“It’s Lena,” I said. “It’s her tree being attacked.”
Jeneta hesitated. “How serious is this? If you’re calling now instead of waiting until morning…”
“They’re killing her tree. Killing her.”
“Oh.” In that single syllable, I heard fear evict the excitement and bravado of moments before. “I’ll try, but I’ve never done anything like this before, Isaac. I’m not sure it will work.”
“I’ve seen what you can do, Jeneta. You can handle this. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” When I hung up, I found Nidhi watching me with a flat, expressionless look I remembered from our sessions together. “You disapprove.”
“She’s fourteen years old. What happens if she can’t control these things? What if they attack her like they did you?”
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
She turned away. “If I did, I’d have stopped you.”
“I don’t like it either,” I admitted. “If you see another one of those things, get the hell out of here. I’ll leave Smudge in his travel cage. He should give you enough warning if anything goes wrong. Keep him with you, but don’t let him get into another scuffle with the bugs.”
I looked through the window. Lena sat in the archway of the garden, her back to the house. Even from here, I could see tension and weariness in the set of her shoulders, the slump of her head. “Call me if anything—”
“I will.”
Jeneta wore an oversized blue sweatshirt with the moose-and-lake logo of Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe on the front. She spent the drive reading, and the soft light from her e-reader cast odd shadows over her face.
“How do you stand it up here?” she asked. “There’s only one building at camp with a decent Internet connection. The wireless signal doesn’t even reach the cafeteria, and the cell reception sucks.”
“It’s like working with stone knives and bearskins, I know.” The Triumph’s traction spells kicked in as we rounded a curve. It felt like an invisible lead blanket had settled over my body, stopping me from sliding into the door. “You’d think they were trying to get you to talk to each other instead of spending all your time checking your phones. Total madness, I know. Someone should file a complaint with protective services.”
“Your jokes get worse when you’re worried.” She didn’t look up from her screen. “What happened to that rule about no magic for twenty-four hours?”
“Your nightmare was last night. In another ten minutes, it will be midnight, and I’ll be able to tell Nicola Pallas that I didn’t ask you to do anything magical until the following day.”
“Uh-huh.” She packed whole paragraphs worth of skepticism into those two syllables, as only a teenager could.
“I’ll be right there with you,” I said.
“Will you be in my nightmares if the devourers come back?” she demanded.
“You can stay with—” My brain caught up with my mouth at the last second. My house had been attacked once today, and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. Not to mention the creepiness factor of a grown man inviting a fourteen-year-old girl to spend the night. “With Doctor Shah. If anything happens, she’ll be able to help.”
By the time we reached the house, Jeneta had donned a cloak of pure confidence. I all but dragged her through the house to show her the headless ladybug and the other melted insects. “This is what we’re dealing with.”
“Cool,” she said, studying the broken bug. She picked up the head and poked the mandibles with her fingertip. “Nasty, too.”
“Can you get them out of Lena’s tree?”
She tapped her reader on her palm. “I’ve got an Emily Dickinson poem I think should do the trick.”
I stopped to grab a few more books from the library.
“Whoa, what happened to your back door?”
“I’m remodeling.” I stepped carefully through the broken doorframe, then crossed the yard to the garden. The roses muted the light from the back porch. Within the garden, we found Lena and Nidhi resting on a hammock made of interwoven grapevines. Smudge’s portable cage hung from a higher loop of vine.
Nidhi’s hair was disheveled, and her clothes appeared rumpled. She was sweating, and her shoes and socks had been tossed in among the pumpkins. I stopped in the archway. Nidhi and Lena had been together for years, but I had never walked in on them during or immediately after the act.
I knew Lena’s nature. I knew she drew strength from her lovers. It made perfect sense for her to turn to Nidhi for comfort. It was a smart move. But it still felt like I’d been punched in the esophagus.
“When did you plant grapevines?” I asked, stammering slightly.
“Tuesday morning.” Lena climbed out of the hammock and grabbed my free hand, pulling me in for a quick kiss. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“You’re really a dryad?” Jeneta asked.
Lena smiled and picked up her bokken. At her touch, a single green bud sprouted from the wood. “The tree behind us is as much my body as this flesh. And right now, something’s trying very hard to kill it.”
“No problem.” Jeneta sat cross-legged on the ground and switched on her e-reader. “Do you have any clover growing around here? The flowers would be perfect, but even if it’s not in bloom, it will help.”
“Give me a minute.” Lena walked from the garden. Nidhi followed, leaving her shoes and socks behind.
Jeneta watched them go. “Were they just…?”
“Focus on your magic,” I said.
“But I thought you and Lena were—”
“We are.”
I waited for her to digest this, and wondered which reaction it would be. Jeff DeYoung’s werewolf-style acceptance of whatever steams your sauna, or the confused condemnation I had received from Pete Malki. Pete lived down the street, and had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to tell me he thought my girlfriend might be making time with that new Indian doctor in town. I guess, “Yeah. Want a drink?” hadn’t been the response he was expecting.
Jeneta landed somewhere in the middle. “That sounds really complicated.”
“It can be challenging,” I admitted.
“Does that mean you and Doctor Shah are together, too?”
“No.” How many times was I going to have to answer that question? I was half-tempted to make a brochure I could hand out.
“There’s this kid at camp, Terry, who’s always talking about sex. He’s been hitting on me and the other girls from day one. Like if he’s persistent enough, if he cracks enough jokes or gives me enough compliments about my hair, one of us will let him into our pants.” She pushed her braids back, then shook her head in annoyance. “If he keeps it up, I’m gonna make him fall in love with a groundhog.”
Lena and Nidhi returned before I could come up with a response to that. Nidhi carried a handful of purple clover.
“Perfect,” said Jeneta. “Clear a spot by the tree and spread them on the ground.”
Lena examined her garden, no doubt studying both the plants on the surface and the roots of her oak below. She finally uprooted four cornstalks and moved them to the side of the garden. The roots immediately began to burrow back into the earth. Nidhi arranged the clover in a small mound.
Jeneta waved us back and began to read.
“There is a flower that Bees prefer—
And Butterflies—desire—
To gain the Purple Democrat
The Humming Bird—aspire.”
It was as if she had transformed into another person. Her voice was slower, more confident, and the cockiness that normally infused her words disappeared. When I looked at the clover, the flowers seemed brighter. The scent was stronger, overpowering the roses until my eyes watered.