See? Suck it, Delilah, I did know my Thistle Grove history.
My mother sighed softly and capitulated, rubbing her temples. “I suppose that’s true. And you’ll have a few days to rest up before the tournament opening on Wednesday. Acclimate a bit to being back.”
At the mention of rest, I tried to stifle a yawn and failed miserably, my jaw nearly unhinging from the force. “Sorry,” I barely managed through it. “I’m just beat.”
My mother pushed back from the table and swiftly gathered up our empty mugs, then set them in the sink. “No worries, sweet. I have the carriage house all ready for you,” she told me over her shoulder as she rinsed them. “I thought, for a whole month, it would be nice for you to have your own space rather than a guest room in the house proper.”
“That would be great,” I said, my heart lifting at the prospect with genuine pleasure. I’d loved the carriage house as a kid, and spent most of my sleepovers with Linden Thorn sequestered out there, apart from my parents but never too far away for help if any was needed. The kind of distance they’d probably envisioned would carry over into my adulthood, instead of the two hundred miles of Illinois flatlands that now yawned between us, vast and intractable.
Together, we lugged my things out the back door and down the paved path that led through my mother’s flower garden. The night bloomers stirred in their beds, swaying toward one another and tittering in high-pitched tones like gossiping fairies. Jasper trotted over to sniff a particularly lively evening primrose, leaping like a rabbit when it leaned over with a tinkling giggle to bop him on the nose.
It was a simple animating spell, though nothing like what a Thorn could have done with one. Flowers in a Thorn-animated garden might have distinct names and personalities and the power of speech, all the trappings of sentience. I knew because Linden Thorn, my best friend of over twenty years, once animated a cherry tree in the Honeycake Orchards for me as a birthday present. Cherry—so styled by yours truly, the world’s most literal eight-year-old—whooped my ass at chess a solid four games out of five, and enjoyed regaling me with its gorgeous, uncanny dreams.
Sometimes I still really missed that tree.
We both dropped my luggage at the threshold with a pair of matching, extremely unladylike grunts, grinning at each other as she handed me a key.
“Your dad may very well sleep at the shop if the night gets away from him,” she said, rolling her eyes fondly. “As they so often do. So don’t rush to breakfast tomorrow on his account.”
“I have brunch plans with Linden anyway.” I’d messaged Lin a few weeks ago to let her know I’d be in town for the Gauntlet, and to see if she wanted to get together as soon as I was back. We were still close, mostly thanks to Lin’s staunch commitment to keeping us abreast of each other’s lives even from a distance, so I figured it was on me to swing our first real-life reunion in years. “But I’ll stop by Tomes and Omens right after, if that works?”
“Of course it does,” my mother said, leaning over to brush a kiss over my forehead. “Good night, my darling, and give me a shout if you need anything at all. It really is so very lovely to have you back.”
2
The Shamrock Cauldron Fiasco
Inside, the carriage house was an airy loft open to the rafters, complete with a kitchenette, a rustic little fireplace, and a queen bed positioned right beneath the skylight. It usually served as my mother’s candle-dipping studio, but her creative clutter was nowhere in sight. Instead, every surface all but sparkled, and she had even left out a bowl of dimpled Sumo oranges, my favorite.
The effort she’d put into my homecoming made me yearn for a drink, in a way that might be considered a tad problematic if I allowed myself to dwell on it too long.
After I tucked the very last set of I-probably-won’t-need-these-BUT-WHAT-IF-I-DO shoes away and slid my suitcase under the bed, I found that my exhaustion had morphed into the kind of maddeningly buzzy fatigue that I knew wouldn’t let me sleep without some help. And the last thing I felt like doing was venturing back to the house in search of the kind of complicated liquor that my parents, who were both “two fingers of scotch for special occasions” kind of people, weren’t even likely to have.
Which left me with only one real option.
* * *
Half an hour later, I slid onto a stool at the Shamrock Cauldron, my gaze skimming over the familiar tangle of jaunty bat lights still strung above the gouged-up bar top, the same psychedelic green and purple shamrocks shimmering on the walls. And, of course, Dead Frederick: the plastic skeleton in a leprechaun’s top hat and Mardi Gras pearls who presided over the bar’s back corner with, puzzlingly, a ukulele propped on his bony lap.