Chapter 19
Magda stepped into the garden behind the greenhouse, letting the cool morning air slap some sense into her. Dew clung to every blade of grass like the yard wasn’t fully awake yet. She breathed in, hoping it would rinse last night’s memory out of her system.
It didn’t. Her brain decided to replay the almost-kiss again, complete with dramatic lighting.
“Absolutely not,” she muttered to herself.
Wally hopped beside her, already disagreeing.
“We are not doing this mental rerun again,” she warned.
He nudged her elbow. Hard.
“What now?” she snapped.
Wally nudged again, steering her hand toward her leather-bound journal.
“No,” she said, jerking her hand away. “Stop that. It was static cling, not attraction.”
Wally snorted. Actually snorted.
“Oh, great. Now you’re editorializing.”
She finally sank onto the stone bench beneath her favorite maple. Resisting him took more energy than just giving in. She opened her journal to a fresh page, where her humiliation could be recorded comfortably.
“Okay. Today, we’re focusing on something purely botanical. No romance. No chemistry. No men who look distractingly good peering into microscopes,” she said as soon as she was finished summing up yesterday’s disaster.
Wally gave her a look that said. Try harder.
“Fine,” she amended. “No humans who look good doing anything.”
He accepted this with a tiny hop.
Magda flipped to a clean section and wrote: Experimental Potion Concept: Emotional Resonance Enhancement.
“This is perfectly sensible,” she told the page. “A potion designed to help plants respond to their caretakers’ good moods and resist bad ones. Therapeutic gardening. Completely practical and safe.”
Wally made a snickering sound that should have been too undignified for any creature except perhaps Victoria’s raccoon.
Magda tapped her pencil defensively. “Stop judging. Emotional resonance is a real thing. Plants pick up on energy. There are studies. Lots of studies. I think.”
She stood and crossed to a cluster of ferns near the trellis. The fronds swayed lightly in the breeze, possibly in sympathy.
She cleared her throat. “Okay, little guys. Hypothetically, if your caretaker is feeling… conflicted, how does that affect your growth? Are we talking droopy? Stunted? Or is there some kind of—”
Wally thumped his tail in warning.
“Scientific inquiry requires vocalization,” she argued. She leaned in closer to a particularly fluffy fern, gently touching one frond. “If a person were experiencing, let’s say, heightened emotional resonance with another person, what would that do to a plant’s—”
A voice behind her said, “Should I come back later, or are you taking confessions now?”
Magda froze.
Then she turned, very, very slowly.
Sebastian stood at the garden gate, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, eyebrows raised in cautious bafflement.
Of course, he was wearing the lab coat. Of course, he had caught her caressing a fern like it was giving her affection.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” she blurted.
He stepped closer. “It looks like you’re interrogating a fern.”
“I was testing emotional resonance.”
“With a fern.”
“Yes.”
Wally burst into muffled wallaby giggles.
Magda shot him a glare that promised dire consequences.
Sebastian tried to hide a smile, but it tugged at the edges of his mouth anyway. “Should I be jealous of the fern?”
Magda sputtered. “No! Why would— This is botanical science!”
He tipped his head. “You’re bright red.”
“That’s chlorophyll proximity heat,” she lied boldly. “Also, I’m a natural redhead. We turn bright red outdoors without a hat and sunscreen.”
Sebastian laughed, warm and unexpected, the kind that curled through her ribs like a sunrise. “Magda, you don’t have to be embarrassed.”
She wished the earth would swallow her. Preferably in front of witnesses so her ghost could get one of her sister witches to document it.
He stepped closer, gentle now. “For the record, I wanted to talk to you.”
Her heart sprinted. Wally leaned back like he was watching a soap opera.
Magda straightened her spine, doing her best impression of a professional adult. “Well. I’m available. Scientifically.”
Sebastian smiled. “Good. Because I think I understand what happened yesterday, and I’d like to help.”
Her breath caught, and the ferns swayed as if gossiping to each other.
Wally nudged her ankle.
Magda ignored him, eyes on Sebastian. “All right. Let’s talk.”
She tried not to think about the almost-kiss. Tried very hard.
The ferns rustled.
“You know what?” she said. “Maybe we should just get back to work.”
He looked a little sad but nodded and followed her into the conservatory.
Magda stood at the worktable in the greenhouse, the glass panes glowing gold with afternoon sun.
