tongue out. “My mom understood her gift almost immediately.”
“You know that’s not common.”
“Yeah. Did you feel the magic when I got my gift?”
Leo nodded. “It was intense. What did it feel like to you?”
“Like… remembering. All these ropes of magic braiding together that I could touch and untie, but I still don’t know what it means.”
“It might take a while to—” He swerved to avoid buckets of flowers scattered across the road. “What the hell?”
Leo pulled over and they turned to look at Beth’s Produce stand. The farm usually displayed flowers in buckets on a green self-service table: bouquets of columbine, peonies, and lady’s mantle, along with a jar for money.
Except the table was currently in pieces. The chalk sign with the prices was face down in the road and the buckets were tipped over, spilling their flowers.
Leo hopped out of the cart, shoved flowers back into a bucket, and set them next to the wreckage of the stand.
“Maybe there was an earthquake,” he said, getting back into the cart.
Pan frowned at him. “Leo, all this weird shit happened the day I got my gift.”
“So?”
Pan chewed on her thumbnail. “So what if they’re related?”
“You didn’t get the gift of earthquakes, Pan. And it’s been twenty-four hours since you got your gift. You didn’t cause any of this.”
She still didn’t respond. She just squirmed uncomfortably, so he started driving again, slower now, in case they met any other obstructions.
When he pulled to a stop outside the Inn, he said, “Whatever’s going on, it’s not your fault. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
“It’s in my stupid name.”
“Pan? The half-goat god of nature?” He jokingly inspected her bare calves. “I guess your legs are getting a little furry.”
She pulled down the skirt of her dress. “Shut up! You know what I mean. I get my gift, and suddenly wasps attack my dad and the flower stand looks like it was struck by lightning? Not to mention the biblical acorns.”
“There are dozens of faerie-kin on this island, and every single one of them is an agent of chaos. You got your gift, Pan. That’s a beautiful thing.”
“Really?”
“I promise.”
“But what if my gift is bad?”
“I know you think you didn’t need it—”
“Because I didn’t!”
“—but it can’t be bad, Pan,” he told her. “Nothing that springs from your heart can be bad.”
That apparently reassured her enough to get her to leave the cart. Leo followed her inside the Inn to greet the chaos and fight whatever demons she may face.