Page 54 of Wild Scottish Rose

“Nae.” Gnorman shook his head and picked mushroom bits from his beard. “Again, it’s about intent. If you’re intention is to do good and to help someone, you’ll be just fine.”

“Brilliant,” I said, picking up the bundles and putting them into my handbag. I left Gnorman with his mushroom while I returned to the closet where Gran’s magickal box of seeds was housed. I hadn’t had enough time to look through everything in the box and another thought had popped in my head. Rifling through the seed packs, I found what I was looking for.

“Chili seeds for the unblocking of negative energy. Be it anger, a curse, or negative thoughts, diffuse chilis in oil and follow the attached spell,” I read out loud. Opening the packet, I gently tapped two seeds out, and closed it carefullybefore returning the box to the shelf. Then I returned to the greenhouse, retrieved two seedling pots, and my potting mix. Bringing it all to the table where Gnorman sprawled out, looking satiated even though he’d only gotten through half his mushroom, I began to pot the seeds.

“Gnorman, can you leave here?”

“Are you booting me out then?” Gnorman asked, sitting up with an indignant expression on his face.

“No, not at all. I’m just wondering if you can come help me with something.”

“If it’s related to a garden, I can.” His tone inferred that I would be unable to do any good on my own without him anyway.

“Great. If you don’t mind being assigned a task then?”

Gnorman popped up, surprisingly agile for his full stomach, and saluted me.

“Aye, lassie. Ready to serve.”

“I’ll need these peppers to grow and then they must be infused in oil. Can that be done…relatively quickly?” Normally, this process would take weeks, but apparently, the rules weren’t the same when magick was involved.

“Just leave it to me, hen.”

Owen’s car was already gone when I got to my van, and I wondered where he was off to today. Not that it mattered. The man could do what he pleased with his time. I stopped short when I saw a piece of paper and a pretty gold leaf, the points just tingeing to red, tucked under my windscreen wiper.

The leaf said to the tree, “I’m falling for you.”

A garden pun.

My heart warmed, feeling like a balloon expanding inmy chest, and I pressed the paper to my lips for a moment before carefully folding it and tucking it in my handbag. Holding up the leaf, I twirled it, a shaft of sunlight spearing it and igniting it like a flame in my hand. That’s how I felt, I realized, when I was around Owen. Lit up inside, burning from within, aching for his touch. His kiss last night had knocked me off the ledge of attraction into the quicksand of desire that threatened to swallow me whole.

The thing that worried me the most was, if I let this man into my bed, my heart—my life—what would happen when he left? There would be this gaping Owen-sized hole where I’d once been relatively happy with my day-to-day life. Shaking my head, I rounded the van and got behind the wheel, my thoughts pinging around my head like ping-pong balls in one of those lotto machines.

Agnes was likely right, and I needed to proceed with caution. Why reveal my magick to Owen only to have him leave anyway? It would save me from potentially getting rejected for who I was, while also protecting Loren Brae. As much as I hated it, I was beginning to agree that we needed to shield the truth from Owen.

See? This was why I hung out with plants. Plants I could understand. Instinctively, I knew when they needed more water, more shade, when they needed to be nurtured, and those that needed to be left alone. Humans were complicated. Nature was my happy place, and it is the reason I was convinced I’d eventually ascend to becoming a forest witch hermit that the local kids whisper about when they run past my cottage.

Well, you’re already the witch.

The thought almost had me driving off the road,and despite all my misgivings, I laughed. Slamming my hand on the steering wheel, I let the laughter keep coming, because damn it, yes, I was a witch.

And I was off to do some witchy shit.

Loving this turn that my life had taken, even if it complicated matters, made me feel powerful in a way that I hadn’t even known that I’d needed. But now, as I pulled in front of Greta’s house, I felt lighter. In charge. I’d heard that someone was struggling, and now I could do something about it.

It was a cute, white stone house with deep green shutters and a children’s bicycle leaning on the gate. I paused, realizing I should practice what I was going to say, and then just decided to wing it. I’d already checked, and luck would have it that tonight was a new moon. Or maybe everything had lined up to bring me here, in this moment, to try and ease a woman’s suffering. The weight of what I was going to try to do settled on my shoulders and I took a steadying breath before grabbing my garden staff and walking to the front door. Having the staff with me calmed me, and the handle warmed to my touch, as though energy flowed through the wood. And maybe it did, for all I knew. I was magick now after all.

A child of about seven answered the door, looking up at me with owlish eyes. A sticky red stain surrounded his lips.

“Is your mum home?”

“She’s not well,” his voice rasped, as though he’d been talking too much, and I smiled gently at him.

“I know. That’s why I’m here. Can you take me to her?”

The child did as I asked, and while I made a mentalnote to discuss security with him on the way out, instead I followed him through a living room cluttered with toys and books. A second child, a girl, watched cartoons on the television while coloring in a book. I followed the boy down a narrow hallway that led to a door that was half-open. When I poked my head in, I found a dimly lit room, and a woman lying on a bed staring at the ceiling.

“Mum, someone’s here.”

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