Chapter 3
LIZA
Wednesday morning arrives the way Wednesdays do: unremarkably.
Coffee is half off at the library café, which means my free will is already dangerously low before I've even opened my front door.
To my surprise, I find an arrangement behind the deadbolt of my apartment door, as if deposited by a passing ghost.
Tulips, but not the generic grocery-store kind. These are black as midnight and glinting with tiny flecks of gold dust, sleek-stemmed and faintly ominous.
For a second, I assume the usual suspects: the local florist trying out a new dye, or my neighbor Mrs. Penrose, whose life goal is to out-garden the rest of the building by any means necessary.
But there's no card, no sender's mark, and when I lift the vase, the water is infused with a scent I can't place.
Not floral. Not chemical.
Something like pepper and honey and the crisp crackle of fresh-cut paper.
I take them inside.
My apartment is a converted attic over the old bridal boutique, the kind of space with slanting ceilings and a spiral staircase that everyone claims to want until they crack their skull on the fifth morning.
I pour the mysterious water down the sink, rinse the stems, and relocate the bouquet to the kitchen table, where it sits like an art installation daring me to comment.
I tell myself it's probably a leftover from the festival committee. Decorations do tend to migrate home with me after late-night cleanup shifts.
But even as I think it, it feels like a lie.
I shower, dress, and argue with my own hair for twenty minutes before giving up and clipping it back.
At the last second, I lean in and sniff the flowers again, half expecting some kind of prank perfume.
They smell sharp and a little mournful, like velvet and burnt cinnamon.
I ignore the prickle at the back of my neck and carry on.
The walk to City Hall is less than ten minutes, and I use every second to talk myself down from the ledge of paranoia.
Blackthorn Bay is not the kind of town where people stalk you with flowers.
The only anonymous mail I usually get is a stack of unsigned city council complaints or letters to the mayor, which I read aloud to myself in dramatic voices.
Weird gifts are part of the scenery.
I remind myself of this all the way to the crosswalk, where the traffic light is stuck on red in its eternal rebellion.
I'm early, but downtown is already humming.
The coffee shop is open, serving triple shots to half the night shift and the town's two most committed graveyard gossips.
The bakery across the street is doing brisk business: fresh sourdough, lemon bars, and those killer cinnamon rolls Cassian swears by.
I wave to Clover, the witch baker, who's in the middle of summoning a fresh cake layer.
A column of flour rises obediently from the bowl and makes an elegant, if slightly menacing, swoop toward the oven.
I duck and dash past before the yeast can attack.
Inside City Hall, the lobby is quiet.
I get the sense that the building is waiting to exhale.
My office is the second door up the main staircase, right across the marble hall from the mayor's.
I unlock the door—
And stop short.
There are more flowers.
A half dozen bouquets, all arranged neatly along the windowsills and in a line across my desk.
Every vase is different: a clear jam jar, a green-glass wine bottle, an old milk carton with the label scrubbed free.
The flowers vary too, but they all stick to a theme—dark, rich colors, strange shapes, petals with odd edges that look almost alive.
None have cards.
The air in my office is dense with a fragrance that sets my teeth on edge.
It's not unpleasant, just... potent.
I stare at the display, counting.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Each precisely spaced, as if whoever left them measured the gaps.
I hesitate at the threshold, not sure if I'm supposed to go in.
For a moment, I wonder if this is a prank, some elaborate payback from the events committee.
Maybe someone's trying to get a rise out of me before the morning staff meeting.
But none of my usual co-conspirators would pull something like this.
The only sound is the faraway tick of the grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway.
A chill runs up my arms.
I flick on the light, half expecting the bouquets to shudder or rearrange themselves.
They don't.
Still, I tiptoe around the edge of the desk and gingerly pluck one of the bouquets from the corner.
At the base of the vase is a small silver coin, so smooth it looks like a drop of mercury.
No inscription.
No obvious magic, but who am I kidding?
It's Blackthorn Bay.
We breathe enchantments the way other towns breathe pollen.
From the hallway, I hear a familiar bellow.
"Morales!"
I flinch, almost dropping the vase, and place it back on the windowsill.
Mayor Zadok Infernalis drums his knuckle against my door and smirks at the lineup of floral arrangements.
"Well, well," he says, his voice full of glee. "Is it Friday the Thirteenth, or are you simply irresistible to the local cryptobotanist?"
"Good morning, sir," I say, smoothing my shirt as if that will make this less weird. "Did you... happen to see anyone leave these?"
He leans across the threshold, sniffing the air with comically flared nostrils.
Zadok is built like a high-end espresso machine: all angles and chrome and barely contained power.
