Petals & Portals (Enchanted Realms: Crossroads #1)

Chapter One

Ten years had passed since I set foot in Hickory Hollow, Texas.

Ten years, almost to the day.

I drifted along the edge of the crowded living room skimming faces the way I skimmed headlines.

The threadbare carpet still had the same floral pattern I used to trace when I was bored as a kid.

The furniture sagged in familiar places.

The drapes—yellowed, heavy, absolutely not in style—hung in the exact same way they always had, like they were too tired to care.

Hushed voices floated through the room like the low hum of an air conditioner on its last legs.

“It was such a shock.”

“She seemed fine the day before.”

“It’s such an unexpected loss…”

My throat tightened. Aunt Alice. Dead.

It still didn’t feel real. Like a headline about a stranger I’d read on my phone between subway stops, instead of the woman who’d taught me how to coax seedlings into bloom and spin fairy tales out of nothing.

I tucked myself into a corner behind a side table stacked with deviled eggs and sympathy casseroles. My best impression of a wallflower—only I was the kind that cost four digits and came with red soles.

My couture black dress was sleek and city-chic. My four-inch heels were worth more than the combined outfits of half the room. I’d gone with minimalist gold jewelry and a sharp bob that skimmed my shoulders. Every inch of me screamed Manhattan fashion girl.

Every inch of the room screamed small-town Texas.

I’d never planned on coming back here. Ever.

The plan—the plan—had been to die in Manhattan at a very old, very glamorous age after a long and scandalously successful career at Glint Magazine, with a walk-in closet the size of this living room and a partner who understood the sacredness of a sample sale.

Instead, I’d lost everything in a single spectacular, flaming dumpster-fire of a day.

Literally.

First, the job. My editor had called me into the office with that tight, apologetic smile that meant no one was “restructuring,” they were getting rid of you. One HR meeting and a signed NDA later, I walked out of the glass tower with a cardboard box and no idea what I’d done wrong.

Then Preston.

I’d gone home early, planning to drown my humiliation in Thai takeout and terrible reality TV, only to find my long-term boyfriend in our bed with a runway model who looked like she’d been assembled out of designer toothpicks and sorrow.

And because fate liked to overachieve, an electrical fire broke out in the building that night. Sprinklers. Smoke. Evacuation. My apartment—and everything that said this is my life now, this is who I am—went up in flames.

I’d been standing on the sidewalk in bare feet, clutching my Hermès crossbody and my laptop bag, when my phone rang.

My mother’s voice on the other end. Tight, thin, brittle.

“Piper. Alice is gone.”

Job. Boyfriend. Apartment. Aunt.

A superfecta of catastrophe.

So, when my mother called again a day later, insisting—no, demanding—I come home for the funeral, I didn’t have the energy to argue.

I booked a cheap flight, packed what I could salvage into my ten-thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton luggage—a gift from my former editor, now saved in my phone as That Woman (Do Not Answer)—and let my uncle pick me up from the airport in his dented pickup.

Regroup, I’d told myself. Go to the funeral. Figure out the next move. Maybe LA. Maybe a different magazine. Maybe… something.

Because it sure wasn’t going to be Hickory Hollow.

“You look like a city girl,” my mother had said in greeting, standing stiffly on the front porch with a pinched mouth and a face that had forgotten how to soften.

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” I’d answered.

“It wasn’t a compliment. Your clothes are too expensive, and your hair is too short.”

Classic Gladys Wakefield. Weaponized honesty.

The first thing I’d done when I got to Manhattan was chop six inches off my hair.

I remembered watching blonde strands slide down the salon cape and feeling lighter with every snip, as if I were shedding more than split ends.

Now I reached up and brushed my fingers along the sleek line of my cut, stopping where it sat above my shoulders.

“I like it this way,” I’d said.

My father had come to my rescue, as he always tried to. “She likes it, Gladys. And it looks great.”

My mother had made a noncommittal sound, the verbal equivalent of a shrug that said agree to disagree.

Now, as the last of the neighbors shuffled through the living room with their Pyrex dishes and condolences, I watched my mother work the crowd.

Black dress, pearls, hair in a tight bun, jeweled reading glasses hanging on a chain.

She accepted every hug with a tremble of her bottom lip and a damp handkerchief pressed dramatically to her nose.

If grief were a performance, Gladys deserved an Oscar.

