Page 8 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

Ethan set the boards up against the Jeep and slung his leather pack from his shoulders. His back was damp with sweat where the backpack had lain, the fabric clinging to his spine and shoulderblades. He stretched and then flopped down in the chair, extending his legs out in front of him. With a shake of his head, he reached out and plucked the spines that had stuck in the red-and-black leggings, placing them on the table before stripping his gloves off and setting them aside. His hands were too big, even without the gloves.

“Water first,” he said, reaching for his backpack. His voice was the same low timbre as when he’d been speaking to her directly, and she thought for a moment that there must be someone else there. But no. He was alone, talking to himself with his sandy voice.

He must talk to himself a lot, Mara realized, spitefully adding probably because nobody likes him. Though now that she was thinking back on their unwanted conversation, he’d clearly been making an attempt to be kind. Moving away from her when he’d realized she was frightened. Expressing concern for her safety. But that could be another kind of cleverness. Pretending to be charming, just so he could strike later. She shuddered at the thought.

He withdrew the water bottle he’d offered Mara from the pack, and for a moment he just held it in his hand, looking at it. He was frowning, though his expression was more confused than angry, and Mara leaned forward despite herself, wondering what he was thinking. Was he picturing her? Had he truly seen her? She’d worn no glamour, since she’d been sleeping and thought herself safe, and she’d shown him her wings in the moment before she’d fled. What did he think he had seen?

After a long moment, he set the plastic bottle on the table beside his gloves and rummaged in his pack again, pulling out a scuffed metal canteen. He tilted his head back and drank deeply. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he drank. Mara watched it, fascinated.

He drank for a long time, then dribbled water over his face and neck. It trailed down his pink skin to soak into the round neckline of the T-shirt he was wearing under his long-sleeved overshirt.

“All right,” he said with a loud sigh of relief. “Now the armor.”

He leaned forward and started to undo the canvas ties at the back of his legs. He set the rounded knee plates on the table, then unwrapped the red and black leg coverings. When he’d removed both of them, he stood and draped them over a wooden rack, the insides facing out. The hard pieces seemed to be pieces of heavy plastic.

With the armor removed, his legs were not nearly as massive as she’d thought—he wasn’t slender, but the canvas and plates had added bulk to his legs. The jeans they’d covered were snug and looked damp, clinging to thighs that were muscular and thick, but not monstrously so. Something about that thought niggled at her, and while he started to undo the ties at his waist, her eyes traveled unwillingly to the red and black protuberance over his groin. It stuck out much farther than her occasional glimpses had revealed—was it padded? What was its purpose? Why was it so…bulgy?

Why was she even thinking about what might lie beneath?

She should leave now. He was taking off his armor, which meant that he planned to stay off her prickly hill for at least a little while, and she should use this time to fortify her defenses. But she kept watching as he took off one hip apron, then the other, then twisted to untie straps that went between his legs and around his hips, finally removing the bulging groin covering. Like his thighs, his pelvis seemed perfectly normal. Mara idly traced the contours of his jeans with her eyes, the way his pockets curved over his hipbones, the ridge of his fly, the—

She tore her eyes away with a gasp. What was she doing?

“Is someone there?”

Mara froze. Ethan was looking right at her, that confused frown back on his face. She stopped breathing as his eyes roamed the landscape, passing over her several more times before he shrugged and returned to unbuttoning his overshirt. He removed it and tossed it over the back of the chair, stretching again. The T-shirt he was wearing beneath was worn and dingy, the thin, damp fabric clinging to his chest and stomach. Mara carefully let her breath out, as quietly as she could as he settled back in his chair.

“Much better,” he said, gusting out another sigh. “A little more water, some food, maybe a nap.” He reached out a hand and stroked the water bottle he’d set on the table, smiling faintly. “Then maybe you can do your research without crazy-ass hallucinations of beautiful women lounging around the desert.”

Mara smiled automatically at the beautiful—she had forgotten how lovely compliments felt, even from vile invaders—then frowned and thought back. Research? Ethan was here to do research? What kind of research?

She stood and carefully crept closer, across the sandy wash, hardening the sand beneath her feet so that she left no tracks and made no sound. He was digging in his backpack again, whistling, and as Mara approached he removed what appeared to be a book. It had rough edges of newsprint sticking out the sides. Mara leaned closer as he tenderly opened the book to reveal…

A flower.

Cold stabbed through Mara’s stomach. It was one of her flowers, one of Tristan’s flowers, one of the flowers she had lovingly coaxed to life, granted colors beyond the rainbow. This man had taken one of Tristan’s flowers. Stolen it. Ripped it from where she had placed it and crushed it inside this book. He was a thief, a vandal, ravaging what she had made. This man was—

The plants about them began to rustle with her rage, and she consciously quelled them, tucking her anger back inside, though she allowed it to simmer there as she sank into the earth. She traveled swiftly through the sand until she reached her inadequate barrier.

So he thought he was clever, did he? Well, she was more so. She would ensure he could not steal any more of Tristan’s memorial, this big-handed man who was the wrong shape and the wrong size and wrong in every possible way.

She started with the prickly pears he had eased his way between before, feeding them with energy until their paddles crossed so thickly he could not possibly move through them without breaking them.

He could break them, said a voice deep inside her. He could chop them down and create a pathway.

But he had walked with respect for the integrity of the soil. Taken care not to damage plants as he passed. He had created his clever trick not to damage the cacti in the first place. Even his research samples, the purloined flowers, had been collected so gently she hadn’t realized. And she pictured him kneeling before her, offering her water, moving away in response to her distress.

He won’t break them, she reassured herself confidently. This will be enough to stop him.

She moved along the line, drawing energy from the earth and the plants themselves to make them taller and wider. Her ring of cacti went all around the hill; she moved swiftly so that she could be sure her barrier had no weaknesses. By the time the sun had reached its zenith and begun to sink, she had closed the barrier so completely that even she could not pass through it; she had to travel through the earth to get from one side to the other.

Ethan Jacobson would never be able to reach her memorial garden again. He would just have to find another place to conduct his research.

Mara traveled back to his campsite, anticipation of his defeat bubbling in her breast.

She’d finished her preparations just in time. When she emerged invisibly from the sand of her hill, he had already reassembled his fool’s armor and was loading equipment into his backpack. She laughed silently as he picked up his now-useless boards and started up her hill.

He headed unerringly for the place where he’d crossed over before but halted in his tracks when he saw the enhanced barrier.