His eyes are black and bottomless, but today they look amused.
"Not a soul," he says. "But someone's got taste. That's a corpse lily, isn't it?"
He points at a particularly sinister bloom bobbing near my monitor.
"We had those in the Underworld. They attract the cheeriest of company."
I want to laugh, but my skin prickles in warning.
"I don't suppose anyone's called with a complimentary delivery?"
Zadok shakes his head, lips quirking.
"Nothing since the standard angry-letter roundup. Though I do like the avant-garde death motif."
He circles behind my desk, picks up one of the bouquets, and rotates it between his hands.
"Not enchanted, at least not obviously. You have an admirer, Morales. Or an enemy with a poet's heart—be careful, that kind can be the most dangerous."
I grin because it's expected.
"Maybe I should forward them to your office, Boss. You could use the scent upgrade."
He sets the bouquet down, still smiling, but his gaze lands on a coin at the bottom of the largest vase.
For a second, his expression slips, long enough for me to catch something worried beneath the clowning.
"That's unusual," he says softly, picking up the coin and rolling it across his knuckles.
The movement is so smooth I almost miss the subtle click of his nails, sharp as a paper knife.
"Trash it?" I ask, feigning nonchalance.
"Keep it. It's ancient and may be worth something," he says. "If anyone asks after it, let me know."
There's a look in his eye I don't entirely recognize.
Caution, maybe.
Or a historian cataloging small but important details for later.
He leaves with a wink and a theatrical bow, his trademark tail flicking as he retreats down the hall.
I let out a sigh and start my morning rounds.
My day proceeds in spurts and lulls: water the plants, answer emails, herd the resident paperwork ghosts back into their proper cabinets.
The bouquets continue to radiate their weird energy.
By midday, almost every office in City Hall has come by for a peek.
I handle it with practiced cool, but the scrutiny gives me hives.
Just before lunch, Cassian stops by.
I'm not prepared for it.
He's in uniform today, which I can never decide if I like or hate, but he fills it out in a way that should be illegal in three states.
He takes one look at the flowers and arches a brow.
"Nice centerpiece," he says. "Are you building a garden or holding a funeral?"
"Could be both," I reply, then immediately wish I'd said something less morbid. "Someone left them for me. No card."
He sniffs the air and goes very still.
Something shifts in his expression.
"Who sent them?"
"No idea. None of the neighbors saw anything."
I hesitate, watching his eyes narrow at the bouquets.
He lifts one carefully and inspects the stems.
"Pranks aren't usually this... dedicated."
He nods once, slow.
"Let me know if you get anything else. Or if anything weird happens. Okay?"
I want to say, Weird is the baseline around here.
But I don't.
His tone is flat, but his jaw is tight in a way that says he's not joking.
"I will," I say quietly.
I try to keep my voice light, but the words stick to my tongue.
Cassian leaves without another word.
I stare at his retreating back, at the way sunlight paints lines along his shoulders, and I wish I could ask him to stay a minute longer.
But he's already gone.
I get through the rest of the day, but every time I look up from my computer, the flowers are still there.
By five o'clock, I've convinced myself they're harmless.
By seven, I'm convinced I'll get over it.
When I walk home at dusk, there's a second bouquet waiting at my door.
The flowers this time are white—star-shaped, in a blue-glass vase—with another coin at the bottom, this one a little larger.
I don't touch it.
I stand in the stairwell in the damp blue shadows and pretend to fumble for my keys, watching the street for any movement.
No one.
Nothing except the flickering lamplight on Main and the distant clang of the old iron drawbridge settling for the night.
I bring the bouquet inside.
It's almost a relief to have the ritual down now: rinse the stems, set the arrangement, dispose of the old water.
I take the coin and put it with the first, side by side on the kitchen table.
They clink quietly against the wood, as if happy to have found each other.
I try to read, but can't focus.
I try to watch TV, but every sound outside my window sounds like a footstep, or a car door, or a breath held in the dark.
I wonder if I should call Cassian.
I wonder if this is how it starts, the unraveling—one petal at a time, until you're left with nothing but the stem.
I'm not scared.
Not really.
But when I finally fall asleep, I dream of a hand reaching through the bars of my fire escape, palm full of black tulips and teeth made of silver.
I wake at three in the morning to silence and the faint sweetness of the bouquets drifting in from the kitchen.
I lie there in the dark and listen to nothing for a long time.
Then I pick up my phone, find Cassian's name, and put it back down.
I do this twice more before I sleep again.
By morning, I've convinced myself I'm fine.
The flowers are still there when I leave for work.
And so is a third coin lying a few feet from my door.
I know I didn't leave the door unlocked.