Page 7 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

“Why are you here?” She fought through the confusion, the dullness of waking and the jarring surreality of this Ethan’s very solid presence. He should not be here. Could not be here. How was he here? It felt like a slap in the face.

Ethan studied her carefully. “I could ask you the same question. Are you hurt? Did you fall and hit your head?” He flickered a quick glance down her body and swallowed noticeably before focusing back on her face. “You, um, don’t really seem dressed for hiking. Is someone after you? Like, I don’t know. Bad guys?” A rueful chuckle burst from his lips. “Sorry. I’m letting my imagination run away with me. But you have to admit, this is kind of a weird place to take a nap. And…and you’re not saying anything, so…”

“Please go,” Mara whispered.

“I can’t just leave you here,” he said, hands flexing on his knees. A breeze wafted across Mara’s skin, rippling her dress and her wings, and Ethan’s eyes narrowed, focusing past her shoulder. “Holy shit. Are those—?”

Mara flared her wings behind her in fury, and the man’s eyes went wide. She hoped it was with fear.

“Go away!” she shouted, putting all her grief and pain into her voice. Behind her the cacti shuddered, hissing in an echo of her emotions.

But Ethan did not move, just sitting and staring at her, and his piercing eyes were suddenly too much for her. With a cry she fled into the earth, sinking deep into its comforting embrace.

She used the desert’s power to glamour herself to invisibility and emerged uphill, well out of reach of the invader. Her skin was vibrating with distress, and she stumbled to the shelter of an ironwood tree, clinging to its trunk for support.

The man—she refused to give him the honor of his name—had lunged forward and was pawing frantically at the sand where she’d lain, a litany of curses spilling from his mouth. After a bit, though, he sat heavily upon the ground. He was panting from exertion.

“It’s not quicksand,” he muttered. “She just fucking disappeared. Which means…” He ripped the white hat off his head, blotted sweat off his brow, and replaced the hat, adjusting its dangling flaps over his neck. “Which means you’ve been in the sun too long. You’re hallucinating. Time for a break.” He heaved to his feet and dusted off his stiff, strangely colored pants.

Mara felt herself leaning forward as she willed him to leave, but after he’d packed away his scattered belongings into his backpack, he planted his fists on his hips and stood there, his gaze traveling the hillside. He scanned across where Mara stood, and though she could tell he saw nothing, the pressure of his passing gaze made her skin tingle and crawl.

He was looking at what she had wrought for herself, the manifestation of her grief and pain and love, and something about the look on his face made her feel exposed. Naked.

Why would he not go?

It felt like hours he stood there, though it had to be mere minutes, and then he sighed and leaned forward, delicately tracing the edge of one of the cactus blossoms before him, one of the ones Mara had enhanced the night before. She was still faintly connected to it, could feel his touch as if he were stroking her own skin, a feather-light caress. She shivered.

“I’ll be back,” he murmured, leaning close to the blossom. His breath was hot on the petals, and his words sounded like a lover’s promise.

But Mara knew better. They were a threat.

And she would not allow him to win.

As he made his way back down the hill, Mara followed, her plants shifting to allow her to pass. She reached her senses ahead to the barrier she’d created, hunting for the place where he’d hacked the barrier out of the way. It was the only way she could imagine he would have passed through.

But no matter how she searched, she could not find the wound. Had he jumped? Or had she erred, left a man-sized space somewhere? She felt certain she had not. She moved more swiftly, until she was just a few paces behind her enemy.

The man walked with sure confidence, navigating around the cacti and plants in his path with ease. His route was meandering and indirect but seemed purposeful, and now that she was close enough to watch his feet, sense the earth beneath him, Mara understood why. He was taking care to avoid the biological crust of the soil, stepping instead on rocks and looser sand, even when it meant brushing dangerously near a cactus’s spines. Even as she made the realization, he moved a little too close to a barrel cactus, catching a few hooked barbs on his stiff pants, though he didn’t seem to notice them.

His respect for the land sent a sudden flash of admiration through her. Which perversely made her angrier. She did not want him to be likeable. She wanted him to leave. She forced the admiration out of her mind and focused instead on things she could dislike about him.

There were the pants. She could mock him for the ridiculous pants that made him look like a jester. Now that she was close and calm, she could see that what had seemed a jumbled patchwork of red and black was actually quite purposeful. One thick barrel of a leg was red and the other black. He had smaller pieces tied around each knee, black on the red leg and red on the black leg. Then above them, he wore hanging apron-like pieces on his hips that again alternated the colors. These were looser, and the canvas had been cut at the edges into a fringe of dangling points. The red and black pieces all seemed individually attached, and every so often his movements revealed that he was wearing blue jeans beneath them. And though she took great care to remain behind him, in case her glamour slipped, sometimes when he shifted his body she caught a glimpse of something covering his groin, an oddly shaped lump that itself was half red and half black.

Beneath the fabric seemed to be something hard and unyielding[1] , plates curved to fit his body and spaced out in a way that allowed him to move. The man brushed against another cactus without outward reaction to the spines, and Mara realized that the red and black jester’s outfit was armor, protection from the thorny desert. What a clever idea! She had no use for it, of course, as the plants would never hurt her, but it was quite an intelligent strategy for a human. Perhaps Ethan—

She shoved down that persistent niggle of admiration. It was bad that he was intelligent, that he’d developed a counter for the desert’s natural defenses. Her defenses. That man had to go.

They were approaching her barrier, and Mara frowned in confusion, because it was intact, exactly as she’d created it. But the man strode as confidently as ever, picking up a pair of wooden panels and sliding them between two of her cacti. She reached out to them, willing them to resist, but the man slipped his body between the panels, moving slowly and persistently, and when Mara realized her demands were going to damage the plants, she released them and let him pass through. He took the panels by their leather straps, one in each hand, and continued on.

Another clever countermeasure. She had underestimated him, this Ethan Jacobson. It had been the sunburn—she had not thought that a man who would forget to put on sunblock would have the cunning to outwit her. She’d been caught unawares.

Now she knew better. She would have to firm up her defenses, pour more energy into the plants and make her barrier truly impassable. She should do it now. But…she could not help but be curious. What other tools might he have at his disposal? It would be wise to find out, ensure that he would not again be able to trespass. Protect her peace for all the days to come.

The cacti let her pass easily, and she followed the man the rest of the way down the hill, seating herself at the very bottom as he returned to his jeep.

Drive away, she thought. Pack up and drive away. Just go.

But she could see he was settled in for a long stay. Atop his Jeep, he’d somehow erected a black domed tent with a ladder reaching down to the desert floor. The other half of the Jeep roof held a large solar panel[2] [3] , which had been angled to the south. There was a sunshade stretching out from the side of the Jeep, creating a large patch of shadow in which a wooden camp chair and small table had been set out along with other paraphernalia.