Every so often, she shot me a sharp look over someone’s shoulder. The look said, They’re asking about you. You’re a problem.

I lifted my chin and pretended not to care.

People came. People cried. People left. Eventually the house emptied, the murmur of voices fading until only family remained. My parents, my older sister Iris, my brother Clay… and one stranger in an expensive suit.

The stranger set a leather briefcase on his knees and flipped the latches with quiet precision.

“Good afternoon,” he said, his voice smooth and practiced. “My condolences to you all. I know this is a difficult time—”

“Can we get on with it?” Iris cut in.

She lounged on the far end of the sofa, long legs crossed, arms folded, posture coiled like a cat ready to pounce.

She was our mother’s twin in temperament and looks.

Tall, sleek, blue-eyed, dark hair flowing down her back in a glossy sheet.

Even her glare matched Gladys’s—cold and sharp enough to nick skin.

She was also six years older than me, which meant she’d had a solid head start on perfecting the art of being terrifying.

Clay slouched on the opposite end of the sofa in jeans and boots, his black cowboy hat tipped back on his head. He looked like he’d been born leaning against a fencepost. Boredom rolled off him in lazy waves.

Across from them, Gladys and George Wakefield sat on the love seat. Gladys clutched her shredded handkerchief. George tamped fresh tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with the careful focus he reserved for small tasks that allowed him to avoid big emotions.

I perched in the ancient wingback chair across from the lawyer, hands clenched together in my lap. Waiting.

Waiting for this to be done so I could book the next flight out of here and never look back.

Alice had been larger-than-life for as long as I could remember.

Summer days in the greenhouse, surrounded by flowers that felt like something out of a storybook.

Dirt under my fingernails. The warm, loamy smell of soil and something else—something I’d once called magic before I learned magic wasn’t a word adults liked.

Alice had always had a way of telling stories like they were memories instead of fairy tales—about other lands, mirror-thin borders between worlds, and magic that didn’t disappear so much as retreat. At the time, I’d laughed, thinking it was Alice being whimsical.

Now, the memory stirred something uneasy in my chest.

When I wasn’t in the garden, I’d spent hours curled into the window seat in Alice’s house, devouring novels about faraway kingdoms, enchanted forests, and girls who saved the day instead of waiting to be rescued.

Alice never told me those stories were childish.

If anything, she’d encouraged them—adding tales of her own about hidden realms and old trees that listened.

Those memories hit me now like a punch to the sternum.

Alice was gone. Not a phone call or a text. Gone.

I swallowed hard and blinked away the sudden sting in my eyes.

The lawyer’s gaze slid from Iris to Clay and finally landed on me, lingering there in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

“Patience, Iris,” Gladys said, casting her eldest daughter a reprimanding glance before turning on her best hostess smile for the stranger. “But we are anxious to understand why you’ve called us all together today, Mr. Schneider.”

Roger Schneider was my aunt’s attorney and executor.

He was tall and silver-haired, with an easy posture and a plaid blazer that screamed old-money subtlety. I clocked the cut, the stitching, the drape, the little details that separated off-the-rack from runway.

Ferragamo, I guessed. I’d seen the same blazer in a preview for the fall line, back when I still had access to those.

“It was part of Alice’s final wishes,” Mr. Schneider continued. His gaze flicked to me again, then returned to the folder he’d opened. “She requested the reading of the will on the day of the funeral.”

The prickling on my neck intensified, a fizz of unease and anticipation that felt a little too much like stepping backstage before a runway show.

He cleared his throat. “This is Alice Hawthorne’s last will and testament.

Her estate is as follows: the house on Snapdragon Drive, including all furnishings; Enchanted Blossoms, her flower shop on Town Hall Street; her car; bank accounts totaling five hundred sixty-one thousand, four hundred thirty-five dollars; and investments valued at approximately five hundred thousand. ”

Clay let out a low whistle. “A million bucks?” He barked a laugh. “Who’d’a thought the old broad was rich?”

“Clay,” Gladys hissed.

Holy. Crap.

My brain tried to assemble the words into something that made sense and… failed. Alice? A millionaire? She’d run a flower shop, for crying out loud. The aunt who wiped potting soil on her jeans and drove a sensible sedan—rich?

Beside me, Iris’s spine snapped straighter, interest sharpening every line of her face. She practically vibrated with hungry expectation. If she’d been a cartoon, dollar signs would have replaced her pupils. I half-expected her to start drooling on the carpet.