Sebastian rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing forearms that had no business being that distracting.
Don’t scientists sit in a lab all day? Shouldn’t they have lab flab? Magda chuckled at her own clever rhyme.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Umm, maybe?” she said, and measured out the first ingredients. “Because emotionally, spiritually, botanically… I’m not sure any of us are prepared.”
Wally hopped onto a stool, already supervising.
Magda uncorked a small vial and held it up. The liquid inside shimmered shades of pink, purple, and red, like a bottled sunrise. “Heartsease. Only harvested at the moment of first light.”
Sebastian leaned in. “That’s beautiful.”
“It stains everything permanently,” she warned, pulling it away. “Ask Joell’s favorite blouse.”
Next, she drizzled a drop of morning dew gathered from her maple tree. Then she reached for a tiny tin.
“What’s that?” Sebastian asked.
“Affection dust,” she said. “Family formula. My grandmother invented it to keep her husbands docile.”
“Husbands?”
“Plural.”
Sebastian blinked. “Should I be afraid?”
“Probably.”
She sprinkled a faint swirl into the cauldron. The mixture brightened instantly, shifting from soft peach to glowing rose-gold.
Sebastian stepped forward with his contribution: a sleek infusion system calibrated down to the milligram. “If we want to measure the resonance effects, we should introduce catalysts slowly.”
Magda stared. “Do you bring controlled infusion systems everywhere?”
“Only on dates.”
She choked. He smirked. Wally thumped the table in delight.
Sebastian adjusted the nozzle, releasing a thin stream into the mixture. “And for the record, your note taking puts half my grad students to shame. You’re more of a scientist than you think.”
Magda’s cheeks warmed. “Don’t make me blush during a high-risk horticultural procedure.”
The potion gave a soft hum. Then a glow. Then a puff.
Rose-gold mist drifted upward, settling on leaves, petals, and spreading evenly throughout the greenhouse. For a beat, nothing happened.
Then everything happened!
Flower buds burst open like popcorn kernels. Vines unfurled in fast motion, spiraling around rafters. Petals swirled into blooming heart shapes.
Magda’s smile grew wide and bright. “Sebastian, we did it!”
Then her smile faltered, because the growth didn’t stop. Vines crawled across the floorboards, stretching toward Sebastian’s equipment. A tendril curled sweetly around his ankle like a clingy toddler.
Sebastian looked down. “They like me.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Magda said.
Within seconds, the greenhouse turned into a blooming jungle. Blossoms pulsed with gentle warmth, petals fusing into glowing clusters.
“Oh no,” Magda whispered. “They’re bonding with everything.”
“Not like yesterday, I hope.” Sebastian’s forehead wrinkled.
Wally hopped into action, brandishing pruning shears from his pouch like a tiny botanical warrior.
“Containment mode!” Magda barked, grabbing her wand. “Sebastian, cover my six!” She tossed him a sword that was kept stashed under the shelves.
He moved to her back instinctively. “I’ve got you.”
They fought like they’d been doing this together for years. She murmured incantations to construct containment fields. He slashed through a vine that was trying to lasso Wally. They moved in perfect sync, ducking the mayhem, bracing each other against waves of enchanted growth.
A thick vine shot toward the rafters. Magda leapt to the counter, nearly overbalancing. Sebastian grabbed her waist, steadying her. She sent a bolt of light at the rafters. When the out-of-control growth halted, he lifted her down.
Their eyes met. Not the embarrassed, accidental kind from before. This gaze held. Silence settled beneath the leaves.
Sebastian’s voice dropped soft as velvet. “You do realize the plants aren’t the only ones responding to stimuli?”
Magda’s pulse fluttered. “Don’t start analyzing this.”
He smiled. “That’s literally my job.”
Before she could respond, a vine attempted to climb up her boot. She yelped and flicked her wand. “Stop flirting!”
Light snapped outward. Slowly, vines retreated, blossoms dimmed to a soft glow, and the greenhouse exhaled back into something resembling normal.
Magda leaned against the table, breathless, hair wild from the chaos. Sebastian braced his hands on either side of her, their shoulders almost touching.
Around them, the remaining blossoms pulsed faintly, echoing their heartbeats. Then he angled his head and lowered his lips to meet hers.
And the greenhouse let out an explosion of glitter.